I spent years unravelling twisted mind of the Yorkshire Ripper…how graveyard encounter sparked his horror murder spree

The Sun

12 hours ago

FIFTY years ago today Anna Rogulskyj, a 34-year-old Irish divorcee, was walking to her boyfriend's house after a night out.
As she passed the Ritz cinema in Keighley, West Yorkshire, a man with a neatly trimmed black beard and dark, piercing eyes emerged from the shadows and asked if she fancied him.
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She replied: 'Not on your life,' and carried on walking – as Peter Sutcliffe fell into step beside her, with evil voices bouncing around his head.
He said: 'They kept reminding me that I had a mission… I was told again that this was the night to go.'
Moments later he took out the hammer he was carrying and smashed Anna over the head with it three times.
She slumped to the ground unconscious and Sutcliffe knelt down, lifted her top and slashed at her abdomen with a knife.
A local resident heard a commotion and shouted into the dark to ask what was going on.
Sutcliffe fled, leaving the Woolworths worker in a pool of blood, later revealing: 'I think I intended to kill her but as it turned out, I didn't.'
Anna – the first known victim of the Yorkshire Ripper – incredibly survived after a 12-hour operation at Le eds General Infirmary.
Dr Michael Green, a Home Office forensic pathologist, examined her a few hours later and made a note of the unusual wounds she had suffered.
Almost identical wounds would emerge in case after case over the next five years as Sutcliffe held vast swathes of northern England in a grip of terror.
In our new Beast of Broadmoor mini-series to mark half a century since that vile attack on Anna, The Sun reveals how a softly spoken lorry driver turned into a monster.
The Yorkshire Ripper bludgeoned me with a hammer & screwdriver but I SURVIVED – why I kept the truth hidden for 12 years
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Using his own words, collected over nearly two decades by Britain's top amateur criminologist Alfie James, we also tell of the Ripper's twisted delight when a hoaxer derailed the investigation.
And we reveal the incredible moment when he passed one of his victims in the street after she survived an attack, his audacious escape bid from Broadmoor – with Ronnie Kray's help – and his own theory about why he became a killer,
Factory worker Alfie, 49, has built-up a huge library of true crime material after writing to killers on both sides of the Atlantic, including Sutcliffe and Moors murderer Ian Brady.
Over 16 years he visited Sutcliffe dozens of times in Broadmoor and Frankland, spoke to him by phone almost every week, and swapped around 400 letters, giving him an unparalleled insight into how the mind of one of Britain's most notorious serial killers worked.
He turned this material into the definitive biography of Sutcliffe, I'm the Yorkshire Ripper, written with Sun reporter Robin Perrie.
Alfie said: 'Sutcliffe remains a fascinating topic to study because no-one could ever agree on what turned him into a killer.
'Police, doctors, lawyers, and Sutcliffe himself all had different theories which contradicted each other.
'The debate over whether he was mad or bad was never settled even after his trial – and perhaps it never will be.'
'Message from God'
Sutcliffe was born on June 2, 1946, at the Bingley and Shipley Maternity hospital, West Yorkshire, the oldest of seven children.
His mill worker dad John was a tough, traditional Yorkshireman who quickly became disappointed in his first-born because he felt he was a mummy's boy.
He remembered his son learning to walk by clinging on to his mother Kathleen's skirt, and when he started school he was shy and withdrawn.
For his part, Sutcliffe didn't think much of his dad: 'He could be really nasty and drunk. He was a womaniser.'
He left school with no qualifications and struggled to hold down a series of jobs until 1964, when he was taken on as a gravedigger at Bingley Cemetery earning £7 for a 44-hour week.
It would change his life forever.
Alfie explained: 'One day he was working in the Catholic section of the cemetery when he heard what sounded like a voice.
'At first he thought it was his workmates messing about because they were always playing practical jokes on each other. But there was no-one else around.
'Then he realised that it appeared to be coming from the grave of a Polish man called Bronislaw Zapolski.
'Sutcliffe described it as echoey at first, and it took a while before the words formed.'
Sutcliffe told Alfie how he quickly realised it was a hugely significant moment in his life, admitting: 'It was like a miracle happening. I was awestruck.
"I decided it was some kind of message from God.'
Alfie said: 'The family were religious, Kathleen had brought up the children as strict Catholics, so perhaps it wasn't that big of a leap for him to think that this was a message from God.
'He kept hearing it again and again and for a couple of years it was giving him good advice. Then it turned to bad advice.'
Sutcliffe claimed the voices guided him on a mission to clear the streets of prostitutes, after a row with one in 1969 left him filled with resentment.
He had offered to pay her for sex to get revenge on then-girlfriend Sonia, after accusing her of cheating on him.
But he changed his mind at the last minute, leading to the woman stealing the fiver she had given him.
His fury – coupled with the voices now swirling around his head – led him to a divine mission to 'clean the streets' – with Anna his first known victim in 1975 after he mistook her for a sex worker.
Remarkably she suffered no permanent brain damage, but had no memory of the incident and was unable to give police a description of her attacker.
The trauma of the horrific assault never left Anna, who died in 2008. Nurses had to shave her auburn hair before the life-saving surgery and when it grew back it was grey.
'Guided by voices'
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Sutcliffe claimed the voices even guided him on who to kill and who not to, stopping him from completing his attack on a schoolgirl.
He had spotted Tracy Browne, then 14, as she was walking home after an evening with friends in Silsden, near Bingley, in August 1975.
After engaging her in a brief conversation as they walked along a quiet country lane, Sutcliffe attacked her from behind, raining blows down on her head with a heavy stick.
A car coming up the lane with its headlights saved Tracy, but in Sutcliffe's twisted mind it was the voices who called him off.
He said: 'I thought she was a prostitute at first, walking slowly and that and looking round. I hit her on the head and it just didn't knock her out, it was only a stick.
'I threw her over a wall and said, 'You'll be okay I'm going,' cos I realised that she wasn't a prostitute, she was a… she seemed fairly young, but I didn't know how young she was.
'I heard the voice saying, 'No, no, it's a mistake. Stop-stop,' so I just said 'Oh you'll be alright I'm going now' and that was it.'
I thought she was a prostitute at first, walking slowly and that and looking round. I hit her on the head and it just didn't knock her out, it was only a stick. I threw her over a wall and said, 'You'll be okay I'm going'
Peter Sutcliffe
The question of whether Sutcliffe really heard the voices was central to his trial and continued to rage after.
And it was one of the aspects of the case that motivated Alife to get in touch with him to discover what the truth was.
He said: 'I wanted to find it out for myself – why did he do it?
'I eventually got so close to him that I guess it made me feel special that he was telling me things that he wasn't confiding in others.
'And over the years I learned to ask him questions in a certain way that didn't sound like I was interrogating him.
'It worked because he confided in me, more so on visits where we couldn't be overheard or in his letters which could have been censored.
Who are the UK's worst serial killers?
THE UK's most prolific serial killer was actually a doctor.
Here's a rundown of the worst offenders in the UK.
British GP Harold Shipman is one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history. He was found guilty of murdering 15 patients in 2000, but the Shipman Inquiry examined his crimes and identified 218 victims, 80 per cent of whom were elderly women.
After his death Jonathan Balls was accused of poisoning at least 22 people between 1824 and 1845.
Mary Ann Cotton is suspected of murdering up to 21 people, including husbands, lovers and children. She is Britain's most prolific female serial killer. Her crimes were committed between 1852 and 1872, and she was hanged in March 1873.
Amelia Sach and Annie Walters became known as the Finchley Baby Farmers after killing at least 20 babies between 1900 and 1902. The pair became the first women to be hanged at Holloway Prison on February 3, 1903.
William Burke and William Hare killed 16 people and sold their bodies.
Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe was found guilty in 1981 of murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven others between 1975 and 1980.
Dennis Nilsen was caged for life in 1983 after murdering up to 15 men when he picked them up from the streets. He was found guilty of six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder and was sentenced to life in jail.
Fred West was found guilty of killing 12 but it's believed he was responsible for many more deaths.
'When we were sitting there in Broadmoor just the two of us he had nobody to impress and no reason to lie. I felt I was in a unique position to get all this stuff.
'It might sound strange but he was always a good host and made the effort to make you feel welcome.
'He was always like, big smiles; he would stand up and walk over to you, shaking your hand, put his arm around you and say, 'Thanks for coming all the way.'
'He'd sit and have a drink. His clothes were too tight for him because he had a big stomach due to injections for his diabetes.
'He was clean and tidy but in the later years, when his eyesight was getting bad, I noticed stains on his top, stuff still in his beard, he looked like a bit of a tramp.
'It was a chance in a lifetime for me to get this information out of somebody like Sutcliffe.
'I wanted to know what he's really like so I wrote to him, he replied and it developed from there.
'Looking back now it was such a unique opportunity which I'm pleased I took because I found out so many things which were not known before.'
Alfie's drive to discover what motivated Sutcliffe led him on an incredible journey until he became as close as anyone to the Yorkshire Ripper.
He added: 'It was strange to begin with. At our first meeting in Broadmoor, I was looking at his hands and thought, 'The crimes those hands have done.'
'And when I was looking him in the eye I couldn't help thinking, 'The things you've seen.'
'Despite that, my main thought was, 'I want to know, what have you done and why did you do it?''
Over 16 years his persistence paid off as Sutcliffe, who died in prison in 2020 aged 74, confided details about every aspect of his life – and crimes.
NEXT TIME: The Ripper's Delight – a hoaxer derails the police investigation...
'I'm The Yorkshire Ripper' by Robin Perrie and Alfie James is published by Mirror Books and is available in paperback and as an ebook. Buy it on Amazon now.
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