Wearside Jack — the hoaxer who diverted the hunt for a serial killer

Between 1978 and 1979, while detectives in the north of England searched for the serial killer the press called the Yorkshire Ripper, an unemployed labourer from Sunderland named John Samuel Humble sent three taunting letters and an audio cassette claiming to be the murderer. He was not. He had killed no one. But his hoax — and in particular a tape, posted in June 1979 to the assistant chief constable leading the inquiry, that opened “I’m Jack” in a distinct Wearside accent — persuaded the inquiry’s senior officers that they were hearing the real killer’s voice. They steered the manhunt toward the north-east, publicised the tape and letters nationally, and began discounting suspects whose accents and handwriting did not match. The real killer, Peter Sutcliffe, a lorry driver from Bradford in West Yorkshire, did not have that accent. He was interviewed and released, and he killed again.

The cost of the diversion was measured in lives. Sutcliffe was ultimately convicted of murdering thirteen women and attempting to murder seven others between 1975 and 1981. After the hoax tape arrived in June 1979, he murdered three more women and attacked others before his chance arrest in January 1981 ended the inquiry. The hoax did not create Sutcliffe, and responsibility for the murders is his alone, but credible analyses — including the official review that followed — concluded that the false trail consumed vast investigative resources and helped the real killer remain at large longer than he might otherwise have done.

Humble was not identified for more than a quarter of a century. The breakthrough came not from the voice but from the gum on the envelopes he had licked. DNA recovered from the saliva on the hoax mailings, preserved in a forensic archive, was loaded onto the national database during a cold-case review and matched a sample Humble had given after a minor arrest years earlier. He was arrested in October 2005, and in March 2006, at Leeds Crown Court, he pleaded guilty to four counts of perverting the course of justice and was sentenced to eight years in prison.

This is a case in which credulity stood adjacent to a body count not of its own making. The hoax was believed because it arrived dressed in the markers investigators most wanted — a confident voice, pinpoint local detail, a forensic coincidence — and because the men leading the hunt invested their authority in its authenticity. The women Sutcliffe killed and harmed, and their families, are the gravest part of this record, and the deception’s true weight is measured against them.