Peter Sutcliffe, the notorious British serial killer known as the ‘Yorkshire Ripper,’ has died after contracting Covid-19.
Sutcliffe, who murdered at least 13 women across the north of England in the late 1970s, died at University Hospital of North Durham, England, a U.K. Prison Service spokesman confirmed to Sky News on Friday.
The 74-year-old, who also had a number of other underlying health problems, reportedly refused treatment for Covid-19.
Sutcliffe terrorized West Yorkshire and Manchester from 1975, sparking one of Britain’s biggest manhunts which finally concluded in 1981 with his conviction for the murders of 13 women.
Sutcliffe said at his trial at the Old Bailey, the Guardian reported: “It was just a miracle they did not apprehend me earlier – they had all the facts.”
He spent three decades at the Broadmoor Hospital high-security psychiatric unit before being moved to Her Majesty’s Prison Frankland in County Durham in 2016.
Sutcliffe is known to have started attacking women in the late 1960s but his first known murder took place in 1975 when he killed 28-year-old mother of four Wilma McCann – and he remained at large until his arrest in 1980.
McCann’s son Richard told Sky News:
“He will go down as one of those figures from the 20th century in the same league I suppose as someone like Hitler.
“It was never just a drunken fight, he went out there with tools and implements and he murdered people again and again and again and again.”
An official cause of death has yet to be confirmed, pending a coroner’s examination.
