Voices

The tapes are of phone calls he was able to make with shameful ease to his pal in June and July this year. The News of the World has also been shown letters the killer sent to his friend.

On July 20, he told his mate anti-psychotic medication he had taken 10 years ago had cured him of his mental illness.

The disorder led him to hear the infamous "echoey" voices in his head, urging him to kill hookers as he worked first in a graveyard and later as a lorry driver.

PAL: Is that (the medication) what stopped making you hear voices?

RIPPER: Yeah. No more hallucinations or anything. I realised they were hallucinations. The medication stopped it.

PAL: What did the voices used to say then?

RIPPER: I heard voices for two years. They gave me good advice and then I got depressed thinking about my grandma buried in the cemetery where I worked and that, y'know. She lived with us. We were very close and I blame meself for her death.

He went on to describe how his grandmother, Lottie Coonan, died after he shouted at her for treading on and killing a pet kitten when he was a child.

RIPPER: One day she was coming down the steps and we had two little kittens y'know, we were playing with them at the bottom of the steps. I heard her clunk clunking down the steps and she was about nearly 80 and a bit unsteady on her feet.

I said, ‘Grandma be careful', She was nearly at the bottom, ‘There is a kitten playing there'. And clunk, clunk still she kept coming down y'know. And she stepped on one and all blood came out of its mouth and she killed it.

She died a week after I shouted at her...‘You've killed the kitten'. I never raised my voice to her in all my life, y'know.

But the monster reckons all his madness is behind him now.

In an earlier letter to the pal on April 11 he wrote: "I do manage to stay sane but I've been on anti-psychotic medication for the past 12 years or so and since then I haven't had any hallucinations so hopefully I am now cured of that horrible affliction called schizophrenia which was the blight of my life and so much tragedy. If only I could go back and put it all right."

During a call on July 8, he talked about his anxious wait for an appeal that he hopes might set him free

PAL: Do you think you'd be out soon?

RIPPER: I don't know. I've got an appeal coming up against sentence and conviction so we don't know when that'll be.

Denial

In the July 20 phone call he said the next hearing to decide if he is eligible for parole will be in December and a meeting has been arranged between his doctor, lawyer and barrister.

Earlier in the call he attacked the judge at his trial. He believes his trial was unfair because he was insane then and shouldn't have pleaded guilty.

RIPPER: The judge was biased against me and he brought in a jury to decide and they knew nothing about mental illness or anything so it was wrong for them to decide it, y'know.

For his victims, however, he feels no remorse - and one conversation proves he is still in denial about his crimes.

In a phone call made on June 30 he rubbishes the report by former Inspector of Constabulary Sir Lawrence Byford into West Yorkshire Police's bungled Ripper investigation. It concluded that he launched his killing spree years earlier than previously thought.

RIPPER: There were 13 and seven attempts. That's all there was. Whatever the Byford Report suggests is ridiculous.

I told them everything I could possibly get from me memory... I just wanted to clear the decks.

There's nothing to it (the report). I saw it mentioned on TV but didn't read anything. Somebody said there was something about it in the papers and I said, ‘Oh, that's ancient history'.

Further proving how out of touch he is with reality, Sutcliffe talked at length in one call on July 8 about his dislike of his "Ripper" tag - and how it made people biased against him.

RIPPER: They see that nickname that they call me and associate it with bad things... they get a negative viewpoint straight away. It's only people with insight who can see beyond these things. That's why I treasure keeping good friends... It wasn't a true description at all, you know.

He hasn't much time for the relatives of his 13 victims either - because he believes they're greedy. In a call to his pal on July 3 the monster was in full moan about how they weren't entitled to his money.

RIPPER: My half of the house - I gave it to them, yeah... always complaining whatever you do... that's all you've got and they should've had the whole house, but that's greedy.

Me ex-wife Sonia owned half the house. They weren't entitled to that and they weren't entitled to mine really because it wasn't gotten through ill - gotten gains or anything.

It was worked for, y'know. Working a hard, difficult job for years and paying the mortgage for years. It wasn't the proceeds of crime or anything y'know.

But Sutcliffe has no money worries where he is.

He lives on the state with his own TV and video, weekly cookery classes and Bible studies, gym visits and regular phone calls to family and friends in the outside world.

In various calls he told of his cushy life. He boasted about how he watched the World Cup and Wimbledon on his own TV set and video. In a letter on April 5 he spoke of his love of cooking and his favourite telly chefs, Delia Smith and Brian Turner.

Hell

Speaking on June 30 from the infirmary where he had gone to lose weight, he talked haughtily about his Friday Bible studies.

RIPPER: About hellfire and damnation and things like that. It's not true. No one goes to hell. What kind of God would want to punish someone for ever? You wouldn't feel the flames anyway.

Sutcliffe still stays in close touch with his former wife, Sonia, who makes cosy visits to him at Broadmoor. He speaks about her in his June 30 call.

RIPPER: We go back a long time and you can't just wipe it all away, can you?... I just give her a peck on the cheek. We catch up with the news. Just normal things.

But there is nothing normal about Sutcliffe -even if he believes there is.

News of the World doctor Hilary Jones, said: "Schizophrenia is pretty much incurable, but is controllable with supervision and the right medication.

"However, there is always the risk that the same psychotic behaviour will re-emerge."

Most telling of all about his insanity, is when he spoke of his Broadmoor friends in one call.

"Some of them are not really sensible and they've got personality disorders," he said, adding: "Well, they're not stable y'know."