Ripper will never be freed, court rules

Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe must spend the rest of his life behind bars, the High Court has ruled.

Now known as Peter Coonan, the 63–year–old former lorry driver, from Bradford, was convicted at the Old Bailey in 1981.

He received 20 life terms for the murder of 13 women and the attempted murder of seven others in Yorkshire and Greater Manchester. He was a regular visitor to Oldham during his six-year killing spree.

The judge Mr Justice Mitting ruled that early release provisions were not to apply.

He said he had read statements by relatives of six murdered victims, adding: “They are each moving accounts of the great loss and widespread and permanent harm to the living caused by six of his crimes.

“I have no doubt that they are representative of the unspoken accounts of others who have not made statements.

“None of them suggest any term other than a whole life term would be regarded by them as appropriate.”

Sutcliffe is currently being held in Broadmoor top-security psychiatric hospital after being transferred from prison in 1984 suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.

It was on July 5, 1975, just 11 months after his marriage, that he took a hammer and made his first attack on a woman.

Sutcliffe is said to have believed he was on a mission from God to kill prostitutes — although not all of his victims were sex workers — and was dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper because he mutilated their bodies using a hammer, a sharpened screwdriver and a knife.

Sutcliffe delivered axles to the former Seddon Atkinson truck factory in Heyside, for three years from 1978.