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Yorkshire Ripper


The serial killer Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper is a prolific serial killer in England.  Sutcliffe killed and assaulted prostitutes as well as other women for about 6 years in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s.  Sutcliffe would attack women from behind by hitting them in the head with a hammer.  After they were incapacitated, he would disarrange their clothes and stab them on their bare skin on the stomach, chest, and abdomen (Keppel & Birnes). 
There were several things that led to Sutcliffe being in the police files, such as: boot prints, blood type, type of car and tire impression, and a specific £5 bank note.  Also, his vehicles were on two separate lists of cars that were sighted in the vicinity of known prostitution areas where the killer attacked.  One list was for the car being sighted two times, and the other was for being sighted 3 times – double and triple sightings (Keppel & Birnes). 
A common psychological effect of serial killer cases is that law enforcement officers may not believe that the work they are doing will result in solving the case.  This leads them to not be as thorough when following up on leads since they don’t believe anything will come of the work they are doing.  During interviews, law enforcement officers didn’t believe their own systems were working, therefore they were not always as thorough as they could have been.  Sutcliffe was interviewed a total of 12 times over the course of several years by police.  Many times, when Sutcliffe was interviewed, the detectives interviewing Sutcliffe didn’t know before going that he had been interviewed already.  Upon being told that he was cleared by previous detectives, Sutcliffe was often taken on his word by detectives.  Another problem is that the investigation was focused on being exclusive with suspects, instead of being inclusive.  When Sutcliffe realized the police were onto him, he would change up his modus operandi (MO).  This led to some of the cases not being attributed to the same series of killings originally (Keppel & Birnes).
There were 13 murders and 7 assaults known to be committed by Sutcliffe.  Each case was investigated separately.  There was no clear task force leader and poor information management strategies led to prevalent clues being lost in the massive amount of information coming in on each case.  Even though the investigations were working, the lack of notes about decision that were made on the case from detectives kept detectives on the task force starting over  from scratch each time Sutcliffe’s name came up.  (Keppel & Birnes).
The most surprising aspect of the Yorkshire Ripper case is that the perpetrator, Peter Sutcliffe, was interviewed 12 times over the course of several years.  The fact that his name kept coming up in the investigation because of ground work detectives were doing was completely missed due to the information overload and poor management.  All the while, he continued attacking and murdering women (Keppel & Birnes). 




Works Cited
Keppel, Robert D., and William J. Birnes. The Psychology of Serial Killer Investigations The Grisly Business Unit. Academic Press, 2003.

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