Welcome back to the Deep Dive. We are shifting
gears a bit today. Usually we're looking at the
cutting edge of tech or, you know, some of history's
stranger quirks. But today we need to go somewhere
quite a bit darker. Yeah, we do. I want you to
try and transport yourself back. Think late 1970s,
specifically Northern England. It's a very, very
specific time and place. And if you look at the
socioeconomic backdrop, it's just grim. You're
heading into the winter of discontent. You've
got industrial declines, strikes, power cuts.
The atmosphere was already heavy. It was. And
then on top of all that, you introduce this specific
predatory shadow that hung over the entire region.
It's a palpable fear. We are talking about the
era of the Yorkshire Ripper. And for anyone living
there, especially women, this wasn't just a story
on the news. It was a daily visceral reality.
Absolutely. People were changing their entire
lives. There were effectively curfews in place,
but not for the criminals, for the potential
victims. Women were being told officially not
to go out at night. Which is such a profound
inversion of civil liberties when you really
stop and think about it. The fear was concrete.
It literally changed the architecture of social
life in the north of England. Now, the subject
of this is Peter Sutcliffe and the numbers. They're
just horrifying. convicted of murdering 13 women,
attempting to murder seven others. But, and this
is really crucial. Our mission today isn't just
to recite a list of crimes. We aren't here to
dwell on the gore just for the sake of it. No,
because that's not the real story. The real story,
the one that emerges when you, you know, you
really analyze the official inquiries like the
Byford report and you look at the investigation
timelines, is about failure. It's a deep dive
into how a man, who was by all accounts a pretty
mediocre criminal, managed to be interviewed
by police nine separate times. Nine times. And
yet he remained free for five years to continue
killing. That's the statistic. That's the one
that just stops you in your tracks. So today
we are going to unpack the systemic incompetence,
the information overload, and frankly, the cultural
misogyny of the era that acted as a sort of blindfold
for the entire investigation. It's a perfect
storm, really. You have a killer hiding in plain
sight, and you have an investigation that was
desperately looking for a kind of cinematic monster,
a phantom that didn't exist. While the real man
was just, what, driving past him every single
day? In his truck or his car. A normal guy. So
let's start at the source. Who was Peter Sutcliffe?
You hear the name Ripper, and you immediately
imagine this phantom. But he was born in Shipley,
west riding of Yorkshire. June 2, 1946. On the
surface, just a lad from a working -class family
in Bingley. But that's the thing, isn't it? When
you start to dig into the biographical data,
that sense of normalcy just dissolves. It vanishes
very, very quickly. The family environment was,
to put it mildly, volatile. Volatile. His mother,
Kathleen, was a Catholic woman, and she's described
in sources as being deeply anxious. And you can
sort of see why, because she was probably made
that way by her environment. His father, John
Sutcliffe, was a heavy drinker and a known abuser.
The sources I read mentioned that his mother
suffered through her pregnancy with Peter under
a... That's right. Sutcliffe was actually born
prematurely. He had to spend two weeks in the
hospital right after birth. And that really sets
a tone, doesn't it? Right from the absolute beginning.
It establishes a baseline of trauma. It does.
And the violence, it wasn't hidden. It wasn't
behind closed doors. One of Sutcliffe's own brothers
recounts a Christmas argument where the father,
John, just... A beer glass over his own child's
head. Yes. And the brother who witnessed this
was only four or five years old. Imagine seeing
that. It teaches a child a very, very specific
and brutal lesson. What lesson is that? That
violence is how the man of the house exerts control.
It normalizes physical aggression and makes it
a tool for conflict resolution. It's just what
men do. There was one specific incident from
1970 that I found just absolutely baffling. The
sources call it the affair sting. It sounds like
something out of a dark psychological novel,
not real life. Can you walk us through that?
This is, I think, absolutely key to understanding
Sutcliffe's warped view of women and sexuality.
In 1970, his father, John, became convinced that
his wife, Kathleen, was having an affair. Okay.
So he decided he was going to catch her. He sets
this elaborate trap, posing as her supposed lover
to lure her to a local hotel. But the real cruelty,
the psychological damage, is in the execution.
He took Peter and two of his siblings along with
him. He brought the kids to the stakeout. To
watch. He hid them in the hotel. So when Kathleen
arrives, expecting to meet her lover, the father
jumps out. And in front of the children, he pulls
negligee out of her handbag to shame her. It
was a public ritualistic humiliation. So Peter,
as a young man, is watching his mother, the primary
female figure in his whole life, being completely
stripped of her dignity, exposed as impure and
just utterly dominated by his father. Exactly.
It fuses sexuality, shame and male dominance
into one single traumatic event. It's really
hard to overstate the psychological impact that
has on a young man's developing psyche, especially
around gender roles and relationships. So outside
of this, this incredible dysfunction at home,
his life seemed pretty aimless. He leaves school
at 15, drifts through a series of menial jobs.
But then we get to what the books call the gravedigger
era in the 1960s. Yeah, he worked at Bingley
Cemetery. And this is where the profile really
starts to darken significantly. His colleagues,
the other gravediggers, noted he had a... A macabre
sense of humor. Okay. That's not necessarily
a crime. No, but this is he would volunteer for
overtime specifically to wash the corpses before
they were buried. He volunteered to wash dead
bodies. Yes. That's a red flag the size of a
billboard. It suggests a well, a deep fascination
with the dead body, an objectification of the
human form when the person, the soul is gone.
It's about being able to have proximity to death,
to a human body without any of the danger or
complexity of interaction. Right. It's a powerless
object at that point. Precisely. But eventually
he leaves that job and he becomes a heavy goods
vehicle driver, an HGV driver. And strictly from
a criminal opportunity perspective, that career
changes just everything, isn't it? It gave him
two crucial things, mobility and solitude. He
had a legitimate, built -in reason to be driving
all across the region at all hours of night.
He could move between red light districts in
Leeds, Bradford, Manchester, and nobody would
question why a truck driver was on the road at
2 o 'clock in the morning. It was the perfect
camouflage. The absolute perfect camouflage.
At the same time, we're seeing these psychological
warning signs really start to ramp up. The voyeurism.
Yes. In his late teens, he became obsessed with
spying on prostitutes and their clients. And
he wasn't just a passive observer, you know,
peeking through a window. He was actively stalking
these interactions, following people. The sources
mention a theory about a con, that he had a bad
experience with a prostitute and a pimp. There
is some speculation about that, yeah. The so
-called lost 20 quid theory. Some analysts, and
even Sutcliffe himself at times, tried to pin
his entire motive on this one grievance, that
he was seeking revenge for being ripped off.
That feels too simple. It's far too reductive.
I mean, think about it. Plenty of people get
ripped off or have a bad experience. They don't
go on to become serial killers. Right. It can't
be the whole story. Exactly. The grievance might
have been a trigger, a spark that licked the
fuse, but the fuel was the deep -seated misogyny
in the history of violence we just talked about.
He didn't murder 13 women over 20 pounds. He
murdered them because of a pathological need
to dominate and destroy. Let's look at his personal
life because this is where the camouflage becomes
so effective. He meets Sonia Surma in 1967. They
get married in 1974. They buy a house in Heaton,
Bradford in 1977. To the neighbors, he's just
a guy paying a mortgage. He's living the seemingly
normal domestic life while committing these horrific
murders. But the domestic dynamic itself was
fascinatingly inverted. Sonia was diagnosed with
paranoid schizophrenia. So she had her own serious
issues. Very serious. And by all accounts, she
was the dominant force in the marriage. Gordon
Byrne, who wrote a definitive biography, described
Sutcliffe as being treated like a naughty schoolboy
at home. So the man who is about to unleash this
campaign of terror on women in the streets is
completely submissive in his own living room.
It's a very common paradox with these types of
offenders. The violence becomes a way to reclaim
the power and control that he feels he lacks
at home. There were reports that he had to physically
restrain Sonia during her schizophrenic outbursts,
you know, pinning her arms down. That sounds
incredibly stressful. It was a high -stress,
volatile environment, and it was compounded by
fertility issues. They suffered several miscarriages
and were ultimately unable to have children,
which added another layer of strain to the dynamic.
So the pressure is building both inside and outside
the home. And that brings us to the escalation,
because the narrative that he just started killing
in 1975 isn't quite right, is it? There were
dry runs. The lull before the storm is critical
to understanding his development. The first documented
assault was actually way back in 1969. Sutcliffe
was out with a friend, a man named Trevor Birdsall.
They were in a minivan. Sutcliffe gets out of
the van, follows a woman up St. Paul's Road in
Bradford, disappears for a few minutes, and comes
back completely out of breath. And he told Birdsall
he'd hit her. He admitted it. He said he'd followed
a woman into a garage and hit her with a stone
that he had inside a sock. A stone in a sock.
That's a prepared weapon. That is premeditation
right there. It's a crude kosh, yes. And here
is the first major systemic failure. The police
actually found him. The victim had been astute
enough to note down the van's registration number.
So they traced it and they visited Sutcliffe
at his home. And he confessed to them. He admitted
to hitting her, but he lied. He downplayed it
and said he just used his hand, not the weapon.
And because of the victim, who was likely traumatized
or just wary of the whole legal process, declined
to press charges. They let him go. The police
told Sutcliffe he was very lucky and left. They
just walked away. And what does he learn from
that? He learns the lesson right there. Yeah.
I can attack women. I can even get caught. And
the system won't stop me. That's exactly the
lesson. And it gets reinforced. Later, in 1969,
he's arrested again, this time in a red light
district. And he has a hammer on him, a claw
hammer in his pocket. OK, so that has to be it.
Man in a known prostitution area carrying a hammer.
That's intent. You would think so. But what did
the police charge him with? What? Going equipped
for stealing. They saw a man with a tool and
their minds immediately went to burglar. They
couldn't make the cognitive leap to sexual predator.
He was fined a small amount and released. Categorization
error number one. Unbelievable. So let's fast
forward to 1975. The attacks begin in earnest
now. And the pattern, the M .O., is terrifyingly
consistent from the start. You have Anna Rogolsky
in July. Then Olive smelt in August. Both were
struck with hammers. Both were slashed with knives.
And both of them survived, but only because Sutcliffe
was disturbed. In one case by a neighbor, in
another by a passing car. But Olive smelt, she
gave the police a piece of evidence that should
have been the key to the whole case. She heard
his voice. She did. She told detectives explicitly
he had a Yorkshire accent. Okay, so listeners,
I want you to put a pin in that. Yorkshire accent.
It seems blindingly obvious given they're in
Yorkshire, but that specific detail is going
to be tragically, catastrophically ignored later
on. We also have the attack on Tracy Brown, a
14 -year -old girl in a country lane in August
of 75. Sutcliffe wasn't convicted of this until
decades later when he confessed in 1992, but
it proves his targets were never just sex workers.
He was hunting vulnerable females, period. Then,
October 1975, Wilma McCann, the first murder.
A mother of four, she was the first to die. And
with her, the modus operandi was fully formed.
It was clinical. Describe it. He'd approach from
the rear, incapacitate the victim with a hammer
blow to the skull. That was to prevent screaming
or any struggle. And then once they were unconscious,
he would stab and mutilate the body. And the
police response, it must have been massive. Oh,
it was huge. 150 officers, 11 ,000 interviews
conducted, thousands of statements taken. But
no suspect identified. Nothing. And this is where
the information management crisis really begins.
They were using a manual card index system. Every
single interview, every car sighting, every anonymous
tip, it all generated a card. And if you don't
have a way to cross -reference those cards efficiently.
They're just building a paper mountain that ends
up hiding the truth. The answer was in there,
but they couldn't see it. The so -called reign
of terror. really takes hold between 1976 and
1979. The frequency is just relentless. Emily
Monica Jackson, in January 76, she was stabbed
52 times. The brutality was escalating with each
attack. He stamped on her thigh, leaving a clear
boot print, another clue that wasn't properly
utilized. But then look at Marcella Claxton in
May of 76. She survived a hammer attack. She
was pregnant, wasn't she? Four months pregnant.
She miscarried as a result of the attack. She
was able to give the police a photo fit, a composite
sketch. But her testimony was largely discounted
by the senior officers. Why? Why would they discount
a survivor's testimony? Because she didn't fit
their preconceived notion of a victim. In the
police's eyes at the time, she wasn't a classic
prostitute. So this is where the investigation's
own bias completely blinded them. They decided
the killer only attacked a certain type of woman.
Precisely. So if a victim like Marcella Claxton
didn't fit that narrow profile of a street sex
worker, the police assumed it must have been
a different attacker. They actually split the
inquiry, which effectively meant they were throwing
away crucial witness testimony that could have
identified him. This cultural attitude, this
prejudice, it really comes to a head in 1977
with the murder of Jane Michelle McDonald. She
was a 16 -year -old shop assistant. And this
was the turning point for public perception and
media coverage. The police and the press immediately
labeled her the first innocent victim. Which
is just such a loaded, destructive term. It's
awful because it implies that the previous victims
were somehow guilty. It creates the obscene hierarchy
of victimhood. It reached its absolute nadir
in 1979 when a senior detective, Jim Hobson,
made a televised appeal. I remember reading about
this. It's chilling. He addressed the killer
directly on television, and he said, and I'm
quoting here, he has made it clear that he hates
prostitutes. Many people do. But the Ripper is
now killing innocent girls. Many people do. He
is validating the killer's hatred on national
television. He's trying to bargain with a serial
killer. He's essentially saying, we understand
your motive. We might even sympathize with it.
Just please restrict your killing to the women
we as a society don't care about as much. It's
morally bankrupt, but it also likely emboldened
Sutcliffe. It fed directly into his delusion
that he was on some kind of mission to clean
up the streets. In the middle of all this horror,
Sutcliffe makes a catastrophic error, a huge
mistake. The murder of Jean Jordan in October
1977. This should have been the end for him.
He picked her up in Manchester, killed her, and
disposed of her body. But afterwards, he realized
something terrible. He'd given her a brand new
five -pound note. And he knew that was a problem.
He knew. He'd worked in factories. He knew these
notes were traceable to specific payroll shipments.
He panicked. He actually went back to the body
days later, a huge risk for any killer to try
and find that note. He couldn't find it. But
the police did. Yes. It was tucked away in a
secret compartment in her handbag. The police
found it, and they realized its significance
immediately. They traced the note's serial number
back to the Midland Bank in Shipley and Bingley.
So they had a geographical location. They did.
They narrowed the suspect pool down to 8 ,000
men who had received that specific run of new
notes in their wages from a handful of local
companies. 8 ,000 is a lot of people, but it's
a list. It's finite. It's manageable if you have
a system. And Peter Sutcliffe was on that list.
His company had received those notes. He was
interviewed. So he's sitting across from a detective.
They know he got one of the notes. What happened?
How did he get out of that room? He provided
an alibi. He said he was at a family party on
the night of the murder. And the police, they
just accepted it. They didn't push. They didn't
check it thoroughly. They didn't check his car
tires against the tracks found at multiple scenes.
They were treating these interviews as a box
-ticking exercise to clear people, not an in
-depth investigation to catch someone. They were
just completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume
of names. So he slips through the net again.
A massive, massive missed opportunity. But then,
as if things weren't bad enough, the investigation
gets completely derailed, utterly thrown off
course. We have to talk about Wearside Jack.
This is the hoax that undoubtedly cost lives.
There's no other way to put it. It is probably
the greatest, most damaging red herring in the
history of British crime. So between 1978 and
1979, the head of the investigation, Assistant
Chief Constable George Oldfield, starts receiving
letters and, crucially, a tape. A cassette tape
with a man's voice on it directly taunting the
police. I'm Jack. I see you're having no luck
catching me. It was chilling, but the voice was
distinct. It wasn't a Yorkshire accent. It was
from Wearside, specifically Sunderland in the
northeast of England. A Geordie accent. That's
right. An Oldfield. He didn't just buy it. He
became completely obsessed with it. He staked
his reputation on it. He decided, based solely
on this tape, that the Ripper must have a Geordie
accent. So what did that mean for all the suspects
who had Yorkshire accents? Like, for instance,
Peter Sutcliffe. They were deprioritized. They
were moved to the bottom of the pile. If you
didn't sound like the man on the tape, in Oldfield's
mind, you weren't the Ripper. End of story. And
this is where that crucial piece of evidence
from Olive Smelt, the survivor who explicitly
told them he had a Yorkshire accent, was just
thrown out. Ignored. Did anyone try to warn Oldfield?
Were there no dissenting voices? Oh, yes. The
FBI's behavioral science unit and several dialect
experts listened to the tape, and they all said,
this feels like a hoax. The psychology is wrong.
The real killer wouldn't taunt you in this specific
way. They warned him. But Oldfield had terminal
tunnel vision. He ignored the experts. He was
convinced he knew better. And just to be absolutely
clear for you listening, Wearside Jack was not
the killer. Not even close. Decades later. In
2005, advances in DNA technology identified the
hookser. He was a man named John Samuel Humble,
an alcoholic from Sunderland who was, by his
own admission, just bored and seeking attention.
He had zero connection to the murders. But his
prank diverted massive police resources for over
a year, during which Sutkle continued to kill.
It's just infuriating to even think about. Meanwhile,
the major incident room is physically, literally
collapsing under the weight of its own incompetence.
That's not an exaggeration. They had to reinforce
the floor of the building because the filing
cabinets full of index cards were so heavy. We
are talking about millions of handwritten cards.
And Sutcliffe was in those files. Multiple times.
He was in there for the five -pound note investigation.
He was in there because his car, a Ford Corsair
and later a Sunbeam Rapier, was spotted in red
-light districts hundreds of times. He was even
in there because his old friend, Trevor Birdsall,
had become suspicious and reported him to the
police. But the dots were never connected. The
system had no cross -referencing capability.
It was all manual. Card A, regarding a car sighting
in Leeds, didn't automatically link to Card B,
regarding the five -pound note in Bingley. It
was complete information paralysis. They had
all the pieces of the puzzle, but they're in
a million different boxes. And while the police
are chasing this ghost in Sunderland, Sutcliffe
kills Josephine Whitaker. He kills Barbara Leach.
In 1980, he kills Marguerite Walls and then Jaclyn
Hill, a university student. The terror is at
its absolute peak. And yet the capture, when
it finally comes, is so utterly mundane. It's
the definition of an anticlimax. January 2nd,
1981. It's not some brilliant piece of detective
work that catches him. It's a probationary constable,
a rookie named Robert Hides, on patrol in Sheffield.
He sees a rover with false number plates parked
in a driveway. A simple traffic stop. That's
what it came down to. A traffic stop. Sutcliffe
was in the car with a prostitute, Olivia Revers.
He's arrested for the false plates. But even
then he almost gets away with it. He almost destroys
the evidence. At the scene he asks the police
if he can have a pee break. He asks to go behind
a storage tank or something. An oil storage tank
near where they were parked. He goes behind it.
And while he's pretending to urinate, he quietly
drops his hammer and a knife into the undergrowth.
And the arresting officers didn't see him drop
them. Not at that moment, no. They take him to
the station. The case should have ended there,
with him getting out on bail. But a sergeant,
Robert Ring, just had a hunch. Something didn't
feel right. He decided to go back to the scene.
And he found them. He shines his flashlight behind
the tank, and there they are. The hammer and
the knife. The Ripper's toolkit. If that sergeant
doesn't go back on that hunch. Sutcliffe walks.
He almost certainly gets bailed on a minor theft
charge for the plates and walks away to kill
again. It was that close. When they get him to
the station and they strip search him, they find
a detail that is just so bizarre, but so telling.
It completely undermines his later defense, the
V -neck sweater. This is one of the most chilling
details of the whole case. He was wearing a V
-neck sweater, but not as a shirt. He was wearing
it upside down as pants. His legs were through
the sleeves. Why? What was the purpose of that?
The V -neck opening exposed his genitals. But
the crucial part was the elbows of the sweater.
They were padded. By wearing it on his legs,
the padding from the elbows was positioned perfectly
over his knees. So it was padding for his knees.
Yes, it was to protect his knees and keep them
comfortable while he knelt over his victims to
mutilate them. That speaks to a level of practical,
rational, cold -blooded planning. Exactly. It
completely contradicts the idea of some frenzied,
chaotic killer who has lost touch with reality.
He was methodically planning for his own physical
comfort during the act of murder. He confesses
pretty quickly after they find the weapons, but
he offers up a motive. He claims God sent him
on a mission. a voice he heard from a gravestone
while he was working as a gravedigger. The divine
mission defense. He claimed the voice of a Polish
man buried in the cemetery. A man named Brunasaw
Zapolsky spoke to him from the grave and commanded
him to kill prostitutes to remove them from the
earth. Which sets up the central question for
the trial in May 1981. It's the classic question.
Is he mad or is he bad? That was the entire trial.
The defense argued for manslaughter on the grounds
of diminished responsibility. They brought in
psychiatrists who said he had paranoid schizophrenia
and wasn't in control of his actions. The prosecution,
led by the attorney general himself, Sir Michael
Havers, argued he was a cold, calculating, sadistic
killer who was using madness as a ploy, as a
shield to avoid a murder conviction. And the
jury sided with the prosecution. They did. They
found him guilty of murder on all counts. He
was sentenced to 20 concurrent life sentences.
The judge recommended a minimum of 30 years,
but in 2010, that was reviewed and changed to
a whole life order, meaning he would never be
released. After the trial, the government knew
it had to figure out what went wrong. The investigation
had been a national embarrassment, a disaster.
They commissioned the Byford Report. This report
is the definitive, brutal account of the systemic
failure. It was written in 1982, but kept largely
secret from the public until 2006. It laid everything
bare. It confirmed that Sutcliffe was interviewed
nine separate times, but it also revealed something
truly heartbreaking about his old friend, Trevor
Bird Saul. The friend from that very first assault
back in 1969. The very same. In November 1980,
just a couple of months before the final arrest,
Birdsall's suspicions had grown so strong that
he sent an anonymous letter to the police. It
said, I suspect Peter Sutcliffe of being the
Yorkshire Ripper. He gave the name and the address.
What happened to the letter? It was lost in the
paperwork backlog. It was buried in the paper
mountain and never acted upon. And it gets worse.
Birdsall was so concerned that he went to the
police station the very next day to report his
suspicions in person. That report was also lost.
You're joking. I'm not. The system was so completely
broken that a direct tip -off, naming the killer
from someone who knew him well, was simply swallowed
by the bureaucracy. Sutcliffe spent the rest
of his life in prison. He was eventually moved
to Broadmoor High Security Psychiatric Hospital
after finally being diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia
in 1984. And his time inside was not peaceful.
It was incredibly violent. He was a target. One
inmate attacked him with a broken coffee jar.
Another, in 1997, stabbed him in both eyes with
a pen, blinding him in one eye. He lived in a
constant state of fear, which is a grim irony
given the fear he inflicted on a whole generation
of women. He was eventually transferred back
to a regular prison and died in November 2020
from a combination of health complications, including
COVID -19. Before we close out, we have to touch
on the unsolved mysteries. because the official
count is 13 murders. But the Byford report itself
states that it is, and I quote, improbable that
Sutcliffe simply stopped attacking women between
1969 and 1975. Serial killers don't just take
a six -year break. It's not how their compulsion
works. There's a whole list of what some call
the secret murders, attacks that bear all his
hallmarks. A man named Fred Craven in 1966. Gloria
Wood in 1974. And the absolute tragedy of Carol
Wilkinson in 1977. This is where the police's
tunnel vision destroyed another life entirely.
A man named Anthony Steele was convicted of Carol
Wilkinson's murder. He was intellectually disabled
and coerced into a false confession. He served
20 years in prison. But he was innocent. Completely
innocent. He was exonerated in 2003. All the
evidence now points to Sutcliffe. He worked near
the crime scene. The M .O. was identical. Anthony
Steele lost decades of his life because the police
were under so much pressure that they arrested
the wrong man just to clear the books. So after
all of this, what does it all mean? What is the
legacy of this case? Well, in terms of policing,
it changed everything. The catastrophic failure
of the card index system led directly to the
development of HOMES, the Home Office Large Major
Inquiry System. It's the computer database that
British police forces use to manage major investigations
to this day. They realized they could never,
ever rely on paper and human memory again. And
what about the social legacy? It sparked the
Reclaim the Night movement. Women in the late
70s were absolutely furious that the official
police solution to male violence was women, stay
inside, lock your doors. They marched in their
thousands to say, no, men are the problem. Curfew
the men. We have a fundamental right to be safe
in public spaces. It was a watershed moment for
feminist activism in the UK. You know, I think
the most provocative takeaway for me from all
this is about the myth of the killer. We want
them to be criminal geniuses. We want them to
be Hannibal Lecter. We do. Because if they're
evil geniuses, it somehow excuses the fact that
we couldn't catch them for so long. But Sutcliffe
wasn't a genius. He was a mediocre man. He was
a bad driver. He was a sloppy criminal. He left
clues absolutely everywhere. The traceable banknote,
the boot prints, the car sightings. He wasn't
a mastermind. He wasn't even close. He was protected
by a system that was incompetent, that was overwhelmed,
and that was fundamentally prejudiced against
the very women he was killing. He didn't outsmart
the police. The police outsmarted themselves.
And that is a very heavy thought to leave you
with. How many other average men get away with
terrible things, not because they are brilliant,
but because we as a society are looking in completely
the wrong direction? It's a question that is
unfortunately still just as relevant today. Thank
you for listening to this deep dive. Stay curious,
stay skeptical, and we will catch you on the
next one.