The Ripper’s last murder was in Bradford two months previously. Now he had returned to his favourite hunting ground and was trying to catch a victim alone outside the entrance and car park to The Hayfield public house on Chapletown Road. This was a big noisy pub with live music and one where prostitutes drank and solicited for punters at the door and outside the pub, at or near closing time. This was one of the prime prostitute haunts in Leeds. But prostitutes were all up tight and terrified because of him and nobody was working alone. Their pimps were also vigilant and aware of the danger to their profession at that time. As the night wore on, the confident and cunning Tracey, who observed the pub from the street opposite as he walked up and down it could not manage to get a potential victim on her own, Tracey, not one to back down from a decided task was waiting for a long time and was in danger of arousing suspicion and so when he saw the innocent Jayne MacDonald who was walking home alone through the car park after a night out with her boyfriend he quickly decided that she would be his next victim. She got the full treatment he intended to give to his preferred victim. The full extent of her injuries was never revealed by the police but a broken bottle was rammed into her by Tracey . The location of the stabbing and the other atrocities were not reported, but the police were in no doubt that it was the work of the Ripper from the start. They knew the Hayfield pub, and the prostitution associated with it, and the close links with the McCann and Jackson murders. George Oldfield took the overall control of the investigation of what had been a series of separate murder investigations. Peter Sutcliffe could only look on in amazement as the massive publicity and fear of the Ripper escalated. Billy Tracey was baiting him and this was the third in a row, with Irene Richardson being the first, in the same park where he had attacked Marcella Claxton, the year before without any publicity.. Sutcliffe knew he had awakened an evil monster who was signaling to him. This monster was unrelenting. There would be another innocent victim like Jayne two months later if he did not stop it. Strange warfare indeed, but Sutcliffe’s statements bear out this assessment.
The Hayfield and the Gaiety pubs have been demolished like Fred West’s house and so many more of the Ripper murder sites.
