Court backs 'Yorkshire Ripper' life sentence

THE YORKSHIRE Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, must spend the rest of his life in jail, the Court of Appeal in London has ruled, after it found that the “interests of justice required nothing less” for crimes “at the extreme end of horror”.

Sutcliffe, who now calls himself Peter Coonan (his late mother’s maiden name), is 64, and has been in jail since 1981 for murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven more during a campaign of terror in Yorkshire and Greater Manchester dating from the mid-1970s.

In his defence at his trial, where he received a minimum 30-year sentence, Sutcliffe claimed he had a “mission from God” to kill prostitutes, whom he attacked and mutilated.

In his ruling, Mr Justice Calvert-Smith said: “Even accepting that an element of mental disturbance was intrinsic to the commission of these crimes, the interests of justice require nothing less than a whole-life order.”

Sutcliffe was transferred to the high-security Broadmoor prison hospital in 1984 for treatment for schizophrenia, which doctors believe he suffered since 1967.

The Court of Appeal case was taken after he challenged a ruling last year where a judge ruled he should never be released on the grounds the judge had not taken his mental disorder into account.