A 22 year-old who lived with her two young daughters in
Heaton. Her body lay undiscovered for two months.
Yvonne Pearson was soliciting for prostitution on the same
corner where her friend Tina Atkinson had been last seen alive before she
became the Rippers earlier victim in Bradford. The Bradford Ripper squad
were keeping Yvonne under observation as live bait from a discreet
distance as they sought to catch the Ripper. She was also being observed
by her pimp.
Arthington Square, where the body was found under a settee
They were all up-tight because of Him. Every pimp in
England knew the Ripper was a person with intimate knowledge of their
business. Peter Sutcliffe, a man greatly disturbed by the Ripper murders
because of his own insight into his assaults on women, and suffering from
verbal abuse from his own psychotic wife, had been greatly affected by the
Ripper killing of the innocent 16 year old Jayne MacDonald, the last
Ripper murder which took place in Leeds.
He knew for sure the evil Ripper was baiting him. He had
attempted to throw the towel in with his assault on Marilyn Moore in Leeds
in mid December. This attack didn't achieve its purpose. Now , a month
later he was going to go one further and prove that he was the Ripper.
The word was that the Ripper used a hammer to kill. It was
Saturday night about 9.30 pm, the busiest time of the week and the exact
same time as Tina Atkinson had been picked up by the Ripper. Sutcliffe was
kerb crawling along Lumb Lane, no doubt observing the police stake outs
and doing his best to be noticed. They reported she was last seen talking
to a white Asian.
The white Asian is as good a description of Sutcliffe as
you would get and the police also had his car registration number. He had
already been interviewed twice in connection with the Manchester murder of
Jean Jordan, which was not regarded as a Ripper murder at this time.
These police statements and records were held in
Manchester. Now, like the Ripper had done with Richardson, he was going to
respond to the Ripper with a murder in his, the Ripper's, chosen place.
he Ripper's hammer was only rumoured but unconfirmed by
police. Sutcliffe, not knowing the type of hammer the Ripper used, had a
lump hammer with him on this occasion to associate himself as the Ripper.
The claw hammer used by the Ripper was not revealed by the police until
after the arrest. Sutcliffe was like an automaton for Billy Tracey, the
evil Ripper.
Newspaper reports of Yvonne's disappearance were not lost
on Tracey, who guessed that his copy cat emulator had struck again, as in
Manchester, and had probably hidden the body similarly. Sensing sensation,
Tracey was quick to respond with the sensational murder of Helen Rytka in
Huddersfield, Oldfield's home town, only days after reading about Yvonne's
disappearance.
Police concern for Yvonne stemmed from the fact that they
had been observing her on the game and lost her. They probably knew that
they blew the best chance to nab the (Ripper).
They knew Yvonne had been abducted and almost certainly
killed. When her body was discovered more than two months later under an
old settee on waste ground not far from where he picked her up, a copy of
the Daily Mirror was found under it. This contained a headline story about
the Ripper murder of Helen Rytka in Huddersfield. The body had been moved
to make it visible a short time earlier which meant that the killer had
returned to the body on at least two occasions.
All these factors convinced the police that the murder was
the work of a disturbed copy cat killer trying to emulate the Ripper. The
disappointing thing for Sutcliffe was that on both of these murders he was
probably hoping that the police had the bodies staked out and would arrest
him in a blaze of publicity which would bring the Ripper terror to an end
once and for all.
This, I believe was his reason for returning to the bodies
as he had no way of knowing that the police hadn't found them. It was not
to be. The copy cat headlines are well documented as well as the police
assessment. As the murders progressed and after Yvonne Pearson was taken
into the Ripper frame along with Jean Jordan, her killing was always in a"
grey area".
Sutcliffe's statement of this killing is indeed graphic
because he knew what he was talking about. Graphic detail of the Ripper's
murders is completely lacking in all his statements for these and the
police knew it .Every criminal who commits a crime can remember in graphic
detail everything about his crime
Check out the links with this murder and the Wilkinson murder
