'Yorkshire Ripper' Peter Sutcliffe, 73, continues to be haunted by his victims' faces in his dreams and could be dead in weeks
The Yorkshire Ripper, who killed at least 13 women and attempted to murder seven more, is struggling for his life with “just weeks to live.” Peter Sutcliffe, dubbed the Yorkshire Ripper for his brutal manner of murder, is reportedly taking a wide variety of medication, as he suffers from breathing difficulties, high blood pressure, diabetes and has almost lost his vision. His health has been steadily deteriorating for years and he reportedly lost vision in his left eye after being attacked by another inmate in 1997. An attempt to improve vision in one eye ironically left him blind in both.
The Daily Mail reports that he has nightmares where he is haunted by the faces of his victims.
The 73-year-old is presently serving 20 life sentences in HMP Frankland prison, Durham.
According to a prison source who spoke to the Daily Star, the convicted serial killer is in the last days of his life.
“Every time he gets ill he never fully recovers and so is on a steady decline,” they said. “He is in the final stages of his life and his own death is now something he is preoccupied with.”
The former Bradford truck driver murdered women, most (though not all) of whom worked as prostitutes, using knives, hammers and screwdrivers between 1976 and 1981. He reportedly believed he was on a mission from God to kill prostitutes. Two years ago, Sutcliffe confessed on tape to savagely attacking a 14-year-old schoolgirl who he mistook for a prostitute.
Tracy Browne, now aged 57, still recalls how he approached her while she was heading to her home in Silsden, West Yorkshire, in 1975, and struck up a conversation before attacking her, hitting her five times before throwing her over a barbed wire fence when he heard a car approaching.
“My vision had gone because I was so stunned from the attack and my eyes had filled with blood”, Browne recalls from the time of the attack, the Mail reported.
“I fell several times but forced myself back up. I told myself I had to get home in case he came back to finish me off.”
Two months after attacking Browne, Sutcliffe murdered Wilma McCann, a mother of four. The murder sparked one of the biggest criminal manhunts in Britain.
He was eventually arrested with a prostitute in 1981 and confessed to being the Yorkshire Ripper. Sutcliffe had previously been questioned nine times in relation to the attacks by officers, but he was released each time. In 2017, police suggested that he may have been responsible for more murders than the 13 he has been convicted for. They began questioning him about 17 unsolved cases that share similarities to his previous attacks.
Sutcliffe has been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia but in 2018 a ruling that he was sane enough to be transferred got him moved to Frankland Prison in Durham from Broadmoor psychiatric hospital.