The Yorkshire Ripper sounds like any other man in tapes unearthed for chilling documentary
The Yorkshire Ripper speaks: Sutcliffe talks candidly about his crimes, his victims and his fans’ children who call him ‘Uncle Peter’ in recordings made by female pen friend that will feature in Channel 5 documentary
Yorkshire serial killer Peter Sutcliffe killed at least 13 women from 1975 and 1980Chilling tapes unearthed for Channel 5’s The Ripper Speaks: The Lost Tapes Killer would have regular phone conversations with informant named ‘Brenda’ In the recording, Sutcliffe talks about the weather, sounds like any other man
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The Yorkshire Ripper speaks candidly about his crimes, his victims and his fans from beyond the grave in never-before-heard conversations recorded by a female ‘pen friend’ before his death.
Sutcliffe, who was convicted of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others, was recorded by a woman identified only as ‘Brenda’ during phone conversations from HMP Frankland in the months leading up to his death from Covid-19 in November 2020, aged 74.
Brenda was asked to record the conversations by former detective Mark Williams-Thomas, who brings the recordings to the public for the first time in Channel 5 documentary, The Ripper Speaks: The Lost Tapes, which airs tomorrow at 10pm.
Brenda, who remained anonymous in the documentary, explained she had first become interested in Sutcliffe as a little girl because she had grown up close to where he lived.
Over time, the pair exchanged letters and had phone conversations and Brenda even went to prison to see Sutcliffe face-to-face.
She says in the documentary he comes across as a normal man who is softly spoken – despite his heinous crimes. The bond between the pair is clear in the recordings.
In the tapes Sutcliffe speaks to her about the weather, calls her his ‘number one angel’ and jokes about how he is known as ‘Uncle Peter’ to some of his fans’ children. He also admits he had planned to kill another victim, Olivia Reivers, then 24, before he was caught.
The Ripper Speaks: The Lost Tapes, a chilling new documentary airing tomorrow on Channel 5 has unearthed tapes of phone conversations the serial killer Peter Sutcliffe (pictured) had with a female informant while he was in prison
In the documentary, the informant, called ‘Brenda,’ right, tells ex-detective Mark Williams-Thomas, left, that Sutcliffe sounds ‘normal’ and that his personality does not fit his crime
Sutcliffe has several pen pals from all over the world, including one woman in America who wanted to marry him (pictured in 2015)
Speaking on the documentary, Brenda admitted she felt nervous before she first went to prison to visit Sutcliffe.
‘The more I got to know him, the more he opened up,’ she says, adding the serial killer was very ‘gentle spoken.’
‘People say, you know, “he’s got these dark eyes, he’s like the devil” and then when you meet him, of course it’s nothing like that,’ she said.
‘He put me at ease very quickly, I couldn’t imagine him doing any of it in his right mind. His character and his personality didn’t it the crimes at all. I got to know the man behind the Yorkshire Ripper.’
During their recorded phone conversations, Brenda and Sutcliffe chit-chat about the weather and other aspects of his daily life.
In one recording, Sutcliffe, says: ‘I really miss you, I do. I think the world of you I can’t wait to see you,’ he said, before calling her ‘my number one angel.’
He went on: ‘I’m right with you in sprit, I wish I was on my doorsteps. Take care, gob bless you.’
At another point, when Brenda complains about the terrible, windy weather, the killer jokes: ‘You know what they say, March comes in like a lion and goes out like a lamb.’
He also speaks to Brenda about his other pen friends, including ones with children.
He says: ‘There is not anymore of Harry Potter stickers.
‘I put them on people’s letters who’ve got kids, because they love them Harry Potter stickers, but they only had then for a certain amount of time, didn’t they.’
Brenda was only one of Sutcliffe’s many pen pals and super fans. The killer boasted at receiving 30 letters a week.
Among them was a 27-year-old woman in the US who wrote to Sutcliffe asking to marry him.
As he recalls to Brenda in one recording: ‘I said “Let’s face up to it, it’s flattering, for a 27-year-old to want to marry a 73-year-old man, but where is the sense in that, you got all your life ahead of you.”
‘She was signing herself Crystal Marie Sutcliffe,’ the serial killer went on.
‘She had a really, just a kind of fascination.
‘She got carried away and in the end, she said “I love you like crazy” and “mwaaa,” she was putting on the letters, M-W-A-A-A,’ he spelled out.
One of Sutcliffe’s super fans, a father-of-three named Daniel Brown, appeared on the documentary.
The man, who is based in the North of England, admitted he has been collecting Sutcliffe memorabilia for years, including shirts that were worn by the killer during his years behind bars.
Daniel, who exchanged letters with Sutcliffe for years until his 2020 death, says he does not find his fascination for the serial killer ‘morbid.’
He adds he did not get to know the ‘base nature’ of Sutcliffe.
The murderer spoke of Daniel Brown in the recordings shared by Brenda.
‘Daniel Brown, I write to him every week he’s just a hard-working family man,’ the killer is heard saying.
A composite of 12 of the 13 victims murdered by Sutcliffe. Victims are: (top row, left to right) Wilma McCann, Emily Jackson, Irene Richardson and Patricia Atkinson; (middle row, left to right) Jayne McDonald, Jean Jordan, Yvonne Pearson and Helen Rytka; (bottom row, left to right) Vera Millward, Josephine Whitaker, Barbara Leach and Jacqueline Hill
A furious crowd outside Dewsbury Magistrates Court is held back by police when Sutcliffe appeared there in 1981
‘Just the way he talks you can see how sincere he is and everything. He’s got three kids, and they all call me Uncle Peter and everything. He’s a really good friend, very reliable, very discreet, you know.’
While Sutcliffe did not discuss his crimes with Brown, he did talk about them at length with Brenda.
He admitted to her he planned to kill 24-year-old street worker Olivia Reivers – a passenger in his car when police caught him in 1981 after discovering the number plates were stolen.
When Brenda asked him if he was going to kill Olivia, Sutcliffe replies: ‘Of course I was. That was the whole point.’
Sutcliffe in prison van on way to the Old Bailey in London, May 1981 (left). He is pictured on the right in a video grab taken during his time in prison, where he was serving a full life term
In another tape, Sutcliffe speaks about attacking Tracy Browne.
The killer reveals he would have killed Browne, who was 14 at the time, when he attacked her with a hammer in July 1975, in Silsden, near Keighley but that he heard a voice that told him not to, and left her for dead by the side of the road instead.
He also admits to attacking Marcella Claxton in Leeds in 1976. Police did not believe Claxton was attacked by the Ripper at the time because she was not a prostitute.
Speaking to Brenda, the murderer blamed his killing spree on an motorcycle accident he had in 1969, which he claimed left him unconscious for two days and led him to attacking the women. However this was disproved by a psychologist.
A selection of newspaper front pages from January 5, 1981, the day Sutcliffe made his first appearance in court, where he was charged with 13 counts of murder
In the Channel 5 programme, Sutcliffe’s brother Carl, who’s never spoken about his relation with his brother in detail before, labelled the killer’s claims that ‘voices from God’ provoked his attacks as ‘utter rubbish’.
Sutcliffe was jailed for life at the Old Bailey in May 1981, before being moved to Broadmoor Hospital three years later after he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
He was transferred to HMP Frankland in 2016 after psychiatrists said he was stable enough for jail. He died in November 2020.
One tape reveals Peter Sutcliffe (pictured above), who murdered at least 13 women in the 1970s and 1980s, planned to kill 24-year-old street worker Olivia Reivers – a passenger in his car when police caught him in 1981 after discovering the number plates were stolen
The Ripper Speaks: The Lost Tapes will air on Channel 5 at 10pm tomorrow.
