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Murder of Carol Wilkinson

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Murder of Carol Wilkinson
The view towards the murder site in 2008. Wilkinson was found fatally injured in the field just by the buildings in the distance.
Date10 October 1977
LocationWoodhall Road, Bradford, West Yorkshire, England
TypeMurder
AccusedAnthony Steel

The murder of Carol Wilkinson, a 20-year-old woman from Bradford, West Yorkshire, occurred on 10 October 1977.[1][2] Anthony Steel spent 19 years in prison for the crime, before having his conviction quashed in 2003.[3] Steel died in 2007 at the age of 52.[4]

Over the years, a number of investigators and writers have asserted that Peter Sutcliffe, the "Yorkshire Ripper", was the real murderer of Wilkinson.[5] Despite this, her case has not yet been resolved.

Murder

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Carol Wilkinson was attacked as she walked to Almond's Bakery, Gain Lane, Thornbury, where she worked as a clerk in the wholesale department.[6][7] The attack took place in a field at the back of the bakery,[8] which was about half a mile from her home in Ravenscliffe.[9] Her best friend at work had heard her say she would not be walking the "muck road" route which Anthony Steel was said to have described in his confession.[8]

Wilkinson was partially stripped, sexually assaulted and battered about the head with a large stone during the incident and found unconscious a short while later.[7] After being found, she was taken to Bradford Royal Infirmary, where she remained on a life support machine for two days before the machine was turned off.[9] This was the first time in Britain that a murder victim was certified dead while on life support.[10]

Conviction of Anthony Steel

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Eighteen months after the killing, Steel's mother-in-law gave the police a keyring in the shape of a fish. Alleged by the Crown to have been taken from Wilkinson's handbag by the killer, this keyring was said to have been given by Steel to his future wife at about the time of the murder.[7] At the time of the murder, Steel was working as a council gardener on the estate where the victim lived.[8] The Crown also argued that Steel told the police details that only the murderer would know.[7]

Speaking in an interview about signing the confession, Steel said:

I was young and I'd never had experience of being in custody or anything like that. That pressure builds up on you so much and there's only so much you can take, so to ease that pressure you do something to get them off your back and that's what I did. They kept intimidating me, telling me what I did that day, and I think I ended up believing what they were telling me. They were saying 'We know you've done it. We've got the proof, we've got the evidence'. I think that, because the case had been going on that long, they were out to get somebody to get it off their books, to put somebody inside. It didn't matter who it was as long as it fitted in some way or they could make it fit in some way and they could put that person inside.[11]

Conviction overturned

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Steel was initially released on licence in 1998 before having his conviction quashed at the Court of Appeal in February 2003, owing to new evidence from both defence and Crown consultant psychologists indicating that Steel "is and was mentally handicapped and at the borderline of abnormal suggestibility and compliability. He was therefore a significantly more vulnerable interviewee than could be appreciated at the time of the trial."[3]

Steel received an official police apology and about £100,000 in compensation from the government, but he was in poor health following his release from prison. He died from a heart attack aged 52 in September 2007.[4] None of the police officers involved in the wrongful conviction were reprimanded or prosecuted.

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Over the years, a number of investigators and writers have asserted that "Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe was the real murderer of Wilkinson. Between 1975 and 1980, Sutcliffe committed 13 murders of women across Yorkshire and Manchester, his signature being to attack his victims from behind with blunt instruments.[5] Wilkinson's murder was initially considered a possible "Ripper" killing but quickly ruled out as one, in part because Wilkinson was not a prostitute.[12][13] However, police would admit by the end of 1979 that Sutcliffe did not only attack prostitutes, although by that time Steel had already been convicted of the murder.[13] After Sutcliffe was convicted in 1981, writer David Yallop asserted that Steel had been wrongly jailed for the murder and that Sutcliffe was evidently the killer.[14] He put forward these claims in a book titled Deliver Us from Evil, pointing out the similarities to Sutcliffe's known attacks in Bradford, Leeds and elsewhere.[14][15] Wilkinson's murder took place nine days after Sutcliffe's murder of Jean Jordan in Manchester.[13]

In 1978, it was widely reported that professor David Gee, the Home Office pathologist who conducted the post-mortem examinations on all of Peter Sutcliffe's known victims, had observed that there were similarities between the murder of Carol Wilkinson and that of Yvonne Pearson, which was committed by Sutcliffe three months later.[16] Like Wilkinson, Pearson was bludgeoned with a heavy stone and was not stabbed, and was initially ruled out as a Ripper victim.[13] The similarities between Wilkinson and Pearson's cases led detectives to suspect not only that they might be linked to each other, but also that they might be copycat killings of the Ripper attacks.[16][13] Pearson was re-classified as a Ripper victim in 1979, the year in which Steel was convicted of Wilkinson's murder. Yallop called for the conviction to be reviewed in 1981 because of the clear similarities, highlighting that Steel had always protested his innocence and been convicted on weak circumstantial evidence.[15] Sutcliffe did not confess to Wilkinson's murder at his Old Bailey trial, although Steel was already the man serving time for the offence by then. During his imprisonment, Sutcliffe was noted to show "particular anxiety" at mentions of the murder, possibly due to the unsoundness of Steel's conviction.[17]

Sutcliffe had in fact known Wilkinson and was known to have argued violently with her stepfather over his advances towards her.[18] Sutcliffe knew the estate Wilkinson was killed on and was known to frequent the area, and in February 1977 – only months before the murder – was reported to the police for acting suspiciously on the street where Wilkinson lived.[19] Another thing that links Sutcliffe to the killing is that earlier on the same day as Wilkinson's murder, Sutcliffe had gone back to mutilate Jean Jordan's body before returning to Bradford, showing he had already gone out to attack a victim that day and would have been in Bradford to attack Wilkinson after he came back from mutilating Jordan.[13][20] The location of the attack on Wilkinson was very close to Sutcliffe's place of employment, T. & W. H. Clark, where he would have clocked in for work that afternoon.[21]

In 2008, David Yallop again put forth the theory that Peter Sutcliffe was the true killer.[13] In 2015, former detective Chris Clark and investigative journalist Tim Tate also supported the theory that Wilkinson was a victim of Sutcliffe in their book Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders.[22] They pointed out that her body had been posed and partially stripped in typical "Yorkshire Ripper" fashion, with her trousers and pants pulled down and her bra lifted up.[23] ITV produced a documentary based on Clark and Tate's book in 2022, and this documentary is likewise titled Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders.[24]

References

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  1. ^ Taylor, Daniel (27 April 2015). "Bradford fire: Sir Oliver Popplewell defends 1985 inquiry – interview in full". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 12 November 2020. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  2. ^ Meneaud, Marc (24 September 2008). "Family want Ripper quizzed over Carol". Telegraph & Argus. Archived from the original on 18 May 2021. Retrieved 3 November 2015.
  3. ^ a b "Murder conviction quashed". BBC News. 28 February 2003. Archived from the original on 27 May 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  4. ^ a b Wright, Steve (2 October 2007). "Family fight on for wrongly accused dad". Telegraph & Argus. Archived from the original on 15 December 2022. Retrieved 15 December 2022.
  5. ^ a b Bilton, Michael (2003). Wicked Beyond Belief: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. HarperCollins. ISBN 9780007100866.
  6. ^ "Carol Wilkinson". Rough Justice. Archived from the original on 26 May 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  7. ^ a b c d "[2003] EWCA Crim 1640". BAILII. The Supreme Court. 10 June 2003. Archived from the original on 26 January 2025. Retrieved 1 June 2017.
  8. ^ a b c "Justice for Anthony Steel". Rough Justice. Archived from the original on 26 May 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  9. ^ a b "[1981] EWCA Crim J0317-6". vLex United Kingdom. 17 March 1981. Archived from the original on 30 April 2025. Retrieved 24 July 2025.
  10. ^ Wainwright, Martin (1 March 2003). "Judges quash murder verdict after 24 years". The Guardian. Archived from the original on 25 April 2025. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  11. ^ "Wrongly convicted man speaks from grave of murder ordeal". The Yorkshire Post. 7 August 2009. Archived from the original on 26 May 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  12. ^ Clark & Tate 2015, p. 231.
  13. ^ a b c d e f g "Ripper mystery". Inside Out. BBC. 23 September 2008. Archived from the original on 11 October 2022. Retrieved 26 May 2015.
  14. ^ a b "Ripper tape hoaxer is also a killer, claims new book". Belfast Telegraph. 25 May 1981. p. 8.
  15. ^ a b "Ripper hoaxer 'double killer'". The Journal. Newcastle. 25 May 1981. p. 5.
  16. ^ a b Williams, John (28 March 1978). "'Ripper' May Have an Imitator". The Telegraph.
  17. ^ Yallop 2014.
  18. ^ Clark & Tate 2015, pp. 231–232.
  19. ^ Clark & Tate 2015, p. 232.
  20. ^ Clark & Tate 2015, p. 229.
  21. ^ Clark & Tate 2015, pp. 230.
  22. ^ Clark & Tate 2015, pp. 229–234.
  23. ^ Clark & Tate 2015, pp. 230–231.
  24. ^ "Yorkshire Ripper the Secret Murders: Episode 1". ITVX. ITV. 23 February 2022. Retrieved 13 March 2022.

Bibliography

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  • Clark, Chris; Tate, Tim (2015). Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders. The True Story of How Peter Sutcliffe's Terrible Reign of Terror Claimed at Least 22 More Lives. London: John Blake. ISBN 978-1-78418-418-6.
  • Yallop, David (2014). Deliver Us from Evil. UK: Hachette. ISBN 9781472116581.
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