Psychiatrists believe Peter Sutcliffe, the man known as the Yorkshire Ripper, is no longer mentally ill and should be returned to jail, prison chiefs have confirmed.
Michael Spurr, chief executive of the national offender management service, told MPs on Tuesday: “Clinicians outside make a determination about whether an individual still requires detention in a hospital. They have determined that this individual [Sutcliffe] does not. We will consider that and the decision will be made by the secretary of state on whether he should be moved back to prison.”
Spurr said he did not have a timescale for the decision to be taken by Michael Gove, the justice secretary.
Doctors have recommended that Sutcliffe, 69, is taken out of Broadmoor hospital, the high-security psychiatric unit, and moved into a specialist prison.
A Ministry of Justice (MoJ) spokesman said: “Decisions over whether prisoners are to be sent back to prison from secure hospitals are based on clinical assessments made by independent medical staff. The high court ordered in 2009 that Sutcliffe should never be released. This was upheld by the court of appeal. Our thoughts are with Sutcliffe’s victims and their families.”
Richard McCann, the son of Sutcliffe’s first victim, Wilma McCann, told the Mirror: “If that is what the MoJ decide I am fine with that. I can understand why some people want to see him in prison. None of this will bring my mum back and where he is locked up does not really change anything.”
Sutcliffe, who was given 20 life sentences for the murder of 13 women and the attempted murder of seven others, was moved to Broadmoor from Parkhurst jail in 1984 after he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.
Broadmoor has previously been rated inadequate by a watchdog, with concerns raised about patients being physically restrained too often. Inspectors from the Care Quality Commission said they had not seen convincing evidence that seclusion and restraint were being used in cases only when it was deemed necessary.
Sutcliffe’s attacks provoked panic in the north of England between 1975 and 1980, and the police operation to catch him was the most extensive and controversial investigation of the 20th century.
Sutcliffe was 29 when he attacked his first known victim, Anna Rogulskyj, 36, in Keighley, West Yorkshire, with a knife and a hammer in July 1975. She survived. Three months later, he carried out his first murder when he attacked McCann, a 28-year-old sex worker with four children, from the Chapeltown district of Leeds.
At the Old Bailey in 1981, during one of the century’s most high-profile trials, Sutcliffe admitted the killings but denied murder, claiming “voices from God” told him to rid the streets of prostitutes.
