Ripper launches bid against life term order

Mr Justice Mitting announced his decision in London on July 16, ruling that the serial killer of 13 women must serve a "whole life" tariff.

A spokeswoman for the Judicial Communications Office confirmed that he has started appeal moves.

She said: "I can now confirm that an application for leave to appeal the whole life order by Mr Justice Mitting has been lodged with the Court of Appeal."

Now known as Peter Coonan, the former lorry driver, now 64, from Bradford, West Yorkshire, was convicted at the Old Bailey in 1981.

Sutcliffe received 20 life terms for the murder of 13 women and the attempted murder of others in Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.

Mr Justice Mitting, when giving his ruling, said the murderer had caused "widespread and permanent harm to the living".

He said: "This was a campaign of murder which terrorised the population of a large part of Yorkshire for several years. The only explanation for it, on the jury's verdict, was anger, hatred and obsession.

"Apart from a terrorist outrage, it is difficult to conceive of circumstances in which one man could account for so many victims. Those circumstances alone make it appropriate to set a whole life term."

He said he had read statements by relatives of six murdered victims: "They are each moving accounts of the great loss and widespread and permanent harm to the living caused by six of his crimes. None of them suggest any term other than a whole life term would be regarded by them as appropriate."

Sutcliffe is being held in Broadmoor top security psychiatric hospital after being transferred from prison in 1984 suffering from paranoid schizophrenia. It was on July 5, 1975, just 11 months after his marriage, that he took a hammer and carried out his first attack on a woman. No date has been fixed for a hearing.

John Stainthorpe, a retired Huddersfield detective superintendent who worked on the Yorkshire Ripper investigation, said anyone with "any vestige of common sense" would never release Sutcliffe.

Speaking from his home in West Yorkshire, Mr Stainthorpe said: "I think that any judge or judges are most unlikely to release him.

"Releasing Sutcliffe, bearing in mind the extent of the damage he did to society, i just can't see anyone at all with any vestige of common sense doing it."

Mr Stainthorpe said he felt strongly about the issue having seen some of Sutcliffe's victims first-hand, and also said he thought it unfair loved ones of Sutcliffe's victims as well as survivors of his attacks should keep being reminded of what happened.

He also said he was certain Sutcliffe would reoffend in the rare instance that he were allowed out of prison.

"I do think he's still dangerous," he said.

"The man is pure evil. There's no doubt about that when he mutilated so many women and girls.

"No matter how many psychiatrists or psychologists, or people of that ilk, say there's no chance he can repeat his actions of the 1970s, there's still a chance as long as he's still breathing."