£5 Bank of England note - The Yorkshire Ripper Inquiry
Jean Jordan was murdered in the Greater Manchester Police area on the 1st October 1977. Her body was found on a disused allotment in Chorlton-cum-Hardy on the 10th October, nine days after her death.
An unusual and curious feature of this case was that there was evidence that the killer had returned to the scene some eight days after the murder, stripped the body and inflicted further injuries including an attempt to decapitate it.
On the 15th October, Jordan’s handbag was found 189 ft away from the body. It contained a new £5 Bank of England note which was thought to have been paid to the victim by the murderer. The recovery of this note some two weeks after the death marked a significant new stage in the series inquiry.
Chief Superintendent Ridgway of the Greater Manchester Police took charge of the investigation and recognised immediately the possibility of a link with the crimes in West Yorkshire.
Weight was added to this initial suspicion when it was discovered that the £5 note recovered from Jean Jordan’s handbag was probably from a consignment of £25,000 (i.e. 5,000 £5 notes) delivered to the Manningham, Shipley or Bingley branches of the Midland Bank on 29th September 1977. A team of detectives from Greater Manchester moved to the West Yorkshire area and, accompanied by West Yorkshire officers, undertook extensive inquiries to trace the person to whom the recovered £5 note had been paid.
The murder of Jean Jordan had occurred within three days of the banknote being delivered to the bank and attention was concentrated on firms in the Manningham and Shipley areas which had collected new notes from the bank to pay their employees that weekend.
On the 2nd November 1977 Detective Constable Howard of the Greater Manchester Police together with a Detective Constable of the West Yorkshire Police interviewed Peter William Sutcliffe at his home. Sutcliffe’s employers had collected money from the Shipley branch of the Midland Bank to pay their employees. Sutcliffe, who was one of nearly 8,000 people listed for interview during the inquiry, denied ever having visited Manchester except during the course of his employment and said that his last visit had been some twelve months previously when he had delivered goods to an unknown address.
Asked to account for his movements on the evening of the 1st October (the date of the Jordan murder) he said that he had been at home all evening and had gone to bed at 11.30 p.m. He was also asked about his movements on the evening of the 9th October when the murderer was known to have revisited the scene. He said that he and his wife had been at a house-warming party at their new home. Sonia Sutcliffe supported her husband’s account of his movements on both these dates.
