Yvonne Pearson was soliciting for prostitution on the same corner where her friend Tina Atkinson had been last seen alive before she became the Rippers earlier victim in Bradford. The Bradford Ripper squad were keeping Yvonne under observation as live bait from a discreet distance as they sought to catch the Yorkshire Ripper. She was also being observed by her pimp.They were all up-tight because of Him. Every pimp in England knew the Yorkshire Ripper was a person with intimate knowledge of their business. Peter Sutcliffe, a man greatly disturbed by the Yorkshire Ripper murders because of his own insight into his assaults on women, and suffering from verbal abuse from his own psychotic wife, had been greatly affected by the Ripper killing of the innocent 16 year old Jayne MacDonald, the last Yorkshire Ripper murder which took place in Leeds. He knew for sure the evil Yorkshire Ripper was baiting him. He had attempted to throw the towel in with his assault on Marilyn Moore in Leeds in mid December. This attack didnt achieve its purpose. Now , a month later he was going to go one further and prove that he was the Yorkshire Ripper. The word was that the Yorkshire Ripper used a hammer to kill. It was Saturday night about 9.30 pm, the busiest time of the week and the exact same time as Tina Atkinson had been picked up by the Yorkshire Ripper. Sutcliffe was kerb crawling along Lumb Lane, no doubt observing the police stake outs and doing his best to be noticed. They reported she was last seen talking to a white Asian. The white Asian is as good a description of Sutcliffe as you would get and the police also had his car registration number. He had already been interviewed twice in connection with the Manchester murder of Jean Jordan, which was not regarded as a Yorkshire Ripper murder at this time.These police statements and records were held in Manchester. Now, like the Yorkshire Ripper had done with Irene Richardson, he was going to respond to the Ripper with a murder in his, the Yorkshire Ripper’s, chosen place. The Yorkshire Ripper’s hammer was only rumoured but unconfirmed by police. Sutcliffe, not knowing the type of hammer the Yorkshire Ripper used, had a lump hammer with him on this occasion to associate himself as the Yorkshire Ripper. The claw hammer used by the Yorkshire Ripper was not revealed by the police until after the arrest. Sutcliffe was like an automoton for Billy Tracey, the evil Yorkshire Ripper. Newspaper reports of Yvonne’s disappearance were not lost on Tracey, who guessed that his copy cat emulator had struck again, as in Manchester, and had probably hidden the body similarly. Sencing sensation, Tracey was quick to respond with the sensational murder of Helen Rytka in Huddersfield, Oldfield’s home town, only days after reading about Yvonne’s disappearance. Police concern for Yvonne stemmed from the fact that they had been observing her on the game and lost her. They probably knew that they blew the best chance to nab the Yorkshire Ripper. They knew Yvonne had been abducted and almost certainly killed..When her body was discovered more than two months later under an old setee on waste ground not far from where he picked her up, a copy of the Daily Mirror was found under it. This contained a headline story about the Yorkshire Ripper murder of Helen Rytka in Huddersfield. The body had been moved to make it visible a short time earlier which meant that the killer had returned to the body on at least two occasions. All these factors convinced the police that the murder was the work of a disturbed copy cat killer trying to emulate the Yorkshire Ripper. The disappointing thing for Sutcliffe was that on both of these murders he was probably hoping that the police had the bodies staked out and would arrest him in a blaze of publicity which would bring the Ripper terror to an end once and for all. This, I believe was his reason for returning to the bodies as he had no way of knowing that the police hadnt found them. It was not to be. The copy cat headlines are well documented as well as the police assessment. As the murders progressed and after Yvonne Pearson was taken into the Yorkshire Ripper frame along with Jean Jordan, her killing was always in a’grey area‘. Sutcliffe’s statement of this killing is indeed graphic because he knew what he was talking about. Graphic detail of the Yorkshire Ripper’s murders is completely lacking in all his statements for these and the police knew it .Every criminal who commits a crime can remember in graphic detail everything about his crime
