Yorkshire Ripper talks openly of murder he was planning in new documentary

Peter Sutcliffe was arrested in 1981 (Picture: Mike Walker/REX)

The Yorkshire Ripper has spoken about planning to kill another woman before getting caught in tapes played as part of a shocking new Channel 5 documentary.

In 1981, Peter Sutcliffe was found guilty of murdering 13 women and attempting to murder seven others between 1975 and 1980. He was sentenced to 20 concurrent life sentences, which was converted to a whole life order in 2010.

Sutcliffe died in November 2020.

In the new programme, detective Williams-Thomas attempted to find out if Sutcliffe had attempted or planned to murder other victims, and shared tapes recorded by an anonymous woman, known only as ‘Brenda’, who had conversations with Sutcliffe while he was in prison.

When he was caught by police in 1981, he was found with 24-year-old Olivia Reivers as a passenger in his car.

In the trailer, Brenda asks him: ‘Were you going to attack the girl you were with?’

He responds: ‘Of course I was. That was the whole point.’

12 of Sutcliffe’s 13 victims (Picture: PA)

‘At no stage was he aware of what we were doing,’ Mark Williams-Thomas, who helmed the documentary, added of the programme.

‘We turned the tables entirely on him so he was openly talking about what was going on in his life and I think it’s the closest you’ve probably got to the truth of Peter Sutcliffe.’

More: This Morning

Williams-Thomas said that Sutcliffe shows more remorse than he has before in the tapes, but still insisted there were worse criminals in prison with him.

The Ripper Speaks: The Lost Tapes airs tonight at 10pm on Channel 5.

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