"I'm Jack"

Yorkshire has a chequered history. Even in comparatively recent times. Many of us can remember what it was like living in Yorkshire during the so-called 'reign' of the Yorkshire Ripper.

In 1979, the police released a tape of 'The Ripper' .

By dialing a well publicized number you could listen to 'the Ripper'.

Thousands did, including EUNICE EXLEY.
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"I'm Jack..."

I dialed the number, not for a laugh exactly, but not in a very serious frame of mind either. I didn't expect to be so completely chilled.  But I think that anyone who heard that voice back in 1979 will still remember exactly how it sounded; will still remember hairs standing up on the back of their neck. 

I know, the voice on the tape wasn't that of Peter Sutcliffe. The voice was that of 'Wearside Jack' who the police used as an excuse for concentrating their questioning on any male over twenty with a Geordie accent. But hearing that voice suddenly made you realize that this person, this madman, who had only previously existed on News at Ten was in fact, real. The ripper was a real person and he lived and killed nearby.

Hearing that voice on your own telephone suddenly made you realize that you too were vulnerable.  We'd become used to seeing those stark, black and white, booth-style photographs of the victims. We'd lived for years knowing that the ripper was just around the corner. We were even used to being stopped in roadblocks. But we weren't used to hearing that voice in our own living rooms. 

Suddenly, we paid attention. 

Now it made sense that the colleges and universities were providing special buses to take girls home after dark. After all, his last victim hadnıt been a prostitute but a young building society clerk. We started to take precautions too. But at least we knew that the police had a further striking clue ­ that accent. 

Just a couple of weeks after the release of the tape, Peter Sutcliffe was questioned by an officer in Bradford ­ the fifth of nine encounters with the police before his arrest. His car had been seen so many times in the red-light area of Lumb Lane and the officer was very suspicious, but since the investigation had been directed to the North-East the interview wasn't taken seriously. 

During the same month, I was walking home early one evening and had to run away from a small, dark, bearded man who accosted me in the street. When I got home, I was urged to call the cops.

"What if it was the ripper and there's a murder tonight that YOU could have prevented?"

The first question I was asked on the phone was, eagerly "Did he have a local accent?" When I said that he did and confirmed that it was a Yorkshire accent I had heard and not a Geordie one, they lost interest completely. 

My friend Geoff could tell you all about the police obsession with the accent.Geoff had been brought up in Newcastle and was interviewed twice by the Leeds police. I know I shouldn't be surprised. Any man who had a hint of the North East when he opened his mouth was subject to investigation, right? Well yes, but I'd seen various photofits and I don't recall that there was ever any suggestion that the murderer was Chinese, like Geoff. 

We heard nothing about the ripper for nearly a year. There was speculation that he'd been jailed for another offence, that heıd died or that maybe he'd moved abroad.  So we forgot about not going out after dark.

It started with a quick trip to the corner shop for a pint of milk. Then we got braver and decided that maybe it was OK to walk down to the curry house. As time went on and nothing was heard, we got back into the swing of walking home after a night in the pub. The ripper? Just a memory. We all knew someone who's brother's friend knew a girl who was dating a policeman who 'revealed'  that the ripper had committed suicide/moved to the States/was in jail for burglary. 

In August 1980 a civil servant was murdered in Leeds. We worried for a while until a Chief Superintendent pronounced with authority "We do not believe this is the work of the Yorkshire Ripper." 

Of course not. We knew this from the cashier in the supermarket who'd heard from her daughter's boyfriend who worked in the police canteen that the ripper had actually emigrated to New Zealand. 

Just over a month later, a doctor who was visiting Leeds from Singapore was attacked. She survived and described her attacker as being a young man with dark hair and a full beard. But of course, this wasn't the ripper was it? The bloke behind the bar at the pub told us in confidence that he knew from his brother-in-law who worked at Jimmy's that the ripper had died of a heart attack the year before. 

Another few weeks went by. A sixteen year old girl was attacked in Huddersfield. Again, she survived so we didn't think much about it. It was probably her boyfriend or something like that, OK? You know what teenagers are like. The ripper? No way, didn't I tell you that I was talking to a bloke on the bus the other day whose niece's fiancé knows a someone whose brother works in Wakefield nick, and the ripper's in there for robbing a petrol station? 

Just under two weeks later, I walked to work as usual, down through Headlingley and on to Cardigan Road. I spent the morning working and in the early afternoon retraced the route. This time things were very different at the Arndale Centre. Yellow tape everywhere. Cop cars. Police on foot keeping onlookers away.   

I knew.

 I think everyone who was there knew. I asked a policeman:  "Whatıs going on?"  "Itıs the ripper, love. Off you go. Off you go home".  

Jacqueline Hillıs body had been found that morning. She was the ripperıs last victim.

 Only a few weeks after her murder, Peter Sutcliffe was arrested by South Yorkshire police when he was found with a prostitute in a car which had false number plates. After several days in custody and several interviews, he brought up the subject of the ripper during an interview with Detective Inspector John Boyle.

Sutcliffe: "I think you have been leading up to it."
Boyle: "Leading up to what?"
Sutcliffe: "The Yorkshire Ripper."
Boyle: "What about the Yorkshire Ripper?"
Sutcliffe:"Well, it's me. I'm glad it is all over."

We all were.

Today, Peter Sutcliffe is an overweight, untidy man of fifty five who will spend the rest of his life in Broadmoor. After an attack by an inmate, he lost an eye and his vision in the remaining eye is seriously impaired, making him almost blind.

It's not quite the hell we wanted him to rot in, but it'll do.

Eunice Exley

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Further Reading:

The Hunt for Wearside Jack

And to further confuse matters:

The REAL Yorkshire Ripper