The Murder Of Judith Roberts: The Mark Of Peter Sutcliffe

On 11th July 2013 I sent a Freedom Of Information Request (FOI) to Staffordshire Police.

Could I have a copy of the Pathologist Report concerning Judith Roberts murder 7.6.1972 and a copy of the witness statement finding the body.

Their reply: Dear Mr Clark,

Re: Request for information under the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 2000, first notified to Staffordshire Police.

I refer to the above correspondence in which you request information described in the following terms.

I can confirm that Staffordshire Police hold the information you have requested.

In accordance with Section 17 (1) of the Freedom of Information act, this letter represents a refusal notice for this particular request.

In refusing this request for data I rely on the following exemptions –

Section 30 (1)(a) Investigations and proceedings conducted by public authorities

Section 40 (2) Personal information.

Factors favouring disclosure:

The information may provide the public with the confidence that a thorough investigation was carried out at the time of the offence.

Factors favouring non-disclosure:

This file has been re-opened and reviewed in 2011 and still constitutes an unsolved murder. Therefore any information gathered would be for the purposes of investigation. The integrity of all evidential material including a pathologist report gathered during a Police investigation must be maintained….

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During July 2015, just after the publication of my book ‘Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders’ and too late to be included within it, I came across three open murder justice files in The National Archives on Judith’s murder and the subsequent miscarriage of justice meted out to Andrew Evans which had been used at his later successful appeal.

Upon reading these files, it became apparent that Andrew, who had presented himself at a police station to assist with enquiries over Judith’s murder, was a vulnerable seventeen-year-old suffering from asthma, who had been subjected to many hours of interrogation without either a solicitor or appropriate adult to advise him, these were the days prior to the Police And Criminal Evidence (PACE) and the Judge’s Rules were breached over and over, without him being cautioned or told he was under arrest.

These files included not only all of the interviews Staffordshire Police conducted with Andrew, but also the pathologist report and all of the witnesses who had seen Judith cycling from her home and there emerged a clear pattern from these that a variously described Ford Escort had followed her around Wigginton on her route and finally was seen in Robinson’s Field at 7pm that fateful evening, with the boot up, at a time it was concluded by the pathologist that she was murdered.

Upon examining these files I was able to see a clear pattern emerging of the method and motive which had occurred to two unsolved murders from 1970, on Jacci Ansell-Lamb murdered in the adjacent bordering police force areas in Cheshire and Barbara Mayo cross border in Derbyshire as well as others which emerged in the later ‘Yorkshire Ripper’ attacks and murders from 1975 and 1980.

In particular, the 1977 murder of Yvonne Pearson, where her head was crushed by blunt force instrument; a walling hammer as opposed to Sutcliffe’s normal ball-pein hammer and the April 1979 murder of Josephine Whittaker where after attacking her with a ball-pein hammer, Sutcliffe stabbed her twenty-one times with a giant Phillips screwdriver filed down to leave a Y mark instead of an X mark, in the chest and stomach, and six times in the right leg, and also thrust the screwdriver into her vagina. Her skull had been fractured from ear to ear.

Part of Sutcliffe’s confession: “I said you don’t know who you can trust these days. It sounds a bit evil now, there was I walking along with my hammer and a big Phillips screwdriver in my pocket ready to do the inevitable.”

‘We both started to walk diagonally across the grass field. We were still talking when we were about 30 – 40 yards from the main road. I asked her what time it was on the clock tower, which was to our right. She looked at the clock and told me what time it was. I forget the time she said. I said to her she must have good eyesight and I lagged behind her pretending to look at the clock.

I took my hammer out of my pocket and hit her on the back of the head twice. She fell down and she made a loud groaning sound. 

I took hold of her by the ankles and dragged her face down away from the road further into the field. She was still moaning as I did this. When I thought I was a safe distance from the road, I stopped. Then I heard voices from somewhere behind me to my left. I saw at least two figures walking along the path across the field toward the Huddersfield Road.

I forgot to mention that on the way up to the grass we passed a man walking a dog. We were within 5 feet of him.

As these people were walking on the path, she was still moaning loudly. I took my screwdriver; I remember I first pulled some of her clothing off. I was working like lightning and it all a blur. I turned her over and stabbed her numerous times in the chest and stomach with the screwdriver. I was in a frenzy.’

After I’d stabbed her, she stopped moaning. I left her lying face down.’

I knew from my research that Peter Sutcliffe had travelled from Bingley to London during May and June 1972 to visit his future wife, Sonya, in a mental hospital, following her breakdown and that this route took him close to the Wigginton /Tamworth area.

I had been interviewed by Tanita back in 2017 for a true crime magazine about Peter Sutcliffe’s unsolved murders and during 2020 we worked together in the production of the ITV documentary based on the book ‘Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders’   this led me to ask her to work together writing ‘The Murder Of Judith Roberts: The Mark Of Peter Sutcliffe’

Order The Murder of Judith Roberts here.