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“It was a fish and chip murder,” journalist Alan Whitehouse says in the first episode of Netflix’s recent true crime series
The Ripper, describing the brutal 1974 death of a sex worker named Wilma McCann the kind of murder that quickly becomes yesterday’s news. “I spent very little time thinking about people like Wilma McCann.”
It’s an irresistibly blunt way of describing the cultural attitudes that would doom the victims of Peter Sutcliffe, the serial killer dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper, subject of the largest, most expensive, and most notoriously botched manhunt in British history. In Britain, the Yorkshire Ripper investigation is a case study in what not to do. And the first thing the police did wrong was to ignore the victims because of their class and presumed profession.
The Ripper, originally named
Once Upon a Time in Yorkshire, charts the gruesome crimes of Peter Sutcliffe, a lorry driver from Bingley who was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven more between the years 1975 and 1980.
Given the brutal nature of the killings, many of which involved a hammer and a knife, the press began referring to him as the Yorkshire Ripper on account of the parallels between himself and Jack the Ripper. KeystoneGetty Images
Sutcliffe was given 20 life sentences in 1981 and was sent to Parkhurst prison on the Isle of White.
Less than three years later, he was transferred to Broadmoor in Berkshire, a high-security psychiatric hospital, on the grounds that he was believed to be suffering from a grave form of mental illness .
The families of the women murdered by Peter Sutcliffe have blasted Netflix for glorifying the serial killer s crimes.
Netflix changed the name of its upcoming documentary from Once Upon A Time In Yorkshire to The Ripper, which his victims families say is a traumatising term.
In a letter written to the company, they described the term as irresponsible, insensitive and insulting to our families .
Netflix only changed the name after the families agreed to take part in the documentary on Sutcliffe, who died at the age of 74 in November.
The families of the women murdered by Peter Sutcliffe (pictured) have blasted Netflix for glorifying the serial killer s crimes after changing the name of its upcoming documentary from Once Upon A Time In Yorkshire to The Ripper