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The body had been lying there for two months, hidden
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under a discarded sofa on waste ground in the middle
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of Bradford. Two months! Women were walking past it every day,
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on their way to the shops, on their way to work.
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The biggest manhunt in British history was underway. Two hundred officers,
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and a killer was leaving bodies in plain sight. My
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name is Marcus, and this is Case Files. We are
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telling the complete story of Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper,
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one episode at a time. Last time, we ended in
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1977 with a 16-year-old girl, Jane MacDonald, walking home from
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a night of dancing. and a city that had finally
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understood that no one was safe. Tonight, we enter 1978,
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the year the manhunt went wrong. But to understand 1978,
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we have to start a few months earlier, in October
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of 1977 in Manchester. Gene Jordan was 21 years old.
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She was last seen on the 1st of October in
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Manchester's Red Light District. Sutcliffe picked her up there. He
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killed Heard. He left her body in the allotments next
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to the Southern Cemetery. And then he made a mistake
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that should have ended everything. In one of her handbags,
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there was a brand new five-pound note. The police traced
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its serial number. Brand new banknotes are issued in sequence,
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so that note could be traced to the exact payroll
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of the exact firm where it had been handed out.
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That firm was a Yorkshire haulage company, T & W Clark.
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Peter Sutcliffe worked there. He was interviewed. He was interviewed twice.
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He told the police he had been at a housewarming
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party with his family on the night Gene Jordan died.
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It was a lie, and nobody checked it. He was released. Released!
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Let me say that again, because it matters. The police
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had him in the room. They had the banknote that
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pointed straight at him, and they let him... And there
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is a darker detail to Jean Jordan's story. Sutcliffe went
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back to her body. He went back days later looking
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for that five-pound note, terrified it would lead them to him.
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He tried to burn her body. He poured petrol over
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her and set her alight. Her body was not found
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until the 9th of October, badly burned. Even burning her
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did not stop him from being questioned. It was not enough.
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Nothing about this man was enough to make the police
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see him. Now we are in 1978. January, the 21st
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of January, 1978. Bradford. Yvonne Pearson was 22 years old.
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Sutcliffe attacked her with a hammer. He beat her to death,
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and then he hid her body. He dragged it onto
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waste ground near Lum Lane and shoved it underneath an old,
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disused sofa. Think about that, huh? A woman's body, hidden
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under furniture, on open ground, in a city where 200
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detectives were hunting a killer. And nobody found her. Not
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for two months. She was not discovered until the 26th
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of March, two months after she died. The manhunt had
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more men than ever, the files had more paper than ever,
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and still, the killer was invisible. Ten days after Yvonne
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Pearson died, he killed again. The 31st of January, 1978, Huddersfield,
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a new city. Helen Ritka was 18 years old. Sutcliffe
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met her near a pub, and she climbed into his car.
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As she climbed out at a timber yard on Great
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Northern Street, under the railway arches, he struck her on
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the head. Five blows. She tried to escape. She did
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not make it. Her body was found in the timber yard,
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18 years old. The killer was no longer staying in
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Leeds or Bradford. He was spreading. Manchester, Huddersfield, Bradford, Leeds.
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Four cities now. Every new city meant a new police force,
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a new set of files, and more gaps for him
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to slip through. May. The 16th of May, 1978. Manchester again.
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Vera Millward was 40 years old, a mother of seven children.
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She told her boyfriend she was going out to buy cigarettes.
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She never came home. Sutcliffe attacked her on the grounds
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of the
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Manchester Royal Infirmary, hit her with a hammer,
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stabbed her. Vera fought back. She screamed. A man nearby
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heard her screams coming from the hospital grounds. And he
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did nothing. He assumed the cries were coming from a
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hospital patient. A woman was being killed within earshot of
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a hospital and a witness dismissed it as a patient
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in distress. Her body was found the next morning in
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the hospital car park. Vera Millward was the eighth woman
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Peter Sutcliffe had murdered. Eight women dead. Dozens more attacked.
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And here is the part of the story that should
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make you angry. The investigation was enormous. Two hundred officers.
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More than 130,000 people interviewed. Statements taken, door to door,
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day after day. It was the largest manhunt in British
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police history. And it was going wrong. The task force
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was led by George Oldfield, an assistant chief constable from
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West Yorkshire. Oldfield was convinced he knew what the killer
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looked like. The investigation had built a profile, and then
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it built its entire world around that profile. Officers were
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told what kind of man to look for, and they
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looked for him with total confidence. That confidence became tunnel vision.
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Anyone who did not fit the picture was filtered out, questioned, checked,
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and cleared, including Peter Sutcliffe. He was not questioned once.
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He was questioned again and again across the years, stopped, interviewed,
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checked against lists, and released every single time. He drove
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a car that matched the tire tracks. He had worked
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at the firm the five-pound note was traced to. He
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had been at the red light districts where the women
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were picked up. He sat in police interview rooms, and
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he walked out of them over and over. There is
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a word for this in policing— confirmation bias. Once the
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investigation had decided what the killer was, everything that did
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not fit was thrown away. The detectives were not lazy,
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they were drowning. 30,000 statements. Every murder generated thousands of pages.
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Every lead had to be checked by hand, by telephone,
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on foot, In a flood of paper, the real killer
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looked like one more name on one more list. He
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was interviewed so many times that he stopped being frightening.
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He became familiar. He became nobody. By the middle of 1978,
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the police were exhausted and the public was furious. Eight
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women murdered, the killer questioned and released. Women across the
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north of England were afraid to walk home after dark,
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and the investigation that was supposed to protect them was
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chasing its own tail. Oldfield's team kept digging in the
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same direction, deeper and deeper, while Sutcliffe kept killing. Remember
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their names. Jean Jordan, 21. Yvonne Pearson, 22. hidden under
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a sofa for two months. Helen Ritka, 18. 18. Vera Millward, 40.
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A mother of seven who fought back and screamed and
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was not heard. The manhunt had 200 officers and 130,000 interviews,
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It had the killer in the room more than once,
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and it let him go. That is not a failure
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of effort. It is a failure of imagination. And before
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the police could fix it, something worse arrived. A letter,
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in a strange accent, from a man calling himself Jack.
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Next time on Case Files, the hoax that broke the investigation.
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Three letters, a cassette tape, and a voice from Wearside
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that sent the entire manhunt to the wrong city for
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a year and a half. That is next time. I
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am Marcus. Case Files continues daily, one complete case every season.