When Noel O’Gara first sent me his book The Real Yorkshire Ripper, my
first reaction was scepticism. I had written about the case several times, read
books about it, and had no doubt whatever that Peter Sutcliffe was the one and
only Yorkshire Ripper. Then an Irish friend, a Dubliner, came to stay with me,
found the book on my crime shelves, and immediately became totally absorbed
in it. And I was surprised when, after reading it from beginning to end, he
told me that the author had convinced him that Sutcliffe was not the only Yorkshire
Ripper, and that Noel O’Gara’s suspect might well, as the uthor
insisted, be the original Ripper.
I have no doubt that my friend, being Irish like the author and his suspect Billy Tracey, simply felt that the whole story somehow ‘rang true’. Then I read the book myself, and began to see why.
Noel O’Gara, it seems, was a highly successful businesss man and property developer when he met Billy Tracey who, like so many of his countrymen, is a man of considerable charm, wit and humour ‘a comedian’, as O’Gara says. So it came about that Tracey became O’Gara’s friend, then his employee, and Tracey moved into his house.
O’Gara knew that Tracey had spent many years in prison, mostly in short stretches, but that he was a Category A prisoner, ‘high security’. He talked freely about his past, and O’Gara found his anti-authoritanism appealing, since he shared the feeling. But as Billy talked about his crimes, and how he had often fooled the police, it slowly dawned on O’Gara that he was living with a ‘controlled psychopath’ with a grudge against women. And when his guest tried to persuade him that they should take O’Gara’s beautiful Dutch girlfriend into a field and murder her, O’Gara was sufficiently concerned to send her back to Holland.
This is while the Yorkshire Ripper murders were going on. And it was when he read the psychological profile of the nknown killer released by the police that O’Gara became suddenly convinced that this was his friend Bill Tracey. It was, he told me, ‘as if an amazing connection had been triggered’. In a state of shock, he began reviewing all the evidence, hoping he was wrong and could forget the whole thing. The more he studied it, the more convinced he became that he was right.
Peter Sutcliffe, the man who is serving a life sentence for the Ripper murders, was arrested on January 2, 1981, and there can be little doubt that he was responsible for some of the murders with which he is charged, and that he had every intention of killing the prostitute, Olive Reivers, who was in his car at the time of his arrest. But it is O’Gara’s belief that Sutcliffe was basically a ‘copycat’ killer, and that Tracey is ‘the real Yorkshire Ripper’. He argues that the Yorkshire police suspected this, and that they were glad enough to close the case and see ‘the Yorkshire Ripper’ behind bars. It is not, he says, in their interest to pursue his own conviction that there was more than one Yorkshire Ripper.
I read the original draft of Noel O’Gara’s book, and listened to the tapes of his conversations with the man he believes to be as guilty as Sutcliffe, and ended up convinced that he could be right. But I also recognised that, right or not, no one now ever going to want to re-open the case.
I recognise that Noel O’Gara is a man with an obsession, and that men with obsessions arouse suspicions in the rest of us. But if he is correct, then his obsession is perfectly understandable, and what he has to say deserves to be looked into.
That is, for obvious reasons, as far as I am prepared to go. Except to say that I believe that those who are willing to look into The Real Yorkshire Ripper will find themselves as concerned and disturbed by it as I was.
For more details see www.yorkshireripper.co.uk