‘The Ripper Hoaxer was unfinished business’ - former senior detective Chris Gregg tells how he finally solved a 25-year mystery

He started as a 16-year-old police cadet and was soon learning the ropes in the incident room of the M62 IRA bombings as well as being a young detective on the “Yorkshire Ripper” murders.

As a senior detective, he led investigations into some of the UK’s most notorious criminals such as cop-killer David Bieber and John Taylor, who kidnapped and murdered the Leeds schoolgirl Leanne Tiernan, as well as leading the inquiry into the murders committed by killer doctor Harold Shipman in West Yorkshire.

In an exclusive interview for the Mrs Yorkshire podcast, Chris Gregg shares his unique insight into the murders of the 13 victims of Peter Sutcliffe, as well as eventually catching the so-called ‘Ripper Hoaxer’ John Humble, which had left a shadow over the West Yorkshire force.

Now, on the 20th anniversary of Humble’s arrest, Chris shares the moment he could finally put the case behind him that had spanned his entire career. ">

It was 1974 when Chris joined the force as a young cadet. He was thrown straight into a major investigation into the “M62 massacre,” the IRA coach bombing that killed 12 military personnel and some of their families.

Chris said: “George Oldfield was leading the investigation, ably assisted by Detective Superintendent Dick Holland.

“They went on to be major parts of The Ripper investigation years later. But that was my first insight, as I was only a kid myself.

“What George Oldfield wanted, he got. I was sent out to the shops on errands, making the tea, but I was in the heart of a terrorist investigation at that point where the whole focus was to find out who did it.”

Chris may have played a small part on the periphery of the investigation, but this became the foundation for his career.

He said: “The sombre seriousness of that environment has never left me because I've never felt anything as highly charged in terms of the atmosphere.”

Following his time as a young Cadet, he joined the Force as a Police Constable and shortly afterwards began his career as a Detective in CID.

The hunt for Sutcliffe

He was soon working on major investigations, including the murder of 19-year-old Helen Rytka, one of Peter Sutcliffe’s early victims.

He said: “I was called to the incident room on that investigation. I worked on that for several months, where I saw first-hand the mechanics of how the investigation was administered.

“I was part of the old manual system of documenting, raising actions, indexing with a team of like-minded people around, and all the calls were coming in and all the intelligence was coming in.”

Chris was in the incident room at Huddersfield when a letter arrived for George Oldfield, claiming to be from the Yorkshire Ripper.

“This letter was in an exhibit bag. Letters were coming in all the time,” he said.

“I remember reading this letter through the plastic bag, and a lot of it didn't make sense to me at the time because it was saying, “don't forget Preston 75.”

“That was obviously part of the plan of the person to try to inspire the belief that these were genuine.”

This was one of three letters and later a cassette tape sent to police at the time from the man claiming to be the killer.

The messages were taunting Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield, who was leading the investigation.

The infamous tape said: “I’m Jack. I see you're having no luck catching me. I have the greatest respect for you, George, but Lord, you're no nearer catching me now than four years ago when I started.”

The anonymous voice was analysed by experts and identified the person as being from Sunderland. George Oldfield then made the decision to redirect resources to focus on the North East, which turned out to be a mistake as three more women were then murdered by the killer, who, when arrested, was Peter Sutcliffe, a Yorkshireman from Bradford.

Chris went on to work on three further Sutcliffe murders as a young detective.

He said: “The people in charge of the investigation were doing their best to try and capture him.

“I saw it first hand…You could not say there was any lack of trying.”

Chris said there was too much emphasis on the authenticity of the letters, and there were concerns as to whether they were genuine amongst the teams.

“There were all sorts of system breakdowns. Decisions made that wouldn't be made in hindsight,” he said.

Thousands of men were interviewed during a five-year period, including the killer, Peter Sutcliffe, who was interviewed nine times.

Everything was processed on paper, and the floors of Millgarth Police Station in Leeds had to be reinforced to carry the weight.

The difficulties caused by the amount of paperwork led to the creation of the Homes cross indexing computer system, which is still used by all UK forces today.

Chris said, “Some catastrophic decisions were made, which cost people’s lives ultimately.”

He said that had it happened today, the main investigation would have continued, and a separate strand would have investigated the letters and messages.

Chris said, “As soon as you find out who it is, everything falls into place. It just drops into place. Then you think, why didn't you know that earlier?”

Once Peter Sutcliffe was jailed, the Ripper Hoaxer letters and tape faded into history.

Chris said: “West Yorkshire Police had the stigma of the case hanging over it. The investigation caused so much damage that nobody wanted to return to it.”

For Chris Gregg however, those callous words that had misled cops stayed with him and when he was in a position to, he was determined to bring the hoaxer to justice.

He said: “In the late 80s, early 90s, forensic DNA started to be used. In the back of my mind, I wondered who it was. Who did this? I had lived and breathed the investigation.”

Every time he mentioned a possible re-investigation into the hoaxer, following Sutcliffe’s conviction, Chris was told there was no point as previous reviews had found nothing and there were reports that the original letters were missing.

In 2004, Chris became head of West Yorkshire CID and decided to track down the letters once and for all to see if any DNA could be retrieved.

He said: “Eventually, I was in a position where I didn't have to ask anybody. I was now head of CID.”

In January 2005, new legislation surrounding Freedom of Information requests came in, and Chris wanted to ensure the Force was prepared.

He said, “I was aware that we needed to have all our ducks in a row for all the big cases because there were all sorts of requests. The Ripper case was still of huge interest.

“I was conscious that a lot of the material was still all over the force because it happened in all the different towns and cities.”

Chris Gregg, aware that most of the original documentation and exhibits had long been destroyed, “quietly tasked” two detectives to gather all the exhibits and items still available and archive them in a digital property store. He also asked them to find out what had exactly happened to the original three letters and tape.

It was established that the three letters had been sent to the London Forensic Laboratory for fingerprint analysis, but the chemical process had destroyed the letters. Chris, however, was determined to find “even a snippet” of something containing the hoaxer’s DNA.

After a complex search,

a small section of gummed seal from one of the envelopes was found perfectly preserved at the Wetherby Laboratory in an exhibit cage in a place it shouldn’t have been – it had lain there for 25 years.

He said: “It had been misplaced but was perfectly preserved.

“Once we'd found it, and thank God we did find it, it was quickly examined, and it came back with a one-in-a-billion match on a chap called John Humble.”

Humble, who was 49, lived in Sunderland and had only been on the DNA database for a few years for petty crime. He was a known alcoholic. For Chris and the team, this was a momentous moment.

“That was the break,” said Chris.

He said: “Within hours now, we had sent the team up to the Northeast, and we brought him back down to Wakefield, but he was completely paralytic. It took him two days to sober up.”

For the first interview, Humble refused to answer police questions; he shook or nodded his head.

However, as the interviews went on, he finally spoke and admitted his guilt. Humble also re-read the words on the tape, sounding exactly like the original infamous ‘Wearside Jack’ as he had been dubbed in later years by journalists.

John Humble was convicted in March 2006 on four counts of perverting the course of justice. He was sentenced to eight years in prison.

Chris said: “It was a huge moment in my career and my life. That case had played such an important role in my early career, and now here I was near the end of my career.”

Chris added that at that time, he was one of the last remaining people in the force to have worked on the Sutcliffe investigation.

He said, “I knew he wouldn't have ever been identified once I had left. There was nobody else around who was as invested in trying to solve the case.”