Peter Sutcliffe’s brother Mick believes their dad might have been right to say the serial killer should have been sentenced to death.
Mick thought at the time the comment was “a bit rotten”.
But speaking on the 40th anniversary of the sentencing, he now thinks it may have been better for all concerned had the Yorkshire Ripper been hanged.
Mick, who is in his early 70s, said: “Our dad said Peter should have got the death penalty when he was sentenced.
“He said it would have been better for everyone – his victims and the family left behind.
“I thought it was a bit rotten to say that, but he just wanted it to be finished...
“I suppose my dad was right in a way. We wouldn’t have so much hassle if he’d have got the death penalty.”
Mick, of Bingley, West Yorks, who has severe lung disease, recalled the moment he was told his brother was the Ripper.
He said: “There was a knock at my door and I answered it to a bloke, who [was] a journalist.
“He said ‘What do you think about your Peter?’, and I said ‘What’s he been up to now?’.
“He said ‘Well, he’s the Yorkshire Ripper’. I replied ‘I don’t think he is’. I didn’t believe it.”
The Ripper was sentenced at the Old Bailey in 1981 to a minimum of 30 years for murdering 13 women in Yorkshire and Manchester, starting in 1975.
The sentence was increased to a whole life order in 2010. The death penalty for murder came to an end in Britain in 1965.
The Ripper died of Covid last year aged 74. His dad John died in 2004 at the age of 81.
Sutcliffe’s mum had a fatal heart attack three years before he was unmasked as a murderer.
