The Yorkshire Ripper’s ashes have been scattered into the Atlantic Ocean
A friend of the Yorkshire Ripper has scattered his ashes in Lanzarote to grant one of the serial killer one of his dying wishes – two years after he died of Covid.
The woman – who had regularly visited the ripper, real name Peter Sutcliffe, in jail – travelled to the Canary Island with his remains in an urn and tossed them into the Atlantic Ocean.
Sutcliffe, who killed 13 women and tried to murder another seven, had asked the friend to scatter his remains ‘somewhere nice and sunny’ so he could be in a ‘better and happier place’, The Sun reports.
She took his ashes to a rocky cove near the Playa de los Pocillos beach – an area popular with British tourists – on the Spanish island’s southern coast after flying there for a holiday this week.
Sutcliffe had died with Covid at the age of 74 in November 2020. He had barely been overseas before he was arrested in January 1981.
His friend, who has not been identified, said: ‘I made a promise to Peter to scatter his ashes somewhere nice and sunny while I was on my travels.
Sutcliffe, who killed 13 women and tried to murder another seven, had asked the friend to scatter his remains ‘somewhere nice and sunny’ so he could be in a ‘better and happier place’. Pictured: Peter Sutcliffe is taken to Frimley Park Hospital in September 2015
A friend of the Yorkshire Ripper has scattered his ashes in Lanzarote to grant one of the serial killer one of his dying wishes – two years after he died of Covid
‘I know people will think it is appalling, but as far as I’m concerned I was carrying out the wishes of a dying old man… It was a nice moment and, at the end, I was engulfed by a wave which I felt like was Peter acknowledging it.’
But the son of Emily Jackson – who in 1976 became Sutcliffe’s second murder victim at age 42 – called the ritual ‘shocking and disgusting’.
Neil Jackson, a retired roofer, said: ‘His remains should have been chucked down a drain or sent to the local council tip.’
Sutcliffe murdered 13 women and tried to kill seven more during a five-year killing spree between 1975 and 1980.
Twelve of Sutcliffe’s 13 victims. Top row (left to right): Wilma McCann, Emily Jackson, Irene Richardson and Patricia Atkinson. Middle row: Jayne McDonald, Jean Jordan, Yvonne Pearson and Helen Rytka. Bottom row: Vera Millward, Josephine Whitaker, Barbara Leach and Jacqueline Hill
Yorkshire police are pictured searching for Wilma McCann, the Ripper’s first victim, in 1975
He was jailed for 20 years in 1981, with the sentence converted to a whole-life order in 2010.
Police interviewed him no fewer than nine times during their five-year investigation.
He often used the services of sex workers in Leeds and Bradford, targeting them.
Sutcliffe was finally pinched by police in Sheffield in 1981 for driving with false number plates.
At that point he confessed to the killings – and claimed the voice of God ordered him to commit them.
He died of Covid in prison in November 2020 aged 74.