Was anyone here interviewed for the wearside jack case?

My dad did but he could not drive so unlikely to be nipping down yorkshire in between shifts at Austin and Pickersgills shipyard

watching back on the case though, I’m sure that the lorry firm Sutcliffe worked for had a warehouse on Pallion industrial estate, he could have delivered there a few times
 


I lived in Bradford from October 78 to July 79, a year at the university before I jacked the course in and went to Liverpool instead. We lived at the top end of Manningham Lane near Lister Park, not far from where the Ripper lived although it was 2 or 3 years later before he was collared. All the pubs had posters of the women he’d killed, I’m a bloke but looking back why anyone would allow their daughter to study there is beyond me. A girl my age got killed in 1979 iirc

When the Wearside Jack tape appeared I remember thinking why have the daft gets fallen for that, even then it seemed ridiculous. A few lads in nearby student houses got pulled in for questioning. The police didn’t have a clue, they’d be parked up plain clothes on street corners at night with the windows open presumably listening for a certain accent. We’d see them all the time when going home after a night on the piss
 
We moved to Leeds from up here 4 days before the first murder. Couple of years later after the tapes, me dad was stopped at one of the regular roadblocks the police did every weekend evening, took his details. They followed up with a visit and me dad asked if 'this is about last Saturday night'. It was a separate enquiry cos someone had rung the police and given his name cos of his accent, you could see them getting excited - 'what happened last Saturday? thought they'd just had a confession of another one. As soon as they checked his shoe size and blood group they lost interest.
The youngest lass that got murdered went to my school, only left couple years before. The whole time Sutcliffe was on the rampage me sister didn't get to go anywhere without being dropped door to door - me, they just let wander out anytime I felt like it. :eek:
 
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.
They interviewed people from all over the city. I think the concentration around Castletown was probably as a result of other intelligence.
 
Living here in Sheffield 3 times.The last time travelling back from millmoor after being dropped off when we played Rotherham in a night time cup game at roker.Every person with a North East accent was questioned was pulled even those with Scottish accents.Sat in the living room getting interviewed by 3 polis asking what I had been up to on certain dates .When I explained I'd been at work the 3 nights they asked me about they then wasted the time and resources going to my workplace when all they had to do was phone my wages department up.comple imcompetnance by South Yorkshire police .Prooved that with the Rotherham paedophile cases about the same time.
 
They interviewed people all over Sunderland though
Yes but I was answering to a question as to why there was a concentration on Castletown
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.
You bring up some very salient points but I can't help but feel that your opinion is predjudiced by your job. We are talking 1970's not 1870's. you say "underprepared and under resourced to cope" yet this was the biggest investigation (in terms of money and manpower) ever witnessed. I just think you are way off the mark. Hillsborough was believed by many to be the fans fault until the Police were proven to be lying and corrupt. There are too many many people join the ranks for the wrong reasons.
Incompetence is alive and well in that job.
 
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Yes but I was answering to a question as to why there was a concentration on Castletown

You bring up some very salient points but I can't help but feel that your opinion is predjudiced by your job. We are talking 1970's not 1870's. you say "underprepared and under resourced to cope" yet this was the biggest investigation (in terms of money and manpower) ever witnessed. I just think you are way off the mark. Hillsborough was believed by many to be the fans fault until the Police were proven to be lying and corrupt. There are too many many people join the ranks for the wrong reasons.
Incompetence is alive and well in that job.
The scale of the investigation was completely unprecedented. That’s what I meant. They had nothing to base it on. The procedures and processes that may have worked well enough for a single murder in one force jurisdiction didn’t work and were found not to work when there were multiple murders over multiple jurisdictions.
And don’t think I don’t know that there were/are incompetent police officers out there. Of course there are but there are incompetent doctors, nurses, soldiers, firefighters, teachers, social workers, priests, mechanics, IT workers, lawyers and in whatever you do for a living as well. And to quote you there are too many people who do those jobs as well that shouldn’t be doing them. Conversely I see good people doing good things every single day I go into work. And that is normal, not the exception. I’ll bet that’s what you see in your job as well.
Hillsborough was thirty years ago. I’m not going to defend that. I can’t and won’t.
But, if I may say, your comments are typical of a vocal minority on this forum who seek to denigrate the police at every opportunity. I don’t see the same comments and vitriol on this forum for any other profession though, other than possibly being a football player for SAFC.
 
The scale of the investigation was completely unprecedented. That’s what I meant. They had nothing to base it on. The procedures and processes that may have worked well enough for a single murder in one force jurisdiction didn’t work and were found not to work when there were multiple murders over multiple jurisdictions.
And don’t think I don’t know that there were/are incompetent police officers out there. Of course there are but there are incompetent doctors, nurses, soldiers, firefighters, teachers, social workers, priests, mechanics, IT workers, lawyers and in whatever you do for a living as well. And to quote you there are too many people who do those jobs as well that shouldn’t be doing them. Conversely I see good people doing good things every single day I go into work. And that is normal, not the exception. I’ll bet that’s what you see in your job as well.
Hillsborough was thirty years ago. I’m not going to defend that. I can’t and won’t.
But, if I may say, your comments are typical of a vocal minority on this forum who seek to denigrate the police at every opportunity. I don’t see the same comments and vitriol on this forum for any other profession though, other than possibly being a football player for SAFC.
Hillsborough was over thirty years ago, does that mean it should be swept under the carpet never to be seen again? That is a very slippery slope indeed.
As regards the ripper investigation, regardless of the fact procedures weren't as hi tech back then there were many glaring errors which should never have been made.
My brother was interviewed five times during the investigation due to the Wearside Jack hoax as he was living near Bradford at the time. In two of the interviews he was verbally and physically abused
even though he was working overseas at key dates. This was the first of many incidents to colour my judgement.
Of course incompetent people are in every walk of life and I know there are a lot of very good police officers who do an excellent job under extremely trying conditions.
However I have come across a lot throughout (more than can be called an exception) my life who are megalomaniacs and whose arrogance and sense of self aggrandisement is staggering
and it is clear that is why they joined the police.
My comments may be typical but are made from experience and not hearsay.
 
Maybe even took in for further questioning.
I was interviewed twice was working at British aerospace in Preston at the time somebody put my name forward apparently ,was only about 24 at the time they got the cops up here to interview my dad as well because I'd borrowed his car when mine was knackered
 
Hillsborough was over thirty years ago, does that mean it should be swept under the carpet never to be seen again? That is a very slippery slope indeed.
As regards the ripper investigation, regardless of the fact procedures weren't as hi tech back then there were many glaring errors which should never have been made.
My brother was interviewed five times during the investigation due to the Wearside Jack hoax as he was living near Bradford at the time. In two of the interviews he was verbally and physically abused
even though he was working overseas at key dates. This was the first of many incidents to colour my judgement.
Of course incompetent people are in every walk of life and I know there are a lot of very good police officers who do an excellent job under extremely trying conditions.
However I have come across a lot throughout (more than can be called an exception) my life who are megalomaniacs and whose arrogance and sense of self aggrandisement is staggering
and it is clear that is why they joined the police.
My comments may be typical but are made from experience and not hearsay.
Where did I say that Hillsborough should be swept under the carpet? I didn’t and never have.
You are looking at the ripper investigation with the massive benefit of hindsight. I’ll say it again, the amount of information that comes into a murder investigation room on a daily basis is massive. Now, multiply that by three forces, 13 murders and seven attempted murders. The investigation team was completely overwhelmed. Huge mistakes were made, massive assumptions were made, very important evidence was overlooked and most certainly procedures and policy when viewed retrospectively were poor but you have to look at it in the context of the 1970s and 1980s, not in the context of the 2020s which is what you seem to be doing.
My dad was interviewed as well by the police. We lived in Durham at the time so it may well have been Durham Police that came to speak to him so that’s a fourth force involved at the very least.
I’m sorry that your brother was spoken to on five separate occasions and that the police weren’t as professional as you expect them to be today but it seems to me that you want to focus on the negatives in all of this. I will never be able to change that. At least you acknowledge that the majority of us are good people though.
 
In the book Whoever Fights Monsters by Robert K. Ressler there is an interesting section on the Wearside Jack call, he was in England on a Police seminar as the Ripper case was active and the lead detective played him the recording. Ressler told him that it was not the killer and explained the reasons why to him, but such was the belief that the caller was the killer it was disregarded. Its an interesting book if you are interested in the hunt for serial offenders, I believe the role of Jack Crawford in Silence of the Lambs was based on Ressler.
 
Where did I say that Hillsborough should be swept under the carpet? I didn’t and never have.
You are looking at the ripper investigation with the massive benefit of hindsight. I’ll say it again, the amount of information that comes into a murder investigation room on a daily basis is massive. Now, multiply that by three forces, 13 murders and seven attempted murders. The investigation team was completely overwhelmed. Huge mistakes were made, massive assumptions were made, very important evidence was overlooked and most certainly procedures and policy when viewed retrospectively were poor but you have to look at it in the context of the 1970s and 1980s, not in the context of the 2020s which is what you seem to be doing.
My dad was interviewed as well by the police. We lived in Durham at the time so it may well have been Durham Police that came to speak to him so that’s a fourth force involved at the very least.
I’m sorry that your brother was spoken to on five separate occasions and that the police weren’t as professional as you expect them to be today but it seems to me that you want to focus on the negatives in all of this. I will never be able to change that. At least you acknowledge that the majority of us are good people though.
You mentioned that Hillsborough was thirty years ago, not sure what your point was, it was corruption on a massive scale whether it was then or now.
My brother wasn't bothered that he was interviewed so often it was the fact he was belittled and abused which had a long lasting and bad effect on him.
"Weren't as professional as you expect them to be today" Is putting a politicians spin on it!!
At least you acknowledge huge mistakes were made at the time though.
 

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