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Daily Mail
3 days ago
- General
- Daily Mail
How Yorkshire Ripper hoaxer who derailed serial killer investigation 'tried to hide his voice when he was finally snared'
The Yorkshire Ripper hoaxer who derailed the investigation into the serial killer desperately tried to hide his voice when finally arrested, a retired police chief has revealed. Chris Gregg, 68, of West Yorkshire Police, has spoken out about the conman 20 years on from the investigation that unmasked him. The so-called Yorkshire Ripper, a reference to Victorian serial killer Jack the Ripper, killed at least 13 women from 1975 to 1980 in a reign of terror across northern England. Peter Sutcliffe was eventually identified as the man behind the killings and jailed for life in 1981. He died in prison in November 2020, aged 74. But it only came after a man named John Humble, dubbed Wearside Jack, had falsely confessed to the killings in 1978 and 1979, in a two-minute voice recording and three letters sent to police and journalists. West Yorkshire Police believed the letters and tape were genuine and diverted resources to Humble's home town of Sunderland. His cruel efforts hobbled police investigations - leaving Sutcliffe at large to kill three more women before his eventual arrest. No one knew it was Humble behind the hoax confessions for a further 24 years after Sutcliffe's conviction in 1981 - until a cold case review by police in 2005. And now investigator Mr Gregg has told The Mirror about finally snaring him - revealing Humble initially just 'kept nodding' in police interviews, knowing his voice would immediately give him away as the man behind the hoax tape. It was only when officers informed Humble a 'one in a billion match' had been made between his DNA and a tiny saliva spot on one of the letters that he eventually confessed - knowing he was caught. With Humble now speaking up in interviews, he then agreed to read aloud a transcript of his original manufactured tape. And only now, a quarter of a century on from that moment, has Mr Gregg re-listened to the recording - describing it as 'chilling' to hear it again. It was advances in forensic science, plus a new police record of Humble - from his arrest for being drunk and disorderly in 2001 - that finally created the breakthrough. With officers finally able to match his DNA to the saliva sample on the hoax letter, they soon found themselves closing in on the culprit. The former security guard was arrested at his home in in the Ford area of Sunderland, where he lived with his brother - just a few miles from the area voice experts had said the hoax taper's accent was from. He was soon brought to Yorkshire for interviewing by Mr Gregg, the new lead of West Yorkshire Police's Criminal Investigation Department (CID). And the cop soon knew he had got the right man, when Humble began reading aloud the tape transcript. The former Detective Chief Superintendent said: 'Humble had quite a remarkable memory. 'He took himself back to when he made it. It was an incredible moment to hear him read it out.' He continued: 'Those last three Ripper victims may not have died had it not been for Humble.' Barbara Leach, 20, of Bradford; Marguerite Walls, 47, of Leeds; and Jacqueline Hill, 20, also of Leeds, were all killed by Sutcliffe between September 1979 and November 1980. Sutcliffe was arrested just eight weeks later - but might have been apprehended sooner had Humble not derailed the inquiry. Mr Gregg, who had been at the heart of the £6million hunt for the hoaxer, said: 'It proved to be tragic. He did something that he never needed to do.' The envelope with a seal that bore the key saliva sample to enable the DNA match was only discovered due to Mr Gregg's sheer determination. Having worked on the Yorkshire Ripper inquiry, he knew he had to get to the bottom of it, enlisting the two original detectives for help. He first worked out the three hoax letters had been destroyed in the original forensics process, having been analysed using a chemical with a destructive effect. But he was not going to give up that easily - and remembered scientists often keep small snippets of evidence in high-profile cold cases such as this one. So, Mr Gregg wrote to the head of the forensics lab in the West Yorkshire town of Wetherby, asking if they could search for any remaining samples. And they were in luck. The police chief received a random phone call several months later to say the lab had found a 3cm sample of the final hoax letter. It was in perfect condition, preserved between two glass slides - and gave them the answers they had been looking for. Mr Gregg said it was one of the defining moments of his career in the police: 'If we had not found him, I am convinced that he would have taken that secret to the grave. 'He had not told a living soul what he had done.' Humble, who was sentenced to eight years in in 2006 after admitting perverting the course of justice, died on July 30 2019.
The Guardian
15-04-2025
- Politics
- The Guardian
Attack on officers raises questions about separation centres at jails in England
With its high, ugly, grey concrete perimeter walls HMP Frankland looks as grim from the outside as you would expect for a place nicknamed 'Monster Mansion'. Since it was opened in 1983 on the leafy outskirts of Durham – near a 13th-century priory used for centuries as a holiday retreat for Benedictine monks – its inmates have included Peter Sutcliffe, Harold Shipman and Charles Bronson. It is not the sort of place to ever get favourable reviews. Bronson, one of the UK's longest-serving prisoners, wrote in his autobiography: 'It was too intense, too closed in and claustrophobic.' Frankland is in the news after an attack on prison guards by Hashem Abedi, a terrorist involved in the Manchester Arena bombing serving at least 55 years. Its inmates are understood to include the Soham murderer Ian Huntley, the serial killer Levi Bellfield, the Soho nailbomber David Copeland and Wayne Couzens, the Metropolitan police officer who raped and murdered Sarah Everard in 2021. Charles Taylor, the former Liberian president sentenced to 50 years for war crimes, is reportedly another Frankland prisoner. Former prisoners describe how someone engraved 'welcome to hell' inside the holding cell at the prison's reception. Inside the category A maximum security jail with more than 800 inmates, it is all fences, gates and keys, say people who know it. And inside all of that, on a narrow corridor, is a separation centre where the attack took place. The separation centre at Frankland is one of three introduced into the England and Wales prison estate by Theresa May's government in 2017, the others being at the high security prisons HMP Woodhill in Milton Keynes and HMP Full Sutton near York. The intention was to tackle extremism in prisons, 'holding up to 28 of the most subversive offenders, preventing their influence over others'. That 'influence' primarily refers to the ability to radicalise fellow inmates, which could prove a risk to national security or disrupt order in the jail. But do these separation centres work? Are they fit for purpose? How did a man who in 2022 was found guilty of a 'vicious attack' on a prison guard at Belmarsh manage to allegedly attack again? A 2022 report by the chief inspector of prisons, Charlie Taylor, into separation centres at Frankland and Woodhill (Full Sutton was closed at the time) found that even though the centres were designed for prisoners from any political or religious standpoint, 'so far, they have only been used for Muslim men'. It described the unit as having a small room for association and an area for prisoners to cook and prepare food. 'With no facilities on the wing, staff arranged for prisoners to visit the main prison gym and they could also be taken off the unit for education, but no prisoner was taking up this offer at the time of the inspection.' The inspection described the unit as well-maintained, with the small number of inmates living in 'safe, reasonable conditions'. It continued: 'They had good access to healthcare, including mental health services, as well as visits and phone calls.' The prisoners in the unit had collectively decided not to engage with the regime, leaving officers 'often underemployed'. That lack of engagement with prison staff showed separation units were clearly not working as they should, John Podmore, a former governor of Belmarsh and an honorary professor at Durham University, told the Guardian. Sign up to Headlines UK Get the day's headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion Having access to a kitchen appears to have enabled the attack on prison officers. Abedi is understood to have thrown a pan of hot cooking oil at officers and used weapons made from a tray to stab them. Podmore said it was clearly a 'gross misjudgement' to have self-catering facilities for the inmates there. If prisoners were not engaging with staff, then 'don't give them kitchens', he said. 'There is probably some poor bugger at a cat C [prison] like Wandsworth locked up 23 hours a day and getting food shoved under the door going: 'Hang on a minute, I didn't massacre children and try to kill prison officers, why can't I have a kitchen?' It is that stupid. On what basis were they given a kitchen?' he asked. 'I'm not an advocate of concrete coffins and I have set up self-catering facilities … but they are something to be earned, something to be worked towards, not something to be given, as appears here, by way of appeasement.' Podmore said he recalled the implementation of the separation centres being 'done very reluctantly' by the Prison Service. 'It was very half-hearted, they didn't really want to do it but they didn't have a lot of choice … the Prison Service does not like being told what to do.' The Ministry of Justice has said there would be a full review of how the incident was allowed to happen. 'The government will do whatever it takes to keep our hardworking staff safe and our thoughts remain with the two prison officers still in hospital as they recover,' a spokesperson said. 'We've already taken immediate action to suspend access to kitchens in separation and close supervision centres. We will also launch a full independent review into how this attack was able to happen and will set out the terms and scope of this review in the coming days.'
