Episode 1291
Peter Sutcliffe
Sat, 2020-Nov-14 01:35 UTC
Length - 3:51
Direct Link
Welcome to popular Wiki of the Day where we read the summary of a popular Wikipedia page every day.
With 400,823 views on Friday, 13 November 2020 our article of the day is Peter Sutcliffe.
Peter William Sutcliffe (2 June 1946 – 13 November 2020), also known as Peter William Coonan, was an English serial killer who was dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper (an allusion to Jack the Ripper) by the press. On 22 May 1981, Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others. He was sentenced to 20 concurrent sentences of life imprisonment, which were converted to a whole life order in 2010. All except two of his murders took place in West Yorkshire; the others were in Manchester.
Sutcliffe initially attacked women and girls in residential areas, but appeared to have moved to red-light districts because he was attracted by the vulnerability of prostitutes. Sutcliffe had allegedly regularly used the services of prostitutes in Leeds and Bradford. He carried out murders over five years, from 1975 to 1980. After his arrest in Sheffield by South Yorkshire Police for driving with false number plates in January 1981, he was transferred to West Yorkshire Police, who questioned him about the killings. He confessed to being the perpetrator, saying that the voice of God had sent him on a mission to kill prostitutes. At his trial, Sutcliffe pleaded not guilty to murder on grounds of diminished responsibility, but he was convicted of murder on a majority verdict. Following his conviction, Sutcliffe began using his mother's maiden name of Coonan.
West Yorkshire Police were criticised for their failure to catch Sutcliffe despite having interviewed him nine times in the course of their five-year investigation. Because of the sensational nature of the case, the police handled an exceptional amount of information, some of it misleading (including the Wearside Jack hoax recorded message and letters purporting to be from the "Ripper"). Following Sutcliffe's conviction, the government ordered a review of the investigation, conducted by Lawrence Byford, known as the "Byford Report". The findings were made fully public in 2006 and confirmed the validity of the criticism against the force. The report led to changes to investigative procedures which were adopted across UK police forces. In 2019, The Guardian described the manhunt as "stunningly mishandled". Sutcliffe was transferred from prison to a high-security psychiatric hospital in March 1984 after being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. The High Court dismissed an appeal by Sutcliffe in 2010, confirming that he would serve a whole life order and never be released from custody. In August 2016, it was ruled that Sutcliffe was mentally fit to be returned to prison, and he was transferred that month to HM Prison Frankland in Durham. He died on 13 November 2020 at the age of 74.
This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 01:35 UTC on Saturday, 14 November 2020.
For the full current version of the article, see Peter Sutcliffe on Wikipedia.
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