World's Worst: YORKSHIRE RIPPER; Mutilated 13 women.

Byline: JOHN PLIMMER 

Serial killers, cold-blooded murderers and gun-toting gangsters. Each week former top West Midlands detective JOHN PLIMMER looks at the most notorious criminal figures of the last century -and how they were caught.

WOMEN feared for their lives across the North of England as Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed the 'Yorkshire Ripper', embarked on a rampage, butchering his victims.

Police were powerless to halt the killing frenzy. In his five-year reign of terror Sutcliffe mutilated women with hammer blows and multiple stab wounds - preying mostly on prostitutes in the red light districts of Leeds and Bradford.

His mode of killing was set out in his first two murders. Between 1975 and 1976 Wilma McCann and Emily Jackson were found in the Chapeltown area of Leeds half-naked with repeated stab wounds The third victim, Marcella Claxton, was attacked with a hammer in Chapeltown in May 1976, but survived.

Crucially, sherememberedher attacker as a white manwitha black crinkly beard. But these first clues to the identity of the Ripper were dismissed because Claxton was seen as mentally unfit.

Undeterred, Sutcliffe claimed his fourth victim Irene Richardson, whose body was found on Saturday, February 5, 1977.

Public concern turned to panic as national newspapers labelled this ruthless killer the Yorkshire Ripper.

The kilIing spree continued in April 1977 when Patricia Atkinson was murdered in her ground floor bed-sit in Manningham, West Yorkshire. Recovery of vital evidence was thwarted because the murder weapon - a hammer - was kept by a groundsman.

Sutcliffe's choice of victim changed with Jayne MacDonald's murder in June 1977. He now no longer just targeted women who were prostitutes -she worked in a Leeds supermarket.

To snare the Ripper, the police used undercover female officers as prostitutes.He had murdered five women in cold blood and West Yorkshire Police were far from the killer's trail - labouring with poor communications and a backlog of paperwork.

A breakthrough came in a description given by Maureen Long, a Ripper victim who survived a stabbing attack in 1977. Her description of thecarusedbythe killer -a white Mark 2 Ford Cortina - matched that of Peter Sutcliffe's.

Clues to connect Sutcliffe to the killings now began to appear.

Murdered Manchester prostitute Jean Jordan's body lay undetected for a week but the police believed the killer had later returned to the scene and searched her. Anewpounds 5notewasfound in the victim's handbag and Greater Manchester Police discovered it had been issued to one of 30 factories, one of which was identified as T. and W.H. Clark.

It was here that Sutcliffe was employed as a driver, and he was interviewed.

With his wife supporting his story, Sutcliffe lied to the officers about his whereabouts on the night of the Jordan killing and the return visit to search her body.

His alibi worked and in January 1978 he added two more victims to his tally. Yvonne Pearson was murdered on wasteland in Leeds and Helen Rytka's body was found in Huddersfield.

Using a surveillance operation in the red light district of Leeds, police spotted Sutcliffe's car no fewer than seven times during August 1978. It was cause for fresh suspicion.

But Sutcliffe claimed that he was just passing through the area to get to work. Due to a bureaucratic blunder, detectives were unaware that it was the second time Sutcliffe was being interviewed in connection with the Ripper inquiry.

He side-stepped the failing police investigation as the murder spree continued. On May 17, 1978, Vera Millward was found dead, her stomach horribly mutilated.

A year later bank clerk Josephine Whitaker was found stabbed to death in Halifax.

But Sutcliffe was becoming complacent. A boot print was discovered at the scene and there were traces of oil and metal particles found on the body.

Alarmingly, the killer appeared to be choosing his victims at random,no longer concentrating on prostitutes.

Although there were now 36 sightings of Sutcliffe's car in Leeds' red light district and police interviewed him once more, detectives failed again because his case paperwork was incomplete.

An important report identifying Sutcliffe was lost and only surfaced nine months later.

West Yorkshire Police were victims of a hoax when they released a tape recording of a man with a Geordie accent, who taunted cops and claimed that he was the Ripper.

It was another disastrous decision and sent the police probe in entirely the wrong direction. The investigation was failing and in September 1979, student Barbara Leach was murdered in Little Horton.

It was 1980 before investigations into the pounds 5 note from the Jordan murder were narrowed down to just three firms and Sutcliffe's company was still in the frame.

Detectives interviewed Sutcliffe on four more occasions that year -but in vain. In one interview officers failed to notice he was wearing the boots he'd worn when he killed Josephine Whitaker.

Eventually the probe into the fiver was filtered down to two drivers.

Sutcliffe and a fellow employee were taken to Bradford Police Headquarters where they were photographed and interviewed. Amazingly both were released.

Sutcliffe's file had been lost in the system -a fact that may well have cost the life of Jacqueline Hill, who became the Ripper's final victim when she was murdered in November 1980.

Trevor Birdsall, an associate of Sutcliffe, saw a newspaper report of a car seen near the Hill murder scene and realised that it was similar to Sutcliffe's brown Rover.

He made a statement to the police. Again, it was lost and never reached senior officers.

In the end it all came down to luck. On Friday January 2, 1981, Peter Sutcliffe was arrested in Sheffield when a sharp-eyed cop noticed that his car was bearing stolen registration plates.

He was sitting inside with a prostitute. Whether she would have become another victim will never be known.

After a number of intensive interviews, Sutcliffe eventually confessed to the Ripper murders. He was later convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.

At the end of his killing spree, 13 women were dead and he remains one of Britain's worst serial killers.

PLIMMER'S VERDICT

THERE can be no excuse for the shameful inefficiency displayed by police during the five years Peter Sutcliffe was active.

Of course, DNA analysis wasn't available at that time and networked computer systems didn't exist.

But neither were these technological and forensic facilities available to many other major investigations of the day, which still had successful outcomes.

West Yorkshire Police failed miserably in dealing with a vast amount of intelligence that resulted from their own appeals for information.

Sutcliffe's wife supported a number of false alibis given to the police yet was never prosecuted, even when her husband had been identified as the Ripper.

Peter Sutcliffe would have undoubtedly been caught a lot earlier if the investigations had been managed more better.

Had that been the case, the lives of many young women might have been saved.

CAPTION(S):

JUSTICE: a lynch mob at his court appearance