30/04/03 - Forensic biologist who cracked Yorkshire Ripper case dies
CNEWS

Science Stuart Kind, a leading forensic biologist who helped British police crack the "Yorkshire Ripper" serial murder case, has died at 78, his son said Wednesday. Kind died April 19 at his home in Harrogate, northeast England, Alan Kind said. He had been suffering from cancer.

The "Yorkshire Ripper" murdered 13 women across the north of Britain in the 1970s in a killing spree that shocked the nation and sparked a major police investigation. Truck driver Peter Sutcliffe was later convicted of the slayings.

Police sought help from Kind, who produced a paper describing the area of northern England where the killer lived. That paved the way for what became known as "geographical profiling," a technique now used by police worldwide.

Using techniques he had picked up while serving as a navigator in the Royal Air Force in the Second World War, he mapped the dates and times of the murders and correctly concluded the killer lived between the towns of Shipley and Bingley.

Sutcliffe was arrested within two weeks of Kind's report. Kind later helped research into how Sutcliffe evaded the police for five years. Its recommendations - including the need to develop computers for major investigations - were used to improve detective work.