Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe dead at 74 after ‘turning down treatment’ for coronavirus

Peter Sutcliffe was serving a whole-life tariff for murdering 13 women across Yorkshire and the North West of England between 1975 and 1980 and had brutally attacked at least seven more, who survived.

Once the most feared man in the country, he died at the University Hospital of North Durham after being transferred there from maximum security HMP Frankland, where he was an inmate.

He had tested positive for Covid-19 and was suffering from underlying health conditions including diabetes, heart trouble and obesity.

According to reports he had turned down medical treatment for the virus.

Richard McCann was five when his mother Wilma was murdered by Sutcliffe in 1975.

He was left terrified after his mother’s killing was followed by that of Jayne MacDonald, who lived in his street.

Mr McCann told BBC Breakfast: “I was convinced as a child, having had no therapy of any description, that he was out there and that he was going to kill me.”

He added: “It really affected me.

“I was ashamed of being associated with Sutcliffe and all his crimes and, possibly to do with the way that lots of people in society looked down, and the police and some of the media – describing some of the women as innocent and some not so innocent.

“I’m sorry to harp on about this but I’ve had to live with that shame for all these years.

“There’s only one person that should have felt any shame, although I doubt that he did, and that was Peter Sutcliffe.”

Former detective Bob Bridgestock said he was one of the first on the scene when Josephine Whitaker was murdered in 1979.

He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “Peter Sutcliffe wasn’t a very intelligent killer, he was just brutal.

“It fits, in my mind, into the likes of (Myra) Hindley and (Ian) Brady and the likes of Robert Black – serial killers who will be detested way after they’ve gone.

“I’ve walked with my dog this morning and people have said ‘Good news, good riddance’, and that’s what a lot of people will be thinking about (it).”

He said senior detectives “wore blinkers” while leading the cumbersome inquiry.