British serial killer dies after contracting COVID-19

British serial killer Peter Sutcliffe has died in hospital aged 74 after contracting Covid-19, the UK Ministry of Justice said Friday.

Nicknamed the “Yorkshire Ripper” by the UK press, Sutcliffe was convicted in 1981 for murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others during a reign of terror in northern England between 1975 and 1980. He was serving a whole life term.

He had been suffering from underlying health conditions before testing positive for Covid-19, but the Prison Service could not confirm the cause of death as that is “rightly a matter for the coroner.”

A Prison Service spokesperson said: “HMP (Her Majesty’s Prison) Frankland prisoner Peter Coonan (born Sutcliffe) died in hospital on 13 November. The Prisons and Probation Ombudsman has been informed.”

Sutcliffe spent many years in Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital, before being considered stable enough in 2016 to be transferred to Frankland prison in County Durham, Britain’s PA news agency said.

He confessed to police in 1981 but then decided to contest the charges in court. During his trial at the Old Bailey in London he claimed he was on a mission from God to kill prostitutes.

Sutcliffe was born in June 1946 in Bingley, West Yorkshire. Among other jobs, he worked as a truck driver and grave digger.

He carried out his first killing in October 1975, less than a year after he was married. The victim was 28-year-old Wilma McCann, a mother-of-four and sex worker. She was battered with a hammer and repeatedly stabbed.

“After that first time, I developed and played up a hatred for prostitutes in order to justify within myself a reason why I had attacked and killed Wilma McCann,” Sutcliffe later told police.

Other victims followed over the course of the next five years, including 42-year-old Emily Jackson and 16-year-old Jayne MacDonald.

Sutcliffe was questioned several times by police in the course of their investigation but a series of blunders and a hoax that led detectives to focus their search for a suspect on the wrong area of northern England allowed him to carry on killing undetected.

Sutcliffe was finally arrested in January 1981 after police stopped the car he was driving, having found the number plates were stolen. He had picked up street worker Olivia Reivers as a passenger. Detectives later found a hammer and knife nearby.

In May 1981 he was jailed for 20 life terms at the Old Bailey, with the judge recommending a minimum 30-year sentence.