Coronavirus killed infamous ‘Yorkshire Ripper’

The novel coronavirus pandemic has ended the life of one of the sinister figures of the 1970s and of the most shocking British public life, Peter Sutcliffe, the infamous “Yorkshire Ripper”, a homicidal maniac who terrorized the north of England and was convicted of murdering 13 women.

Femicide – a number that at the time was not used to identify female murderers – died of Covid-19 at the age of 74. His modus operandi included abdominal and genital mutilation and organ harvesting, which earned him the brutal nickname “The Yorkshire Ripper”.

In addition to the 13 women he massacred, he attempted to murder seven others, the Ansa news agency recalled.

He had recently been transferred from prison to hospital but refused to undergo treatment for the coronavirus, British media reported.

Reactions to his death came from several quarters, including spokesman for the Conservative Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who called him a “depraved and evil person”.

“Nothing can ever reduce the suffering he caused and it is right that he died behind bars,” he added.

The son of one of his victims said that now a terrible page in his life is finally closing.

“I won’t shed a tear,” said Bob Bridgestock, the police officer who investigated the serial killer at the time.

The ex-agent, turned mystery writer, told the BBC that he heard the news of Sutcliffe’s death while walking the dog and many people were saying, “It’s a release.”

The reactions also included that of West Yorkshire Police, the police force that had tracked down and arrested the killer.

Its current commander, John Robins, 45 years after the events, officially apologized to the families of the murdered women for the language and allusions made by detectives during the investigation of the victims, many of whom were described as “prostitutes.” or defined offensively, as if to overshadow his utter innocence.

Sutcliffe had been captured in 1981 and initially imprisoned on the Isle of Wight.

However, sentenced to 20 life sentences, he has been transferred since 1984 to a wing of Broadmoor Hospital, a high security psychiatric clinic in Berkshire (south-east England), on the basis of a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia.

In 2010, the High Court in London ruled that he could never be free again. Then, in 2016, doctors declared him cured and locked him up again in a prison, that of Frankland, in the north-east of England.

They called him “the Yorkshire Ripper” because of the way he had savagely attacked the bodies of the victims with hammers, screwdrivers, knives.

His nickname is reminiscent of a notorious predecessor in the Kingdom’s criminal history, Jack the Ripper, who killed at least five women in London’s East End at the end of the 19th century.

Sutcliffe’s arrest photo remains iconic, with his evil and spooky look. During his long stay behind bars, he had been the victim of an assault in which he lost sight in his left eye, became obese, diabetic and suffered from heart disease.

As for the pandemic, the Department of Health confirmed on Sunday a total of 24,962 new infections and 168 deaths, which brought the British toll to 1,369,318 cases and 51,934 deaths.