Peter Sutcliffe

Biography

Peter William Sutcliffe (2 June 1946 – 13 November 2020), also known as Peter Coonan, was an English serial killer who was convicted of murdering thirteen women and attempting to murder seven others between 1975 and 1980. Press reports dubbed him the Yorkshire Ripper, an allusion to the Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper. Sutcliffe was sentenced to twenty concurrent sentences of life imprisonment, which were converted to a whole life order in 2010. Two of his murders took place in Manchester; all the others took place in West Yorkshire. Criminal psychologist David Holmes characterised Sutcliffe as being an "extremely callous, sexually sadistic serial killer". Sutcliffe initially attacked women and girls in residential areas, but appears to have shifted his focus to red-light districts because he was attracted by the vulnerability of prostitutes and the ambivalent attitude of police to prostitutes' safety. After his arrest in Sheffield by South Yorkshire Police for driving with false number plates in January 1981, he was transferred to the custody of West Yorkshire Police, who questioned him about the killings. Sutcliffe confessed to being the perpetrator, saying that the voice of God had sent him on a mission to kill prostitutes. At his trial he pleaded not guilty to murder on grounds of diminished responsibility but was convicted of murder on a majority verdict. Following his conviction, Sutcliffe began using his mother's maiden name of Coonan. The search for Sutcliffe was one of the largest and most expensive manhunts in British history. West Yorkshire Police faced severe criticism for their failure to catch Sutcliffe despite having interviewed him nine times in the course of their five-year investigation. Owing to the sensational nature of the case, investigators handled an exceptional amount of information, some of it misleading, including hoax correspondence purporting to be from the "Ripper". Following Sutcliffe's conviction, the government ordered a revi

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