The day I met Jack the Ripper ..

[confus-ed]

This really is from an awful long time ago, but this bit of news brought back an event to me from 20 odd years ago ...

Man quizzed over Ripper hoax case

I can't even clearly remember the details, I must've been somewhere around 13 (as I was doing a paper round !), when I was stopped by a bloke in a lorry asking for directions, so I of course even at that young age helpfully told him the way .. it was only a couple of days later, as news of the attack on JACQUELINE HILL , broke & police were appealing for information to catch the man dubbed 'the yorkshire ripper', that my parents urged me to come forward & make a statement, as I'd directed him to the place where it happened .. Its pretty difficult to describe, but there really was an atmosphere of fear about the place at that time in & around West Yorkshire (where I live & where all but one, I think, of the murders took place), & young women etc were literally being urged to stop at home for their own safety ..

At the time, & now with the benefit of hindsight, I know I was able to give an accurate description of this guy & even quote a partial number plate, which I'm sure lead to Peter Sutcliffe, being interviewed about the incident, but sadly because of the now infamous 'ripper tape' the police were at that time convinced they were looking for somebody from the Newcastle area, because of the strong regional accent on that tape, & thus Sutcliffe, who we now know to be the 'real ripper' was released on no less than 5 seperate ocassions ...

If 'whoever' has been arrested & can be proved to have perverted the investigation into this series of horrific rapes & murders, I hope they stick him away for a very long time indeed, as without his interferance they might well not have rejected evidence like mine, which could have caught Sutcliffe much earlier ...

Truely a sick individual, who no doubt thought he was "just 'aving a larf !"

[El_Squid]

Whew! That was a close brush with horror.

And, you are absolutely right, the hoaxer needs to be punished. The sad thing is that those types of folks are tyically mentally unstable and will go so far as to confess to crimes they haven't commited, looking for attention.