10/03/03 - Ripper could be
bad, not mad, says MP Helen Carter
The Guardian
The Yorkshire Ripper should be moved from Broadmoor high
security hospital to an ordinary prison because he is
not really mentally ill, an MP said yesterday.
Fabian Hamilton, Labour MP for the constituency in Leeds
where Peter Sutcliffe killed his 13th and last woman victim,
university student Jacqueline Hill, said new evidence
suggested he had fooled psychiatrists.
Mr Hamilton said evidence in new a book suggested Sutcliffe
had attacked and may have murdered a number of men in
Yorkshire during the 1960s, before he began his killing
spree a decade later. He suggested that this proved that
Sutcliffe's claim to have been directed by voices was
false.
The claims about the other murders come in Michael Bilton's
book, Wicked Beyond Belief, about the police investigation.
Mr Hamilton, MP for Leeds north-east, said that if Sutcliffe
was "bad rather than mad" he must be treated
like any other prisoner.
This would mean moving him from Broadmoor to a maximum
security prison for the rest of his life sentence. However,
many police officers and psychiatrists who worked on the
case were convinced that Sutcliffe had a mental illness,
probably paranoid schizophrenia.
Sutcliffe told police that the motivation for his crimes
came from voices which had first come to him in a cemetery
when he worked as a gravedigger. Others had doubts and
suspected he had made a deliberate effort to feign mental
illness.
During his incarceration, he has been attacked by other
patients. Six years ago, he was blinded in one eye after
being stabbed with a pen. |
