Was anyone here interviewed for the wearside jack case?



A huge number of male ex-pats were interviewed at the time including me just to eliminate them from enquires. I had been working in London since 1977 and had a detective call at my work place to question me. He didn't know my home address so I assumed that I had been located by my National Insurance number which would have indicated my gender age group and the place of issue (i.e. Sunderland).

Among other things the copper asked me my shoe size (7's the same as Sutcliffes) and could I account where had been on particuar dates. Fortunately I had a draw full of old dek diaries & I was working in a Law Centre at the time. I was never told what it was all about just that they were conducting enquiries on behalf of another police force although it was perfectly obvious waht it was all about. It was never a question of me being under any suspicion just one of crossing me off the list like many many others.

The cost and resources taken to do all that must have been huge and of course it was a waste of effort but the police had little choice. In the meanwhile Stutcliffe attacked other women. It needs to be said that not all of Sutcliffes' victims were engaged in prostitution as the media made out and that a few although seriously injured survived his attack.

I get very annoyed when the media refer to Sutcliffe as "the Ripper" as he clearly got a big kick out of the notoriety of that title & was probably encouraged by it. In fact he was just another vicious psychopath and not much more than a worthless freak. It has always been my view that he had help in hiding his involvement when he was conducting his murders other than the contribution that was made to it by "Wearside Jack" . It's very sad that such a person who helped facilitate his murderous campaign escaped prosecution & got away with it.
 
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My dad was as well. He looked a lot like Sutcliffe back then actually with the dark hair and the tash. Mind you so did probably most blokes. My dad also travelled a lot with work back then so the plod were very interested in him.p

We've always joked what about it was actually me dar and Sutcliffe took the rap :eek::lol:
Erm that sounds just like my dad :eek::lol:
 
My dad was as well. He looked a lot like Sutcliffe back then actually with the dark hair and the tash. Mind you so did probably most blokes. My dad also travelled a lot with work back then so the plod were very interested in him.

We've always joked what about it was actually me dar and Sutcliffe took the rap :eek::lol:

Does he grow basil at his allotment ?
 
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 caring about the victims was a huge part of why it was such a weak investigation at the start
 
Not caring about the victims was a huge part of why it was such a weak investigation at the start
Agreed. As I went on to say later, we have to judge things by the attitudes of the day, not by our more possibly enlightened ones of today though. The police back then undoubtedly saw the victims as second class citizens, but so did society as a whole. It wasn’t right. Individual officers would have compassion I’m sure, but institutionally the police wouldn’t have.
 
Me old man as he was a lorry driver with a beard at the time. They noticed his teeth were slightly crossed and I think the Ripper had bitten one or two of his victims which showed a gap in his front teeth so they ruled him out straight away.
 
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.

It's absolutely fair. One of his earliest victims who survived told the police that she had heard Sutcliffes voice and that he had a Yorkshire accent.

 
A mates dad was a cop in Leeds at the time, travelling home when he was days off so firmly fit a possible suspect. He thought they put him under surveillance.
 
I was talking to an American friend about accents and I mentioned the case of the hoaxer, he was fascinated as to how an accent could be traced to a part of the city and although the police were a few miles off target, he was impressed. He said that in the USA, it often takes hundreds of miles to notice a difference in accents, although there are some areas with localised distinguishable accents. Of course, I explained that you have to be close to the area to notice the difference as most of his colleagues think I'm Scottish.
 

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