The ‘Suffolk Ripper’ will be caught by good old-fashioned police legwork, says chris boffey |
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In the fevered atmosphere of the incident room in Suffolk police HQ, dozens of detectives are running information through computers in the hunt for an active serial killer. Three prostitutes are dead, two more are missing.
But will the culprit be caught by the increasingly sophisticated tools available to police - including criminal profiling and DNA - or by a lone copper's intuition? History suggests the latter.
Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, who started out butchering only prostitutes in the 1970s before any lone woman became at risk, was nicked by two curious bobbies in Sheffield who had an inkling he was up to no good lurking in a doorway.
Donald Neilson, the Black Panther, who left kidnap victim Lesley Whittle hanging by a wire underground, was arrested in 1975 after two traffic police wondered why he was trying to |
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| Peter Sutcliffe was nicked by two curious bobbies who had an inkling he was up to no good lurking in a doorway |
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hide his face. A fingerprint then linked him to the Staffordshire cavern where Lesley had been found and to four other victims.
Even the most notorious mass killers in recent times, Fred and Rosemary West, were only discovered when a Gloucester policewoman became curious in 1994 about a standing joke among the West children that sister Heather had been buried in the back garden years earlier. She was, and so were many other girls.
Dennis Nilsen, the former probationary PC, who murdered more than 15 homosexual drifters between 1978 to 1983 in north London, became part of a police inquiry after he blocked the neighbourhood's drains with body parts.
Nilsen and the Wests excited public curiosity and shock but not fear, because they were discovered to be serial killers only after their arrests. The Ipswich killer is active. And it is possible that he will, like Sutcliffe, move on to attack young women who are not prostitutes. Until he is caught, the fear will persist. 
FIRST POSTED DECEMBER 12, 2006
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