Episode 403: The Yorkshire Ripper Part 1 | Morbid

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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.

She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.

And let me tell you, it did. I've been listening to it while I walk, and I am absolutely loving it.

I love all the different narrators. I love Audible.

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Visit audible.com slash morbid. On November 13th, 2022, four University of Idaho students were murdered.

Today, finally, the true story. Based on over 300 interviews, in their own words, family members talk about their heartbreak and grief.

Students and townspeople describe that terrifying night.

Police detail the dramatic investigation and arrest of Brian Koberger.

You've never read a true crime like James Patterson and Vicki Ward's The Idaho Four.

The true story, it's finally here. Hey weirdos, I'm Ash.

And I'm Alayna. And this is Morbid. This is Morbid.

I just said that. I just said that, man.

I literally just told them what this is, Jed.

We're back and it's after Thanksgiving now.

Yeah. For you, it's probably like three years after Thanksgiving.

They're like, Thanksgiving was like 10 years ago, guys.

We've yet to figure out when these episodes like actually come out.

Yeah, I think this one comes out. I don't know.

The 7th? It's after Thanksgiving. That's all we know.

The 5th and then the 12th, I think. We're living in the future right now.

It's me, Xenon, girl of the 21st century.

We're living in the future and who really knows.

That's a question. What? Are we in the 21st century?

Why did you ask me that? Or is it, oh, you don't know either?

I think we are in the 21st century. Oh, okay.

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense, right? What is the 21st century?

We are, right? We would have heard if it was the 22nd.

We would have heard. Like someone would have told us.

Are we vamping? Vamp, vamp, vamp. What century is this?

We do. Okay, that's the 2000s. I thought so because it's like 2000 is 2-0 and I always think that was the 20th century, but it is the 21st.

Yeah, it's always like ahead. Yeah. All right.

Okay. You made me question myself first.

I was like... I think I know the answer to this, but I don't want to say it and get roasted.

So we won't be alive in the next one. So yeah.

So 21st century, we're there. We're with Xenon.

Thought so. I'm just thinking about like life and centuries and death because we did just finish watching the last episode of Buffy for our show, The Rewatcher.

Prophecy girl. I'm in like a weird vibe.

Guys, if you're not listening and this is not even like a plug.

No, it really isn't. It's such a fun show.

Like we are having so much fun doing The Rewatcher.

Go check it out because we're watching Buffy from beginning to end.

Ash for the first time, me for the zillionth time.

And we just finished the first season. Yeah.

We're moving on to season two and that's when.

Season two, episode three, School Heart.

That's a big deal for me. She's excited.

I think Spike comes. Everybody jump on. But no, it's actually been really fun.

That's like, I look forward to that a lot.

I do too. It's really, it's really fun. It's really fun.

It's, yeah, but it's. It's heavy, but it's fun.

Yeah, just like this. So here we are. We're on Morbid.

I had a stomach bug last week and it sucked.

Oh, yeah. And I feel better now. So I'm glad that we're here because I was a little worried.

I was like, I don't think I can sit there and even talk without wanting to gag.

No, I didn't forget, by the way, that you had a stomach bug because I was like, oh, yeah.

I just was like, wait, we haven't, you know, like, holy shit, it's been that long.

The days are blurring together. They are.

But I did hear that a lot of you also have stomach bugs or have had stomach bugs or your family is having a stomach bug.

Right now, it seems like it's like the thing now and I'm sorry.

I mean, I didn't give it to you guys. What a trend to hop on.

I'm still sorry. I know. I'm normally not a trend follower.

You're not. But here I am. Although you did like my new sunglasses this morning.

I loved your new sunglasses. Those were really cute.

Thanks. But yeah, this was not a trend that I should have...

Should have jumped on. You should have just got the same sunglasses as me and called it a day.

Should have done it. I actually got those sunglasses the day that you got your stomach bug.

So I chose the wrong trend. Yeah, you did.

You really did. I had two choices. I chose wrong.

I love it. Yeah, it was terrible. Don't recommend it.

Everybody wash your hands. Wash your hands.

That is the only way you can not get this stomach bug.

Wash your fucking hands. Because the other thing is, I don't know how I got this stomach bug because I don't go anywhere.

Well, and everywhere Elena goes, I pretty much go.

Yes. The only thing you did that I didn't come to you with was like a little thing with the kids the night before you got sick.

So that's not even where you got it. Because it's essentially the night I got sick because it was hours after that that all of a sudden I was like, ooh, something's wrong.

So everywhere leading up to that, like I had been with you for days on end.

It doesn't make any sense. But you were even saying like it could have been as simple as like a cup you drank out of that I didn't.

I always think because it's really one of those things, especially with these stomach viruses, all it takes is someone not washing their hands.

And handing you something. Touching that, handing it to you.

You either put that cup in your mouth or you put your hand in your mouth.

That's as simple as it is. So everybody, wash your fucking hands.

And there's hand sanitizer everywhere these days.

You want to hear the worst thing? That's not.

Neurovirus and stuff, hand sanitizer doesn't kill it.

I'm done. I don't want to. Neurovirus, even Clorox wipes don't kill it.

You have to use bleach. You have to use soap and you have to wash your hands for at least 20 seconds to start killing it. yeah so soap will kill it but tequila hand sanitizer won't yeah because it's honestly it's honestly it's the the movement of like the soap scrubbing it for 20 seconds with hot water do you know that um because so like in hair school you learn that you should wash your hair twice because like the first time you kind of loosen everything up and the second time you really get it out yeah i wash my hands twice now there you go and i sing oops i did it again in my head just the chorus there you go That's a good way to do it.

Or happy birthday. Oops, I did it again.

That's all you need. Way better. Whatever you're feeling in that moment.

So yeah, wash your hands. If you have the stomach bug, feel so much better.

We're thinking of you. I just feel bad. A few people were like, oh, same, like my family.

And I'm real sorry. That sucks. Drink a lot of fluids.

Get some rest if you can. Hopefully you'll feel better within like, you know, 48 hours.

Like I felt better in 48 hours. I'm so scared of it.

But it's not great. I don't recommend it.

Whenever anybody gets a stomach bug, though, I automatically just think of the Devil Wears Prada.

One stomach clear away from my go white.

Oh, it's terrible. Terrible. Not good. But it always makes me think of that.

Terrible. You're like, not me. No, definitely not.

Luckily, we were able to contain it. And that's great because I will take the stomach bug over and over if it means no one else in my family is getting the stomach bug.

I would literally never say that out loud.

I'll be that person. I will happily take it.

If I count. If it's coming in the house, hit me.

Don't hit anyone else. Hit me. Hit me. Don't hit anyone else.

Hit me, baby, one more time. You know what the Capricorn in me, though, did?

Don't worry. We're going to get into the story.

But sometimes you guys like this. Shut the fuck up.

You know what? Sometimes you guys are like, I like it when you do that every once in a while.

So here we are. Yeah, we try to limit it, you know?

This is who we are, you know? What do you got?

This is why you're here. Yeah. But I was thinking about it and I was like, wow, the Capricorn in me is very unhealthy because I was angry and annoyed at myself because I was in bed all day because I'm lucky enough that John was like, you don't move.

And he just kind of quarantined me in the room.

And I was in bed and I put on Gilmore Girls because that's my comfort show.

And I'm just laying there and I like had my iPad, like my little like laptop iPad thing in front of me.

And I was like, oh, like you should work.

Like you have all this time. That's not healthy.

You have uninterrupted time right now. You should go to therapy for that.

And I was like, oh. So I opened the thing and I'm like, I can't even look at the screen without wanting to throw up.

And then I had this pounding headache from dehydration.

But I was, and I still am thinking about those wasted hours uninterrupted hours that I didn't do something productive.

Isn't that wild? Like, that's a very unhealthy mindset.

That's an illness. And I recognize that.

No, you know exactly what that is. That is hustle, grind, culture, telling you, like, you're supposed to work, you're supposed to work, you're supposed to work.

And yeah, we should all work. Totally. Mm-hmm.

You shouldn't work yourself. The reason that you got the stomach bug and I didn't is because you do not stop.

Mama over here, mama in this seat, she stops.

She gets her nails done. She takes a little lash nap.

You have to take. I know, I do. It's not selfish.

No self-care. Self-care is not selfish. I do things for myself so that I'm not an asshole to other people.

It is important. Because if I didn't do things for myself, I'm sorry.

I'd be an asshole to other people probably.

Yeah, and that's probably why I'm such an asshole.

No, you're not an asshole. I'm totally kidding.

You missed the point. I'm totally kidding.

No. I fully agree with you. And you have actually showed me a little bit that self-care is a very necessary part of it.

It's going to take a little while for me to fully accept it because I am who I am and that's all that I am, Popeye.

You also, you have other signs. You're not simply a Capricorn.

I know, but I'm just... Yeah, you are, I know.

That sign really has a chokehold on my entire life.

I mean, your son usually does. But it was literally just one of those things that I was like, wow, like no one is in this room and no one's asking me for things.

And I'm not like actively doing something else like working or like cooking dinner or doing something, you know, whatever.

And I was like, I'm just sitting here. No, your body was healing you.

You were actually still working actually.

That's true. Internally. But afterwards, I was like, wow, what a fucked up mentality.

And I was like, I got to change that. It was a little bit of like an awakening.

So that was good. I was like, ooh. I hope it really was, though.

Maybe. I mean, I recognized it. So that's something, you know.

I recognized it. That's all that matters.

I'm moving forward. You're going to work yourself to the bone, man.

But you know what? Let's get into what is going to be one of at least two parts.

Hey, let's do it. Usually that means three.

Yeah. I don't know. I'm not positive. I think it may end up being three parts.

The third part might be a little shorter, but we'll see.

I'd like to see where it naturally cuts itself.

What is this? This is the Yorkshire Ripper.

Oh, okay. So this is very much like a more modern Jack the Ripper, to be quite honest.

Okay. Modern? Like how modern? Modern in the sense of like it's in the 1970s.

Oh, my decade. There you go. So like modern in a sense that it's not 1888.

Yeah, yeah. But it's got a lot of parallels, a lot of similarities.

That's why they named him the Ripper. Oh, really?

It was because of the similarities to that case.

So this is really gnarly. I just want to warn you ahead of time.

I'm going to try to stray away from like giving – you know strenuous thing details that are not necessary i won't do anything like that but um sorry before you start did he is this like a copycat of jack the ripper like do you think he was inspired by jack the ripper i think he is just another another like another person that did fuck had the same feelings about especially sex workers or who he deemed to be sex workers yeah i think it's just one of those situations okay So we're going to be talking about Peter William Sutcliffe, who was born on June 2nd, 1946.

That would make him a Gemini, am I correct?

It would indeed. Look at me, I'm learning.

You are. He was born in Shipley, West Yorkshire, and his parents were John and Kathleen Sutcliffe.

His father was a baker. His mom stayed home to take care of the six Sutcliffe children in the house.

Okay. I, like, wanted to make a joke that she should have been a candlestick maker, but then I got really, like, I was, like, six children.

Whoa. Yeah, you got really, like, thrown off there.

That's crazy. Now, the family was pretty, like, run-of-the-mill, average, normal, working-class family by all accounts.

They did have their fair share of goings-on later.

There was nothing that I could find that there was, like, tons of abuse or tons of neglect or, like... you know, too weird of relationships between kids and parents.

You know what I mean? Like, there's nothing that struck out right away.

There was one big thing, though, that happened that was handled in a very fucked up way.

And we will get to it. Don't worry. Regarding Peter, I'm assuming.

Yeah, with Peter and his parents. So by all accounts as well, the Sutcliffe kids were pretty well adjusted.

They did well in school. They had lots of friends.

Some of them played sports. The neighbors liked them.

They never caused any trouble. And Peter's brothers especially were all the kind of like really picture perfect like 70s macho man type people.

Like, they just fit. Macho, macho man. It's what you picture when you sing that song.

Like, the mustache, the, like... Like, the porno stache.

Yeah, it's just, like, you can see them.

You can see them. Yeah. You're picturing them right now.

They were all like that. The dad was like that.

So there was more of a bond between his brothers and the dad because of that.

They had that shared, like, we're macho men kind of thing.

Now I'm just, like, watching Dazed and Confused in my head.

There you go. This is very different, but...

Peter was not that like classic macho guy.

He just wasn't. And he wasn't like the exact opposite or anything.

He just like wasn't that. Did he get kind of left out?

So I think he just didn't bond as much with his brothers or with his dad.

Okay. It just kind of did his own thing.

Exactly. But Peter was the oldest. He was pretty smart.

He wasn't a genius. He wasn't really struggling that much either when it comes to like intelligence.

He was just like there. But he also didn't really apply himself.

That's a Gemini characteristic, my dude.

He didn't put forth a lot of effort in school, so he didn't do well.

It wasn't because of lack of smarts. He just didn't put forth the effort.

We're a little flighty. He was also a kid who really liked his routine.

And when things, when change happened, he didn't handle it super well. that's interesting yeah he had a lot of difficulty adjusting to changes in his perception of things okay and as he got older that got really hard because you have to adjust to life's changes as you get older changing all the time because i'm i'm very i'm not great with change so it's i like my routine i like things the way i like them when things change i get like very stressed out so i understand that but like as you get older you do have to adjust yeah certain things i crave change oh i don't like it at all because i'm so chaotic when things change i start feeling like an existential crisis oh see i also have like sagittarius in my chart which makes me want to just like change all the time just change and then gemini's are chaotic so change change change chaos uh but he was known in the beginning to be kind of a loner very detached from his peers that does change a bit as he gets older he does evolve somewhat okay He becomes less of a loner, I will say.

But he still is very detached from like the normalcy of a relationship.

Probably because he sounds like he might be a sociopath.

He is. He is a serial killer. So there's that.

That's what I'm saying. But even at home, he was pretty quiet and really shy when he was younger.

He really only liked to be around his mom, Kathleen.

He really bonded with her. Which in and of itself, that's not a big deal.

Kids bond to their parents in different ways.

But we're talking about a serial killer.

So it takes on a little more of like a huh.

And a serial killer who targeted women. Yeah.

Do you think anything stemmed from that or are you just going to get there?

Yeah, there's a couple of big things that I think probably, he obviously already had something in there.

Yeah, of course. That was brewing, but there's a couple of things that changed the way he looked at women, I would say.

Okay. Now, Peter also wasn't really interested in dating or a sexual relationship when he was a teenager.

Like, whatever. I don't know if he was asexual.

I don't know what the deal was with that.

He just wasn't interested in it. And honestly, I don't think it really has any bearing on anything.

I think it's just like a normal stage of development where you are or you're not.

Yeah. You know? Well, and I think people probably look harder at it because they want to point to something.

I was going to say, I think it gets put in there as like, oh, and look at this.

He didn't, like, that's not normal. And it's like, I don't know.

You don't even know what's going on when you're a teenager, you know?

Like, you're either interested, you're not.

You don't know what you're interested in.

Yeah. You're, like, trying to figure everything out.

You're coming of age. You're not concentrating on it maybe because you're not having luck in that area or you're shy and you don't want to deal with it.

There's a lot of different explanations.

So I always think like that kind of stuff.

I'm like, I know we have to like throw it in there as like, well, that's something too.

But like in the grand scheme of things, I don't really think that had anything to do with anything that happened later.

But it's just a fact. Now, instead of dating or doing those kind of things that a lot of teenage boys his age were doing, he spent his time very interested and... excelling really at mechanical endeavors like fixing cars motorcycles things like that he was really good at it that was something he finally figured out that that was something he was good at he kind of put in some effort because he enjoyed it right um he was doing really well and by the age of uh 15 in 1961 um and he actually left the traditional school system and started as an apprentice engineer with fairbank briarley which was a local engineering firm you You hear that?

It's like when we start to talk about the childhood and like something goes really great, I'm like, yeah.

Yeah, you're like, great. And then you're like, no.

But what a waste of a mind. It's true. Because when you hear the childhood part of it, you're like, fuck, you could have gone such a different way.

Right. Like what happened? So sad. So that seems great, like we said.

But, you know, he doesn't apply himself, remember?

Like he likes this, but he hasn't really had to prove it to anyone at this point.

He's just doing it for fun. Now he's got to prove it to someone.

And he's not going to want to. He's got to put forth the effort.

When he had the chance, he just didn't do it.

He didn't put in the effort. He didn't apply himself.

And he left the program after less than a year.

And he never reached the title of apprentice.

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Why are there ridges on Reese's peanut butter cups?

Probably so they never slip from her hands.

Could you imagine? I'd lose it. Luckily, Reese's thought about that.

Wonder what else they think about. Probably chocolate and peanut butter.

So by 16, now he had left school and now he had failed to excel in the apprenticeship, but somehow he was gaining a bit of confidence in his like personal life.

Okay. I guess like career didn't really like his, I guess his father later thought it was probably that this was when he got his first motorbike.

Yeah. He could finally excel at something because he was really good on the motorbike.

Yeah. And it was something that, again, he didn't really have to put effort into, but he liked it.

And he could if he needed to. He seemed like he didn't really like authority.

He didn't like being told he had to do something.

This translated into him finding some peers to hang out with.

Because he was gaining this confidence. And he started working on his physical appearance as well.

He was like, you know what? He joined the gym.

He's working on his fitness. Starting to grow into his features a little bit.

That's probably where the confidence is coming from.

He's getting out of those weird, awkward stages.

And he even attempted, which I thought this was so strange and random.

And I just had to throw it in here. He attempted to form a pop group at one point with some guy friends in the 1960s.

What? Just wow. That's wild. I just had to put that in there because like he tried to form a pop group.

I almost had a pop group with Peter Sutcliffe in it.

That's a lot. I wonder if he would have had luck if it was disco.

I know. And it's like, maybe if that had taken off, what he had become, what he became.

It would have been a very different story.

Would it be a different path or would it have come out anyways?

Yeah. We don't know. So he could not, however, hold on to any type of job, unfortunately.

The pop group didn't work out, in case you were wondering.

But he was a classic case of just can't hold one down for even a minute for a myriad of reasons.

He would get fired. He would do something shitty and never show up again.

Or he would just never show up again, leaving the job perplexed because everything was going fine.

What the fuck? He was spending all his time on his looks and on his newfound confidence.

And then he just started abandoning anything to do with a career.

It wasn't. He became very self-involved.

Exactly. Now, in 1965, he finally found one that seemed like, you know, he was going to stick with for a bit.

And it's not surprising in hindsight when you look at it.

He got a job as a gravedigger. at bingley cemetery uh he had a pretty strange record there because he worked a couple of other jobs around the cemetery too for one he was pretty good at his job and didn't have too many like official disciplinary citations against him aside from being terminally tardy he was tardy all the time he was tardy for all the parties i knew you were thinking of it I actually wasn't.

I was thinking about how I am also always tardy and now I'm wondering if that's like a star sign thing.

I also thought about that when I wrote it.

My first job, I got taken up into the office and my boss was like, you've been late 23 times in a row.

Like you got to stop. And I was like, yeah, you know, like I live down the street, so it's hard to get here.

Yeah, it's really hard to get here from down the street.

You know, I just said, gotta get my coffee.

Yeah, but he didn't really have too many, like no disciplinary stuff, just you're always late.

Yeah. But on the other hand, his co-worker said initially he was pretty normal, didn't really bother anyone.

But as they got to know him... They saw that he had like a real obsession with death.

Not like, hey, I work at a cemetery. I'm kind of obsessed with death kind of thing.

Yeah. They said it was far beyond this and it made them all very uncomfortable.

Oh. To make things worse, it didn't just end in a fascination.

He would sometimes open the caskets before burying them.

Oh, you can't do that. Just to look at the dead bodies.

No, that's like voyeuristic. No, that's weird as fuck.

Yeah. He would even steal bones from the older graves and he would use them to prank his coworkers.

Jesus. And also random girls around the school.

Also, like you're fucking with something you don't understand, boyfriend.

When he wasn't stealing their actual limbs, he would even sometimes allegedly steal jewels and valuables from the dead when he did this.

So he's a grave digger and a grave robber.

Exactly. Fucked up. His co-worker Tom Nixon said, quote, but it soon became obvious what was going on.

Someone was having a look inside the coffins when the relatives had gone.

Jesus. So it would be after the wake. He would open up the casket and, like, look at the person.

That's so... Just, like, ugh. Like, going in the room where they're all stored in the morgue and just peeking in all the caskets.

Just, like, violating people. And it's like, dude, I don't understand that at all.

Like, that person's grandchild just left.

Can you calm down? Like, they're... There's just some unspoken, like, there's a respect that you should have in the death industry that nobody should have to tell you about.

Like, it's not something they have to train you on.

No, that's just human. You should just know it.

Yeah, like, that's integrity, you know? Well, and it's like, even in the morgue, like, if we had to look for someone and, you know, the bag wasn't tagged right or something like that.

You're not going to open all of them up.

Well, no, you do. Oh, you do. It's like you do have to open them all up.

Okay. But that's the only way you can find out.

Otherwise, you're looking at a bag. So what do you do?

But you do open them all up. But any time I would have to do that, I would apologize to the person.

Hey. Every time I opened that bag, I was like, I'm so sorry.

And then I'd have to close it if it wasn't the person.

Like, I'm sorry. I'm not just looking at you.

Because you have a moral compass. And you feel like you are inherently doing something almost wrong by opening a bag that you weren't looking for.

You're disturbing the dead. So doing that on purpose just to ogle at them is like... i can't even my body wouldn't even allow me to do it i'd feel so like it feels so like shitty about it isn't it so interesting how morals work yeah and like i'm like maybe he liked the feeling of that like you're not supposed to because those people like serial killers are obviously very different from you and i yeah and so their body chemistry works differently and maybe the feeling that i get the ick That I got when I would open somebody and go, oh, that's not the one I'm looking for.

Like, sorry. Like, I can't believe I had to do that.

That, like, rise in your chest that you're like, ooh, like that feeling.

Like when something feels wrong. Yeah, like you're not supposed to be doing it.

I think to them that's a rush. Like, I feel like that must be like a ooh.

It's almost like, obviously it's very different, but it's almost like when you're a teenager and you do something you're not supposed to do and you get that rush.

It's almost like serial killers just never get rid of that and keep heightening it.

Exactly. The thing you're not supposed to do.

They need more and more and more to hit that same teenager.

Feeling a rush. Stole my mom's car. Yeah, exactly.

That's a pretty big one. I was going to say, like, stole a stick of gum from, like, the corner store.

Wow, child's play. But, like, yeah. I never stole my mom's car, just for the record.

But, like, you know, same thing. People do, you know?

People do. But yeah, it just made me feel like, oh God, you just like open those, in a casket.

That's a whole different, a body bag is one thing.

You unzip a body bag. You have to unzip them a lot to do things.

But like those are being opened and closed a lot.

But like a casket is supposed to be That's their final resting place.

They're supposed to rest, like leave them alone.

You know, it just feels like, ugh. So another coworker, Steve Close, said something even scarier about his habit of peeking and stealing from the dead.

What's scarier than that? He said, if Peter couldn't get a ring off a finger, he would take the finger.

Peter seemed to get a real kick out of death.

He would look at a corpse, touch it, and then eat his sandwich without even washing his hands.

That's gross. He was a really creepy sort of guy.

This is wild to me. One day, the body of a female magistrate came in, like a police officer kind of.

Peter had known her and took delight in opening the coffin.

I remember to this day that he grabbed a hold of her face as hard as he could and said, you won't be putting anyone else away now, will you, you bitch?

Oh, my God. Yeah. He is deeply, deeply disturbed.

To which I say, guys, that, that's a, that's a red flag.

Yeah. So red that it became lava and it just swallowed us all whole.

Yeah. That's how red that flag is. Like, no one was like, that guy.

Where's HR? Something's wrong with that guy.

Was there HR at this company? Yeah. Like, I'm sorry if that ever happened in front of me.

I'd be like, yeah, you gotta go. Like, you can't be here.

I feel like if that happened in front of me, I'd be like, I have to go.

Like, I don't work here anymore. I have to go.

Like, I don't... You can work here, but, like, I'm leaving.

That is outrageous. I feel like after watching that, I could never be around, like, a dead body again.

That would stress me out a lot. Because I just... I feel like that would just think... It would make you think of it.

Yeah. Also... you i wonder if you said wash your fucking hands wash your hands there's like embalming fluid and shit like you're gonna get hurt yeah which like i mean you're playing with fire but yeah that's like what the fuck was everyone doing when he said and did this is what i want to know and that's not normal i love that we both had the same also at the same moment that was great there's just that's so much rage and so much callousness that yeah that's a lot Also, he hadn't even been arrested yet.

It's like, why are you mad at this woman?

Exactly. Now, there was also the fact that he would just talk about necrophilia like it was, you know, like the new Marvel movie.

Like he would talk about it just like, hey, have you, you know?

Was he? Well, I don't know. No, he just would throw it into casual conversation like it belongs there.

And everybody was like, that's not a joke, first of all.

And second, like, what the fuck, dude? Like, this isn't a funny joke.

Like, what are you doing? You know there were people that were like, do not put me on shift with him.

Oh, I'd be like, you better not put me on with Peter.

No, I'd be like, I would refuse. No. By 1967, everyone had enough of his shit, luckily, and his complete disrespect for the industry he was a part of.

And luckily, he was also a perpetually tardy piece of shit, so they were able to fire him for that.

Good. It worked. Now, unfortunately, his disrespect for the death industry didn't keep him from still gaining jobs in it.

Oh. He soon got a job as an assistant in the mortuary at Croft Road in Bingley.

So now he actually got more one-on-one time with bodies and actually got to touch them now.

In his new position, Peter was basically receiving the new bodies, washing them, preparing them in every way, and any other tasks that the autopsy technicians required from him.

And that can be a lot. I was going to say, can you give us any example of like what that might be?

It's basically just the autopsy technicians would be the one like opening, doing everything.

But if you needed somebody to like sew something back up, you could ask him to sew it back up if he knew how to do it.

Wow. So he gets a lot of time or like, hey, go wash this organ.

Can you take this and go bring it over there?

Yeah. Just touching things, you know, like having his hands on a lot of stuff.

That he finds different than you do. Yeah.

So during this time, he was still living with his parents and was still not at all really interested in socializing outside of his tiny little group that he had.

He was very loner-ish still. He would spend hours alone in his room, not coming out, not speaking to anyone on the phone, in person.

I'm sorry. That's weird. Yeah. That's when you can at least be like, what's going on?

That's good. I shouldn't say that's weird.

I should say that's cause for concern. That's cause for a lot of concern.

Like, I feel like if that was going on with me, I'd be like, you know, like, we got talk.

Yeah, and he's like, this is like late teens.

It's like, what's going on here? Yeah, like, I know, of course, spending a lot of time in your room, but you got to come out.

Yeah. Now, weirdly, during this time, too, he got super obsessive about his sister's moral welfare.

What? And would often become annoyed and angry whenever men would pick her up for dates.

So he became like obsessive about his sister.

Where did that come from? There was also a lot of mentions of him talking about work a lot and people thinking it was gross.

Like that's all he wanted to talk about was work. uh yeah if you well it's gross it's gross where he's coming from because i'm sure he's talking about it in a like let me just like freak you out kind of way exactly like because i'm getting a weird feeling from it you know like he's looking at it in a totally different way exactly he's not passionate about his job it's not like wow guess what i got to do today it's like really fascinating exactly i learned a lot he's not looking at it from a scientific point of view definitely not But now he's so he's doing that.

That's really all he wants to talk about, which is like throwing people off.

He's obsessive about his sister and her dating habits.

Which I also love that he's like, I'm really concerned about her moral compass.

Mom, can you actually throw this finger away?

Yeah, like I took the jewelry off of it.

You good, bro? So one of Peter's only close friends was an 18 year old named Trevor Birdzall, who he met in 1966.

He ended up meeting another close friend the same year, but we'll get to her, too.

Okay. Because she becomes a very big part of his life.

Now, between 1966 and 1972, Peter and Birdsall spent a ton of time together.

Basically, whenever he wasn't working the cemetery or holed up in his bedroom, they were together, drinking at pubs in and around West Yorkshire.

Now, Birdzall testified later at Peter's trial and said, quote, they had spent both time.

They had spent both. That's not what he said.

I don't know why I'm reading it that way.

They had both spent time. There you go. I had a feeling that's what it was.

Watching sex workers soliciting in Leeds and Bradford, and they had taken part, or they would just watch them work.

He said there were a few occasions where he seriously believed that Peter had assaulted or possibly done worse to sex workers in Leeds and Bradford, in Halifax.

But no, he didn't do anything about it. I was like...

Yeah, I was like, so you still go hang out with him and, like, watch sex workers?

Yeah, like, why are you hanging out with him?

I don't understand. But you think he's dangerous to that population?

Cool. Yeah. Like, they ended up stopping, kind of their friendship ended up stopping in 1972, so not too long after that, like, years after.

But, like, Trevor got married, and so he wasn't into chasing.

Yeah. And you know his wife was like, get that man out of here.

And you're not going to the red light district anymore.

She was like, you are the company you keep.

Yeah, my friend. Now, the second friend he met in 1966, who I mentioned before.

A woman. Was 16-year-old Sona Zerma. He met her doing what he loved to do, which is hanging out in a pub.

And about what age is he at this point? He was 20 at the time.

And this was in a pub in Bradford. That's not okay.

I'm here to tell you. That's what I'm saying.

Apparently, he and a 16-year-old really hit it off.

They were kind of the opposite of each other, personality-wise.

Paul, at this point, like I say, remember I told you his... Yeah, thank you.

Peter, at this point, his personality was kind of shifting.

I told you he was becoming less of a loner.

Yeah. At least outwardly. Uh-huh. He was getting a little mouthier, a little abrasive, kind of over the top at times.

He would say things to freak people out, like he was becoming that kind of guy, which like, wow, what a great guy.

Yeah, no, thank you. We all love that guy.

That's why he ended up with a 16-year-old, because that's what 16-year-olds do.

Well, and Sonia was quiet. She was reserved, and she was very intentional in her speech and her actions.

Yeah. Peter was obviously not into school or applying himself with no real goals or aspirations of any kind.

And Sonia was excelling in school and had dreams of becoming a teacher.

Good for her. And she was very solely focused on it.

To a fault for herself at one point. Now, they had a strong bond immediately.

They spent a ton of time together. And people around him felt like he was very much in love with her.

And they started to, like, date. Oh. Now, for the first of the traumatic events that I had mentioned that is going to shape Peter's outlook and view on women, in 1969, that year, 1969, was a real banner year for Peter.

Yeah. Usually when you say that, that's not the truth.

Not great. So this year it was discovered that his mother was having an affair with the neighbor.

I had a feeling that was going to happen.

Yeah. His father found out and decided to publicly humiliate her in front of her children and strangers for it.

What did he do? It was bad. He found out where they were planning to meet, at a hotel, and he had the entire clan show up. all the kids ahead of time.

He set them all up and himself to meet her when she arrived, and then he yanked her purse away from her and pulled out the brand new nightie that she had bought and showed it off to her kids.

She was humiliated and devastated, and it was horrific all around. yeah that's every level of that is horrific that's something you see in a movie and say that would never happen that would never happen or that's too much too far too much are all the kids mostly grown at this point they're all like teens i was gonna say because peter's the oldest and he's 20 they're basically in their teens i would say like young teens they're in their formative years formative years That's really fucked up.

It's fucked up that she had an affair. It's fucked up that he brought his kids into it.

They were both. That's the thing. This is a whole super fucked up.

Yeah, this is a medley. The way that he handled that was a real turning point for Peter.

Because if you wanted to go, like, if the husband wanted to go catch her.

Yeah, you do whatever you need to do, man.

Like, that would have been fucking epic.

Like, do it. If that's what you want to do, you want to, like, meet her and be like, caught ya.

Don't involve your kids into it. Do not involve the kids.

No. Like, that's a whole different thing.

And worse yet, remember, Peter had really attached to his mother.

Yeah, he was really close with her. Closest to her.

Not with his dad. He saw her as an untouchable beacon of goodness.

And now his father. Shattered. had cruelly shown him that she was not the perfect goddess that Peter had always thought she was.

This also made him feel even more disgusted by women because he was obsessive about sex workers too, and he had put them on a lower level than regular women.

That was what his whole thing was with Trevor.

They would go and just cruise down there and just watch these women.

And they just formed this like absurd opinion about them and what they thought they were.

It was like... I feel like I'm watching White Lotus right now.

It's so sick and gross. And so now he sees this and he's already given himself this disgusting portrayal of women where he and like women, sex workers, anybody who he deemed to be below him, which was everybody.

Yeah, like more than me. And now he's looking at his mother that way.

And so it's like this is really shaping a lot.

And now he is also being shown that, oh, so these subhuman women can be punished by cruel, humiliating, and dehumanizing methods.

And it's okay because my dad did it. And even if you're supposedly love them, it's still okay.

Oh, I'm so nervous for Sonia. That's a bad message to send to anybody, really.

Yeah. A psychologist should have been involved with this family.

Yeah. Remember back then when everybody was like, psychology's bad.

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And as if this wasn't bad enough, shortly after this, the same year, another huge event rocked Peter's opinion of women and his sense of being betrayed by them.

Another one. Peter's brother Mick let him know that he found out that Sonia was cheating on him with a boy who worked at the ice cream parlor.

Because remember, she's a child. Was Sonia cheating on him or was Sonia not aware that they were in a relationship?

Exactly. Thank you for saying that because that's how I kind of saw it.

Peter went right to Sonia to confront her and she was kind of evasive and wouldn't really like confirm or deny the rumor.

Because I don't remember them ever making it official.

And directly after this, in a rage, so he left Sonia where she was and in a rage, he decided he was going to pick up a sex worker at the Royal Standard Pub.

Oh no. He wanted to spite Sonia, but he changed his mind.

And he changed his mind as he was driving this woman to her apartment after they had made the deal.

And she agreed, like the woman was like, okay, I'll give you back the money and like just bring me to my house.

But she's like, let me go get you some change because I'm going to keep the bigger bills.

So she went in and she comes back out with two big guys.

And these two big guys roughed up Peter a bit and sent him on his way without his money.

Oh. So that was not a great day for Peter.

He had been betrayed by two women that day, in his mind.

Yes, of course. I should say, not in reality, in his mind.

And a few weeks later, Peter said he saw this same woman at a pub and told her that he hadn't forgotten about the incident and she could put things right so there would be no hard feelings.

And she laughed in his face and then proceeded to tell everyone in the pub about the humiliating situation.

Also, like, you wasted her time. You did.

You wasted her time. They shouldn't have roughed him up, obviously.

Oh, of course not. But this is all fucked up.

Like, in every way. This is a dirty game. they're all playing the morality here is like nowhere to be found anywhere but 1969 it's no surprise that this is when the first attacks that peter sutcliffe perpetrated were in this year yes the year of all the events we just mentioned he had become weirdly obsessed at this point with sex workers like i said yeah and obsessed not in this like admiration way or like wow they're so fascinating Like, he was fascinated by them and, like, disgusted by them at the same time.

He had this weird conflicting thing with them.

It's very Jack the Ripper-ish, very much like that kind of vibe to it.

And especially after the whole situation with Sonya, it got worse.

Um, he just like kind of, that's the thing.

He would, he would like, um, work with sex workers.

Like he would like become a client, but he also just liked watching them.

Yeah. Like he would just watch them work.

He would watch them like pick up people.

Yeah. Watch the whole transaction take place.

Like he was weird about it and stalkerish.

Yeah. And according to On the Trail of the Yorkshire Ripper, his final secrets revealed by Richard Cobb, he also, quote, would continuously boast about having sex with sex workers and was fascinated by the idea of women selling their bodies for money and found it hard to believe they charged so little for an act that he held in such awe.

Okay. So he's got a lot of layers here that he's working with of like, oof.

Yeah. Because he looks at sex in a very different way.

Yeah. He's looking at it. He's high on the.

Very high esteem. And he's holding it in almost this like strange place.

Yeah. And then he's looking at these women as subhuman, but also he's in awe of them for having this thing that he holds in such high esteem and they're charging so little for it.

But he's saying he holds it in such high esteem, but he's having sex with women he doesn't know.

Exactly. So you can't hold it that high.

None of it's adding up. None of it's logical, at least. becoming very unpredictable, very angry all the time, and it culminated a bit in September 1969.

He and Trevor Birdsall were out at the usual pubs in the area of Bradford, and as they drove down the street from one pub to another, Peter saw what he assumed was a sex worker walking down the street.

So he made Birdsall stop the car, and he got out and just aggressively followed this woman.

Jesus. Also, how fucking presumptuous. Yeah, it's like, what the hell?

And he just followed her up St. Paul's Road.

And Birdsall didn't. He stayed in the car.

He didn't want to join. He was like, I'm just going to sit here.

I don't know why you're here. But he didn't do anything to stop it.

No, he did not. Suddenly, after about 10 to 15 minutes, he said Peter came running back to the car, very anxious, like breathing heavy, told him to speed off.

So he started driving and was like, what the fuck, dude?

Like, what's going on? And Peter said that he hit a girl in the head.

Oh. And his friend was like, what, on purpose?

Like, what? And Peter said, yes. And he said he put a rock in a sock and he had swung it at the girl's head as hard as he could.

Oh, my God. He then proceeded to take the rock out of his pocket and throw it out the window.

What the fuck? And obviously he had been prepared to do that.

Yep. It's not like he took his own sock off, you know what I'm saying?

So Birdsall was like, is she okay? Like, what the fuck?

Like, where did you leave her? Am I eating in a bedding right now?

And Peter answered, quote, of course she is, the old cow.

I just wanted money. What? What? And later at his trial, he said he did it, quote, because it was what I had to do.

It was my mission. I had been told sex workers were the scum of the earth and had to be gotten rid of.

No, nobody told you that. And it's like, shut up.

Well, after this encounter, as they drove away, this woman was, she was not okay, but she was not dead.

Okay, good. And she had memorized the license plate.

Yep. And she had gone to the police. So a few days after this, police showed up at Trevor Bird's all store because that license plate is attached to his car.

It's like I would literally pull over and be like, get the fuck out.

Yeah, I'd be like, you need to get out. Yeah.

But he explained I was in the car. I didn't see what happened.

He just told me it happened. He's kind of kooky that way.

He says weird shit. I didn't know if he was lying to me.

I never saw her. Like, that's it. But he's like, I did see the rock.

Like, but I don't know. I know that happened.

Yeah, he was like, that's all I know. Oh, my God.

So he gave them Peter's address. He was like, you go find him.

Go talk to Peter. And they went and talked to Peter.

And Peter was like, oh, yeah, I did. I hit her.

And he was like, but with my fist, not a rock.

What? And they said, okay. That makes it worse.

And then they left with no other issue. What?

Just talk to him about it real quick. Oh, you hit her with your fist.

That's okay. Bye. Have a good day, sir. Oh.

Yeah. So now he's gotten away with this without even, even with being caught.

Like, he was caught. And he was like, yes, I did that.

I hit her. And they were like, okay. And so now he's seeing from authority figures.

That I can get away with this. That's okay.

You can hurt a sex worker. Like y'all. Who's just minding her business walking down the street.

He's getting these messages. Oh, this is okay.

I can do this. Remember, I can punish women.

I can do it cruelly. I can dehumanize them.

And now I'm hearing, oh, I can physically hurt them and I won't get in trouble.

Nothing's going to happen to me. Cool. Let's go.

What the fuck? So a few weeks after this, a police officer was just doing a beat walk in the Manningham area and saw Peter's car parked on the side of the road and his engine was on.

So he was walking up to the car to just be like, you good?

And he sped away before he got to the window.

So this officer's like, what the fuck was that about?

He's like, that was weird. Yeah, that was a little weird.

So this same officer saw this car again shortly after this, but it seemed like it was parked intentionally to be hidden a little bit.

Okay. And it was alongside two row houses and it was empty and the engine was off.

So he went looking around a bit and found Peter hiding in the bushes holding a hammer.

What? And he told them, he was like, oh, yeah, like this.

The reason I have this is my hubcap came off and I was using the hammer to bang the hubcap back on.

In these bushes away from my car. Yeah. No one believed this shit.

Luckily, the police officer was like, yeah, I don't believe that.

I really thought you were going to say that.

They're like, okay, have a good one. Have a good day, sir.

I wouldn't have been shocked. But he was really close to the row houses, and it was clear that he was trying to hide his car, and he was hiding in a bush.

Yeah, with a hammer. No, I think you were trying to break into those homes, sir.

Like, pretty sure. Yeah, like, I think we know what's going on here.

So he was arrested, but the officer didn't search him.

Just brought him in and didn't realize that along with the hammer, he also had a giant knife on his person.

Oh, my God. So he was fined 25 pounds for a misdemeanor and just let go.

Okie dokie. The police report doesn't even mention the hammer in it.

Why? Police officer forgot. Yeah, you know how it's just like everyone has a hammer, so it's just like so commonplace these days.

Are you okay, police? Definitely not. Are you all right?

Not those ones. Later at his trial, Peter said his intentions that day were to murder a sex worker and he was interrupted.

We know. He was like, oh, that was my intention.

They just interrupted me. He was hiding in a bush by a row house with a fucking hammer in his hands and a knife in his pocket.

Yeah. Like, what did you guys think his intention was?

To fucking sell Girl Scout cookies? Exactly.

So I don't know if this... spooked him in a way because there was a strange lull between 1969 and about 1975 where he didn't get caught doing this kind of shit at least i was gonna say do you think it's just a matter of he didn't get caught that's the thing i think maybe he was doing smaller things to get his little like jollies you know he was still with sonia they were still together wow And was spending a lot of his time with her.

So I don't know if that was taking up a lot of his time.

But in 1970, she moved to London to live with her sister, which was four hours away.

Stay there, girl. She was continuing schooling for teaching and she was living there to be closer.

It was a four-hour drive. Peter would drive the four hours to go be with her.

So that was a lot of time that he was taking up.

On the road, too. Yeah. Exactly. So during that time, I think he was preoccupied a little bit and he was probably doing smaller things.

But Sonia was working really hard at school.

And unfortunately, she actually had a breakdown because of the stress, like I said, like to her.

Yeah. Rest is important, everyone. Yeah.

In 1972, she had a breakdown. So she had to be admitted to the hospital.

She was very unwell. She was having like hallucinations.

Like it was really messing with her mental well-being.

Now, Peter was her primary caregiver through all of this.

Weirdly enough. In August 10th, 1974, after she was getting better, she had come out of like outpatient.

And in August 10th, 1974, they married at Clayton Baptist Church in Bradford.

Now I feel like he's going to take some kind of like ownership of her.

You know what I mean? Well, they honeymooned in Paris, and then they moved into Sonia's parents' house.

The good news here was that Sonia was doing much better mental health-wise, and she was able to return to the teaching program at Margaret Macmillan College in Bradford.

But she was able to do this at her parents' house with her parents helping to make sure she was... monitoring staying like not going too hard and like really taking her time for her kind of thing which we should all do i know i feel like that was a weird little thing weird message but this also meant that she is back at school she's preoccupied peter has a lot of free time now which he did not settle before and now he's got free time so he's back to cruising sex workers and hanging out in the red light district Now he was tagging along a lot of the time with their neighbor, Ronald Barker.

And Barker said they would just be out all night chasing women.

Which is hilarious that he thinks that women have a corrupt moral compass and that his sister can't go out on dates and Sonia can't flirt with somebody at the ice cream shop.

You're a married man having sex with other women.

Like, what's wrong with you? So on July 5th, 1975, Peter went along to Keeley's Red Light District.

And after hours of staring at and just obsessing over sex workers there, he saw 36-year-old Anna Rogalski.

Okay. Okay. Which is good for her. She hurried away from him because she was like, I immediately like, no.

Got the creeps. Hurried away from him. When she got to the apartment, she was screaming to be let in and banging on the door.

Oh my God. Like she was that terrified. She was like, I just, bad vibes all around.

Without her even hearing him, Peter snuck up behind her with a ball peen hammer.

Oh my God. And hit her on the back of the head twice.

What? What the fuck? She fell unconscious and he dragged her into an alley where he produced a knife and cut her stomach.

Oh my God. He was literally about to kill her in that alley, but a neighbor came out of his apartment because he had heard the commotion and Peter ran away.

So did she live? Luckily, she did live. Anna suffered two massive skull fractures and went into surgery for 12 hours where they had to put metal plates to piece her skull back together.

She suffered severe cognitive trauma and couldn't remember anything about the attack or Peter.

Oh. I mean, I'm happy that she didn't have to remember the attack because who would ever want to remember that?

But like, damn it, fucking Peter. Fucking Peter.

So when her clothing was analyzed, they did see that there was semen on her clothing, but she was not actually raped.

Okay. What we'll find out about Peter, and I'm just going to say this right out front, is he likes to masturbate over women as they are either dying or dead.

What the fuck? That is one of his things.

So Peter had failed again to commit the ultimate act that he was trying to commit because he was obviously trying to kill her.

And he went out again on August 15th to make this happen.

So this evening, him and he and Trevor Byrds all again went to Halifax to drink at the Royal Oak.

During this outing, a disagreement occurred between Peter and a woman named Olive Smelt.

Okay. Who Peter was accusing of being a sex worker.

He's obsessed. Yeah. Why is he just, like, accused, like, sir, you're not... Go away.

Like, what are you doing here? Like, are you just running around accusing people of becoming, like, of, like, being, like, bankers, too?

Like, what is, what's your problem? You're an accountant.

I know it. Yeah, like, what the fuck? It's just strange.

So the fight ended with them both leaving the pub and going their separate ways.

And on the way home, Peter saw Olive again coming out of another restaurant down the road.

Now Birdsall again was driving his car and he made Birdsall pull over and told him that he had seen someone that he had to speak to.

So he didn't tell him that it was Olive.

He just said like, oh, I saw someone I got to go run.

He's like, I'll get a ride. Don't pull over for Peter.

So Birdsall said he pulled over, he let him leave the car.

And then he said as he was leaving the car, he could have sworn that he reached down and grabbed something, but he couldn't see what it was.

Probably a rock because he already did that once.

Exactly. Now, Peter went around the other side of the block from Olive, so he was trying to cut her off.

Yeah, he's stalking her. As he saw her coming down the alleyway, he walked by her with his head down and then struck her in the head with a hammer as he passed by her.

Oh, my God. She crumpled to the ground and he hit her in the head a second time with the hammer.

He then pulled down her pants and pulled out a knife.

He then cut her in the buttocks twice. And as he did this, a couple who was parked nearby heard the commotion and they put on their high beams at him to be like, we fucking see you.

He ran again because he's a bitch. And also, Olive had to undergo multiple life-saving surgeries, but she also survived.

Wow, thank goodness. Thank goodness. Survived with skull fractures and brain injuries, so this was another failure for Peter.

Now, Trevor Birdzall saw a report of the attack on Olive Smelt the following day.

Mm-hmm. And he said when he first saw it, he didn't initially think that, like, you know, they had a disagreement that night, so it must be Peter.

Like, that wasn't his first thought, because I'm giving benefit of the doubt to someone, I suppose, because I don't know Trevor.

Right. You would not want to believe that your friend tried to murder a woman after you let them out of your car.

But on the other side of that coin, you have literal evidence of him trying to murder a woman when he left your car.

That literally happened another time. That's the thing.

If that hadn't happened before, of course I wouldn't be like, but that's literally happened.

Yeah. And you know they had a disagreement.

And you saw him pick something up as he came out of your car.

Yeah. Guy. A little weird. He was quoted as saying, I found it hard to believe that he, as a friend of mine, could be the man that police were looking for.

I don't know. He hit a woman in a head with a rock and then threw it out of your vehicle, sir.

Yeah. To me, it seems pretty cut and dry here.

But then again, I've never had a friend who has murdered someone, so I've never had to be in that position of having to be like, it's probably my friend.

Yeah. But again... To me, it's pretty cut and dry.

So moving on to October 30th, 1975, Peter was all but obsessed now with the idea of killing a sex worker because he has not killed someone yet.

Right. He went out like he normally did that night.

And after having some beers at a pub near Leeds, he went driving around.

And as he drove, he spotted a young woman hitchhiking on the side of the road in Chapelton.

I think it is Chapelton. She was wearing a pink blouse, white pants, and a bolero jacket.

And she was 28-year-old Wilma McCann. She had recently separated from her husband.

She had four children from five to nine years old, so young children.

She had moved them all into an apartment with her and had turned to sex work to support her family.

Unfortunately, she was also struggling with alcoholism, which would be the thing that the press would mainly remember about her.

Of course. Now, he stopped and offered her a ride, and she was extremely grateful.

And she said she had a few drinks and was just looking to go home.

Yeah. Now, once inside Peter's car, Wilma gave him directions to her apartment, and he set off in that direction.

As they drove, Wilma said, you know, would you like to pay me some money?

Yeah. So I'm not sure how to say that. It's a business opportunity.

Exactly, a transaction. So she indicated that there was a spot near Prince Philip playing fields where they could have some reasonable privacy, and it was a place where often sex workers would take clients, so...

They ended up getting out and decided they were going to go to like a grassy area.

She sat on the grass and he got a hammer from his toolbox in the car.

And as she unbuttoned his pants, he raised the hammer and brought it down hard on the top of her head.

Oof. She slumped forward, and this is really like trigger warning.

This is a little graphic, just letting you know.

If you want to skip like literally 10 seconds ahead, you can.

Okay, I will. He said that Peter later said that she emitted, quote, a horrible noise, like a moaning, gurgling noise.

He continued to hit her over and over and over with the hammer, quote, penetrating the full thickness of her skull.

Oh, my God. He then took her shirt off and stabbed her in the neck and then 14 times in the abdomen and chest.

Oh, my God. With a knife. Her body was discovered the next day by a milkman named Alan Rutledge.

He happened to have his 10-year-old brother with him that day, Paul.

Paul saw Wilma, and when they realized what had happened, they ran to the nearest house where a man named John Balds lived, and they called 999, which is 911.

Mm-hmm. I also feel like this is a good time to point out something that our Uncle Wayne told us.

Like, I think a lot of times even I would read that and be like, oh, my God, it had to have been somebody she knew.

That's so personal. Yeah. Because of how incredibly brutal that attack is.

Yeah. But it just goes to show you. Total stranger.

It's brutal. personal, but it's a different kind of personal.

It's personal for Peter, but he had no idea who she was.

Exactly. It's personal only to him. Wilma, that is the first time he had seen her that night.

That was it. And West Yorkshire police arrived at the scene quickly.

Detective Chief Superintendent Dennis Hoban began to interview the Balds and the Rutledge brothers.

Not a lot of information was to be had here, which was wild because it happened very close to the Balds' home and actually near their bedroom.

Margaret Bald said, what I couldn't get over is that we never heard anything.

We always sleep with the window open and we used to have a big South African Ridgeback called Butch who used to bark if anyone came near the house.

It always used to wake me up, but he didn't bark that night.

Yeah. No one else in the neighborhood heard anything or saw anything and investigators assumed it was just a one-off terrible murder.

Like this just happened. Yeah. And they somehow didn't connect it to the attacks on Olive Smelt and Anna Rogalski weeks earlier.

Which is interesting. And is it in close proximity?

Oh, pretty much. Yeah, it's in the same area.

And it's like, they're very similar. I mean, a hammer was used.

That's a pretty significant detail. That's a pretty unique detail, I would say.

Definitely. And it would put, I mean, it's pretty, I would think that this person was trying to kill Anna and Olive and just failed.

Like, he obviously put in the effort to kill them.

Right. But he just didn't do it. And it's like, so to me, this would make sense as an escalation.

Like, he did it. Yeah. And he brought another.

Like, he, with Anna, he cut her stomach.

Right. It's like, so he does bring these two different things, too.

And, like, you're seeing the two different weapons here, too.

Mm-hmm. I don't know why they didn't connect it.

It's weird to me. It is interesting. Now, Professor David Gee was the head of forensic medicine at Leeds University.

And he was called to the scene to analyze the body and the surrounding area for clues.

And fortunately, he believed Wilma was unconscious, likely while most, if not all, of the knife wounds were inflicted on her.

Okay. So she wasn't awake. Hopefully wasn't feeling any of that.

He also believed that she was not raped, and tests later confirmed this, but there was traces of semen found on her clothing.

Again, Peter had done that. No one was able to provide any information or clues, and Peter had never entered Wilma's life up until this point that he snuffed it out.

So there was no connection at all to him.

Right. There was nothing to connect the two.

They weren't seen together. They didn't go to a pub together.

They didn't meet in public. No. It was like the perfect crime at this point.

Ugh. By the end of 1975, Peter and Sonia were still living with her parents, but he had actually gotten a job at this point at Anderson International, or Anderton, I mean, International, and was taking truck driving lessons or lorry lessons. with Apex Driving School.

So he was going to become a lorry driver.

This meant that they were able to save some money to try to get a home of their own.

And Peter also sold his lime green Capri, which is what he had been driving, and it was very conspicuous.

He was now able to drive a white Ford Corsair, I think it's called.

So a white Ford is a lot less conspicuous than a lime green Capri.

Yeah. Moving on to the beginning of 1976.

So the beginning of the 1970s as a whole brought about a deep recession due to the oil crisis that had also hit the U.S.

Of course, there were places that suffered harder than others, and crime rates skyrocketed during this time, as they often do.

People are trying to survive. They become desperate.

People become bitter and angry. The Chapelton section of Leeds turned into a red light district and a lot of the activity was happening around a particular pub and strip club in the area called Gaiety.

Okay. Now, January 20th, 1976, two well-known patrons and sex workers, Sydney and 42-year-old Emily Jackson, were at Gaiety.

Okay. They were actually a married couple with three children who had fallen on very hard times.

In fact, they had dealt with a lot of tragedy.

In 1970, their son Derek had fallen to his death from the bedroom window.

Oh my God. And once the recession hit, Sydney's roofing business was struggling and they fell further into depression and financial instability.

This caused them to turn to a life of sex work to survive and support this small family they had.

They would go to Gaiety, meet potential clients, and when one was found, Emily would take them out to Sydney's work van while Sydney waited inside.

It's just like very depressing. It is. It's so bleak.

But it really does remind you of Whitechapel in 1888.

It does. These people are desperate. Yeah.

And they are at the, like, this is necessity and just survival mode.

And it, like, really was another one where you're just sitting there being like, oh.

Yeah, history truly does repeat itself. It really does.

So this night they interrogated around 6 p.m.

And Emily stepped outside after a while.

She was working inside, just kind of talking to people, didn't really find any clients.

So she stepped outside to see if she could get anybody.

Okay. peter happened to be trolling around the area obsessively stalking sex workers as well he pulled up when he saw her and asked her how much they agreed on five pounds and she got in his car where she told him there was an old factory around the corner that was kind of like private and away from everything peter later said quote i remember when she got in there was an overpowering smell of cheap perfume and sweat this served all the more for me to hate this woman even though i didn't even know her shut Shut the fuck up.

What do you know about cheap perfume? Also, fuck you.

You smell like shit and I know that. A hundred percent.

I know that. You smell like Sutton Poo. Yeah, Sutton Poo.

Peter Sutcliffe. We know they went to, so we know, we know like generally what happened, but we have to rely on Peter's recollection here.

Which I'm sure is embellished. Yeah, we know that they did go to the factory, and then on the way back out, Peter intentionally turned the ignition key only slightly so that the lights on the dashboard would flash and look like the car didn't start.

Like all the lights come on, like the check engine light if you don't do it.

Like you turn the battery on. And he was like, oh no, and he acted like something was wrong, got out to check on what was going on.

Emily followed him and lit her lighter, her cigarette lighter, trying to help him see.

Right, like a kind soul. And she leaned forward and he reached over and hit her on the back of the head with a ball-peen hammer as hard as he could.

Oh my god. When she fell to the ground, he hit her again harder and then he dragged her body into the factory.

You just can't even imagine like how much that would hurt too.

Just like to be knocked, like your senses would just be completely gone to shit.

Think about, and this is the thing, like we say these things and it's like hitting the head with a ball peen hammer.

And it's like, but you're like what you're saying.

Think about it. Yeah. Think about it. Like I feel.

Think about banging your head. Like we have like this little like chandelier light.

Yeah. That before we got a dining room table, it was like in the middle of the room and it was just, even I would hit my head on it.

Yeah. When I would walk under that thing and bang the top of my head.

It hurts. I thought I was going to go to the moon.

It hurts so bad. Yeah. And that was me just walking into it, not at full speed, just like bonk.

No, it's true. Just the other day. And the top of your head.

Yeah. Well, I was just going to say, and even like the back, like where you kind of have that like flat area.

Yeah. I should know what that's called, but here I am.

Here I am. Anyways. I was, I bent down to do laundry in the bathroom, like to scoop up some laundry and I got the corner of the counter to the back of my head.

And that's the kind of pain that just ricochets throughout your entire body.

And he would do this to these women. And it's like, you have to think about that, that fucking terror.

And then you just, there's no fighting back at that point.

No, because you're so disoriented. You're so incapacitated.

All your senses are going at a million miles an hour at that point, and you're so disoriented.

It's so fucked up what he did. So he ended up hitting her again, and then he dragged her body into the factory.

Now, at some point, he then stabbed her over 50 times with a screwdriver, they believe.

With a screwdriver? It was hours at this point, and Sydney had not seen Emily return back to the pub.

Oh. He began to get worried, obviously, and she was nowhere to be found until hours later when her body was discovered in the morning by a factory worker who arrived for his shift early in the morning.

He was walking in and he saw what he thought were mannequin legs sticking out of a pile of rubble.

When he got closer, he saw it was obviously a real woman.

She was on her back with her coat on, her tights were torn up and ripped, and they were pulled down by her ankles and her dress had been violently pushed up around her chest.

So he also poses them. Yeah. you She was lying in a large pool of blood, and he immediately called 999.

Now, Detective Chief Superintendent Hoban was on the scene shortly after, joined by David Gee from Leeds University.

Luckily, they immediately realized that this was obviously connected to the murder of Wilma McCain.

Finally. Or McCann, excuse me. And they interviewed everyone around the gaiety and in gaiety, and since she just left and went outside to meet Peter, it was kind of hard because, like, a lot of people didn't really interact with her that much that night.

But the information they did get was a little interesting.

Some people in the bar and around it said they remembered seeing Emily around 7 p.m. getting into a Land Rover with a man described as about 50 years of age.

Wow. Which is not, I mean, he didn't look good.

I was going to say, like, I'm glad they're insulting him.

They described it of fattish build with mousy colored ear length hair, a full beard, and bushy ginger blonde sideburns.

I haven't even looked up what he looks like yet.

And a distinctive scar extending from the knuckles to the wrist of his left hand, which I'm like, that is pretty descriptive.

And he had that? And he, I don't think that's what he looked like to me.

Oh, okay. And he didn't have that scar? He does have like a, he had a beard.

He had like the full, you know, he had like a, I would say he had like darker hair than mousy colored.

Oh, wow. I don't know why, but this isn't one that I was picturing at all.

Yeah. I know it's hard to picture what you think he's going to look like.

Yeah. So I don't know if they just saw her with someone else or they confused something.

Yeah. But this was not him, so it wasn't great to have that description because it wasn't the right one.

Yeah. But Guy noticed that at the crime scene there were drag marks leading from an open space near the factory to where she was found.

And then following them, he saw and made impressions of size 7 Wellington boots.

Okay. He found a similar boot print on Emily's thigh.

So he had placed his, like, foot on her thigh.

Her autopsy revealed the brutal attack she had endured.

She was stabbed over 30 times in the back, 12 times in the abdomen, eight times in the neck, and her heart was stabbed intentionally two times.

Oh, my God. She had been hit twice in the head with a ball-peen hammer, once on the top of the head and the second on the side of the head.

They found semen like the other cases and also evidence that intercourse had occurred, but they could not determine if it was consensual since she had been working that weekend or evening, excuse me.

And she had been like outwardly telling people she was like working that night.

Yeah. So people were like, I think she was, it probably was.

Yeah, like it could have been that. But, and they don't know if they're like, they don't know if it's going to be his or if it's going to be somebody from earlier in the night, you know?

Yeah. So within a month, DCS Hoban announced the connection between the McCann and Jackson cases like publicly.

Put out a full notice to all the police forces with the description, the Land Rover.

And he made a public statement as well saying, the man we are looking for seems to have a pathological hatred of sex workers and good time girls.

I don't know what that means. I consider myself a good time gal.

You know what? It's actually true. He does have a pathological hatred of good time gals because he looks at them as subhuman and immoral.

Mm-hmm. and is the type who could kill again.

He is a sadistic killer and may well be a sexual pervert.

I cannot stress strongly enough that it is vital we catch this brutal killer before he brings tragedy to another family.

Which, yeah. All went quiet with no new leads or information after this, and four or five months after the public address, DCS Hoban actually was promoted and Detective Jim Hobson took over the investigation at this point.

From your face, I don't think that's good.

I just feel like it wasn't great to change hands when it wasn't finished yet.

Because that's the thing. No matter what, when you're changing hands in any type of work, there's going to be bumps along the way.

Exactly. So when there's like a really brutal murderer on the loose, that's not a great time.

Yeah, not great. Mm-mm. So May 9th, 1976, Peter is out trolling again in Chapelton on Spencer Place.

And he pulled over, he turned his lights off, and kept his engine on and just waited.

So now he's literally doing the, like, he's just like a predator waiting in the, I don't know why I can't say darkness.

I don't know why that. I was going to say dark.

I was like, dark? I was going to say dark, and then I was like, I feel like this is so much greater.

You know why? I was going to say in the bushes, but he wasn't in the bushes.

But he's like a predator waiting in the bushes.

So maybe that's what I was thinking. And he even had been.

So you were onto something. I'm getting over a stomach bug, okay?

I'm trying to make my words come. The stomach bug.

I heard it. I had a tummy bug. But yeah, he's like a predator waiting in the darkness, and now he's just waiting for some poor prey to walk by that he can just attack.

It's like the scariest shit. So he's pulled over, lights off, engine on, and soon 20-year-old Marcella Claxton walked by, clearly a bit tipsy.

She had been at a party that evening. It was kind of like staggering a little bit.

So maybe this is like what a quote-unquote good time girl is.

Good time, yeah. Exactly. And was walking, she was walking home to her apartment off Round Gay Road where she had two children.

She ended up in his car that night for a ride home.

He had offered her a ride home. Peter claimed they drove to Soldier's Field and parked where he offered her five pounds for sex in the grass on the field.

She said no. Okay. She was like, I'm just trying to go home, dude.

Yeah. Yeah. But she got out and was like, I have to pee.

So I'm going to go pee over here. So she went behind a bush.

She was hoping if she took a while and took her time back there that he would get tired of waiting and leave because he wasn't getting what he wanted.

Because she was put off by him. She was like, I don't know.

I literally just want to go home. That's all that this is.

And if you're not sitting there like clear about it, that's insulting to just assume that.

Yeah. So she's hiding behind the bush. And when she finally came from behind it, she can see Peter has gotten out of the car and is coming towards her.

And she heard, she said, she heard something.

You might hear me say she said, which means she survived.

Yeah. I was getting that feeling and I'm happy to hear that.

We're going to end part one on a survivor, at least.

Oh, good. She heard a clunk, she said, like something fell.

And she said, I hope that isn't a knife.

Oh. Because the attacks were in the news.

And she was like, ugh. So she was trying to say, like, I hope that isn't a knife.

And he told her it was just his wallet. He then grabbed her, raised his arm, and hit her in the head with a ball-peen hammer.

Oh, my God. He hit her possibly up to eight times with that ball-peen hair.

In the head, with a hammer. She fell to the ground, wasn't unconscious or dead yet, but she pretended to be.

Smart. And she said she played dead while he stood over her and did what he normally does over her.

So that's how we know that's what that is.

And then put a five-pound note in her hand and left.

What a piece of shit. Especially where she said no.

Like, that's not what I'm here for. And I think this is him being like, because he looks at sex workers as subhuman.

He looks at them as below him. That's his, like, fucked up notion.

It really just seems like he sees women.

But that's the thing. So he thinks that all women who are good time gals, especially because Sonia to him is like, that's his wife.

Yeah. But these good time gals, these party gals out at night without their man, they might as well be sex workers to him.

And I think that's the mindset here. You said no to me, but you might as well be a sex worker because look at you.

And I think that's his way he thinks about this.

He has a moral code that he throws on women.

I think it definitely is, some of it is formed by how his father did that whole thing.

And obviously, I'm sure that was not his father's intention to create that.

But his father didn't think that one through.

Definitely not. I don't think anybody tries to create a serial killer.

No. But it's also like that was formed by looking at his mom, who he thought was, you know, what he looks at Sonia as, what he looks at, you know, these other people as.

Like the good girl, the chaste girl, the one I can count on.

And then as soon as they turn, as soon as there's something off of that moral compass that he's given.

In his mind, yeah. She dips below a certain level, you're a sex worker, and I can kill you now.

Yep. Because now you're officially, like, I can dispatch of you.

And that police officer also gave him that idea when he hit who he assumed was a sex worker in the head with a fucking rock.

And they didn't do anything about it. And they didn't give a shit.

So he's taught by, he's been shown by everybody that this is okay.

Yeah. Now, Marcella crawled to a phone booth.

After being hit in the head eight times.

With a ball-peen hammer. And then she called for her own ambulance.

While in the phone booth, she said she was hiding on the floor while he drove by several times before finally leaving.

Why do you think he did that? I don't know, maybe he saw her move and he was looking for her.

Yeah. He might have been driving by because he didn't see her anymore and he was wondering where she was.

Oh. And he just couldn't see her in the booth.

Thank God he couldn't see her. Now, she had been four months pregnant at the time.

Oh, no. And she lost the baby. She also suffered severe skull and brain trauma.

She had extensive brain surgery, 52 stitches in her head, and she lived and managed to avoid severe brain damage.

Wow. She remembers everything from that night.

She remembers the attack. And she was even able to provide police with a description of Peter Sutcliffe.

My gosh. She said he was a young white man.

Correct. With crinkly black hair and a beard.

Crinkly. And he spoke with a Yorkshire accent.

All right. They were finally able to put together a photo fit of her attacker, which is like the sketch, but sounds more fun.

I like a photo fit. Photo fit. It's a Luke.

Yeah, a Luke. And strangely, police didn't connect her attack to the murders of Wilma McCann and Emily Jackson.

Hey, guys, hammer. Hammer? Like, what are you doing?

There's a hammer. And he also masturbated over her.

Exactly. Like, how are we not connecting this?

They also didn't connect it to the earlier and very similar attacks on Anna Rogalski and Olive Smell.

Right. There was no stabbing and the money being left was kind of different.

So I guess that's what they were going with.

That's so minor. Like, that he didn't use a second weapon and that money being left was different.

Yeah. But he used a hammer, y'all. So no connection was actually made until years later when Sutcliffe was arrested.

And that's when he confessed to the attack on Marcella.

So they didn't even know that he was the guy until then.

But Marcella said she knew the second that she saw him on the news.

Oh, I bet. You're not going to forget that face.

She was like, that's the one. And she also, as soon as she was like getting better and she was seeing more attacks on the news, she was like, that's him.

I know it. Even when they didn't even know what the guy looked like, they were just saying the Ripper.

She was like, that's him. I know it. Yeah, of course she did.

I'm sure her body went into fight or flight mode every single time she heard that.

Your body knows. 20 years old. 20. Like, what the hell?

Oh, my God. But that is where we're going to end for part one.

We're going to end on a survivor, Marcella.

It's going to get gnarly. Oh, it's going to get?

It's going to get even more gnarly in part two.

But he does get caught. So there's that.

That's nice to know. It's not going to be a Jack the Ripper situation.

We got him. Peter Sutcliffe, he did it. But that is part one, and it's a lot.

Yeah, well... We hope to see you for part two and we hope you keep listening.

And that's your job. We hope you. Weird.

Weird. But not so weird that you always forget how you end your own episode of a podcast you've been doing for four years.

Bye. Whoa. You love when I sing, huh? If you like Morbid, you can listen early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or on Apple Podcasts.

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[The Dark Path of the Yorkshire Ripper: A Morbid Deep Dive]-[Episode 403: The Yorkshire Ripper Part 1]

📋 Summary

The Formation of a Predator: Peter Sutcliffe's Early Life

The Catalysts of Rage and Dehumanization

A Pattern of Brutality: The Escalation of Violence

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript