Doctor Bandara was a Chinese student in Leeds University who became the next victim of Peter Sutcliffe, the disturbed maniac who thought he was the Yorkshire Ripper. If he went into any police station in West Yorkshire and declared himself the Ripper he would have been kicked out. The attack was played down like the Walls murder a month earlier. She described Sutcliffe accurately ( see Roger Cross account ) It strengthens the point I make, that they knew Sutcliffe was the copy cat and didnt want to touch him. This description matched both Marilyn Moore’s attacker and Marcella Claxtons’s attacker. These photofit images were high on every West Yorkshire policemans mind. This latest attack could not have been lost on them. The most important point I wish to make regarding this attack is that it was in no way associated with the Ripper investigation until after Peter Sutcliffe’s arrest when the police wished to throw everything they could at him to support and bolster the evidence against him to make the public believe that he was indeed the Ripper. Sutcliffe should have been detained shortly after my tip off when his role as the copy cat killer was recognised but the police obviously were much more interested in getting their hands on Billy Tracey and didnt want to risk taking the copy cat out of the equation. As a result of this short sighted policy decision, lives were lost, others were blighted and the public were left in fear of the Ripper for another year. Tracey was going about his business in Ireland and he had a string of serious assaults notched up. In June that year Tracey attacked his own nephew with a hammer after inviting him into his house and putting his arms around him first. Hammer assaults were unheard of then. Here was a criminal making a serious unprovoked hammer attack on a man in Ireland when the whole world media was directed towards unmasking the Yorkshire ripper, known for his trade mark hammer attacks. The police emphasis was all directed towards the expected spectacular arrest of the Ripper, the commuting Irishman Billy Tracey who would be apprehended with blood on his hands. This was the big prize they coveted for five long years and a few assaults by this copy cat madman wasnt going to take it from them.
