Ripper hoaxer

[Zen]

8 years plenty good enough or not enough ?
Would have loved to have see his face when the Police knocked on his door to arrest him after all these years !

[don1]

Nowhere near enough, if the west yorks police hadn't wasted their time looking for this clown several women may not have been murdered.


What amazes me is that nobody came forward to say "I know that voice"

[don1]

Incidentally Zen, how did they find him?

[Zen]

His identity was discovered 25 years later when his DNA, taken after a minor offence, was matched against saliva on an envelope sent to detectives.

[Ward-Minter]

To me 8 years seems a little long for what is mere supposition that further women died.

when kiddy fiddlers and terrorists get 6 months, old Wearside Jack seems a little hard done by.

Also goes to show a guilty plea is not always the best option!

[joko]

how old was this guy at the time?

[Hammond Egg]

It's a bit more than a 'supposition', W-M.

After a banknote found on one of the victims was traced to a bank he was paid from Peter Sutcliffe was a suspect for the murders - not a particulaly strong one - but was ruled out because he didn't have a Wearside accent.

If anyone had identified Humble's voice to the Police, they (the Police) may well have found that he had an unshakeable alibi for one or more of the murders thereby clearing Humble of being the voice on the tape.

Humble would have been in his early-mid 20s at the time.

[bernardo]

... but there is "supposition" about whether the actions of Humble delayed the apprehension of Sutcliffe, or whether he would have remained uncaught for the last 3 murders anyway.

I think that the sentence should be set on the basis of what his intentions were. I don't think that he coldly and calculatedly intended to help Sutcliffe to commit further murders. By the accounts of the news media, he seems to have been a low-intelligence habitual drunkard with low career prospects, and arguably with little understanding or foresight about the seriousness of what he actually did. I was expecting a sentence of about 3 or 4 years, but it is such an unusual and unprecedented case that it could have been anything from very light (months) to very heavy (life).

[don1]

Bernado, with our system of parole 4 years is what he will actually serve, if I were the father of Jacqueline Hill I would say that was at least 50 years too little

[Dom Tuk]

Did it not occur to the police that the tapes were a hoax. To abandon all lines of current enquiry and go for a man with an accent in a particular town was lunacy. The police are covering their follies here.

To answer the question, the man was an alcoholic and drunk when arrested. He had to be sobered up before he could be questioned. So he probably did not recognise the police when they came knocking.

[WoWo]

"Did it not occur to the police that the tapes were a hoax."

There were certain things said in the letters which alluded to a further murder which had never been linked to the case, on investigation of that case it bore close similarities to the ripper crimes and therefore the police believed they were genuine.

I think 8 years is about right (if he were to serve the full term). The judge himself said there was no evidence to suggest that the tapes and letters directly led to the 3 further murders and this would have been taken into account.

While it's true that police dismissed Sutcliffe because he didn't have an accent, you should remember that there was very little evidence he had commited the murders at that time and it didn't hinge on his accent, it wasn't as if he was covered in blood standing over a body but didn't have an accent. Without the tape they would most likely have let him go anyway.

[andy-hughes]

We all have the benefit of 20-20 hindsight, but I remember the tapes at the time - they were broadcast on a free phone line in case anyone could idtentify the voice.

I can remember the chilling sound of that message - it sounded utterly genuine, so i can quite understand the police thinking it so.

A tragedy, but of its time.

[don1]

At the time of this hoax a young Bradford constable had interviewed Sutcliffe 5 times and repeatedly told his dimwitted bosses that Sutcliffe was the ripper but they didn't want to know because Sutcliffe didn't have a wearside accent.

There is no doubt whatsoever that the hoaxer made a major contribution to Sutcliffes continuing freedom.

[thikasabrik]

It is a total fallacy that there were certain things in the letters that only the genuine killer would know. The decision that the sender of the letters and tapes was the killer was taken by a couple of senior officers, one of whom hadn't drawn a sober breath for years. It was an open secret that he got through a bottle of whisky at work each day. Many of the rank and file officers working on the case did not agree with the way the enquiry was going and two survivors of attacks stated that the attacker had a local (Yorkshire) accent. They were dismissed as idiots by the senior officers.Hindsight is a wonderful thing and I doubt that any murder investigation conducted today would be run in such a shoddy manner by half wits.