Yorkshire Ripper has died from Covid aged 74
Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, has died from Covid at the age of 74. The ex-lorry driver was serving a life sentence for murdering 13 women in Yorkshire and the North West during a five-year spree between 1975 and 1980. The number of victims though is expected to be higher.
A spokesman for the Prison Service stated: “HMP Frankland prisoner Peter Coonan (born Sutcliffe) died in hospital on November 13.
The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman has been informed.”
Sutcliffe was treated for Covid at the University Hospital of North Durham, three miles from HMP Frankland prison where he was being held. He was treated at the same hospital after a heart attack only two weeks ago. The Yorkshire ripper had many health problems including heart complications, diabetes, and obesity. He died as a result of refusing any treatment. His first victim was 28-year-old sex worker Wilma McCann who he killed on October 30, 1975, having already committed three non-fatal attacks on women earlier in the year.
He was called the Yorkshire Ripper as he mutilated his victims using a hammer, a sharpened screwdriver, and a knife. Sutcliffe was found guilty for the murder of 13 women and attempted murder of seven others at the Old Bailey in May 1981. The judge declared that he must serve a minimum of 30 years behind bars.
He was transferred from Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight to Broadmoor secure hospital in Berkshire in 1984 following a paranoid schizophrenia diagnosis. In 2008, Sutcliffe made a legal bid to be released for a breach of human rights with his lawyers arguing that the Home Office had given no fixed tariff for his sentence. The idea of Sutcliffe being set free provoked anger from the public. At the High Court in London in 2010, Mr. Justice Mitting, ruled that “early release provisions” were “not to apply” reasoning that the “appropriate term is a whole life term”.
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