A New ITV documentary about the seventies serial killer, the Yorkshire Ripper, is being shown on ITV.
The documentary explores the killings and investigations that took place, with a look into Wearside Jack who pretended to be killer Peter Sutcliffe before he was later captured.
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Who was Wearside Jack?
Wearside Jack is the nickname given to John Samuel Humble, who was a 68-year-old British man that pretended to be the Yorkshire Ripper.
In a series of phone calls and letters, he caused a diversion in the police search to find the real Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.
He sent a taped message spoken in a Wearside accent and three letters which would taunt the authorities for failing to catch him.
The recorded message caused the investigation team to move away from West Yorkshire, which was home of the real killer, Peter, which thereby helped to prolong his attacks on women.
More than 25 years after these events occurred, a fragment from one of Humble’s envelopes was traced to him through DNA which led to his arrest in 2006.
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What was the Wearside Jack hoax in the Yorkshire Ripper case?
Between March 1978 and June 1979, Humble sent three letters claiming to be the Yorkshire Ripper.
The first letter was written to Detective George Oldfield.
In the letter, Humble wrote in great detail how he was proud of murders that he claimed he committed as the Yorkshire Ripper.
He goes on to describe the girls that were murdered and claimed that the police should “Warn wh*res to keep off streets cause I feel it coming on again (another murder)”.
In June 1979, Humble sent a cassette to Assistant Chief Constable Oldfield, where he introduced himself only under the name “Jack” and claimed responsibility for the Ripper murders.
In the tape he said: “I’m Jack. I see you are still having no luck catching me. I have the greatest respect for you George, but Lord! You are no nearer catching me now than four years ago when I started. I reckon your boys are letting you down, George. They can’t be much good, can they?”
Sutcliffe denied to have any involvement with the letters or tape recordings.
The police then started to focus on Humble’s Wearside accent.
Together with voice analysts, they came to the conclusion that the accent was distinctive to the Castletown area of Sunderland.
This led to 40,000 men being investigated but there was no avail.
While the West Yorkshire Police were investigating the leads, Sutcliffe managed to murder three more women and attacked two others.
It was only after Sutcliffe’s confession that Wearside Jack was demonstrated to be a hoax.
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How long was Wearside Jack in prison for?
On March 21, 2006, Humble was sentenced to eight years in prison.
In July the same year, he launched an appeal against his sentence, which was rejected in October 2006.
Humble was released from prison in 2009 after serving four years of his sentence and was given a new identity.
In August 2019, it was reported that he had died at his home in South Shields on July 30 due to heart failure and the effects of his alcoholism.
