| Tracy Browne was a 14 year old schoolgirl when she was battered by the well described Sutcliffe who masturbated on her while touching her genital area. Tracy Browne gave the police an accurate description of Peter Sutcliffe and it is amazing that it was not compared with the later descriptions such as Marilyn Moore’s and Doctor Bandara’s. It is surprising that the police who interviewed Ripper suspects were not briefed on all descriptions of attackers of women in the area especially as Sutcliffe was well known to a number of detectives for more than three years before his arrest. Marcella Claxton gave a description of her attacker but this was never published to my knowledge. Her assailant’s white car, referred to in the newspaper article, was similar to one seen at the scene of the Lesley Molseed murder about three months later but never traced. Semen revealed his blood group and as a consequence of this, the attack was never in the Ripper frame. The attack on Tracy Browne was very similar to the attack on Marcella Claxton the following May when he still had the same white car with red markings.Some years after Sutcliffe’s conviction, the then Chief Constable Keith Hellawell confirmed that Sutcliffe had confessed to the Tracy Browne attack, a fact that was obvious from the time he was arrested. It took several years for the police to reveal this and it was only done through pressure from her family who are influential. It was another crime solved for Hellawell but he didn’t go into the eliminating factors because it would undermine Sutcliffe’s conviction for the Ripper murders. However it placated Tracey Browne’s family who had been saying this to the media for years. Hellawell would never reply to my letters and presided over the public relations fiasco that was the Yorkshire Ripper. He is a career P.R. man without substance. He left the police force and had been known as the drugs Czar for a few years. He made a mess of that PR job also and was retired from it. He is a policeman who knowingly covered up for the real killer to save police face.Hellawell wrote a book about his career as a cop and two detectives sued him for defamation and won substantial damages from his publisher for lies that he wrote about them in relation to a murder investigation. It seems the Ripper case was not alone in his attempts to massage the facts and obscure reality.
Hellawell is now retired and living in Huddersfield. |
TODAY 24th November 1992
