Tracey moved to Ireland from the Yorkshire area on Good Friday 1976 when the Yorkshire police were looking for a bearded , tatooed Irishman resembling him in connection with the Ripper murders. The local Sargeant could pinpoint the exact date when I asked him nine years later. There was an incident in the town involving Tracey which made him remember it. It was also significant that he returned to Ireland voluntarily. Normally he would be deported. A few weeks later Sutcliffe committed the strange assault on Marcella Claxton in Tracey’s area of operations which made him take an interest. Tracey was well aware of the arrest of both Mark Rowntree for his murder of Barbara Booth, and Stefan Kiszko for the murder of Lesley Molseed. This was his business. This man had a most unusual insight and predeliction for violent sex crimes. Perhaps Tracey put it together that the mystery man Sutcliffe was making a statement to the police with the attack on Miss Claxton. Nobody had a better insight into such amazing behaviour than Billy Tracey. He determined to smoke this crazy criminal out. This may sound bizarre but that was the extraordinary Billy Tracey. That is exactly what he achieved in the end. He played criminal mind games with people and used the police as his accomplice. It is incredible, but the whole Ripper story is an incredible saga. At the start of 1977 he took a job in a meat factory which was to be the only job he ever had, and with this as a regular cover to fool the Irish police, he embarked on a campaign of murders in West Yorkshire designed to arouse this crazy attacker of Miss Claxton into further retaliation. The next three murders were done on Saturday nights and he would be back on the job with B.O.P.A. his employer, on monday morning, reading about them in the Daily Mirror. Irene Richardson was killed with three hammer blows to the head, her stomach was ripped open with the claws of the hammer, her intestines spilling out, she had her throat cut and her body was rearranged like Joan Harrison in Preston. There were instant Ripper headlines. The police were in no doubt it was him again. There was no talk about copy cats or assaults. All the Ripper murders were unambiguous for their sheer savagery. Sutcliffe’s lame statement of how he did this murder is reminiscent of his assault on Marcella Claxton.
