The "biggest shit" of the British Police

Everyone has had or has a suspect in the Jack the Ripper case;

all except the English Police.

So when the mutilated body of the prostitute Wilma McCann appeared in a wasteland in Yorkshire (north of England) in 1975, a unique opportunity arose to redeem the historic failure that has given rise to countless television series, movies, plays , essays and novels since the famous murderer committed his first crime in 1888. The miniseries

(Netflix, four episodes) reconstructs what the journalist Derek Jameson, of the

, described as the "biggest shit" police in history.

Neither the high rewards, nor the investigators staring at the television cameras challenging the criminal, nor the analysis of the tapes and letters sent by the murderer [in reality they were written by a simulator], nor the gigantic alert campaigns served, until six years later, to catch the little man who dismembered at least 13 innocent people and seriously injured another seven.

And that the humble policeman Andy Laptew, from the beginning of the investigations, pointed it out directly: "They threatened to direct traffic if I insisted again."

Nine times Laptew questioned Peter William Sutcliffe, and nine times he offered inconsistent or contradictory answers.

Even in the transport company where the criminal worked, and given the agent's insistence, they already knew him as Jack the Ripper.

“Sometimes he would even respond with a smile,” recalls co-worker William Clark.

More information

Jack the Ripper, cold case

When the relatives of the victims affirmed that the murdered were not prostitutes, but students, housewives or pharmacists, the British police smiled: surely, deep down, their relatives did not know them at all... The women who miraculously They were saved from death – they were hit with hammers on the back of the neck, but they survived – they cried out for justice and described some specific traits of the offender.

“The Yorkshire Police are not worth it, no”, complains in the series one of the attacked and that she had accurately described the appearance and accent of the criminal.

Joan Smith, a journalist for

recalls that, when he was arrested in 1981, "everyone wanted him to be a monster" cold and calculating, a privileged mind that had devised a plan to humiliate the police and cause panic among the public. population, something he got.

The reality was different: behind the murderer was not a powerful aristocrat or a calculating mind in a top hat.

The murderer turned out to be a 37-year-old truck driver, with a humiliating childhood, and who "had heard the voice of God."

He attacked women he found alone at night.

In reality, it is unknown how many he attacked and killed.

“There are more unsolved crimes and he knows it.

But I believe that he will take them to the grave and, in the end, he will be the winner ”, concludes Keith Hellaw, a police superintendent who reviewed the case in 1992.

Sutcliffe died just over a year ago from covid.

This time the police were right.

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