Ripper's Return

Killer in a triangle of terror

Josephine Whitaker, 19, was so proud of her new watch that she rushed to her grandparents' house on the other side of Savile Park in the Yorkshire town of Halifax to show it off. She started for home at 11:40 p.m., declining an offer to stay overnight because she had forgotten her contact-lens case. "Don't worry, I'll run all the way," she assured her grandparents before stepping out into the night.

At 6:30 a.m. the next day, a woman waiting for a bus spotted what she thought was a bundle of rags lying on the grass in the large open park known locally as "the moor." Not far away was a single brown stack-heeled shoe. Coming closer, the woman discovered Josephine's body; she had died only 300 yards away from her parents' front door. The bruised, bloodstained corpse bore distinctive wounds, convincing police that a sadistic killer known as the "Yorkshire Ripper" had claimed another victim. Declared George Oldfield, assistant chief constable of the West Yorkshire police: "Clearly, we have a homicidal maniac at large."

It had been nearly a year since the Ripper last struck. Nine of his ten previous targets were prostitutes working the red-light districts of such grimy North England industrial towns as Leeds, Huddersfield and Bradford. The murder of Josephine Whitaker, an entirely respectable clerk, set off fears that the unknown killer might attack any woman in "a triangle of terror" in West Yorkshire and Lancashire. "The whores in the red-light area of Leeds are so jumpy that some gulp tranquilizers before going out to work," reports TIME Correspondent Art White after a visit to Yorkshire last week. "Some are carrying sharpened hammers and small hatchets in their handbags, presumably hoping that these weapons will give them a chance to fight off the Ripper if he picks them up. They have taken to working in pairs; when one is picked up by a man in a car, the other conspicuously writes down the license number."

Police will not discuss the Ripper's trademark murder technique, because they fear that lurid revelations might inspire other killers to imitate his grisly methods. Some details, however, came out at an inquest on Jean Jordan, the Ripper's seventh victim. At that proceeding, a pathologist reported that the victim had been slashed and mutilated in a style reminiscent of the original Jack the Ripper. In 1888 a rapacious killer whose identity has never been established savagely murdered five prostitutes in London's East End.

To catch the Yorkshire Ripper, police have mounted the biggest man hunt in British history; more than 300 officers are currently assigned full time to the investigation, which has already cost more than $5 million. Police are mystified by the gaps between the Ripper's murderous outbursts; more than a year elapsed between his third and fourth attacks. Psychologists have put together a profile suggesting that the killer is a powerfully built single white male, between 30 and 50 years old, who probably lives in West Yorkshire, alone or with his aged mother. An obvious psychopath, he may have developed a hatred for prostitutes because of a perceived sexual inadequacy or because a female relative once worked the streets.

Last week police began circulating a composite photographic likeness of a "scruffy looking," mustached suspect who tried to pick up a woman in Halifax just three hours before Josephine Whitaker was murdered. Rebuffed, he drove off in an old Ford. Police suspect that the killer may live with someone who is deliberately shielding him from the investigators. Says Oldfield: "Until this man is caught he will continue to kill and kill again."

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