All language subtitles for Episode 01 Once Upon a Time in Yorkshire

Her life was brought to an end
and there was no reason for it.

It's as if though she was murdered
and she's just been forgotten about.

She's disappeared
from the face of the Earth.

Peter Sutcliffe. Peter Sutcliffe,
the Yorkshire Ripper...

Peter Sutcliffe had killed 13 women...

'She said she was going out

'for a ride on her bike
to her sister's.'

There was blood everywhere.

'Tests confirmed
there was no more brain activity.'

Why was he ruled out?

Why did nobody put to him,
"Did you kill my daughter"?

So many chances were missed because
the police were not listening.

The man who spoke to me
was a Yorkshireman.

They really believed he was a Geordie.

'I'm Jack.'

The long-term effects with the family

is we don't like to talk about it.

We've brushed it under the carpet,
so to speak.

Three men lost the best years
of their life

locked up in prison
for crimes which the evidence shows

Sutcliffe should have been
considered a prime suspect.

When I think about my mum...

And it's really hard
to remember long periods with her.

It's like little fleeting things.

But I do remember her being emotional.

I can't remember now how she sounded.

I can't remember her voice.

I'd like to say she was a kind person.

It's such a long time ago
that I can't say that.

But she was my mum.

Mum was described as a feisty character.

And she did have a feisty character.

I've got this memory as a child.

A group of kids further down the street,

past the halfway mark
where we weren't supposed to go,

got me and they took my trousers down.

I went home and told Mum that

and she went down there

and she was banging on that door,
demanding...

And I can't remember what happened,
I just remember being with my mum,

being taken there and her being that,

I guess, that feisty character,
wanting to defend her son.

'Body identified

'as that of 28-year-old divorcee
Wilma McCann.'

'Her body was found

'just inside the Prince Philip
Playing Fields, Chapeltown.

'She'd been brutally battered
about the head

'and had other horrifying injuries
to her body,

'which the police
will not disclose.'

Wilma was found a very short
distance from her own home,

on a playing field nearby.

She'd been struck twice with a hammer

and stabbed 15 times in the chest
and abdomen and the neck.

Her clothes had been pulled down
and pulled up.

Wilma's case was delegated,
first of all, to Dennis Hoban.

Cos she'd been out that night
and she'd had a few drinks

and she accepted a lift
from her attacker.

That, as far as the authorities
were concerned,

was enough to make her
almost culpable in her own murder.

The way she was portrayed

reflected the twin cultures

of the police and the press.

Those were unequivocally,
unchangeably male.

Old—fashioned male.

The police saw her as a "good time girl"

and the press went one further
and called her a prostitute.

I can remember the night
of her not coming home.

I can remember being woken.

I can remember thinking or feeling,

when they took us
into the visitors' room,

that she was going to be in there.

She wasn't there.

It was a police photographer,
who took our photograph.

'Peter Sutcliffe, surrounded by police,

'was walked the few yards
to the court doorway.'

Die! Die! Die!

Mary Judge was a carer
for an elderly man.

She was also working as a sex worker

to try and earn money just to survive.

On the night she died,

she followed what appears to have been

a fairly standard routine for her.

She went and placed a shilling bet
on a horse.

And in the evening

she went to the pubs
in the Calls area on Kirkgate.

She'd been to the local hostelries

and she was sighted
at various establishments.

And then a young boy, who was in a train,

looking out of the train window,

caught a fleeting glimpse
of a man attacking a woman.

When Mary was found, she was found
slumped against a low wall.

They identified her
through her fingerprints.

With hindsight,
her body bore all the hallmarks

of Peter Sutcliffe's MO.

The case was dealt with by Dennis Hoban.

'Born On The Bayou'
By Creedence Clearwater Revival

# Oh, when I was just a little boy

# Standin' to my daddy's knee... #

Sutcliffe had gone out with his friend

and they'd gone for a drive.

He saw a woman who,
either he believed was a prostitute

or who was a prostitute.

Sutcliffe attacked her from behind,

with a stone in a sock
and hit her about the head.

A police constable saw the car,
parked with the driver in,

with the engine running and wondered why.

So he went up to speak to the driver...

...and Sutcliffe roared off.

He was found about a mile
further down the road.

The car was abandoned

and Sutcliffe was found
crouching behind a privet hedge

with a hammer in his hand.

There has never been an explanation

of why he was only charged
with the relatively minor offence

of going equipped for stealing.

Even in 1969,

he should then have been flagged

as someone who was a danger to women.

Only three months
after the murder of Wilma McCann,

another woman nearby was killed.

'A man on his way to work found the body

'among the rubble of a demolition
site in Manor Street, Roundhay.'

She was Emily Jackson.
She was a mother in her 405.

She'd worked all her life,

but within, sort of, the last few months,

her family had become very hard-up

and as a result,
Emily decided, very reluctantly,

to go into prostitution.

What were her injuries?

She's had very severe head injuries.

There are other injuries,

which I don't wish
to elaborate on at this time.

She'd been attacked with a hammer

and she'd also been stabbed 52 times.

And because of the nature of the wounds,

the pathologist
immediately did link her murder

to that of Wilma McCann.

That's when
the police came forward and said,

"We are looking for a serial killer.
One who preys on prostitutes."

We are quite certain
that this man hates prostitution.

This even stretches
to women who go in public houses

and clubs of rather loose morals.

They became wrapped up in this idea

that they were hunting
a modern-day jack the Ripper.

'The police are looking
for a psychopathic killer

'with a pathological hatred of women
he believes are prostitutes.

'Those words strike me as the modern echo

'of something that was written
to the London newspapers

'back in September 1888.'

"I'm down on whores

"and I shan't stop ripping them
until I get buckled."

Sonia had a sister
who lived in West London

and they would frequently
go together to see her.

Sometimes Sutcliffe would drop her off

and return home to Bingley alone.

# Strawberries, cherries

# And an angel's kiss in spring

# My summer wine

# Is really made
From all these things... #

Gloria was my first cousin.

She was 14 years older than me.

She was a very pretty girl.

Very, very confident.

When she walked in,
she'd just light the whole room up.

She lived in Ealing.

To supplement her wages,

she worked as a barmaid in several
West London public houses.

The last time I recall seeing Gloria,

I think I went across with Mum,
just for an hour or so,

a couple of hours maybe, maybe had lunch.

Said goodbye.

In the early hours of the morning,

she appears to have walked
beside or through Stonefield Park.

Her body was found the next morning,
partially stripped.

It had been posed.

When we're talking about
the posing of a body,

it's about removing clothing,
it's about posturing a body.

That can tell you something
about the killer.

It can be him getting
some sort of gratification,

some sexual gratification,
from that body positioning.

Posing was an integral part
of Sutcliffe's signature.

It's almost like a photofit
of a killer's mind.

Given that posing of itself

is a really unusual characteristic
in a murder...

If, as a senior investigating officer,

I'm at a crime scene
and somebody else has got a murder

where maybe that's the only
characteristic that's the same,

I would want to at least question

whether those two murders were linked.

There are 43 police forces in the UK.

Linking inquires between forces
in the '705

was incredibly difficult.

The best way to describe

how police forces interacted
in those years

is that they didn't.

West Yorkshire didn't talk
to North Yorkshire,

let alone the Met.

You know, "It was my patch,
I'll deal with this."

You know, "Keep your nose out," almost.

It was almost like
an admission of failure

that you were asking for help.

My mum was very, very close to Gloria.

I can't remember if she used the words,

she'd been "murdered"
or she'd just "died".

I can't remember how Mum told me.

I think I was shielded,

being a bit vulnerable, 15 years old.

Knowing I just saw someone not long ago

and not gonna come and see us again.

The atmosphere at home was tragic -
very solemn, very quiet.

There was a disbelief
that she'd been murdered.

You can't picture it in your mind.

The long-term effects with the family

is we don't like to talk about it.

We've brushed it under the carpet,
so to speak.

Get on with life. Just leave it be.

It's a tremendous responsibility
that's been placed upon me.

'Jayne MacDonald had been
to a disco in the centre of Leeds.

'In the early hours of the morning

'she left her boyfriend in town
to make her own way home.

'When she reached
the children's adventure playground

'in Reginald Terrace,
the Ripper pounced.'

Jayne was 16 years old.

She came from a good family.

And because of this,

it was deemed that
this man was now picking

on what the police termed
"innocent women".

Unlike the previous four victims,
Jayne was no prostitute.

She lived at home
and worked in a supermarket.

But because she was walking home
alone late at night in Chapeltown,

police believe that the Ripper may
have thought she was a prostitute.

Will you catch him?

I'm sure we shall.
I'm sure we shall.

The personality
of a senior investigating officer

is fundamental
to the success of an inquiry.

One of the key skills is objectivity.

But you had a kind of belief
in those senior officers

about what they believed
were the motivations of this killer.

We think it was a mistake that...

...he attacked Jayne MacDonald.

Describing Jayne MacDonald
as a mistake was a low point.

As though everything else
before Jayne MacDonald's killing...

...was perfectly fine and reasonable.

The police believed he's got
this crusade against prostitutes.

And you close your mind
to any other kind of enquiry.

For them, every killing, every attack

which fell outside
those narrow parameters

by definition could not be

a Yorkshire Ripper attack or killing.

She said she was going out

for a ride on her bike to her sister's.

That was a normal practice,
to go for a ride

along the lane, which you can,
in fact, see from your home. Yeah.

Lance Corporal Trevor Steele,
you found the body.

How did you come across it?

I saw a pile of privet hedge cuttings

on the floor,
just underneath the hedgerow...

...and I saw this little piece
of blue quilt

just sticking out the top.

So I lifted the piece of blue quilt up

and saw the body.

Judith's top clothing
had been pulled upwards

and she was naked from the waist down.

Some of her clothing
was laid neatly underneath her body

when it was retrieved

and she was covered with grass clippings,

some plastic fertiliser sacks

and a sheet of corrugated asbestos.

The whole team is confident

that an arrest will be made
before this inquiry finishes.

Andrew Evans was 17.

He was a very unsuccessful soldier

and was just about
to be discharged, in fact.

He turns up at the police station
in Tamworth

to volunteer himself
as a potential suspect

for the murder of Judith Roberts.

Having seen the news coverage
for many, many weeks and says,

"I don't know, I think I may
have had something to do with it."

At the end of 72 hours,

a confession has been obtained from him.

He didn't write that confession.

Andrew was illiterate.

He couldn't have written that confession.

At the time, it wasn't uncommon

for police officers
to write a witness's statement

and get him or her to sign them.

And that's what they did.

The only real lead
the police had to go on

was a thumb print on her bike.

It wasn't Andrew's.

Andrew spent
more than two decades in prison

before, ultimately,

that conviction was quashed
and he was released.

The characteristics of Judith's murder,

which match those of Jayne MacDonald

and Sutcliffe's other victims,

are really striking.

The attack to the back of the head.

Huge force, blunt instrument
smashing in the skull.

The posing of the body.

The fact that it was partially naked.

All of that matches
what Sutcliffe is proven

to have done and done repeatedly.

Andrew Evans' conviction
for the murder of Judith Roberts

was a miscarriage of justice.

It would not be
the last miscarriage of justice

in the Yorkshire Ripper saga.

# Goodbye to you, my trusted friend

# We've known each other
Since we were nine or ten

# Together we've climbed
Hills and trees... #

Carolyn was my nanny.

My parents employed her
to come and take care of me.

She was a very pleasant girl.

Very balanced. Very easy-going.

The final day we spent together,

in the afternoon, we played some football

and we then went for a walk.

And then we headed back...

...and we had a race up the driveway,

to see who could get
to the front door first. I won.

My mother came home.
Carolyn said her goodbyes.

She ran down the driveway,

like she had to catch a bus or something.

Her father rang up close to 12 o'clock,

wondering where his daughter was.

Basically, Carolyn disappeared
from the face of the Earth.

Carolyn Allen was 17 when
she went missing some 20 months ago.

She had been babysitting at Bramcote,

just south-west of Nottingham,

and left late at night
to catch her bus home at Kinoulton,

which is 15 miles away.

Police now suspect that,
instead of catching that bus,

she was probably given a lift.

A lift which came to an abrupt end
at this spot.

Her skeletal remains
were found in Old Dalby Wood,

close to Melton Mowbray
in Leicestershire.

She had been out in the elements
for all that time.

It was very difficult

to determine a precise
cause of death as a result.

But what the pathologist's report showed

is that Carolyn had been hit

over the back of the head
with a blunt object.

The police believed
her jeans had been removed.

Just a few days before Carolyn's murder,

Sutcliffe's sister gave birth
to Sutcliffe's nephew.

He'd visited that family.

The road he would've travelled,
from his home in Bingley,

would take him past

almost exactly the spot
where Carolyn was killed.

Incident room at Millgarth.
Can I help?

Could you possibly find from your
friend the name of this gentleman?

We just don't have the manpower to do it.

It puts a great strain
on the investigators,

a great strain on the men
who have to work extra time.

But there is no lowering of morale.

They're absolutely determined
they're going to get him.

We have worked something
in the order of a million man-hours.

This is pre—computerisation.

Murder rooms, murder squads,
murder inquiries

were run on card index systems.

And the card indexes were fallible.
They were vulnerable.

It was almost inevitable that there
would be a loss of intelligence

and a loss of information.

And the idea, then,
that you could take one card system

from one inquiry
and integrate it with another

was almost impossible.

Well, one thing is certain -
we shall not give up.

We shall pursue this inquiry

with all our strength
and all our facilities.

'The Ripper came at his next victim

'60 miles away, across the Pennines,
in Manchester.'

There was two of us.
There was me and an older bloke.

We got the chance
to get an allotment, which we did.

We needed a shed, so we managed
to acquire this big shed,

but it needed a brick base.

"I'll go and get the bricks
for the base."

And it was on the way there.

Five times I'd gone,
filled the barrow, come back.

And the sixth time
I come across this body.

My mate come running up.
He couldn't look at it.

He just had to...
I mean, he just started being ill.

Jean Jordan was a young mother,
only in her early 205.

She'd come down from Scotland
to live in Manchester.

She was working as a sex worker.

She was picked up and was
very, very brutally attacked.

'A post—mortem showed
that days after the murder,

'the killer had returned to mutilate
Jean Jordan's body still further

'and drag it
to a more open position.'

Realising that the police might be
able to trace this note back to him,

he'd actually gone back to the body
and tried to find the £5.

When he couldn't find it,

he attacked her already lifeless body

in just a very, very brutal way.

I ran across the main road.

I rung 999.

I got back to the allotment.

I thought,
"What do I do? Do I go? Do I stay?"

The next minute -
I've never seen so many police cars.

I used to work with Carol
at Almond's Bakery.

She loved clothes, she loved fashion.

She used to love David Essex.
Mind you, we all did.

His single, Gonna Make You A Star,
was out at the time

and it got to number one.

# Star, yeah... #

And when that came on,
she used to be sat there singing it.

# He's into his music

# But I don't believe it... #

Sutcliffe asked to go out with Carol
and was rebuffed.

Carol's dad had argued with Sutcliffe

and Sutcliffe had not just been seen
hanging around on the estate,

he'd been reported to the police
for loitering on the estate.

She used to take the route
on the disused railway.

It was known as "the walk".

I know it led out to the hospital
at the back of the bakery.

A cook from the hospital
was coming on to work

and what he thought
was a load of rags in the field,

until he got near
and he could hear moaning.

And when he looked, it was Carol.

Carol's skull was fragmented
in about 17 different places.

'Carol was taken to Braford
Royal Infirmary on Monday morning

'and immediately linked
to a life support system.'

They asked me if I'd been to Yorkshire.

I couldn't remember
if I'd been to Yorkshire or not.

Where was I in Manchester
on such and such a date.

I didn't know.

Why I had a hammer and big chisel
and lump hammer in my wheelbarrow.

That was to break the bricks up
I needed for the base of the shed.

Your mind does play tricks on you.
It's like, "Where was I?

"Had I been to Yorkshire?
No, never been to Yorkshire."

Your mind is going faster
than you can think.

"No. No, no.
I wasn't there. I wasn't there.

"No, no, never been there.
Never been there."

And in the end,
they come in and tell you,

"Get dressed and we'll run you
home," and that was it.

I think at this time, the pressure
on this murder investigation

was already enormous.

We find ourselves, sometimes,
being totally stretched.

It was crushing
the West Yorkshire Police,

there's no doubt about that.

To say that he's end of his tether...

Well, no, but perhaps with...

The police were feeding
a huge amount of resources

and time and money into the case.

It's not going to be easy.

We're gonna have to keep slogging,
knocking at doors, asking questions.

But it's got to be done
if we're going to crack this one.

And the fact that
so much money had gone into it,

with so very little result,

was something that was picked up

in the newspapers and also by the public.

We have established that
it went to one of three banks

in the Bradford,
Shipley and Bingley area.

And it's here where we are now
concentrating our enquiries.

When the £5 note was then linked
to Bradford, at that point,

taking into account her injuries

and the fact that
she'd worked as a prostitute,

the police said,

"Yes, this woman is also
another victim of our Ripper."

We can narrow our inquiry down
to one particular factory.

12 officers came down
and went through our firm.

Went through everybody.

It was quite in depth.
They really went into it.

I mean, I was quite joking about it

and they soon told me how serious it was.

But the support system,
described as a sophisticated pump,

kept the lungs ventilated
and, therefore, the heart working

before tests confirmed
there was no more brain activity.

I was busy making tea
for myself and my husband...

...and he came in from work

and he just looked at me, he said,
"Have you heard?"

He said, "About Carol."

And he just looked at me and I realised.

I said, "Don't tell me she's dead."

When you look at the murder
of Carol Wilkinson,

geographically, it's in the right place.

The night before,
Sutcliffe had been in Manchester.

He'd been to move and desecrate
the body of Jean Jordan

and had come back home.

She is attacked from behind,

the body was posed,
the underwear was adjusted.

The police refused to accept

that Carol could have been
a Ripper victim,

on the grounds that what
she had been hit with was a stone.

In their mind, he only used a hammer.

'Yvonne Pearson was found
on wasteland in Bradford.

'As police began
the painstaking search for clues,

'appeals for information went out.'

She didn't care less

what people thought of her
in the street or nothing.

She only thought of herself and her kids.

She thought a lot of her children?
Yeah. Too much.

What do you mean, too much?

Well, let's put it this way -
she went out on the game

so she'd have enough food
and enough clothes for them.

That was the reason why
she kept going out?

Yeah, only reason.

She didn't do it
for anything else anyway.

'Yvonne Pearson,
who had been missing for two months,

'could be identified
only through her fingerprints.

Although Yvonne Pearson had
all the hallmarks of being a victim

of the man they were calling
the Yorkshire Ripper,

because her head injuries were
caused by a heavy object, a stone,

initially she was disregarded
as a victim.

Hindsight is a great thing.

And I look at the murder
of Carol Wilkinson now

and I ask myself, "Why was this not
part of the enquiry?"

I would have looked to see
why it was ruled out, not ruled in.

If you're West Yorkshire Police,
it's right in your face.

It's his home turf, it's your doorstep.

They put the blinders on

and, therefore, a young man
will spend decades in prison

for a crime he simply didn't commit.

We were very close.

I were at his house most days.
Well, every day, I would say.

I spent a lot of time with his children.

Used to love taking them out

and looking after them
and playing with them and things.

Yeah, I spent a lot of time
with him, a lot of time.

He was a bit of a...

Wheeler dealer.
Yeah, wheeler dealer.

Would come in with old radios
and mend 'em.

I knew her, sort of, to see on t'estate,

maybe going to t'shop or something,

but didn't speak to her or anything,
didn't know her that way.

It were going round t'estate
that somebody had been murdered.

At that time, there were
police officers all over the place

that were coming, doing door-to-door,

just asking people questions.

They had quite a rough relationship.

They were always falling out
and arguing and things.

He were going backwards
and forwards to his other partner,

which probably didn't help.

His wife's mother informed the police,

"I think he's murdered
Carol Wilkinson."

And I still have no idea why.

She kept accusing him
that he'd done this murder.

And he were going to say
that he hadn't done this murder.

"Can you tell her
to stop making accusations?"

Here you have a young man
who goes into the police,

who's taken in into custody

and questioned roughly and rigorously.

They just went on and on and on at him

and put words into his mouth.

"You did this, didn't you?

"You went that way, didn't you?"

As he were just about to fall asleep,

they overturned his mattress

and sat on the mattress
and he couldn't breathe.

So he were absolutely petrified.

In the end up, he just said,
"I did. Yeah, I did."

And whatever they said,
he agreed to and they wrote it down

and got him to sign at the end of it.

Not his words, their words.

We went to see him -
there was me, my mum and my dad -

more or less
after he'd done his confession.

And we went in
and he was an absolute wreck.

And I mean wreck.
He were shaking, he was gaunt.

He was drip white.
He looked horrific.

And he just says to my dad,
"I didn't to it.

"Dad, I haven't done it.
I didn't do it."

My dad says to him,
"Why did you say you've done it?"

And he said, "If I said I'd done it,
I'd get a solicitor.

"He told me I can have a solicitor."

When Detective Chief
Superintendent Hobson was told

that they'd got a confession,

Mr Hobson must have thought,
"What is that?"

There's no detail at all
in that confession.

The only detail there is

is what the police have told him
they think has happened.

The judge said that he would accept
a majority of ten to two.

Bearing in mind,
I think this were 23rd December,

so it's, sort of,
running up to Christmas.

So, obviously, they wanted to get

the verdict sorted and finished with,

otherwise they could have ended up
staying in a hotel

over the Christmas period.

And when they announced guilty...

...we nearly fainted.

Literally, nearly fainted.

We were just absolutely in shock.

Carol's mother says to your mother,
didn't she,

after the trial,
"He can't have done it."

There was no evidence against him.

No forensic evidence
which could connect him.

It just didn't make sense.

And I think that they realised that
as well. You know?

I mean, we were sat there,

praying and hoping that Anthony
were gonna get proved innocent.

And their daughter were dead.

You know, so, nobody won, did they,
in th'end?

Carol Wilkinson's murder

should have been considered

as a potential Yorkshire Ripper killing.

There's a pattern
of wrongful convictions,

in which someone was sent to prison
for an attack

which Sutcliffe should have been
considered a prime suspect.

'I'm Jack.'

The way the investigation
got completely derailed

is one of the strangest things.

'I see you are still having no luck
catching me.'

There was not a shred of evidence

that legitimised the direction
of that enquiry.

The police arrived.

I says, "I've got blood on my hands,
can I go and wash them?"

Little did I know that
at the time, they suspected me.

Subtitles by accessibility@itv.com