Jim Hobson, police detective who formed a ‘super squad’ to catch the Yorkshire Ripper – obituary
Jim Hobson, who has died aged 96, was the police officer heading the investigation into the murders committed by the Yorkshire Ripper when Peter Sutcliffe was arrested for them in 1981; Sutcliffe was subsequently convicted of causing the deaths during the previous six years of 13 women and the attempted murder of seven more.
Hobson had only been appointed to his post some weeks earlier, but he had been a key member of the inquiry team for several years as head of CID in Leeds. Indeed, in that capacity he had unknowingly investigated some of Sutcliffe’s first attacks.
He had worked under Dennis Hoban, who had been among the first to suspect the murders were linked but had subsequently died of diabetes. Hobson had then been deputy to Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield, the inquiry’s leader, until the latter was also sidelined by ill health.
It was the fury in November 1980 of Margaret Thatcher, then Prime Minister, at the failure of the West Yorkshire force to catch the Ripper that had led to Hobson being promoted. He formed a “super squad” to find the killer, but Sutcliffe’s arrest only a few weeks later was almost accidental.
Driving with a prostitute in his car, he was stopped in Sheffield for having false number plates. It was only some time later that an officer following a hunch found a knife and hammer that Sutcliffe had thrown into bushes while being questioned at the scene. After several days of being interviewed at a police station in West Yorkshire about these events, Sutcliffe unexpectedly confessed to being the Ripper.
The task of Hobson and his colleagues had undoubtedly been made considerably more difficult by the scale of the operation in which they were involved and by the volume of information it generated in an age before computers revolutionised police work. The major incident room at Millgarth held four tons of paper – the floors had had to be reinforced – and at any one time thousands of records remained to be logged and cross-referenced.
A hoax tape recording also convinced Oldfield that the killer was from Wearside rather than being local, leading senior officers to discount evidence that might have pointed to Sutcliffe sooner. He had already been interviewed about the crimes nine times in the course of the investigation.
Yet in recent years, criticism has also been levelled at the investigating officers for their prejudices towards those of the victims who were prostitutes, as initially the majority of those attacked by Sutcliffe were.
At a press conference in 1979 which followed the killing of a student, Barbara Leach, Hobson, who had a daughter, said that the murderer “has made it clear that he hates prostitutes. Many people do. We, as a police force, will continue to arrest prostitutes. But the Ripper is now killing innocent girls.”
It was widely felt by relatives and friends of the earlier victims that the view that prostitutes were somehow deserving of their fate had at first led the force to not take their deaths seriously enough.
Moreover, the assumption that the Ripper only targeted sex workers had prompted the police to ignore detailed descriptions of the killer – Sutcliffe – by two survivors of his early attacks on the grounds that they were not prostitutes. A report in 1982 by Lawrence Byford, the Inspector of Constabulary, strongly criticised the handling of the inquiry, the choice of Oldfield to lead it and the failings of the index system.
This led to major changes in future investigations. In 2020, following Sutcliffe’s death in prison, West Yorkshire Police apologised to the families of his victims for the “language, tone and terminology” used by it at the time of the investigation.
James Hobson was born at Gipton, in Leeds, on April 6 1927. He left school without qualifications, but having qualified in signals while in the Sea Cadets he joined the Royal Navy at 16. He sailed on convoys to Murmansk, which subsequently brought him a medal from the Russians, and after the war served in the Mediterranean at the time of the end of the British Mandate over Palestine.
He joined the police in 1951 and by the mid-1970s had risen to the rank of detective chief-superintendent. Not a man to stand for any nonsense, he was commended for his work by judges and chief constables on 10 occasions. After retiring, he headed up security for a chain of shoe shops.
A dedicated Rotarian and a champion crown green bowler into his nineties, Hobson never lost interest in his most famous case. He felt, however, that the recent ITV drama about it, The Long Shadow, in which he was portrayed by Lee Ingleby, was not accurate to his satisfaction.
His wife, Joan, whom he married in 1950, died in 2010. Their daughter survives him.
Jim Hobson, born April 6 1927, died December 12 2023
