Patricia Atkinson - Yorkshire Ripper Victim
Prostitute Patricia Atkinson operated from a flat in Bradford. It was at this flat on the 23rd April 1977 that Peter Sutcliffe murdered her.
Patricia Atkinson was killed by four blows to her head with a hammer after which her body was exposed and stabbed repeatedly with a knife or chisel
Detective Chief Superintendent Domaille of the Western Crime Area led the investigation into the crime and established an incident room at the area headquarters at Bradford.
Very little evidence was forthcoming in this case apart from a footprint on a bedsheet apparently made by a wellington boot and similar to a print left on the thigh of the earlier victim, Emily Jackson.
Due to Patricia Atkinson mainly travelling by taxi an inquiry was mounted to interview all taxi drivers working in the Bradford area. Approximately 1,200 were seen but no useful information was obtained. The murder of Patricia Atkinson was linked with other crimes in the series in “Special Notices” issued on the 9th and 30th May 1977 and in which, for the first time, reference was made to an attack on Barbara Miller in March 1975.
This relatively minor attack on a prostitute, of which the police were previously unaware, is not one which Sutcliffe has admitted but was included in the “Special Notice” because Miller, who came forward in response to publicity about the Atkinson murder, identified her attacker as a 35 to 40 year old bearded man with a scarred left hand, driving a Land Rover.
Sutcliffe was later to be discounted as being the Land Rover driver.
