The Yorkshire Ripper Files: A Very British Crime Story (2019)

In May 1981, truck driver Peter Sutcliffe was convicted of murdering thirteen women and attempting to kill seven others. His trial concluded the biggest manhunt in British criminal history, for a killer nicknamed 'The Yorkshire Ripper'.
But after an intense six year search, Sutcliffe was only caught when stopped for a minor motoring offence. And it transpired that he’d in fact already been questioned nine times during the investigation.
In this new box-set history series for BBC Four, filmmaker Liza Williams will re-investigate this infamous case from a wholly new perspective, asking whether prevailing attitudes of the time, towards women and prostitutes in particular, influenced the investigation and meant that Peter Sutcliffe was caught years too late.
Over three gripping hours of television Williams will meet the relatives and friends of those Sutcliffe murdered as well as survivors of his attacks - some of whom have never spoken before. Going back to original sources and meeting police officers who worked on the case, as well as journalists who covered it, she’ll re-examine the story with contemporary eyes
Her investigation will bring into focus the complex realities and social forces at play in the North of England in the 1970s that meant Britain’s most notorious serial killer evaded capture for too long, leaving 23 children motherless.