The three letters Between March 1978 and the end of June 1979, Humble sent three letters claiming to be the Yorkshire Ripper. Postmarked from
Sunderland, two were addressed to
Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield of the
West Yorkshire Police who was heading the Ripper inquiry, and one to the
Daily Mirror.
First letter: 8 March 1978 Written to Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield :Dear Sir :I am sorry I cannot give my name for obvious reasons. I am the Ripper. I've been dubbed a maniac by the Press but not by you, you call me clever and I am. You and your mates haven't a clue that photo in the paper gave me fits and that bit about killing myself, no chance. I've got things to do. My purpose to rid the streets of them sluts. My one regret is that young lassie McDonald, did not know cause changed routine that night. Up to number 8 now you say 7 but remember Preston '75. get about you know. You were right I travel a bit. You probably look for me in Sunderland, don't bother, I am not daft, just posted letter there on one of my trips. Not a bad place compared with Chapeltown and Manningham and other places. Warn whores to keep off streets cause I feel it coming on again. :Sorry about young lassie. :Yours respectfully :Jack the Ripper :Might write again later I not sure last one really deserved it. Whores getting younger each time. Old slut next time I hope. Huddersfield never again, too small close call last one. "Preston '75" was a reference to the murder of Joan Harrison. The Yorkshire Ripper was believed at the time to have killed her, but the supposed connection was wrongly thought not to be in the public domain leading the hoaxer's claim to gain undeserved credibility. Despite this, the police focused on Humble's
Wearside accent. Together with voice analysts, they decided (based on
dialectology) that the accent was distinctive to the
Castletown area of
Sunderland. This led to 40,000 men being investigated to no avail, as the killer, Sutcliffe, came from
Bradford. Police also commenced a substantial publicity campaign, including 'Dial-the-Ripper' hotlines, 5,000 advertising hoardings, and advertisements in 300 newspapers. Chief Constable
Ronald Gregory diverted £1 million from the inquiries budget into the publicity campaign alone. Interviewed by
Joan Smith for
The Sunday Times in 1980, Olive Smelt, a victim of Sutcliffe who survived his 1975 attack in Halifax, was angry that the police had ignored her insistence that the perpetrator was a local man. Other survivors' evidence, photofits which were close to Sutcliffe's appearance, were also rejected. Each time he was rejected as a suspect because he did not have a North-East accent. A then unknown victim of Sutcliffe at the time of Humble's first letter was Yvonne Pearson, whose body lay undiscovered, hidden under a discarded sofa in Bradford. This detail raised the suspicion of a
Northumbria Police Detective Inspector that the Wearside Jack evidence was a hoax (as the writer of the letter made no reference to this crime) and submitted a report to West Yorkshire police in September 1979, but the report was ignored. One coincidence between Harrison's (then falsely suspected) killer and Wearside Jack was the secretion of their B-group blood cells in their saliva and semen, retrieved from her murder scene and from the gum of one of the letters, a quality shared by only 6% of men. It was this which was taken as definitive proof the Yorkshire Ripper was the same man as had sent the letters and the tape.
Hoax confirmed While the West Yorkshire Police were investigating the leads, Sutcliffe murdered three more women, and attacked two others. It was only after Sutcliffe's confession that Wearside Jack was demonstrated to be a hoax. ACC Oldfield took early retirement following what he considered to be a total humiliation; he died in 1985 aged 61. It emerged during Humble's own trial that Sutcliffe had told police after his arrest in 1981 that "While ever that was going on I felt safe. I'm not a
Geordie. I was born at Shipley." ==John Humble==