THE YORKSHIRE RIPPER STORY
The police reports made shortly after the crimes were committed were unambiguous in the Ripper murders. There is no suggestion of a link with the Ripper investigation in this police report. Sutcliffe was looking to assault a prostitute in the Ripper’s favorite killing ground in Leeds in order to associate himself as the Ripper. This attack was all about the fiver. The Manchester police had only just taken statements from Sutcliffe in Bingley, Bradford only a few weeks earlier in connection with the Jordan murder in Manchester and the fiver they knew was planted by the killer who returned to the scene on two occasions after the murder. this deranged man had also murdered Carole Wilkinson in Bradford in the morning after he exposed the body of Jean Jordan.The papers reported that the Manchester police were going home shortly. They hadn’t arrested him and he was in a panic to be noticed as the Ripper. Now in the Ripper’s territory, he went out of his way to give Marilyn Moore a good look at himself and gave her his name as Dave, as well as a description of his car. The only problem for him was that it was the Leeds police that were responsible for this assault and it was not linked in any way to the Jordan murder in Manchester. Marilyn remembered what he looked like and gave a very good description of Peter Sutcliffe and his car. The Jordan murder was the sole responsibility of the Manchester police and they wanted to catch the crazy Yorkshireman who planted the brand new fiver on their victim. Jack Ridgeway, the policeman in charge of the hunt said ‘we are looking for a very strange man’ Marilyn’s was an assault in Ripper territory which was to be lumped in with the Rogulsky and Smelt attacks after the police included the Jordan murder in the Ripper frame as a result of the Ripper’s letters. This was “the grey area” that George Oldfield referred to in 1980.
Sutcliffe walked into the Gaity pub in Chapletown in 1980 desperately looking for Marilyn. She reported that she saw her attacker in the pub to her friends and to the police, but at that stage, they knew Sutcliffe was the copy cat, and they didn’t want him until after the expected arrest of Billy Tracey. She was ignored in the PR game that was being acted out.The police were going to be world famous with the dramatic arrest of the bloody Ripper on the job. The mad copy cat killer couldn’t be allowed to spoil their party. Sutcliffe was so desperate to be identified that he started chasing his assaulted victims hoping they would start screaming that he was the Yorkshire Ripper. He phoned up Olive Smelt in Halifax and threatened her. Again he was hoping she would report it and he would be found.
