PETER Sutcliffe, the serial killer known as the Yorkshire Ripper, died while being treated for coronavirus at University Hospital of North Durham, three miles from HMP Frankland, where he was serving time for murdering 13 women.
He died aged 74.
It is said the frail serial killer’s lungs failed and he was pronounced dead just after 1am with no visitors at his hospital bedside due to strict Covid-19 rules.
Sutcliffe, who died without ever apologising to his victims’ families, had refused treatment for Covid-19 at the University Hospital of North Durham, three miles from the maximum security Frankland jail where he was an inmate.
Two weeks ago, the monster was treated at the same hospital after suffering a suspected heart attack. He went back to prison but was taken back to hospital after developing coronavirus.
Sutcliffe used hammers and screwdrivers to murder 13 women from all walks of life during the 1970s and 1980s. He is also known to have attacked at least nine other women before his arrest in 1981.
Richard McCann, the son of Sutcliffe’s first recognised victim, Wilma McCann, said the killer’s death had brought some closure to him, and Sutcliffe will go down as someone “in the same league I suppose as someone like Hitler”.
A relative of a victim said the Covid-19 pandemic had produced “at least one happy ending” with the death of one of the UK’s most notorious mass murderers.
Mr McCann, whose mum was murdered 45 years ago on playing fields just yards from her home in Chapeltown, Leeds, told BBC Breakfast, “I’m surprised how I feel this morning. It brings me some degree of closure, not that I wished him dead, far from it.
“Every time we hear a news story about him, and my mum’s photo is often shown, it’s just another reminder of what he did.
“One positive to come from this is that we’ll hear much less about him and no more reminders about what happened all those years ago.”
He said a lot of the families and surviving children of the victims might be “glad he’s gone”, but “I am sorry to hear he has passed away”.
“It’s not something I could have said in the past when I was consumed with anger,” he added.
In a separate interview, Mr McCann, who was five in October 1975 when his mum was hit with a hammer and stabbed 15 times, told Sky News, “(Sutcliffe) ruined so many lives.
“He will go down as one of those figures from the twentieth 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.”
– mirror.co.uk
