found text – ‘sutcliffe rumours’ – Oct 1, 2013

I am being asked in my first seminar […] to contemplate the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe. One of my professors has written a long narrative poem about him. […]

My father, who for a period also worked as a long distance truck driver, though I feel that it is very unlikely he has the… spark about him that creates the madness necessary to commit horrific, violent acts. He knew people who knew Sutcliffe. People who stopped in the same truck stops, people who ate breakfast with him as he roved the country, people who had not just met a creepy man from Yorkshire, but men who had, in their own way, been friends with the guy.

One person my father spoke about specifically was the manager of a pub […] this Midlands publican knew Sutcliffe, as he stopped regularly, […] on his journey from the South of England up to the North. […] The publican knew Pete, liked him, considered him a friend. He was a displaced Northerner, was always good to hear a homesome voice amongst the Midlands drawls. But one morning,[…] when expected, Pete didn’t turn up […] The publican put on the news, bought his paper, can’t remember which, and there he was. There was Sutcliffe. His regular, his friend. Arrested, […] guilty […] And he was such a nice, polite guy, you know?

A male […] who loved war re-enactments, guns […] UKIP […] Welsh […] his parents had family friends who were prison warders up in the North, at the site of Pete’s incarceration. Knowing of this young boy, a very small child then, but perhaps already exhibiting tendencies towards morbidity that lent this gift an appropriacy it would have otherwise lacked, and supervising the woodwork class Pete was taking in the gaol, they took the rocking horse made by the murderer’s hands and presented it to the child […]