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Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper

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Investigative journalist Michael Bilton, over the course of many years of intense study & exploration, has done a superb job in investigating, collating and then detailing the facts behind one of the worst serial killers of modern history, the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.

Sutcliffe terrorized Northern England for a period of approximately five years between 1974 and 1979 brutally killing thirteen young women, and assaulting many others before finally being caught and sentenced to multiple life sentences. Bilton has conducted probing interviews with many of the key detectives, medical examiners & legal practitioners involved in the investigation. Additionally, Bilton clearly details how the investigation became hopelessly bogged down by the sheer volume of information flooding into the police, the lack of proper cross referencing of the intelligence, and how clashes of ego's and pride between senior police officers in various jurisdictions further hampered the investigation. His book also clearly outlines the impact of computer technology and DNA related forensic science on 21st century criminal detection, and how these tools could have greatly benefited the Ripper investigation if they'd been available in the mid-1970's.

Bilton's book does get laborious and slow in some places, however the slow nature of the pace is often a reflection of the frustrations and plunging morale of the officers pursuing a faceless monster for many years. The book not only chronicles the damage inflicted by the Ripper onto his victims and their grieving families, but how the investigation took a crippling toll on the personal lives of the police officers involved. For enthusiast's of true crime stories, Bilton's attention to detail is excellent, and his book is easily the most comprehensive and well researched publication on the Yorkshire Ripper murders.

( October 2005 Update - UK police have charged a 49 year old Sunderland man over the infamously misleading audio tapes & letters sent to Chief Inspector George Oldfield at the height of the "Yorkshire Ripper" investigation. Oldfield took the tapes as being genuinely sent by the Ripper, and the investigation went off in entirely the wrong direction by seeking a man with a Geordie accent...which Peter Sutcliffe did not possess. The Sunderland man will face court shortly )

Recommended reading for crime fans !!

Given the number of books that have been published about the Yorkshire Ripper, Bilton's book 'Wicked Beyond Belief' is a welcome breath of fresh air as it does not dwell on the horror and gruesome details of the Ripper murders, or the motivations of Peter Sutcliffe, but rather it looks for the first time at the bungled police investigation and why West Yorkshire Police couldn't catch the Yorkshire Ripper for 5 dark years.

Bilton is well positioned to write a book such as this as he was a local reporter when the Yorkshire Ripper's murderous campaign was taking place and knew many of the detectives involved at the time, some of whom were on the verge of nervous breakdowns due to their inability to catch the elusive Ripper.

One of the great strengths of the book is that it draws attention to the gross incompetence of West Yorkshire Police in conducting the Ripper investigation without sounding wise after the event or self-righteous. At times whilst reading the book, I found the incompetence of the investigation to be literally jaw-dropping. This wouldn't be so bad except with each missed lead, failure to follow-up a clue or police pursuit of a red herring, more innocent women were being gruesomely murdered. Some facts that stand out from the book are:

-Peter Sutcliffe was interviewed 9 times by the police and let go to kill again.

-There were 3 different files for Peter Sutcliffe in the police investigation, each with a slightly different spelling of the name and therefore each assuming him to be a different man.

-Sometimes, when police were questioning Sutcliffe, the officers interviewing thought they were questioning him for the first time, unaware that he had been questioned by police several times before.

-In 1979, a junior detective, after questioning Sutcliffe fingered him as a prime suspect and wrote a report explaining his suspicions and recommending Sutcliffe be brought in for further questioning. The report was lost in the mountain of paperwork.

-The descriptions given by the survivors of Sutcliffe's attacks were largely dismissed by the police as 'unreliable'.

-West Yorkshire Police were warned that the 'Wearside Jack' letters and tape with the Sunderland connection were most probably a hoax, yet continued to pursue this line of enquiry for 18 crucial months whilst the real Ripper, with a West Yorkshire accent went on killing.

-By 1980, the then Prime Minister Mrs Thatcher, was so incensed that the Yorkshire Ripper was still at large after he claimed his 13th victim, that she threatened to go to Leeds and take personal charge of the investigation herself until the Ripper was caught. She was talked out of this by the Home Secretary.

-A Home Office task force despatched to West Yorkshire to help with the investigation worked out after only 2 weeks on the case that the killer lived in Bradford, something West Yorkshire Police hadn't been able work out after spending 5 YEARS on the case.

-Even when Sutcliffe was finally caught, the police didn't search Sutcliffe properly allowing him to hide a knife in the police station and didn't discover his special garment or 'killing kit' until 2 days after his arrest. This garment was worn when Sutcliffe went looking for prey and proved that Sutcliffe killed for sexual gratification and could have thrown out his plea of schizophrenia in court, yet the garment was never produced as evidence during his trial.

In criticism of this worthy book I would say that it was a little too long and could be dry in places. For example, why spend an entire chapter on the career of Detective Inspector Dennis Hoban of Leeds CID, someone who didn't seem to have much to do with the Ripper case and died 2 years before the Ripper was caught? Or why describe in detail all the banking procedures for trying to trace the £5 note clue? I found those particular pages bordering on the tedious.

The only other question mark I have is why was the author totally disinterested in Sutcliffe himself? Although I acknowledge that the book is about the police investigation and not the murderer, I don't think you can discount the killer entirely from the picture. In the book, Sutcliffe is a shadowy figure who is finally collared at the end and doesn't seem to have any motive for his depraved crimes other than he is 'wicked beyond belief'. Call me fussy, but I would have liked a little more explanation than this.

However, I don't wish to detract from the book as overall I found it to be very interesting. Bilton brings to light some important new evidence, notably the warnings that the 'Wearside Jack' Sunderland connection was probably a hoax and the 'killing kit' that Sutcliffe wore when cruising in his car looking for victims. At times the book is disturbing, especially the descriptions of the modus operandi of the Ripper. Another thought-provoking aspect of the book is that the police, the organisation that the public put so much faith in when confronted by such a public danger, can get such a big and important investigation so wrong year after year.

The book ends on a more optimistic note by pointing out that with today's technology, a similar killer would be caught very quickly. DNA testing, computers, geographical profiling and CCTV mean that people can't hide from the authorities the way that Peter Sutcliffe could in the late 1970s.

Wicked Beyond Belief by Michael Bolton is an expose of The Yorkshire Ripper through the eyes of the police and investigators who worked on this biggest manhunt in British History. Anyone aspiring to become a police officer or an investigator should read this book. It is crammed pack with investigative methods and forensic procedures. Not only was The Yorkshire Ripper one of the worlds most chilling mass murderers, but he got away with murdering and attacking women over a period that lasted ten years because of bad policing.

The case of The Yorkshire Ripper is a three act story. It is about a serial killer who brought the middle of England to a stand still at night, the citizens gripped in fear for years on end and afraid to go out alone. It is also equally, if not more so, about the establishment of a single Yorkshire police body that combined the talents of different police squads from the towns where the Ripper was at work. It is also about the mistakes that where made during the Rippers legal hearing which led to his convicted and "diminished responsibility" on the grounds of insanity.

The Yorkshire Ripper terrorized Leeds, Manchester, Brandford, Halifax and Huddersfield. He may have murdered more than thirteen women and attacked scores of others. The total number of murders and assaults will never been known. The Yorkshire Ripper picked up prostitutes, hit them with a hammer over the head and left them to die, or as in most cases - he mutilated their bodies using special killing instruments that he shaped from screwdrivers which he always drove around with. He did not take any souvenirs but he did mutilate the woman in a sexual way. This led many detectives working on the case to believe that he was mainly only interested in killing prostitutes and so a huge manhunt began which involved questioning prostitutes, setting up monitors in the red light districts and trying to trace a car that matched the killers tire prints. The Yorkshire Ripper was not long before he started to turn on teenage girls, female doctors, secretaries, school teachers and women walking home alone at night.

Trouble for the investigators was brewing since the beginning. The fact that the murders had taken place over various different police jurisdictions meant that the crimes where not linked until at least three women where murdered, but there was also scores of other near-fatal attacks that where never connected. They had the killers name already in their database of suspects to go through and several photofits of the suspect from witnesses. The Yorkshire Rippers car was also on a list of another 140,000 vehicles to be checked. Later as the evidence against the Ripper began to mount up they eventually zeroed in on their man on no less than seven different occasions. Unfortunately bad management and organization in the incident room left the prime suspects file go unnoticed for years. Hundreds of thousands of homes, vehicles and businesses where searched and suspects vetted. A punters £5 became the center of the enquiry and a letter and voice tape recording from the Ripper drove a media blitz upon the people of Yorkshire. LOOK AT HIS HANDWRITING! LISTEN TO HIS VOICE!

Read about detectives cracking under the stress and having heart attacks - learn what new victims emerged after the trial - listen to detectives talk about their conversations with the Ripper during routine interviews before he was captured - read about how his friends fingered him out to the investigators only to be ignored - Learn about the never-mentioned-before "KILLING UNIFORM" that the Ripper wore while stalking his pray. Read about how this demonic device never found its way into the courtroom as damning evidence which suggested that the Rippers claims of insanity where a hoax and that he planned his sexual murders meticulously.

The book is slow to start because it goes into a lot of detail about the areas where the attacks took place and the investigators, including their family background. So it is very slow to start, but around 250 pages in it really starts to get cracking. There is still much that the detectives on the case are not talking about and the Yorkshire Ripper himself has also told a lot of lies. However the end of the book does give the whole chain of events from the Rippers own mouth so you get that side of the story too. Overall a very good book but it is long slog to get through the detectives backgrounds before the case begins.

Michael Bilton, Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper (Harper, 2003)

Michael Bilton writes in his preface to Wicked Beyond Belief that "I have no intention of pillorying anyone for mistakes made." Intentional or no, however, this fascinating police procedural excels in its quest to create a piece of nonfiction that could never be marketed as a novel; there's no way the reading public could get through it and say "this is believable." The only way it's possible is to get through this book and realize that it is, in fact, a piece of nonfiction. Truth is stranger, etc.

Peter William Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was convicted of thirteen counts of murder, and seven of attempted murder, in 1981. There are placed in Britain where the mere mention of his name sends shivers up the spines of folks old enough to have been around who were living in Ripper territory. Many cases of murder and attempted murder, still unsolved in the area, are believed to be Ripper attacks. While Bilton touches briefly on the things no one's still sure he did in the last chapter, Wicked Beyond Belief covers the time period from the discovery of the first body in 1975 to Sutcliffe's 1981 conviction. Anyone looking at those dates has to wonder: how did a serial killer, especially one who took so few pains to conceal his identity, manage to operate for so long? The answer is police inefficiency. No matter how you dress it up, Peter Sutcliffe remained at large for five years because, for the most part, Peter wasn't talking to Paul. This is not a book about Peter Sutcliffe, per se; those with more prurient tastes, while they will find some description to revel in here, are gently steered towards David Yallop's Deliver Us from Evil. This is a book about the police who attempted to catch him, and how small errors and inefficiencies, with more than a few bits of luck and coincidence, turned into the biggest cockup in British police history.

Through the book's almost-five-hundred pages, you will find yourself wondering again and again how certain things could have been missed, why person X wasn't doing thing Y, and why, most of all, one of the biggest manhunts in human history was so woefully underfunded. Bilton addresses all these questions and more, though even twenty years on, it is impossible to actually answer them all. You will find yourself sympathizing with some of the police and finding others to be incompetent morons who should never have been allowed near an investigation. You will likely find yourself wondering why the public didn't take matters into their own hands and simply lynch every white guy of the requisite age who had a beard. It is only that we know how the story ends that makes this tale readable; had this book been written with the Yorkshire Ripper still at large, it might have caused a revolution.

This, of course, is exactly what one should expect of a true crime book. Bilton devliers. ****

I remember the time of the Yorkshire Ripper. I was 12 yrs to 17 yrs old and at school we felt a kind of juvinile morbid delight every time there was a new killing. I remember seeing Sutcliffs photo for the first time and thinking how he looked just like the photofits I'd seen on the telly and wasn't it strange that someone who looked so like the photofits wasn't caught for so long. Also I remember the taped voice and really BELIEVING that it was the voice of the Ripper.It was strange how for some people The Yorkshire Ripper cast his shadow over the whole of England not just the Northeast. It was facinating reading this book and seeing all the behind the scenes incompetence from the upper echelons of the West Yorkshire Police. At one stage they tried looking at over fifty thousand vehicles for tyres that matched trackmarks left at murder scenes but the top brass never prioritised the search. The upper brass cancelled the search after thirty thousand cars had been checked- many of them women owners etc. who could have been checked later. A Detective Constable called Laptew handed a report in which virtually fingered Sutcliff but, because he got his bosses back up at the same time, the report was filed and ignored and then "lost" when there was an enquiry. The incompetence of the upper ranks of the police was beyond belief. For me, this is what made this a great book. I felt very sad reading about these poor desparate women and their deaths and still have a kind of morbid fascination (I think we all do)for the killings but the overiding factor in the book is the police manhunt and their incompetence though the author is very kind to them- he probably made promises to get his research. The police manhunt takes place in a different world than today with no computers etc. so no national pooling of information or experience. You just get the feeling that although the book says that Hoban, Oldfield and Holland are good coppers, they reached their exalted positions through politics rather than brilliance.

I read this book in just a few days.A fascinating read.

An incredibly detailed and almost exhaustive account of the hunt for Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper. The most expensive and intensive investigation in British history.

The book offers in agonising detail the heroic efforts, bad judgements and fatal mistakes made by the Ripper Squad during Sutcliffe's reign of terror. These accounts are dealt with fairly, horror when horror is needed, praise when praise is due. One can't help but `feel' for those involved in, and scarred, by the hunt.

As a reader of numerous Bio's I didn't find the book a slow starter at all - the information given was the exact amount required. Also, i lived in 'Ripper Country' during the terror and the book accurately portrays the fear that gripped the area.

On the downside, I felt the book aimed towards those who believe Sutcliffe was never mentally ill and offers many arguments (strong, yet flawed) as to why. Rather than leaving personal opinion in the hands of the reader, `our' minds are made up for us during its concluding chapters.

Aside, excellent and most informative journalism.

I read David Peace's four novels based on the notorious Yorkshire Ripper case. The use of fiction allowed him to speculate, but his elliptical style and shifting point of view made it difficult to sort out what happened. The novels are reminiscent in style to those of James Ellroy, who did a hallucinatory trilogy set in LA and the Cold War. I bought Wicket Beyond Belief to see if I could get a better factual handle on this mass murderer who escaped detection for far too long. The reality is somewhat mundane, the real criminal less interesting than the fictional, but it was useful in setting forth the police blunders and carried the story through the killer's incarceration and deterioration in prison. You will not feel much sympathy for him.

This book would have been perfect. I am slowly getting through the text by absorbing the information. The author, Michael Bilton, does allow us an in-depth look at being a Yorkshire policemen when they didn't have computers or databases during the crime spree. What bothers me is that we don't know who Peter Sutcliffe is as a person? What makes him tick? Now I believe Bilton does a servive in painting an honest portrait of policemen and women who served the Yorkshire community during this crime spree. Much like the Green River Killer who killed for years before being caught, I think the police are their own worst critics by blaming themselves for not catching him sooner rather than later. They did everything possible and there were mistakes but they are human too. Yes, the police can be both the enemy and your greatest ally but they did work under a different time and they should be grateful that they did catch Sutcliffe before there were more victims. I kept looking for Sutcliffe's picture until I realized it was on the cover. I wished there was one photo for each victim (living or deceased) to help us understand them. Sadly, most women even in the Green River case were mostly prostitutes and runaways. Sutcliffe had this insatiable anger and hatred of women and attacked them viciously. There is no excuse for his behavior but we have to know his upbringing in order to understand what can prevent future criminals. So I think this book is very good but you have to digest it slowly. There is a lot of information about so many people but he does a nice job in giving a chronology, a map, and helps us with an index.

My son likes the book, but says there is too much regarding the trial and not enough info about the life and character of the Ripper.