Theresa Sykes - Yorkshire Ripper Victim

In the early evening of Wednesday 5th, November, 1980, sixteen-year-old Theresa Sykes left the flat she shared with her boyfriend and baby son in Willwood Avenue, Huddersfield.

Theresa walked to a nearby grocery shop on the main road to buy a packet of cigarettes.

As she was on her way back home Peter Sutcliffe was watching her from inside a telephone box. Sutcliffe started to follow her. As Theresa was close to home she saw Sutcliffe appear from the evening shadows. She later recalled that he had a long, thin face and neatly trimmed beard. Sutcliffe then disappeared down a nearby ginnel. Suddenly, he reappeared, and struck Theresa on the back of the head with a metal hammer.

Theresa's screams were heard by neighbours and by her boyfriend, Jim Furey, who was a fitness fanatic.

As Sutcliffe took off Furey gave pursuit. The Yorkshire Ripper hid in a garden until his pursuer gave up and he felt it was safe to crawl out.

Theresa Sykes spent weeks in a specialist neurosurgical unit at Chapel Allerton Hospital in Leeds.Theresa had recalled the colour of her attacker's beard and moustache as ginger. This caused the Ripper Squad to discount this attack as a Ripper attack.

Theresa's attack was within a few hundred yards of a local police station.

This crime was investigated by Detective Superintendent Hickley from an incident room at Huddersfield and was not publicly linked with the Ripper series.

It was after this attack that Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, had decided that a shake-up of the Ripper Inquiry was required.