BRIEF SUMMARY
Carole Wilkinson was murdered on the 10th October 1977 in Bradford. This murder is not publicly connected to the Ripper story but should be mentioned . There is strong circumstantial evidence that links this murder to Peter Sutcliffe, the copy cat killer who tried to emulate the Ripper. On the night of 9th October Sutcliffe travelled to Manchester to see what had become of Jean Jordan or hoping perhaps to run into a police trap. He pulled out the body so that it would be found, see Yallops book.
Then he drove back to Bradford in the early hours of the 10th. In such a state of mind the attack on miss Wilkinson in the morning mirrored the attack which he was to perform on the luckless Yvonne Pearson 3 months later and which the coroner linked also. A local man Anthony Steel was arrested 18 months later and interrogated and convicted of murder. He always professed his innocence and after serving more than twenty years in jail he was pardoned in 2003 and the chief constable actually apologised to him.
Steel was framed by the police on the flimsiest of evidence because of his inability to face the interrogation and like Stefan Kiszko who was also mentally inadequate Steel confessed in writing and the rest is history.
A very telling aspect is revealed in the web site when James Hobson asks Steel if he took Carole’s knickers down. Hobson knew that the killer had done just that because she had been in her period and a bloody tampax was found near her body. Consequently this murder was clearly a sexual murder and it echoes the crimes of Peter Sutcliffe who masturbated over his victims while touching their genitals. Sutcliffe pulled down Lesley Molseed’s knickers also and in October 2007 Ronald Castree has been stitched up for that murder after Stefan Kiszko had already spent 16 years in jail for it.
The Steel web site and confession is very interesting for the reader as it has the same players as the Ripper case and now in 2006 we have new evidence about this murder which places Peter Sutcliffe in the murder victim’s home area at that time.
Patrick Cullinane, George Westcott and the writer drove into the Ravenscliffe estate to try to find someone who knew the victim and discuss the feelings of the residents generally now that this murder is an unsolved case again. The first person we spoke to outside a row of shops was a middle aged lady who said she knew Carole and asked us to call to her house in the estate after she left her child to school. It transpired that this lady, Kay Lintern, had lived opposite Carole’s parents home in Thackary Road and knew her well. She had been only 13 at the time and incredibly she knew that Peter Sutcliffe had been in her own home about that time and had been repairing a fridge for her stepfather. Not only that but she said that Sutcliffe had been a regular visitor to the estate and had been chased away from it on a mumber of occasions by the male residents with baseball bats. In fact one of the men who had done so was George Wilkinson, the stepfather of Carole. Sutcliffe was well known there and was not liked but there was no doubt that he knew the estate well and had contacts there.
With her consent we went to the central police station and reported this new evidence to detective Danny Bolton who listened to us with some scepticism. A few months later when we next visited K Lintern we found that the police hadnt approached her so we returned to Mr Bolton to put it to him that he hadnt done his duty and to find out if they were going to talk to her.
We did find however that Kay had been targetted by an ex police officer in a staged car crash at the local supermarket and they had accused her of serious damage to their car. A claim had been submitted by them to an insurance company and she was being bullied into signing a paper accepting her fault. Fortunately she hadnt signed it and when we examined the alleged damage to her car there was nothing but a scratch on the paintwork which could not possibly have inflicted any material damage to the other car which had deliberately driven into her path and grazed her car. The occupant of the other car was claiming big damages for whip lash and if Kay had signed the paper as requested by the manager of the insurance office they would have gotten a large claim and she would have her premiums increased or lost her insurance. As a mother of three young children that would have been very serious for her. We advised her not to repair the damage as the insurance manager had requested her to do and Patrick Cullinane took the case over and sent them a stiff letter and put copies into the police and the newspapers and that was the last she heard of that scam.
When we approached the reception desk in the police central station we were met with denials that detective Bolton was there and complete indifference to what we were there for. The officer at the desk was most unhelpful and would not convey a message to Bolton. Several people were in the area reporting stolen purses and theft of goods etc and they were quite shocked listening to what was happening and how the police didnt want to know about the new evidence in this unsolved murder case.
The evidence is now here and ongoing.
Anthony Steel died on the 29th September 2007 and now his family want the case reopened, a call I have been making for more than twenty years.
