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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