A woman who was bludgeoned with a hammer by the Yorkshire Ripper when she was 14 wants him convicted of trying to kill her.
Tracy Browne, whose harrowing story was told in the Mirror last week, was hit on the head by Peter Sutcliffe in 1975.
The monster was convicted of 13 murders and seven attempted murders, after a trial at the Old Bailey in 1981.
Tracy was not named on the charge sheet and it was only in 1992 that Sutcliffe finally confessed to the attack, near her home in Silsden, West Yorks.
While at Broadmoor high security hospital the former Bradford lorry driver told Keith Hellawell, then chief constable of Cleveland Police, that he had attacked Tracy and also Ann Rooney.
Sutcliffe, 72, who now goes by the name Peter Coonan, is serving a whole life tariff in jail and will never be free.
Hellawell had secretly visited him for 10 years to identify other victims.
The Crown Prosecution Service is thought to have decided it was not in the public interest to prosecute him again.
But former receptionist Tracy, 57, insisted: “I want justice done. I want him convicted for attacking me.”
Tracy features in tonight’s BBC Four documentary which looks at how the police theory of a “prostitute killer” often drove the case in a wrong direction.
In his disturbing confession, Sutcliffe, who moved in 2016 to Durham’s HM Prison Frankland, admitted: “I saw this Tracy Browne. She didn’t look 15, she looked 19 or 20. She were all dressed up. She were walking slowly up this lane.
“I thought, ‘Oh, she’s probably one of these prostitutes’ because I had it in my mind Silsden must be full of prostitutes.
“Anyway, I hit her with a branch or something, didn’t really injure her, and threw her over a wall. I climbed over and I was thinking of bumping her off and this voice said, ‘Stop, stop. It’s a mistake’.”
The documentary makers also talked to children of his victims. Richard McCann was just five when his mother Wilma, 28, was murdered in October 1975, the first of Sutcliffe’s victims to die.
Richard reveals that he feared the Ripper would kill him too after Jayne MacDonald, 16, was killed 20 months after Wilma’s murder.
The 48-year-old dad-of-three, who lives in Leeds and runs a public speaking business, said: “Jayne lived seven houses away and babysat for us.
“I started to be scared and imagined he had watched our house for months. I believed this killer was looking for me.”
Richard’s sister Sonia tragically took her life in 2007, aged 39, after struggling with her mum’s death.
Julie Lowry’s mother Olive Smelt was attacked in August 1975 but survived. Julie, now 58, remembers police turning up on her wedding day to say her mum would have to give evidence at his trial.
Olive was never the same after the attack and found the trial “horrendous”. But, when asked “How did you feel when you saw him in the dock?” Olive replied: “I felt sorry for him because his suit were creased.” Olive died aged 82 in 2011.
Julie said at the time: “She has been through hell and suffered in silence.”
- The Yorkshire Ripper Files: A Very British Crime Story, BBC Four, 9pm.
