22/05/81 - Yorkshire Ripper jailed for life
BBC News On This Day

Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, has been sentenced to life imprisonment at the Old Bailey. The judge, Mr Justice Boreham, imposed a sentence of 30 years. He described Sutcliffe, a lorry driver from Bradford, as "an unusually dangerous man" and recommended he serve his full term.

The jury returned a majority verdict on 13 counts of murder and seven counts of attempted murder between 1976 and 1981. Most of the victims were prostitutes who were beaten about the head and their bodies mutilated.

Sutcliffe remained impassive as he listened to the verdict - crowds outside the court cheered when they heard it. By their verdict, the jury had rejected three psychiatrists' statements that he was a paranoid schizophrenic driven to kill by a "divine mission".

Painstaking investigation

Yorkshire Police spent nearly six years trying to track down the killer and by the end of the investigation, the incident room in Leeds was crammed full of facts and information relating to the case.

A quarter of a million names were individually filed on cards and more than 30,000 statements were taken. But none of it led to his arrest. In 1978 and 1979 a hoax tape and letters sent police on a wild goose chase to the North East looking for someone with a Geordie accent.

Police registered millions of car number plates seen in red light districts all over the north. Sutcliffe's was spotted 60 times and he was interviewed nine times before his final arrest. In the end Sutcliffe was caught after police discovered he had put false number plates on his car and found weapons in the boot.

He soon admitted he was the Yorkshire Ripper and spent 15 hours giving the police graphic details of his crime. His wife, Sonia, was not in court but in an interview with the Sheffield Star - which stated she had not been paid - she said she was shocked when told the news that her husband was the Ripper.