The Strange Tale of Peter Sutcliffe - The Yorkshire Ripper

The Yorkshire Ripper

Sutcliffe’s plea of diminished responsibility, which could have resulted in a lighter sentence, wasn’t successful. On May 22, 1981, he was found guilty of 13 murders and seven counts of attempted murder. The judge sentenced him to 20 life terms and recommended a minimum sentence of 30 years. The death penalty wasn’t an option, having been abolished in 1965.

After he was captured and behind bars, Sutcliffe began using his mother’s maiden name and going by Peter William Coonan. In 1984, a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia saw Sutcliffe removed from prison and sent to Broadmoor Hospital, a secure psychiatric facility. While in custody Sutcliffe applied for the right to parole, but a 2010 ruling said that he would never be released from prison. He was declared mentally able to leave the secure hospital and sent to a maximum-security prison in 2016.

Sutcliffe experienced numerous assaults while in custody. In 1997, an inmate stabbed Sutcliffe’s eyes with a pen, and he subsequently lost vision in his left eye.

Wife
Sutcliffe met Sonia Szurma, whose parents were refugees from Poland and Ukraine, in 1966. The two married on August 10, 1974. They had no children.

Sonia offered her support during Sutcliffe’s 1981 trial and initially visited him while he was in custody. They divorced in 1994. Her visits reportedly stopped after she got married again in 1997.

Despite their divorce, Sutcliffe named Sonia as his next of kin. Sonia no longer lives in the house she and Sutcliffe moved into in 1977. Although she reportedly received permission to sell the home in December 2021, there is no public record of her actually doing so.

Death
Sutcliffe died at age 74 on November 13, 2020, at the University Hospital of North Durham in England. The hospital was near the prison where he’d been serving his sentence.

At the end of October, Sutcliffe had been treated for a suspected heart attack at the hospital. Following his hospital stay, he reportedly tested positive for COVID-19 but refused treatment. His ex-wife Sonia is believed to have planned his funeral.

The Long Shadow and Other Media
In December 2020, Netflix debuted a four-part docuseries simply titled The Ripper about Sutcliffe’s crime spree. It featured interviews with witnesses and investigators.

Sutcliffe’s crimes and capture are the subject of the seven-part ITV miniseries The Long Shadow, which debuted in September 2023. Writer George Kay based the dramatized series on the 2003 book Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper by Michael Bilton, as well as real case files, interview transcripts, and police reports.

Originally called The Yorkshire Ripper, the series underwent a name change because Kay felt the moniker was “disrespectful” to Sutcliffe’s victims and survivors who he felt were at the heart of the series. “The victims’ families certainly don’t want that name being applied to Peter Sutcliffe because it creates a dark brand around a man who doesn’t deserve that sort of attention,” he said.

 

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