Was anyone here interviewed for the wearside jack case?

Think most males between a certain age who lived in Castletown were asked a few basic questions at one point due to John Humbles calls
They came to our house in Castletown and interviewed my dad. He was a miner (as I was) working every hour god sends and only left the area on holiday during shipyard fortneet so the coppers apologised for wasting his time.
 


My step dad.
He was born and raised in Castletown. ⛳
Worked in the 'materials handling' industry and travelled widely across the north at the time of ripper murders. ⛳
Luckily he kept his diaries plus he didn't look like the photofit.

Never forget watching Nationwide when the tape was played and the Leeds prof. Said he was from Castletown.
😃
 
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I wasn't, and I actually fitted the profile they were looking for pretty closely. Yet another example of "not very efficient" police work in those days. I do wonder it they are any better nowadays....
They interviewed Sutcliffe like 5 times, even though he fitted the profile, worked where they suspected, looked like the suspect, was reported by a friend of his as the suspect and still couldn’t work out he was the killer.

Geniuses the lot of them
 
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They interviewed Sutcliffe like 5 times, even though he fitted the profile, worked where they suspected, looked like the suspect, was reported by a friend of his as the suspect and still couldn’t work out he was the killer.

Geniuses the lot of them
That’s not really fair is it?
The Yorkshire Ripper investigation was unprecedented in size. No police force at that point was equipped to undertake such a huge task. The procedures at that time were not robust enough to cope with the vast amount of information and intelligence being fed into the incident room and processed on a daily basis.
Mistakes and catastrophic ones at that were undoubtedly made, that is common knowledge. Especially the tape recordings coming out of Sunderland. Sunderland CID were of the opinion that the tapes were a hoax virtually from the outset, however George Oldfield, in charge of the overall investigation was adamant that the person sending them was the ripper. It was probably wishful thinking but we’ll never know.
There were good detectives who believed Sutcliffe was worth looking at in more detail, but their voices were drowned out under the sheer cacophony of information to be processed. There were also detectives who should have been embarrassed to call themselves as such as they dismissed vital evidence based on nothing more than their perception of the victim. One victim for example who never had a statement taken described Sutcliffe down to a ‘T’ but as he didn’t attack black women she was ignored.
On top of that, the investigations as the murders ramped up were spread over more than one police force jurisdiction, West Yorkshire and Manchester and later obviously Northumbria, all of whom had their own ways of doing things. That wouldn’t have helped in streamlining any inquiry.
In short, but with no fault of most of the individual investigators, the whole investigation was woefully underprepared and under resourced to cope.
As a result of the fallout from this investigation we now have HOLMES and later HOLMES2 which revolutionised complex investigations like this. Had it been around back then, Peter Sutcliffe would not have committed as many murders as he did.
 
Not interviewed but I was working in Holland at the time and loads of workmates pointed the finger at me. Me and a lad from Carlisle flew home for a long weekend and when we got got to work I was asked if there had been any murders while I was home, I replied with a dead serious expression that there hadn't. Meanwhile my mate was going around telling everyone that the day before we flew back a prostitute was murdered in Leeds and they think it was the ripper. Some lads were convinced it was me for days afterwards.
 
They interviewed Sutcliffe like 5 times, even though he fitted the profile, worked where they suspected, looked like the suspect, was reported by a friend of his as the suspect and still couldn’t work out he was the killer.

Geniuses the lot of them
And a five pound note that was found on one of the victims was traced back to his employer through payroll

I didn’t know until the other week that the Les Battersby actor found that particular victim in a Manchester allotment
 
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Me dad was
I came home from school and there was a police car outside the house
I was bricking it as the back yard had about 10st of pinch roof lead in it ready to melt down for fishing weights and there was about 800ltr of pinched red diesel too.
I was literally shitting it. I came in and there was 2 coppers eating freshly boiled prawns and me dad was copying a written statement comparing his hand writing
The front me dad had keeping it together was beyond me
That wasn't the Ripper investigation police, it was the Prawn Squad.
 
They interviewed Sutcliffe like 5 times, even though he fitted the profile, worked where they suspected, looked like the suspect, was reported by a friend of his as the suspect and still couldn’t work out he was the killer.

Geniuses the lot of them
maybe that he told a few lies, that at that time could not be proved to be false or more importantly have evidence to prove his guilt.
 
That’s not really fair is it?
The Yorkshire Ripper investigation was unprecedented in size. No police force at that point was equipped to undertake such a huge task. The procedures at that time were not robust enough to cope with the vast amount of information and intelligence being fed into the incident room and processed on a daily basis.
Mistakes and catastrophic ones at that were undoubtedly made, that is common knowledge. Especially the tape recordings coming out of Sunderland. Sunderland CID were of the opinion that the tapes were a hoax virtually from the outset, however George Oldfield, in charge of the overall investigation was adamant that the person sending them was the ripper. It was probably wishful thinking but we’ll never know.
There were good detectives who believed Sutcliffe was worth looking at in more detail, but their voices were drowned out under the sheer cacophony of information to be processed. There were also detectives who should have been embarrassed to call themselves as such as they dismissed vital evidence based on nothing more than their perception of the victim. One victim for example who never had a statement taken described Sutcliffe down to a ‘T’ but as he didn’t attack black women she was ignored.
On top of that, the investigations as the murders ramped up were spread over more than one police force jurisdiction, West Yorkshire and Manchester and later obviously Northumbria, all of whom had their own ways of doing things. That wouldn’t have helped in streamlining any inquiry.
In short, but with no fault of most of the individual investigators, the whole investigation was woefully underprepared and under resourced to cope.
As a result of the fallout from this investigation we now have HOLMES and later HOLMES2 which revolutionised complex investigations like this. Had it been around back then, Peter Sutcliffe would not have committed as many murders as he did.
Was part of the problem not the fact that they were fixated on the idea he was only killing sex workers and ignored evidence from other women who had managed to avoid him? I know it’s easy to criticise looking back but the police made some horrendous mistakes.
 
Was part of the problem not the fact that they were fixated on the idea he was only killing sex workers and ignored evidence from other women who had managed to avoid him? I know it’s easy to criticise looking back but the police made some horrendous mistakes.
No one disputes that the police made mistakes. They made many of them. And yes, the prevailing thought was that he only attacked sex workers. Hindsight is a wonderful thing as we say. One thing we have to take account of here was the time in which these murders occurred and they have to be judged accordingly by the standards of that time.

I’ve read a fair bit about this case and it’s my opinion shared by many others that the police were just completely overwhelmed by the amount of evidence and information they had and were relying on the old ‘coppers gut instinct’. As such lots of vital information was overlooked or not prioritised correctly.

One huge criticism I had even as a kid at the time was the tapes. It was clear to me even as a 13 year old that the tapes weren’t genuine. Yet George Oldfield decided they were and sent the investigation off in the wrong direction for months. Now that was an unforgivable decision. In his (slight) defence, Oldfield was not a well man then and by all accounts he wasn’t an easy man to speak to openly.
 
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My brother was questioned a few times, he was living just outside Leeds at the time.
The voice "expert" who said he came from Castletown was talking bollox. Humble was in
my year at school and was brought up in Ford estate.

Was he ? I know he lived there later in life but I didn’t think he grew up there.
Didn’t he go to school in castletown?
 

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