Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. Michael Bilton
Yorkshire that could have left such tyre marks continued their foot-slogging work. Thousands and thousands of vehicles were being screened. But such huge and painstaking inquiries brought no returns and it was never easy trying to maintain morale among those given the day-to-day tasks of relentless door knocking.
Each detective taking part in this kind of inquiry has to live with the knowledge that a single false move, a question forgotten, a momentary loss of concentration, might eliminate the killer, passing over the real culprit and rendering the whole exercise futile. Such an error would leave the inquiry team working in vain, without knowing their quarry had already escaped the net. For the conscientious officer wanting to do everything he can to catch a killer, the strain of possibly making such a mistake must be enormous.
The easiest vehicles to screen in the tyre inquiry were done quickly. People who had not moved home and had kept their vehicle since the time of the Richardson murder could be seen and eliminated reasonably swiftly. It was thought unlikely that an owner would have changed all four tyres. The remaining unseen vehicles proved gradually more and more difficult to eliminate. The vehicle may have been sold, scrapped or abandoned. Each generated new lines of inquiry for the beleaguered force. Where someone said they no longer had the car, its current whereabouts had to be checked. There was also a critical need to keep the reason for the tyre operation top secret in case the killer realized the vehicle he owned might trap him. The tyres might be changed and dumped, or the vehicle crushed and turned into a three-foot cube of metal. Hobson’s ‘tracking’ inquiry moved past the half-way stage and before midsummer 1977 more than 30,000 vehicles had been seen. For the Leeds murder squad under Hobson’s command, it seemed the best chance they had of catching the killer – providing he still had his car with him.
The process of recording who had been seen in relation to the Richardson tyre inquiry involved indexing vehicle makes and registration numbers on special cards, but with no separate name index of vehicle owners who had cars with tyres which could have matched those left at the Richardson crime scene. Although Peter Sutcliffe was the owner of one of the vehicles on Hobson’s vast list of over 50,000 potential suspects, his name as yet figured nowhere within the incident room card index system – though a record of the vehicle he owned had yet to be eliminated from the tyre inquiry. If Sutcliffe’s name should arise in connection with some other aspect of the inquiry, no one would be able to tell he had been on the list of potential suspects for the Richardson murder. There were still separate incident rooms for each of the four murders. With no computers available to handle the ever-expanding number of inquiries or the information they produced, the various incident rooms relied on the paper-led system: the keeping of various indexes relating to different aspects of the inquiry and the taking of statements – lots of them. It all took time and manpower.
In any area of Britain the number of police officers and their supervisors is a scarce resource. Precisely how much manpower was needed to devote to a ‘tracking’ inquiry that covered the whole geographical area of West Yorkshire as well as Harrogate in North Yorkshire was highly questionable. The normal pace of life in the region continued unabated, which meant other crimes also had to be tackled. Prostitute victims or not, the existence of a multiple murderer operating in the Leeds and Bradford area raised the stakes for a force CID already burdened with an average twenty-six murders to investigate every year, along with armed robberies, rapes, and sexual assaults as well as routine burglaries and vehicle crimes. Altogether in 1977 West Yorkshire Police had 128,000 crimes reported, including 5,000 crimes of violence. Roughly half these crimes were being solved.
Responsibility for not simply doing something, but being seen to do something rested ultimately with Oldfield’s boss: the chief constable, Ronald Gregory. As chief, he had total autonomy to run the operational side of the force as he thought fit. In legal terms, he alone had ‘direction and control’ of his force. As long as he carried out this task ‘efficiently’ within the terms of the 1964 Police Act, no one could tell him what to do. By tradition and by statute chief constables are independent office holders, a key feature of British democracy. A local police authority or watch committee could oversee the work of the police, but they couldn’t tell the chief constable what to do. The task of overseeing the efficiency of police forces rested with the Inspectors of Constabulary, who reported back to the Home Secretary. For generations in Britain this general rule for the well-ordered preservation of the public good had been observed: no one wanted politicians telling police officers who they could or couldn’t arrest. In 1968, Lord Denning, Master of the Rolls, made the legal position of chief constables clear: ‘No Minister of the Crown can tell him that he must or must not keep observation on this place or that; or that he must not prosecute this man or that one. Nor can any Police Authority tell him so. The responsibility of law enforcement lies on him. He is answerable to the law alone.’
However, a massive investigation by one police force into four unsolved murders by the same person had its price. Manpower was stretched, and with it came a rising bill for police overtime. With the costs mounting, Gregory consulted with his local police authority and so ensured that the necessary financial resources to solve the killings were found from within the West Yorkshire Police budget. But it was also clear that something more had to be done for the public to continue to have confidence in their local police service.
De facto, the buck in 1977 stopped at George Oldfield’s first-floor office as assistant chief constable in charge of crime at the Wakefield HQ. For a year he had followed the normal procedure of handing day-to-day responsibility for each individual murder inquiry to the various senior investigating officers. In 1977, as the number of incidents involving the Ripper increased dramatically, there were sensational headlines and public disquiet. How Oldfield dealt with the pressures of the case became the source of considerable controversy over the years. That his response was to overwork himself, drink too heavily and habitually smoke his Craven A cigarettes, was undeniable. The mode of life led eventually to him having two heart attacks.
Later the spotlight would fall on Oldfield’s judgement calls. His management of twentieth-century Britain’s most important criminal investigation became the subject of unique official scrutiny. After a five-year killing spree by the Yorkshire Ripper, the failure to capture him became a national scandal and a group of Britain’s most senior detectives descended on West Yorkshire police. Their orders from the very top of the Home Office were to ‘Sort out what is going wrong’. This unprecedented move came after an outraged Margaret Thatcher herself told the Home Secretary that she was inclined to take personal charge of the Ripper inquiry.
But no one could accuse George Oldfield of being either lazy, uncommitted or a fool. He was typical of many who held similar jobs up and down Britain. He knew about crime, serious crime, and he was a good thief taker. Taking over as ACC (crime) from Donald Craig meant he had a lot to live up to. His predecessor had investigated seventy-three murders and solved every one. It had been Oldfield’s ambition, according to his wife, to become head of CID, and now he was in the hot seat. He had learned the art of mastering internal politics. Indeed, he could never have risen to assistant chief constable had he not understood the value of discretion or been in the habit of making enemies among the force hierarchy. There was, however, a persistent rumour among the higher echelons of the force’s CID that, when offered the job of ACC (crime), he had been warned he had to cut down on his drinking.
Professionally he was an enthusiastically hard worker who took his job very seriously and demanded an equally determined effort from subordinates. Though undoubtedly a leader at local level, he lacked the sophisticated knowledge and intellectually rigorous mind necessary to employ innovative procedures to break the deadlock confronting him. Normally a soft-spoken man, in the latter years of his career he could be mistaken for a country farmer. Rough shooting was his favourite pastime. He presented a bucolic appearance typical among those brought up in rural areas who have improved their station in life. He wore on occasions country tweeds, and his round face and cheeks bore the ruddy features of someone who liked the outdoor life and knew a good quality whisky when he drank it. However easygoing he was at home, his outbursts of temper at work were legendary, though not necessarily understood. He was essentially a private man, rarely speaking about his family, preferring to keep home and professional life separate. When riled by something or someone at work his anger could turn to fury in an instant. He could swear like a trooper, yet he was never one to hold grudges.