1979 » July (Month of Year)

Peter Sutcliffe · The police interview Sutcliffe for the 5th time. Detective-Constable Andrew Laptew and Detective-Constable Graham Greenwood visit Sutcliffe at home after his Sunbeam Rapier was spotted 36 times by Ripper surveillance teams in Bradford, twice in Leeds, and once in Manchester. This was the most crucial interview of the nine times that Sutcliffe was questioned by police. For the first, and only, time Sutcliffe's answers and demeanour did not allow him to avoid the suspicion of the officers that there was "something not quite right about this man." When the two detective-constables went to interview Sutcliffe they did not know that he had been questioned about the £5 note, nor did they know he had been questioned about the frequency of his red Corsair in red-light areas. His file in the Ripper Incident Room was almost two years out of date.

As he sat in the front room of Sutcliffe's home in Garden Lane, Bradford, DC Laptew realised that everything the police knew about the Ripper seemed to fit the man he was questioning. Sutcliffe was the same height and build as the man described by two survivors, he had a beard, a Jason King-style of moustache, collar-length black hair, dark complexion, and smallish feet. Sutcliffe also had a distinctive gap between his top two teeth as noted in survivor Marilyn Moore's photofit. He was also a lorry driver, one of the suspected occupations of the Ripper.

Days later, Laptew discovered that could have owned the £5 note that was found in Jean Jordan's handbag. Continuing to follow up on Sutcliffe, he also found found out through the Regional Criminal Records Office that Sutcliffe had been convicted for 'going equipped to steal' in 1969. Unfortunately, Laptew did not check with the Criminal Records Office at Scotland Yard, where there were two important and vital details, the burglary tool had been a hammer, and Sutcliffe had also been arrested earlier in a stationary car in a red light district.

DC Laptew's two page report, detailing his and DC Greenwood's suspicions, and that Sutcliffe should be seen by senior detectives, was passed on where it was considered about nine months later by two superintendents, including Detective Superintendent Dick Holland, second-in-charge of the entire inquiry. Here the hoax letters and tape, and the police over-reliance on them as being from the Ripper, instead of the real crime scene clues and descriptions from survivors, played their horrific part in allowing Peter Sutcliffe to avoid becoming subject to more intense questioning and from becoming a prime suspect. Sutcliffe had lived all his life in Yorkshire, and a Home Office report showed that a specimen of Sutcliffe's handwriting, taken by DC Laptew, did not match the letters from Sunderland. DC Laptew and DC Greenwood's suspicions and report was routinely marked "to file" where it would languish with thousand of others in the massive backlog of reports not yet filed in the system, allowing Sutcliffe to escape yet again from further and more probing investigation. Age: 33