serial-killers-101:

Peter Sutcliffe

Forever known as ‘The Yorkshire Ripper’, Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering 13 women and attacking many others who survived his assaults. He is currently serving life imprisonment at a mental hospital in England.

Born June 2, 1946, as a young student, Sutcliffe was described as being a loner in school. He dropped out at the age of 15 began taking on a variety of menial jobs. He was known to frequent prostitutes and was reportedly conned out of some money once, which is believed to have fueled his hatred of women.

At the age of twenty-one, he met his future wife and was married five years later, in August of 1974. Sutcliffe’s wife suffered several miscarriages and they were told that they would never be able to conceive children. Less than one year later, in July 1975, he started his attacks on women. Amazingly, his first four victims survived his brutal assaults with his first murder occurring in October 1975.

He typically struck from behind, using a hammer or some other blunt instrument to render his victims unconscious, then stabbing and slashing their bodies mercilessly with a knife before sexually assaulting them. Finally on January 2, 1981, he was stopped by police while with a prostitute. It was found that he had stolen license plates on his vehicle so he was brought into custody. They soon began questioning him about the Yorkshire Ripper case because he bore so many physical similarities to the accounts from the surviving victims.

After two days of intense questioning, Sutcliffe admitted to the Ripper killings and described in detail each of the murders and the seven attacks where the victims survived. He was initially declared mentally fit to stand trial even though he was diagnosed as a schizophrenic. He was sentenced to prison, but was viciously assaulted several times within the first few years there. In March of 1984, he was transferred to Broadmoor Hospital where he has suffered multiple attacks over the years. One of the attacks rendered him blind in his left eye and vision in his right eye, severely diminished.