The 13th Victim

Yorkshire ripper kills again

"No woman is safe while he is at large.

To catch him, we need all the help we can get. I appeal to the public, especially to all women, to think carefully about all males with whom they come in regular contact, including those to whom they may be married or related, and ask themselves: 'Could he be the man they are seeking?' "

Like his earlier police counterpart in London's East End in 1888, Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield, 57, of Britain's West Yorkshire police is baffled and desperately seeking help. Last week, five years after the first gruesome killing, and despite the biggest man hunt in the country's history, Britain's modern-day reincarnation of Jack the Ripper struck again--for the 13th time and the first time in over 14 months. His victim was Jacqueline Hill, 20, a literature student, Sunday-school teacher and would-be probation officer, who was attacked and killed sometime late Monday evening as she walked the last 200 yards to her Leeds University hall of residence.

There is a definite, if complex, forensic weave that links the murders, and police are certain that the latest one was the work of the Yorkshire ripper. Like most earlier victims, Hill was killed by a specific pattern of multiple injuries that are the trademark of the unknown killer. Morever, this murder, like the twelve before it, occurred within the so-called triangle of terror that includes Leeds and Bradford in West Yorkshire and Manchester in adjacent Lancashire in northern England.

The Yorkshire ripper is Britain's worst mass murderer in this century. Yet, after taking some 25,000 statements, checking over 150,000 vehicles and interviewing nearly 200,000 people in the five years since the first murder, of a Leeds prostitute, in October 1975, the police are not close to an arrest. They have, however, built up a general picture of the killer; they know his blood type and shoe size and believe that he is between 30 and 50, an artisan or manual worker, powerfully built and white. Still, they cannot explain many points, including the variable intervals between killings that range from as little as three weeks to as long as 14 months.

In one sense, the investigators do know more about their quarry than most man hunters. The ripper has not only mailed three gloating letters to the police and press, but also sent, 17 months ago, a taunting, spine-chilling two-minute-long tape recording that promises further killings to come. But despite poster reproductions of portions of the letters and a special phone number that allows a caller to hear the tape, no one has admitted recognizing his handwriting or distinctive Sunderland accent. Now the latest killing and the lack of any breakthrough by the West Yorkshire police is prompting renewed public pressure for Scotland Yard's supposedly more expert murder squad to be called in. Yorkshire officers still resist that idea, pointing out that the Yard never caught its ripper 92 years ago. Said one: "Society is at the mercy of the murderer without a motive."

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