Tina Atkinson was a prostitute who rented a flat near her soliciting pitch because she was afraid of being the next Ripper victim She would not get into a car because the police had warned prostitutes that the Ripper was a motorist because of the tyre tracks found at the scene of the last murder two months earlier, that of Irene Richardson. This was Bradford. The Ripper murders to date were in Leeds but nevertheless the Bradford prostitutes were all conscious of their vulnerability to the Ripper. Tracey came to Lumb Lane for his next victim, the area most associated with prostitutes in Bradford and an area he knew well. There was not so much police activity here. With the claw hammer in his inside pocket he probably had a drink in the Carlisle pub where, clean and well dressed and wearing his half sovereign gold ring he would have been able to stalk his drunken prostitute victim when she left the pub alone. It was late on Saturday night, the pub was full and everyone was the worse for wear with alcohol. The well dressed Tracey followed Tina from the pub and in the dim light and the relative quiet of the street he arranged to go to her flat only five minutes walk away. Tina felt perfectly safe because he did not have a car and was an Irishman rather than a Yorkshireman. When he stepped through the door of her flat, Tracey, the experienced pimp battered her senseless with the hammer and fearing she might have a pimp in the flat he probably searched the living room for any other person. Then he proceeded to perform his ritual slaughter. Tina was sexually assaulted and the presence of B blood semen confirmed this. He used the claws of the hammer to rip at her flesh. At first the pathologist thought it was a wood chisel but each claw is like a chisel. All prostitutes were afraid of sexually transmitted diseases and Aids and they always gave their customers a condom to wear before allowing them to penetrate them for this reason and also of course to save them the obvious trouble of washing themselves thoroughly after every bout of sex. The likelihood of one recent customer sharing the same rare blood group as the Ripper and having unprotected sex is a very long shot. The Ripper was one customer who could promise a girl big money and not use a condom. However, somebody noticed him because shortly after the discovery of the body, the police again put out a major request to trace the same elusive stocky bearded man resembling the man who was last seen talking to Emily Jackson. This was the No 1 suspect who was never traced. Peter Sutcliffe’s statement about how he killed Tina Atkinson is reminiscent of his statement about the murder of Yvonne Pearson, which he knew all about. He clearly didn’t know what he was talking about in this case and was being prompted by police here and there. He saw lots of red blood when he murdered Carole Wilkinson in broad daylight later that year.
