Marguerite Walls - Yorkshire Ripper Victim
On the 20th August 1980 Marguerite Walls, a 47 year old civil servant, was murdered by Peter Sutcliffe as she walked home in Leeds. She was struck on the head, knocked down and then strangled with a piece of cord. Her body was stripped, indecently assaulted and hidden under a pile of grass cuttings in the grounds of a large house. When this crime was discovered it was not linked with the Ripper series because death by strangulation was an entirely new feature in relation to all the previously connected crimes.
Detective Chief Superintendent Hobson assumed responsibility for the inquiry and set up an incident room at Pudsey Police Station from which he directed police operations. Descriptions were obtained of people who had been in the vicinity at the time of the murder but none of these was very useful and attention was focussed on a number of men living in the area who had previous convictions for serious sexual offences.
