New Channel 5 show reveals worker's 'fear' of Yorkshire Ripper and his 'shark-like' eyes
A new Channel 5 documentary called Broadmoor - For The Criminally Insane - sheds new light on one of the UK's most notorious killers.
Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital houses some of the UK's most dangerously disturbed individuals, including serial killers, rapists and terrorists. However, one former inmate instilled fear even in experienced Broadmoor staff and veterans.
In new programme, Broadmoor, which started at 10pm on Monday, October 21 on Channel 5 and My5, Neil Wheatcroft, a nursing assistant at the Berkshire high security hospital for nearly 15 years, recounted his first encounter with Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.
He said: "He frightened me to start with, because his eyes were like looking into a shark's – there was no life there at all."
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Neil revealed on Channel 5's Broadmoor, that Sutcliffe, who brutally killed at least 13 women between 1975 and 1980 - including Ormesby woman Jaqueline Hill - didn't really mingle with other inmates.
"He was never a mixer. He didn't play pool or card games," he explained. Sutcliffe was the victim of several violent attacks while incarcerated, including a 1983 assault by fellow-inmate James Costello, which left the murderer with four wounds requiring 30 stitches.
When asked if he was unpopular with other inmates, Sutcliffe responded: "Yes, but it does not affect me because it is an ignorant opinion they hold. Anyway, they just do not understand.", reports Yorkshire Live.
However, the one thing that the deranged murderer did care about was money. Author Geoffrey Wansel reveals how Sutcliffe, after turning 65, pursued legal action to claim his state pension while incarcerated.
He shared: "He told the world, or anybody who cared to listen, 'I worked hard all my life and I paid my taxes, so why can't I have my pension?" When he requested his state pension, he specifically argued: "This is a hospital, not a prison. I'm therefore entitled to my pension'.
Despite his efforts, Sutcliffe never received his pension, but he was assigned the sought-after task of delivering patients' food orders to Neil Wheatcroft. While prison food is generally deemed subpar, the meals at Broadmoor are considered superior. "Food in prison's terrible," one ex-inmate explained, "but the food in Broadmoor... it was like a hotel. Sutcliffe would go around in the mornings and ask them what they wanted," Neil added.
Out of Sutcliffe's 39 years in custody, 32 were spent in Broadmoor. He eventually passed away from complications related to diabetes in HMP Franklin at the age of 74.
Teessider Jacqueline, a 20-year-old student from Ormesby in Middlesbrough, was studying English in Leeds, and was a Sunday School teacher and probation service volunteer, when she became Sutcliffe's final victim.
Jacqueline was on her way home to her student halls - where her parents had persuaded her to move for safety at the height of the Ripper hunt - when he struck in November 1980. She had been for a meeting with probation service workers before the group decided to head for a pint, with Jacqueline invited along.
The hard-working final-year student then took the bus home, which stopped 300 yards from her halls of residence around 9.20am. Her body was discovered on a stretch of wasteland 100 yards from where she lived. She suffered four skull fractures and cuts to her head, a stab wound to her left breast and a stab wound to her right eye.
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