Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe is reportedly dying - but even if it’s true who cares says Christa Ackroyd

Peter Sutcliffe is dying? Apparently. Forgive my cynicism but we have heard it all before.
Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.
Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.

And even if it is true, who cares? Sutcliffe is not worthy of our attention.

As for the claims that he is haunted by the faces of his victims he is not. He is a liar.

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He couldn’t give a damn about them. He is playing a game as he always has done.

Police leading murderer Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, into Dewsbury Court under a blanket.   (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)Police leading murderer Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, into Dewsbury Court under a blanket.   (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)
Police leading murderer Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, into Dewsbury Court under a blanket. (Photo by Keystone/Getty Images)

Peter Sutcliffe has had ample opportunity to show remorse. Day after day at the Old Bailey he faced a public gallery packed full of relatives of those who had died in the most terrible way. Alongside them were women whom he planned to kill but survived. They still bore the mental and physical scars of his crimes. And he showed not an ounce of pity, or regret.

He was not haunted by what he had done. In fact quite the opposite.

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Serial killer Peter Sutcliffe on his wedding day, August 10, 1974. (Getty Images).Serial killer Peter Sutcliffe on his wedding day, August 10, 1974. (Getty Images).
Serial killer Peter Sutcliffe on his wedding day, August 10, 1974. (Getty Images).

Answering in enormous detail in his pathetic high-pitched voice he was taken through each of his heinous crimes.

He remembered everything without emotion. He did not sit with his head bowed. He did not weep. Instead he enjoyed the performance. And a performance it was.

I know, I was there.

Instead it was me who bowed my head when he deliberately caught my eye. He enjoyed the sense of power he had over women, not only his victims.

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And he loves being front page news. Peter Sutcliffe is an inadequate man who revels in his notoriety. He cares about nothing else.

When he was arrested he was soon “singing like a bird”.

He took pleasure in correcting the interviewing officers as to which crimes he had committed and which he hadn’t.

He told how he had carried them out in the grossest of detail. The only time he came close to any show of compassion was when he talked about the death of 16-year-old Jayne MacDonald . This is what he said. These are the words of an evil man.

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“The last one I did I still feel terrible about... I felt like someone inhuman and I realised that it was a devil driving me against my will. “

And that is what his latest bleating is about.

Peter Sutcliffe has never apologised because for the last four decades he has been too intent on keeping up the pretence that he is mad, not bad. If he had shown any sense of remorse, any acknowledgement of the enormity of his crimes, even one ounce of decency, he would have been bad not mad. And he has been too busy enjoying the cushy life of a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic in a secure mental hospital, not a prison.

An apology would have jeopardised all that. Well Peter Sutcliffe is now in a normal prison. And he doesn’t like it. That is what all this is about. He is not haunted by the deaths of those he killed. He is haunted only by thoughts of himself. And he wants the easiest life possible.

When he does die, he will inevitably be on the front page of all our newspapers once again. It might or might not happen soon. And when it does I want us all to pledge not to remember him, it is what he lives for, but instead focus our emotions on the 13 women he killed and the seven others he tried to murder.

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It is for that reason I am currently working with the producers at Netflix on a documentary series which will put the women to the fore and place him back in the shadows. I thought long and hard before I said yes but newspaper stories like the one last weekend are the reason I agreed. The series concentrates on the crimes and the victims, not the man who committed them. And the fact there may be more.

The Byford report concluded that there are almost certainly other women who died at the hands of this evil monster.

It is known he has been questioned on at least seventeen other murders. If he is haunted let him now confess all of his crimes and give the families peace. But he won’t. It’s all about him.

Peter Sutcliffe says that when he dies he wants his ashes scattered by his ex wife in Paris because that’s where they honeymooned and that’s where he was happy. There is only one place for his ashes, and that is on the rubbish dump where he belongs. Until then let us agree with the Ministry of Justice this week when a senior source said, “There is always a feeding frenzy ever time the Ministry mentions Sutcliffe so there will no official comment until he is dead.”