Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper

Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper
Michael Bilton

Revelatory investigation into the police handling of the Yorkshire Ripper Case which spanned over 14 years. Newly updated to include Sutcliffe’s bid for freedom in 2008, and the verdict from court in 2010.For over twenty years, the dark secrets of the biggest criminal manhunt in British history have remained a closed book. Detectives refused all requests to tell the inside story of the Yorkshire Ripper investigation that logged over two million manhours of police work. The victims who survived maintained a wall of silence. And the detailed forensic evidence, witness statements and autopsy reports have remained locked away.Until now.Award-winning writer Michael Bilton has persuaded the key people to talk. After years of exhaustive research he can finally reveal the extraordinary truth behind the murder enquiry that left Peter Sutcliffe free to kill again and again.With exclusive access to the detectives involved, to pathologist's archives and confidential police reports, the story of the hunt reads as tensely as any thriller. Its measured analysis of the calamitous investigation is also a shocking and important indictment of the most notorious murder hunt of the twentieth century.Note that it has not been possible to include the same picture content that appeared in the original print version.

Wicked Beyond Belief

The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper

Michael Bilton

Copyright

HarperPress

An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

1 London Bridge Street,

London SE1 9GF

First published by HarperPress in 2003

The extract from a report of High Court hearing R v Peter Coonan (formally Sutcliffe) before Mr Justice Mitting, on 1 March 2010, published in the Independent, is reproduced with kind permission of The Press Association.

Michael Bilton asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

WICKED BEYOND BELIEF: THE HUNT FOR THE YORKSHIRE RIPPER. Copyright © Michael Bilton 2003, 2006, 2012. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks.

HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication.

Ebook Edition © MAY 2012 ISBN: 9780007388813

Version: 2018-12-06

Dedication

For my Father

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Dramatis Personae

Chronology

Preface

1. Contact and Exchange

2. The Diabetic Detective

3. ‘A Man with a Beard’

4. Tracks in the Grass

5. Impressions in Blood

6. A Fresh Start

7. Punter’s Money

8. ‘The Job Is Life; Life Is the Job’

9. A Miserable Place To Die

10. Chinese Walls

11. The Wrong Track

12. Going Covert

13. ‘He Comes from Sunderland’

14. Bad Feelings

15. Swamped by Paper

16. ‘He Lives Somewhere, He Works for Someone’

17. ‘The Beast I Am’

18. Mad or Bad?

19. DNA, DNA, DNA

20. A Suitable Case for Treatment?

21. Unmasked: Leeds, West Yorkshire, 2006

The Final Chapter: Crime and Punishment in 2011

Note on Sources