Wicked Beyond Belief. Michael Bilton
for a Jack the Ripper killer.’ The Sun partially regurgitated the sensational headline it used a year previously, following Emily Jackson’s death: ‘RIPPER HUNTED IN CALL GIRL MURDERS’. This third death was clearly major front-page news. With a madman slaying prostitutes on the loose, Britain had not seen anything like this since the Thames nude murders in London during the mid-1960s. However, it would be another year before the term ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ became common currency.
Sensing the urgency of the situation, Ronald Gregory, the chief constable, was among those who turned up at the murder scene before the body was moved. When suspicions were eventually confirmed that the killing was the work of the man who had also slain McCann and Jackson, Gregory knew he had a maniacal killer in his force area, equal, in his mind, to the worst work of the notorious multiple murderers, Haigh and Christie, a few decades earlier. Gregory’s foreboding was well justified. The search for the ‘Ripper’ would become the most notorious criminal investigation in British history, and far more complex than either the infamous Haigh or Christie cases. For in February 1977 West Yorkshire police had an on-going murder hunt on their hands, a series of crimes to be solved, whereas the Haigh and Christie cases presented no great mystery for investigators, even though they produced sensational trials and equally sensational headlines. The killers were under arrest before police knew they had multiple deaths on their hands. Haigh admitted straight away he was a serial murderer and became infamous as the ‘Acid in the Bath’ killer. There was no police hunt for him as such. Christie had killed eight women over a period of ten years, including his own wife, but none of them were linked to a series for the bodies were not found till very late in the day. Indeed, they were discovered by accident. Christie walled up his victims or buried them in the back yard or under floorboards at 10 Rillington Place in London, where he lived. They later gave off a rather unpleasant smell. Four days after the discovery of various skeletons he was arrested and immediately confessed. Both Haigh and Christie had their defence pleas of not guilty of murder by reason of insanity rejected by a jury at the Old Bailey and both were hanged.
Convinced the man who killed Richardson had to be bloodstained, Jim Hobson telexed a warning to all West Yorkshire divisions and surrounding forces to keep an eye out for anyone coming into custody with bloodstained clothing. He also wanted urgent inquiries made at local dry cleaners. One hundred officers then began house-to-house inquiries. Among those soon interviewed was one of Britain’s top television stars, Jimmy Savile, who lived in West Avenue, opposite the murder scene. He wasn’t at home at the crucial time, but when a neighbour gave him the news he was badly shaken and kept repeating: ‘This is terrible. It is a ghastly thing to happen practically in your own front garden.’ In the following weeks numerous men were hauled in and questioned closely; several items of potential suspect’s clothing were examined at the Harrogate laboratory, along with various pairs of shoes and a bloodstained raincoat retrieved from a dry cleaners in the centre of Leeds. Tools, hammers and knives were also handed over for scientific analysis. A fragmentary fingerprint found on a bus ticket near the scene could not be eliminated. Prostitutes in Leeds were asked to come forward if they had been ill-treated by their clients. Courting couples using Roundhay Park over the weekend were asked to report anything suspicious. None of these initiatives led anywhere. Hobson appealed directly to women not to accept lifts from strangers. The last thing he needed was another murder before they had exhausted all lines of inquiry from the current one.
Four days after Irene died, he sought the cooperation of the public in finding Marcella Claxton, who nine months previously had been attacked in virtually the same spot at Soldier’s Field. Now she had moved home and police couldn’t find her. The local press claimed it as ‘a carbon copy’ attack and reported that Marcella could hold vital clues to the killer’s identity. Hobson told reporters that there were striking similarities. Both women had been viciously attacked with a blunt instrument from the rear; both had clearly been picked up in Chapeltown for sex and taken to Roundhay Park, a favourite place for prostitutes to take their clients.
Hobson said of Marcella: ‘She could help us with vital clues to the identity. It is essential that we interview this woman in view of the recent murder. There may be some connection between the attack on her and the murder of Mrs Richardson.’ An eminent biographer once declared that although hindsight is often the last refuge of the instant historian, scorning hindsight is always the first escort of the evasive politician. He might also have said policeman. With the benefit of hindsight and twenty-five years on, Hobson’s prophetic comment seems like irony heaped upon irony. There was indeed a connection between the two events, but it was overlooked. Marcella Claxton had repeatedly told police that the man who attacked her had been driving a white car; so was the man who tried repeatedly to pick up a woman in Nassau Place, Chapeltown, not long before Irene Richardson was walking in the same area, probably half an hour before she was murdered. Even more damning, Marcella had helped prepare a photofit, but again its value to the investigation was never realized.
Later that day, Marcella spoke to detectives and repeated her description of the man in a white car who attacked her. But next morning at a press conference Hobson briefed the media saying Marcella had given them a description, ‘but this is not necessarily the description of the murderer [my italics]’. It was a comment hardly likely to inspire confidence. The public was told he was aged twenty-five to thirty-five, five feet nine inches tall, medium build, with dark wavy hair, who at the time of the assault was wearing a dark suit with a multicoloured shirt and tie. He was well spoken and drove a white car which was fairly new. Anyone recognizing this description was asked to contact the police immediately. Tragically, the detail police left out from Marcella Claxton’s description was that the man had a beard and a moustache. Nor did they issue to the press the photofit Marcella prepared on 10 May 1976, the day after she was attacked. It had been published in Police Reports, a confidential internal police publication sent to northern police forces, and in a separate police circular a week later. However, the public was never given the opportunity of seeing the actual photofit (which bore a stunning likeness to Sutcliffe). True, Marcella had problems selecting the components for the photofit, but when it was finished she was satisfied it was a good likeness of the man who tried to kill her. But Hobson was not convinced, and was moreover doubly concerned that the public could be misled if given the wrong information. The simple truth was that the West Yorkshire police did not believe what Marcella Claxton was telling them.
Ever cautious, Hobson repeated his warning to the ‘good time girls’ of Chapeltown to be wary of accepting lifts in cars: ‘From our observations taken over the last week it seems that women are still getting into cars in the area. I would again warn them of the dangers.’
Over the next few months, Leeds police mounted a crackdown on prostitutes in the Chapeltown area, arresting and issuing cautions to more than a hundred women. Hobson’s policy was to get sex workers out of the vice area, a policy which appeared to be working. ‘We have clamped down to try to get prostitutes off the streets,’ he said. ‘It is as much for their safety as anything else. We are making every effort to prevent another murder.’ If they insisted on plying their trade, he believed they should let one of their friends know where they were going, or take the car number. Then another tactic was tried. Special squads of police operating in the Chapeltown area noted the registration numbers of cars belonging to men cruising around looking for sex. A similar stratagem had been applied by the Metropolitan Police in London more than ten years previously during the hunt for the Thames nude prostitute murderer. In a proactive effort to apprehend the London killer, all the ‘pick-up’ places in Bayswater, Shepherd’s Bush and Notting Hill had been kept under observation. ‘A system of “flagging” was introduced whereby the same car in an area more than once became suspect, and if it appeared three times the driver was questioned.’ The operation was not a success.
Under some pressure from the media Hobson was extraordinarily open with information. The press knew the latest victim had head injuries, that her throat was cut and she had wounds to her stomach; they knew files from previous cases were being reviewed and a special watch was being kept on people driving through the Chapeltown red-light area. Hobson also informed the media of a possible connection with the murder of a prostitute in Preston, Lancashire. The Leeds Evening Post was able to inform readers on 8 February 1977, two days after Richardson’s body was found: ‘Police are comparing notes from the files of three brutal murders committed in the last