Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe has reportedly been questioned in jail over 17 unsolved attacks.
The Sun reports some of the attacks involved the use of hammers, a weapon sometimes employed by Sutcliffe, who murdered 13 women and attempted to kill seven more between 1976 and 1981.
The newspaper cites an unnamed source as claiming the officers who have quizzed the 70-year-old: “Seem to be focusing on victims who survived – because they have provided descriptions and spoken about how the attacks were carried out.
“Also, advances in DNA technology mean he could be linked to these women, so they are the cases with a realistic chance of prosecution.”
An attack on Tracy Browne, who was just 14 when she was hit on the head five times by a man wielding a hammer in 1975, is thought to be one of the cold cases detectives are looking at.
Browne believes she survived the attack because her assailant was disturbed by an approaching car.
A spokesman for West Yorkshire Police told Huffington Post UK: “We do not comment on the progress of ongoing investigations or the people we may speak to during these investigations.”
In August it was reported Sutcliffe, who now calls himself Peter Coonan, had been moved out of Broadmoor psychiatric hospital and into HMP Frankland in Durham.
The former lorry driver from Bradford had spent 32 years inside the high-security institution in Berkshire after he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia following his life sentence in 1981.
He will continue to have his mental health assessed in prison and could be returned to a psychiatric hospital if there is a change in his condition.
Most of his victims were prostitutes who were mutilated and beaten to death.
He was given 20 life terms for the murders and was caught when police found him with a prostitute in his car.
They became suspicious and found he had a fake licence plate and weapons including a screwdriver and hammer in the boot.
Before he was moved to Broadmoor, the killer spent three years at Parkhurst prison on the Isle of Wight.