Peter Sutcliffe: Victim's son wants killer's pseudonym dropped

Richard McCann said: "I'm not going to use that word but it begins with R, the Yorkshire R"

The son of Peter Sutcliffe's first victim has asked for the murderer not to be referred to by his pseudonym, out of respect for the women he killed.

Richard McCann - whose mother Wilma was murdered in 1975 - said labelling serial killers glamorises their crimes and encourages copycats.

He said his relief at Sutcliffe's death on Friday was marred by use of the alias, which was coined in the 1970s.

"I'm not going to use that word but it begins with R," he said.

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"I'm pleading, can we no longer use this term?

"Think about the families and what it does for those who were affected."

He said: "Please bear in [mind] the word, it serves to re-traumatise us families left behind because it's a description of how our loved ones, how they were maimed, how their injuries were inflicted.

"In memory of those women that died, please no longer call him that name, the name we've had to endure for most of our lives."

Sutcliffe died, aged 74, after refusing treatment for Covid-19.

The former lorry driver, from Bradford, was serving a whole life term for murdering 13 women across Yorkshire and north-west England.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4, the first UK victims' commissioner Dame Louise Casey said it was important the name for Sutcliffe was not used.

She said: "When you take another person's life, you take the life of another human being, there is nothing that gives notoriety to those people.

"The reason why we are quite clinical in the way we prosecute and defend crimes, it's because if we knew the extraordinary hell that the loss of a loved one killed by another human is on that family, they might rest slightly easier."

Sutcliffe's victims

Wilma McCann was the first woman Sutcliffe murdered, in 1975

• Wilma McCann, 28, Leeds, October 1975

• Emily Jackson, 42, Leeds, January 1976

• Irene Richardson, 28, Leeds, February 1977

• Patricia Atkinson, 32, Bradford, April 1977

• Jayne McDonald, 16, Leeds, June 1977

• Jean Jordan, 21, Manchester, October 1977

• Yvonne Pearson, 22, Bradford, January 1978

• Helen Rytka, 18, Huddersfield, January 1978

• Vera Millward, 41, Manchester, May 1978

• Josephine Whittaker, 19, Halifax, May 1979

• Barbara Leach, 20, Bradford, September 1979

• Marguerite Walls, 47, Leeds, August 1980

• Jacqueline Hill, 20, Leeds, November 1980

Mr McCann believes other notorious killers who idolised Sutcliffe were influenced by his name.

He said one of those was Stephen Griffiths, who was jailed for life in 2010 for killing three women in Bradford and referred to himself by an assumed alias when he appeared in court.

West Yorkshire Chief Constable John Robins apologised to the families of Sutcliffe's victims on Friday, saying the language used by senior officers at the time caused families "additional distress and anxiety".

Peter Sutcliffe, who was convicted of murdering 13 women, died on Friday

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