11 crimes that have rocked Yorkshire

Peter Sutcliffe was dubbed the "Yorkshire Ripper" by the press after murdering thirteen women and attempting to murder seven others.

The murder spree lasted for five years from 1975 with police handling a vast amount of information sent in from the public - and a hoax caller with a Wearside accent who pretended to have carried out the killings.

It is thought that Sutcliffe, from Bingley, carried out the murders after he was swindled out of money by a prostitute. Sutcliffe, however, claimed that the voice of God had sent him on a mission to kill the women.

He was eventually arrested for the small crime of driving with false number plates in January 1981. Detectives quizzed him about the killings and he admitted carrying out the crimes.

But, at his trial, he pleaded not guilty to murder on grounds of diminished responsibility, owing to a diagnosis of paranoid schizophrenia. That defence was rejected by a majority of the jury.

Now 70, Sutcliffe is serving twenty concurrent sentences of life imprisonment and currently resides at HMP Frankland, in Durham.

When traffic officers Ian Broadhurst and Neil Roper approached a suspected stolen car in the Fearnville area of Leeds on December 26, 2003, there was no indication of the mortal danger they were walking into.

The pair, who had spotted that the black BMW may have false plates, went to speak to the driver, who was sitting inside reading the Racing Post.

Unbeknown to the two officers, the hulking man behind the wheel of the car was a steroid-obsessed fugitive killer who had stolen the identity of a dead child in his native United States before fleeing to the UK. He had already spent eight years on British soil evading justice. The suspect – who gave a false name – was unnervingly cold under questioning.

Well-founded suspicions that he was concealing both the truth about his own personal details and a potential weapon gave Pcs Broadhurst and Roper cause to call for back-up. But as Pc Roper attempted to handcuff him, he pulled a 9mm gun from his pocket and fired without warning.

Pc Roper was shot twice but managed to escape. James Banks, who had arrived to provide support, remarkably survived being shot as the bullet lodged in his police radio.

Pc Broadhurst was hit twice. The first shot to his chest may well have proved fatal, but Bieber ensured he had no chance of surviving by shooting him in the head as he lay pleading for his life on the ground.

Having killed one policeman and seriously injured another, the gunman calmly left the scene, threatened a couple who were out shopping and stole their car to make his getaway.

Inquiries progressed rapidly. The stolen BMW and the Racing Post the gunman had been reading yielded fingerprints. Public appeals gave police a name – Nathan Wayne Coleman – and an address.

When they broke into a storage facility on Roseville Road in Leeds that was being used by the man calling himself Coleman, they got a chilling insight into the extent of the danger he posed. The unit contained a bullet-making machine capable of producing hundreds of rounds of ammunition.

Disturbingly, a CCTV camera had recorded the killer entering the facility two days after Pc Broadhurst’s death to collect his home-made arsenal. Four days after the shooting, the FBI matched fingerprints from the BMW to those of David Bieber – a fugitive who was wanted for a murder in 1995.

The net finally closed in when Bieber checked into the Royal Hotel guesthouse in Gateshead in the early hours of New Year’s Eve. A staff member recognised him from a photograph published in a national newspaper. Armed police were called to carry out the arrest. The gun used to murder Pc Broadhurst was found under Bieber’s mattress.

He was jailed in December 2004 and told he would never be released. Four years later the Court of Appeal reduced his sentence to a minimum of 37 years.

Sergeant John Speed, who was 39, was murdered near the former Leeds Parish Church on Kirkgate in the city centre by David Gricewith on October 31, 1984.

He was shot after going to the aid of a colleague who was fired on during a routine check on two men acting suspiciously near Leeds Parish Church.

Pc John Thorpe, 33, who was first at the scene, had spoken only a few words when one of the men pulled out a handgun and opened fire.

Gricewith, a garage owner and well-known criminal, was only identified as the gunman after his own death two years later.

Speaking at the unveiling of a memorial to Sgt Speed in 2014, ex-Detective Chief Supt John Conboy, who had led the inquiry, said: “This had a massive impact on the police in Leeds at the time and the inquiry into Sgt Speed’s death went for on two-and-a-half years. We all knew John and we all served with him and we are here to make sure he isn’t forgotten.”

Scottish-born paedophile Robert Black was serving 12 life sentences for the murders of four schoolgirls during the 1980s including Morley girl Sarah Harper, before he died in prison last year, aged 68.

Sarah, of Brunswick Place, was on her way back from a nearby corner shop when she was snatched and murdered in 1986.

Four weeks later, a dog walker found her body floating in the River Trent at Wilford near Nottingham.

A post-mortem examination revealed she had been violently sexually assaulted before drowning.

In 1994, Black was found guilty of Sarah’s murder along with two other unsolved child murders in the 1980s – those of 11-year-old Susan Maxwell, from the Scottish Borders and five-year-old Caroline Hogg from Edinburgh – as well as a failed abduction bid in Nottingham in 1988.

A student who called himself the "Crossbow Cannibal" was jailed for life for the "wicked and monstrous" murders of three women in Bradford.

Three prostitutes were killed in the city in 2009 and 2010.

Susan Rushworth, 43, disappeared in June 2009, followed by 31-year-old Shelley Armitage in April 2010 and Suzanne Blamires, 36, the following month.

Stephen Shaun Griffiths, 40, was arrested just days after the Miss Blamires
went missing and was subsequently charged with killing the three women.

After his arrest, he told West Yorkshire Police: "I've killed loads." Police had found CCTV footage of him attacking Ms Blamires at his block of flats.

Ms Blamires was later seen being dragged on the floor by her leg by Griffiths, who was seen to have something in his hand.

The woman was shot with a crossbow, the court heard, before Griffiths "gestured" by holding a finger up to the CCTV camera.

He told officers he had "eaten some of her", adding "that's part of the magic".

He was sentenced to life imprisonment with a whole life order.

Parts of Blamires's body were found in the River Aire in Shipley, near Bradford. Other human tissue found in the same river was later established to belong to Armitage.

No remains of Rushworth have ever been found.

John Taylor, 45, from Bramley, Leeds, admitted killing Leanne Tiernan and was sentenced to two life sentences, one for kidnap and one for her murder.

Leanne, 16 and also from Bramley, was abducted in November 2000 while on the way home from a shopping trip in Leeds.

Her body was found in woods 16 miles from where she was last seen by a man walking his dog.

Her body had been wrapped up in plastic bags with her hands tied using plastic cable. A dog collar was tied around her neck.

Taylor was described by the judge in the case as as "a dangerous sexual sadist" who kidnapped Leanne to satisfy his "perverted cravings."

Taylor had grabbed Leanne on an unlit path near her home and took her back to his house. There was evidence Taylor took sexual pleasure from tying up women.

Former girlfriends described Taylor as an "oddball" who was keen on bondage and sado-masochism. One told police that he liked to tie her up during sex sessions.

Donald Neilson, born Donald Nappey, was a lance corporal with anti-terrorist training in the Kings Own Yorkshire Light Infantry and spent time in Kenya, Aden and Cyprus on National Service.

But he left the Army in 1958 after his wife Irene, whom he had married in Morley three years earlier, persuaded him to settle down in Bradford. He then embarked on a series of failed business ventures, including working as a self-employed joiner and setting up taxi and security firms.

Turning to a life of crime, he used the covert skills and survival training he learned during his Army jungle fighting days to carry out hundreds of burglaries.

But he sought even greater cash rewards and went on to commit armed robberies at post offices, becoming known as the Black Panther because of the black hood he wore and the speed of his attacks.

He committed his first murder at 5am on February 15, 1974, when he broke into a post office at New Park, Harrogate, and killed the sub-postmaster, Donald Skepper.

Mr Skepper was in bed above the shop when Neilson came into the room, hooded and armed with a sawn-off shotgun.

The sub-postmaster tried to leap from his bed to grapple with the intruder but he was shot in the chest.

Neilson murdered two more sub-postmasters later that year, shooting Derek Astin in Accrington, Lancashire, on September 6 and Sidney Grayland in Langley, in the West Midlands, on November 11.

Police interviewed thousands of witnesses about the crimes, but the investigation gained an even higher profile after detectives were able to link the killer with a fourth victim, 17-year-old heiress Lesley Whittle, who was abducted from her home in Shropshire in January 1975.

The Black Panther left ransom notes, demanding £50,000 for Lesley’s safe return, but the girl was found dead seven weeks later in a deep drainage shaft beneath Bathpool Park, a Staffordshire beauty spot.

Lesley’s body was discovered hanging by the neck from the bottom of a ladder to which Neilson had secured her with wire.

Neilson remained on the run for another nine months before police spotted him acting suspiciously near a sub-post office in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire.

He pulled out a double-barrelled shotgun as he was approached, but police officers Pc Stuart McKenzie and Pc Tony White were eventually able to overpower him, with the help of passer-by Roy Morris

He claimed that he had accidentally knocked Lesley off the ledge of the drainage shaft but a jury at Oxford Crown Court took less than two hours to find him guilty of the girl’s murder. Neilson had spent three years planning Lesley’s abduction after he read a newspaper report of a will dispute involving the Whittle family, who ran a successful coach firm.

He bought masses of equipment and spent many hours searching the Midlands for the perfect hiding place for the kidnapped girl.

Neilson’s plan, plotted with the meticulous detail of a military strategist, even allowed for the possibility that he might have to face SAS units.

He was one of a small group of prisoners who were told they would spend the rest of their lives behind bars before he died aged 75 in 2011.

Thomas Mair, of Lowood Lane, Birstall, shot and stabbed mother-of-two Jo Cox as she arrived at the library in Birstall Library for a surgery on June 16 last year, a week before the EU referendum.

The court heard he shouted “Britain first”, had a stash of neo-Nazi material at his home and had collected a dossier on the MP for Batley and Spen, who was supporting the Remain campaign.

At the conclusion of the prosecution case, Mair’s barrister Simon Russell Flint, QC, called no evidence on behalf of Mair.

Bringing the prosecution case to a close, Richard Whittam, QC, said: “The sheer brutality of her murder and the utter cowardice of her murderer bring the two extremities of humanity face to face."

The M62 coach bombing happened on February 4, 1974, when an IRA bomb exploded in a coach carrying off-duty British Armed Forces personnel and their family members.

Most of those on board were asleep as the coach passed between junction 26 and 27 shortly after midnight, completely unaware of the explosives stashed into the luggage hold.

The blast, which could be heard several miles away, reduced the coach to a "tangle of twisted metal".

Twelve people (nine soldiers, three civilians) were killed by the bomb and more than 50 others were injured.

Judith Ward was convicted of the crime later in 1974, but 18 years later the conviction was judged as wrongful and she was released from prison.

The teenage killer of Yorkshire teacher Ann Maguire said that a “red mist” descended on him in the minutes before he committed one of the most shocking crimes in recent British history.

Will Cornick also claimed he wanted to be stopped from carrying out the attack on Mrs Maguire at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds.

The mother-of-two, 61, was murdered on April 28, 2014.

Sixteen-year-old Cornick admitted her murder at Leeds Crown Court and was sentenced to a minimum of 20 years.

One 16-year-old girl who was in one of his classes said he rarely spoke and many of his contemporaries thought he was “a bit weird”.

The girl said he was an Emo devotee who posted “unusual” things on his Facebook page.

The hunt for Shannon Matthews on the Moorside estate in Dewsbury ended on March 14, 2008, when the nine-year-old was found hidden and drugged at her stepfather’s uncle’s home, less than a mile away.

The revelation that the kidnapping was planned by Shannon’s mother Karen and her partner’s uncle Michael Donovan to generate money from the publicity sparked national outrage, and resulted in prison sentences for both.

The plot hatched by Karen Matthews and Donovan saw the estate tarred as an example of ‘Broken Britain’, a tag that left locals furious.