Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe killed eight more women than the 13 he was jailed for, says a former police chief who interviewed him at Broadmoor Hospital 30 times over the course of a decade.
Keith Hellawell, who retired as Chief Constable of West Yorkshire Police in 1997, confronted Sutcliffe with a list of ten attacks on women, two of whom survived.
He told The Mirror: “It was significant that he only confessed to the two attempted murders on the top of that list.
“If I was still working, it is those eight I would be going after.” When asked if he thought Sutcliffe had killed them, he replied in the affirmative. While Hellawell has not revealed the names of the eight extra women he believes were killed by the Ripper, the newspaper has drawn up a list of possible victims.
Sutcliffe was jailed for life in 1981 for murdering 13 women and attempting to kill seven more between 1976 and 1981.
In 1992 he admitted attacking 14-year-old Tracey Brown with a hammer in 1975 and trying to kill student Ann Rooney. Both cases were dropped because Sutcliffe was already serving life.
Hellawell, who is now the chairman of Sports Direct, has admitted he would see Sutcliffe again in a final attempt to grill him over the remaining eight women on his list.
The news comes just days after it was reported Sutcliffe was being interviewed about 17 cold cases, with all victims having survived the attacks.
It is claimed some of the attacks involved the use of hammers, often Sutcliffe’s preferred weapon of choice.
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.