Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe dies - but did he kill Preston and Chorley's Joan Harrison 45 years ago?

Why was notorious serial killer Peter Sutcliffe thought to be responsible for the death of Lancashire prostitute Joan Harrison? Read all about it..
Joan Harrison, once thought to be a victim of the Yorkshire Ripper, who has diedJoan Harrison, once thought to be a victim of the Yorkshire Ripper, who has died
Joan Harrison, once thought to be a victim of the Yorkshire Ripper, who has died

THIS CHAPTER IS TAKEN AND UPDATED FROM THE BOOK 'LANCASHIRE'S MOST NOTORIOUS MURDERS' BY MIKE HILL AND NICOLA ADAM

On a cold, quiet and overcast day the funeral cortege made its way along the damp road, carrying a young mother on her final journey.

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Just a few family members and a handful of other mourners attended the solemn 50 minute church ceremony, before driving down the road in three funeral cars and several private vehicles to commit the body of a beloved daughter, sister, lover and mother to the chilled ground of the cemetery on a murky December day.

Grave of Joan Harrison in Chorley cemeteryGrave of Joan Harrison in Chorley cemetery
Grave of Joan Harrison in Chorley cemetery

Only a pile of wreaths and bouquets, including a large cross of snowy white chrysanthemums and blood red roses, brightened the final resting place of Joan Mary Harrison.

The card attached said simply, “With all our love and remembrances, Mum and Dad.”

At the bottom, “Goodnight and God bless Mummy – Denise and Maxine.”

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The date was December 5, 1975, and the location was Chorley, Lancashire.

Joan HarrisonJoan Harrison
Joan Harrison

The church service at St Mary’s Roman Catholic Church, in Market Street, was less than one mile from the semi-detached home of Joan’s parents in Millfield Road.

But the dignified ceremony belied the horrific truth of how Joan died just a few miles down the road in neighbouring Preston’s notorious ‘Skid Row’.

Little did her family know that her brutal demise was to reverberate down through the years. That nearly four decades, and thousands of police hours, later it would remain one of the most debated unsolved murders in British criminal history.

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Because Joan was not only murdered, she may have been a victim of one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers, the terrifying Yorkshire Ripper.

The question is still unresolved after all these years.

Joan may have been Peter Sutcliffe’s other victim.

Or did the work of a callous Ripper hoaxer lead detectives astray, obliterating the path to her real killer?

Wherever the truth lies, justice has never been done for Joan, who could never have comprehended how her squalid death would create a murder hunt of a magnitude never seen before in Preston.

And it all started as a young woman’s previously respectable life spiralled out of control.

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Joan Harrison, nee Riding, was a bubbly, house-proud and loving, mother-of-two, who worked sporadically as a machinist and shop assistant before her life took a turn for the worse when she began drinking heavily and experimenting with drugs.

Brought up by her parents in Chorley, she attended St Mary’s School in the town, before moving to Preston with her first husband, with whom she had two daughters, Maxine and Denise.

But life at the family home, in Miles Street, near Moor Park, had turned sour, the marriage broke up and her husband died shortly after.

She began a new relationship with a much older man, 34-year-old Wilf Roach, who she moved in with and lived for eight months. But, as her descent into alcoholism and drug-use continued, that relationship foundered when Wilf suspected she was unfaithful.

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Soon after, Joan began falling behind on her mortgage payments on the Miles Street house and eventually lost the property. Her beloved daughters were taken into care, one to live with Joan’s mother, the other with social services.

She then married Paul Raymond Harrison, a carpet fitter from Burholme Road, in the Ribbleton district of Preston.

The 27-year-old later told an inquest into her death he had not lived with his wife for two years because of her heavy drinking and drugs use..

In the months before her death, Joan lived at bedsits in Frenchwood Street and Brackenbury Road before beginning a relationship with her 47-year-old landlord David Keighley at East View, Deepdale.

They were due to be married the following June.

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He later spoke of his love for Joan and explained how he had tried to give her a stable home life but spoke of her terrifying drinking binges.

But that was a side Mr Keighley never saw, “Joan never brought any boyfriends back here, she knew I wouldn’t have it.

“We were very close. We were engaged to be married and I bought her a ring. She had her problems but I was trying to show her the better side of life, like staying at home at night, sitting by the fire and watching television instead of fooling around the town

“I told her I didn’t care what she had done in the past, it was now that counted. I fell in love with her and I wait to get home at night to see her. She got under my skin.”

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But he admitted, “I’m no drinker but she did used to have too much. She sometimes came back tipsy but she was a good tenant and I can’t say a bad word against her.”

Joan’s elder sister Margaret Upton had seen the writing on the wall.

She told the Lancashire Evening Post that in the last six weeks before her death Joan had become a “fleeting memory” to her sister’s family. Once a regular visitor to the household, in Havelock Street, Margaret’s children would innocently tell her, “Auntie Joan is ill again.”

Margaret knew better, her sister often came to the house drunk.

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Warned by doctors about her failing health, Joan turned more to the bottle for solace and to ease the worst effects of her chronic bronchial asthma, which she had battled since childhood.

Margaret said, “I knew something would eventually happen to her... things were going that way but I never thought she would be killed.

“It was pitiful really, the way she went. She had been a good mother and her kids thought she was great though they were not living with her. There was another side to her so many people will never have known and she did love her kids such a lot.”

By 1972, Joan was plumbing the seedy depths of Preston, losing access to her children as she was unable to cope.

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She was dubbed a “complete wreck of a human being” when she appeared on her 25th birthday at Preston magistrates court in 1974.

By the time she was brutally murdered the following year, she had already stared death in the face once – doctors battled successfully to bring her back to life in a Preston intensive care hospital bed after she imbibed a cocktail of drink and drugs, triggering a massive asthma attack. She had turned blue and her heart stopped beating.

Joan was mixing with the dregs of society and spent much of her time in Preston's more downmarket pubs and clubs.

She became addicted to cough mixture, which contained morphine, drinking up to eight bottles a day. Her former husband later told her inquest they had split after she became addicted to drink and drugs.

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Joan was unemployed and lived off social services. Her life became a living nightmare.

Despite rumours she was on the game, Joan was never arrested nor cautioned for prostitution.

But she was known to sleep with men she knew for "favours" whether it be booze or lodgings. She would share drinks with winos and swap small talk with the local hookers.

Often Joan and some of her new low-life associates would use a derelict house in Avenham where much drink was consumed, cider, meths, whatever they could get their hands on.

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She was on skid row. Down and out. She had finally hit rock bottom.

Her family tried to rescue her. But she turned on them too. Her court appearance saw her charged with stealing £51 of property from her sister and forging a drug prescription, increasing the prescribed quantity from 30 to 60 tablets.

Her sister said later, “She got in a terrible state and in the end I felt I had to report her.”

Out of custody, things were not getting better.

Margaret put a stop to her frequent stays at Havelock Street, later saying, “I said that unless she kept going to Alcoholics Anonymous she could not stay with me.”

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Joan was an accident waiting to happen. But her ultimate death was no accident.

On the day she died, she had been working voluntarily in St Mary's Hostel for the homeless where she had a job as a part-time cleaner, washing plates and cleaning up.

It was Thursday November 20, 1975, and after finishing her shift at lunchtime, Joan went out with colleagues for a drinking session at the nearby St Mary’s pub and later moved on to the pubs in the New Hall Lane area.

She was the worse for wear, or as warden Ian Finchen described her, “a little drunk”, when she returned to the hostel later and needed a lie down on one of the rest beds.

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He later described her as, “A kind sort of girl, good-natured as a rule. She knew quite a lot of the residents, had seen the rougher side of life.

“But Joan needed to drink far too much. This was the cause of many of her problems.”

From the hostel, Joan returned to the home in East View, Deepdale, which she shared with Mr Keighley.

Anxious to get a late-night drink, she left again at 10.20pm, walking the damp and badly-lit streets into the town centre. Ten minutes later, at around 10.30pm, wearing a light green three-quarter length coat with an imitation fur collar and brown calf-length brown suede boots, she was seen in Church Street.

It was the last time that Joan would be seen alive.

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The first sign that anything was amiss was when Mr Finchen reported her missing on Saturday morning.

The following day her sister Margaret received a knock on her door that she would never forget.

“Your sister is dead,” a policeman told her.

Joan had been found battered to death in a disused lock-up garage, in Berwick Road, Avenham.

She was just 26.

Her body was discovered lying face down in a pool of blood by mother-of-five Mildred Atkinson who was on her way to the paper shop at 8am on the Sunday.

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Her husband, Ronald, had left only moments earlier to walk to work.

But as Mildred, 47, walked along the street she had walked hundreds of times before, a gust of wind blew a wooden garage door open, to reveal the battered and blood-stained body of a young woman.

She dashed to a telephone box and called the police.

On November 24, just days after the murder, Mrs Atkinson told the Lancashire Evening Post, “The door was blowing open and I saw the body lying face down. There was a coat over her head and I saw blood on the ground beside her.

“I did not know it was a woman and thought it may have been a drunk who had banged his head.”

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Speaking later, she said the memories of that fateful morning will always be with her. “I remember it every time I walk past that garage.

“I go down that street every day. It used to bother me at first. But I still remember it now.”

Joan had been bludgeoned to death in a savage attack and a bite mark had been left on one of her breasts.

She suffered serious injuries caused by a flurry of blows to the head, which had been covered by a coat, her clothes laid about her in almost ritualistic fashion. She was just two miles from her East View flat.

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Later that week, it emerged the killer had sex with Joan before she died. Semen tests showed he belonged to blood group B.

She had been wearing the clothes was she seen in last – the coat and boots with a turquoise crew neck sweater, bright yellow tank top and brown slacks. Round her neck she wore a gold chain and gold loop earrings.

That day police and forensics officers sealed off the bloody scene in the back street and three hours later Joan’s battered body was taken away in a hearse.

When the story of her murder broke, David Graham was a 21-year-old reporter at the Lancashire Evening Post. Years later he recalled the day as if it were yesterday.

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He was sent to the murder scene in Berwick Road, after his colleague Jim Potts picked up the details from his morning calls to the police.

Mr Graham, who now runs a news agency in Blackpool, told the Post, “I remember it was raining, wet, very cold and grey and the sombreness of the weather matched the discovery of the body.

“A constable was standing guard and police had cordoned off the garage itself while scenes of crime officers gathered forensic evidence. You couldn't see in to the garage and I was told the body had already been taken to the mortuary.

“Police were doing house-to-house enquiries and I was speaking to the same neighbours.”

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He recalled at 10.30pm, police held a press conference and released Joan’s name to the media.

The next day, November 25, the headline in the Lancashire Evening Post was “Twilight world of a murder victim.”

It said, “Just off Preston’s town centre Church Street, the Post talked to three men who were about to start a can or two of cider. They knew Mrs Harrison. What they knew is not pleasant.”

David explained, “There was a reaction from society at the time that she was someone putting herself at risk by the very nature of her lifestyle.

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“We followed up avenues to keep the story going and found ourselves knocking on the doors of semi-derelict homes where people slept rough.

“Everywhere we went with connections to Joan was rundown.

“Some of the homes where people slept rough were covered in cider bottles.

“We found her circle of friends were drunks and tramps who spent their time around Church Street and out towards Peel Street.”

He said the police encountered similar difficulties, having problems tracing Mrs Harrison's movements before her murder because of her lifestyle on the seedier side of Preston life.

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Many potential interviewees had short memories, blurred by drink and nights roughing it in derelict property.

David added, “Police had a difficult time when talking to her friends as most didn't know what day it was, let alone what they were doing at 9pm the previous Thursday.

“It was a mental impossibility to remember any hard facts as many were floating on a sea of alcohol.”

One of the prime suspects in the early investigation was Mrs Harrison's landlord and lover David Keighley but he was later ruled out after offering a cast-iron alibi.

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But he was not the only one of Joan’s former lovers to fall under suspicion.

Years later her former boyfriend Wilf Roach told of his time as the prime suspect. He was eventually ruled out following a saliva test.

Thirty years after Joan’s murder he told the Lancashire Evening Post he had been head over heels in love with her.

He remembered Joan as a beautiful and bubbly mother-of-two whose life was eventually overtaken by drink. But they split up months into the relationship after the labourer became jealous of her life spent away from him in Preston's bars, suspecting her of sleeping with other men.

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He found out about her death from the front page of the Lancashire Evening Post, brought home by his brother, Bill.

His heartbreak turned to horror soon after when he found himself a suspect for her brutal murder.

Mr Roach recalled, “Detectives turned up at my flat twice after the murder and spoke to me at work so I felt like the number one suspect for a time.

“Thirty years on and I would like nothing better than to know whoever did this has got what's coming to them.”

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He said, “I have always maintained the girl who died was not the same girl I knew and loved.

“She was a gorgeous girl, warm and loving and a good mum. But she changed after turning to drink and was what I would call a good time girl.

“I loved her very much and if things had worked out differently I would have asked her to marry me. “

He admitted that in the 1970s they were all dabbling in drink and drugs.

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“I first met her as I had some amphetamines to sell that I didn't want.

“She would use it to give her the energy to keep her house tidy but after drink took control, she let things slip and missed the re-mortgage payments and eventually they took the house off her and her kids.

“She moved in with her sister Margaret Upton, but Joan began selling ornaments and the kids' toys to get money for drink.

“We split up eventually as she began going out more and more to the pub with her sister's husband, who played music around the town.

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“It made me jealous and we had an argument. I was heartbroken when she finished it. “I was quite a lot older than her and I don't think her parents approved. I was a registered drug addict but I decided to give it up after the relationship ended, which meant giving up my lifestyle and friends in those circles.

“Joan just carried on drinking so I hadn't seen her in a while before she died.”

Meanwhile, a squad of 80 detectives moved in, with officers drawn from right across Lancashire. Police interviewed almost 100,000 people, and took more than 6,000 statements and saliva samples.

The rare blood group of her killer – identified through the bite marks and semen – allowed police to rule out thousands of men who volunteered or who were tracked down to be tested.

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The discovery that Joan had sex before she died triggered a probe into the thriving red light district of Avenham, amid theories that the murderer could have been a client or a prostitute-hater.

The man leading the murder inquiry, Detective Superintendent Wilf Brooks, told the Lancashire Evening Post, “I am now satisfied that there are sexual implications to this murder. The woman had had sex before she died.”

In fact Joan had had sexual activity with at least five men.

A special lorry squad – to talk to long distance drivers as they rolled in and out of town – was set up, also targeting ship’s crews and overnight guests at hotels and guest houses.

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When Joans’s brown purse – believed stolen - was recovered by a member of public in Avenham Park the find sparked a massive fingertip search with dogs of the park, including draining the pond to look for clues. But to no avail.

A hunt for Joan’s missing jewellery - two gold rings and an engagement ring with three stones set in platinum, cigarette lighters and several silver and chrome bracelets - proved a tougher task.

Her black, shiny, handbag was found seven months later in the Avenham area of Preston. But the contents were missing.

A drunken confession to the murder made by a young man in a pub, known to locals as the ‘bar room boaster’, was soon ruled out.

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Even the post mortem examination, carried out straight away on the body, was unable to pinpoint an exact cause or time of death.

As the hunt moved into its second week Det Supt Brooks, then second in command of Lancashire CID, admitted it had turned into a “hard slog”.

He told the Post how many members of the murder team had sacrificed home and family life, burning both ends of the CID candle, convinced they would clinch a result on the case. Meanwhile, hundreds of lines of inquiries were followed and eliminated, with numerous unreliable sightings taken into account

Weeks of routine, methodical checking, re-interviewing, tracing outstanding witnesses was undertaken. Looking for an anonymous tip or a broken alibi, re-visiting pubs and clubs, going over and over statements and working alongside regional crime squads across the country in the hunt for lines of inquiry.

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Three weeks, four, five and as time went on Joan’s death remained a riddle. Police still had no serious leads.

Christmas came and went and still there was no light at the end of the tunnel for investigating officers or any form of closure for Joan’s family.

Despite a massive probe into Preston’s twilight world, sifting through the lives of tramps, winos and down and outs, the dragnet still failed to find Joan’s killer.

One year later, in November 1976, and her killer had not been found.

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But Wilf Brooks, still heading the investigation, despite his promotion to detective chief superintendent and head of Lancashire CID, was no less determined to crack the case, despite the fact that the number of police assigned to the case had gradually been eroded.

“We are still intent on tracing the killer of Joan Harrison,” he vowed.

“Information about the incident is still coming in but we would obviously welcome any further help from members of the public.”

Then, a remarkable twist to the story that turned a lowlife murder into national news still discussed to this day.

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Three weeks before Joan was killed Wilma McCann, 28, was struck twice with a hammer then stabbed 15 times and her body dumped in a playing field, in Leeds.

The mother-of-four was the first victim killed by the Yorkshire Ripper.

Over the following five years the serial killer struck 20 at least times butchering 13 women to death and leaving others seriously injured.

The crime spree shocked the nation and left women living across the north of England in the grip of terror.

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In March 1978 the head of the ongoing Ripper Squad, West Yorkshire Constabulary’s assistant chief constable George Oldfield received the first of three letters from a man claiming to be the feared serial killer.

‘Dear Sir, I’m sorry I can’t give my name for obvious reasons. I am the Ripper. I’ve been dubbed a maniac by the press but not by you, you call me clever and I am.’

It went on:

…Up to number eight now you say seven but remember Preston 75, get about a bit you know.’

And he signed off

Yours respectfully, Jack the Ripper.

When there was no public sign George Oldfield had received the chilling message, the man calling himself the Ripper put pen to paper again, this time posting the letter to the Daily Mirror.

Dear Sir,

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I have already written to Chief Constable George Oldfield ‘a man I respect’ concerning the recent Ripper murders. I told him and I am telling you to warn them whores I will strike again and soon when heat cools off.

..Up to number eight now you say seven but remember Preston 75.

..Yours respectfully, Jack the Ripper

When the letter arrived at the Daily Mirror newsroom, it caused a storm and the editors wanted to publish. But instead they approached George Oldfield, who was shocked, revealing he had never even received the initial letter. After digging into the police internal mail system, it was uncovered.

After protracted negotiations, staff at the Mirror agreed to sit on the story for a year to help police investigations.

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So just under a year later, the letter had no publicity and the ‘Ripper’ decided to make contact again. In March 1979 another letter was received.

‘Dear Officer,

‘Sorry I haven’t written, about a year to be exact, but I haven’t been up north for quite a while. I wasn’t kidding last time I wrote..’

Frustrated with a lack of publicity, the next contact he made put his voice to his claims for the first time, sending in a tape cassette with a chilling recording.

The tape reached George Oldfield on June 17, 1979.

In his North East accent the man claiming to be the Ripper appeared to be playing a strange game of cat and mouse.

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The speaker said in a sarcastic tone: "I'm Jack. I see you are still having no luck catching me. I have the greatest respect for you George, but Lord! You are no nearer catching me now than four years ago when I started. No good looking for fingerprints."

The message ended with laughter: “Ha.ha.ha!” The recording, finished with a clip from the song Thank You For Being A Friend, by Andrew Gold, was marked 'From Jack the Ripper'.

The handwritten letters and an audio tape sent in caused a storm.

Not only did it swing the spotlight back on to the Joan Harrison case, marking her out as a possible Ripper victim, but it also switched the emphasis of the massive Ripper inquiry over to the North East of England.

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The tape, heavily edited from 10 minutes to two, was played to the media in a bid to trace the speaker.

In a press conference held at a lecture theatre at the police academy at Bishopsgarth, Wakefield, George Oldfield sat alone, on a table in front of him a tape player. When he pressed play, the atmosphere was electric.

Oldfield told the assembled press, “I believe we have now got the break we are looking for in our hunt for the so-called Yorkshire Ripper.”

The story was huge.

And the nation was agog.

Yorkshire police launched a frantic bid to identify him, playing his voice again and again to the enthralled public and pouring vast amounts of their limited resources into tracking him down.

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As former Lancashire Evening Post reporter David Graham recounted, the story of Joan’s murder now took on a life of its own.

“When links arose with the Yorkshire Ripper killings the case began to boil instead of simmer.

“It gave the investigating team in Preston a chance to pass the buck down the line to West Yorkshire.”

West Yorkshire Police was initially convinced by the letters and tape and switched the search to Sunderland.

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It was to be a costly and tragic mistake that cost the police thousands of man-hours and thousands of pounds, sending detectives up a blind alley and possibly costing three more women their lives.

For 18 months they targeted the area, during which time, Sutcliffe, the real Yorkshire Ripper, was interviewed and eliminated because he did not have a North East accent.

Meanwhile in 1979, the Lancashire Evening Post, reported that the Ripper was thought to be responsible for Joan’s murder.

‘Skid Row link-up in Ripper hunt,’ said the headline.

The story revealed a top level meeting between Lancashire CID and their counterparts in Yorkshire had led to a sharing of information.

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It said, “They decided a close similarity existed between the Ripper murders and killing of mother-of-two Joan Harrison. That attack came less than a month after the first Ripper murders.”

Det Supt Donald Griffiths told the Post, “There is certainly a marked similarity in the way all the people were attacked and killed. And it could well be the work of the same person.”

There was much to link her violent killing with those of the man who called himself the Ripper.

He knew about her murder – and tests showed Joan's attacker belonged to the rare blood group B secretor – matching the blood grouping of the author of the letters. The blood group is shared by just 6% of the population.

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The crime scene echoed a Ripper murder with Joan’s boots taken off and placed on top of the rear of her thigh, her body covered with a coat.

The bite mark on her breast was similar to that of Ripper victim Josephine Whitaker.

Joan’s abdominal injuries mirrored those of another Ripper victim, 16-year-old Jayne MacDonald.

The use of a hammer as a murder weapon was a Ripper trademark.

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And Joan was considered to be a prostitute, just like most of the Yorkshire killer’s victims.

Det Chief Supt Brooks said, “In the light of this new information, what was a distinct possibility that the Ripper killed her has now become a probability.”

He speculated on why the Ripper would send such a tape and letters, “He could want to get caught or he could be throwing down the gauntlet. There could be all sorts of reasons.”

In November 1979 the Lancashire Evening Post’s own offices were thrown into the media glare when a man with a Wearside accent rang in to talk about his crimes.

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The boastful conversation with an Evening Post receptionist at the paper’s former Fishergate office was recorded and later played to police and the Post’s then editor Barry Askew.

The voice told the receptionist, “I’m Jack,” adding, “These fellows the police are not very clever.”

He claimed he had been to Preston already and said he would strike again soon in the town and in nearby Wigan. The receptionist recognised the voice as being the same as that played on the infamous Ripper tape.

The Evening Post story headline was ‘Ripper voice warns Post: I’ll be back’.

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The story continued, ‘Experienced telephonists are convinced it was no hoax. Only hours before they had listened to a police tape of the Ripper’s voice. “It was identical,” they asserted.

It said: “I have a message for George. I will strike again in Preston or Wigan. Tell George he has not got me yet.”

The switchboard operator, who was not named in the paper, told the Post reporter, “I had been listening to the tape of the Ripper’s voice earlier this morning and I am sure the voice was the same. It had the same accent and the man even paused in the same way as the voice on the tape. I felt really shaken up afterwards.”

In the meantime, the frightening news that the Ripper had struck in Preston – and was threatening to do so again - sent shockwaves through the local community and the seamy underworld that had been Joan’s life.

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Such was the fear inspired by the Yorkshire Ripper and the possibility he had struck in Preston, the town's street sex trade was all but killed off for more than two decades.

Back then Preston was a busy port and there had been plenty of work for the women in their 20s and 30s who touted for business in the Church Street, Manchester Road and Shepherd Street areas.

Preston was a magnet for kerb-crawlers and punters, with sailors and lorry drivers passing through the town regularly.

For the street girls, the money was good, but when the Preston Ripper story broke, fear drove them off the streets almost overnight.

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One prostitute, Mary, told the Evening Post she worked the same patch as Joan and said she was lucky to be alive.

She herself was injured when a “mush” – a man prepared to pay cash for sex – refused to hand over the cash and a scuffle developed, in which she was stabbed.

Another said she no longer took men inside strange buildings, saying, “Now I just settle for £10 a time in the back of somebody’s car.”

Another prostitute, Barbara, said, “I always took men back to my flat so I was in screaming distance if necessary. Just after Joan’s death we were always talking about the killer. Every night I go to bed the Ripper tape goes through my mind.”

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Ripper squad detectives visited Preston repeatedly, even inviting winos and prostitutes to a special briefing on the killer's macabre tape message.

But then rumours surfaced that the letters and the tape may well be a hoax. An anonymous tip-off to the Sunderland incident room in 1979 claimed it was fake and by winter that year speculation was rife, some police officers voicing their doubts openly.

In turn the speculation cast heavy doubts over any links between Joan’s murder and the Ripper. And several factors - that Joan was not stabbed and the killer had sex with her before the attack – added to the argument. Then on January 5, 1981, the LEP reported that the Yorkshire Ripper has finally been caught and had been detained by police the day before.

‘Ripper: Man held’ screamed the headline.

The following day, with the Ripper denying Joan’s murder, the Evening Post headline was ‘Preston killer still on run.’, with Det Chf Insp Brookes telling the Post there was always a possibility the letters and tape were a hoax.

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He added, “I want to stress that our inquiries into the death of Joan Harrison will continue elsewhere.”

Then the Yorkshire Ripper, named as 35-year-old lorry driver Peter Sutcliffe, from Bradford appeared in court in connection with a string of murders across Yorkshire and Greater Manchester.

He was sentenced to life imprisonment admitting carrying out 13 killings, but crucially, not that of Joan Harrison. Under interrogation, he told police they could not connect him to the crime.

Added to the fact that his blood group was B – not B secretor – it looked increasingly unlikely he was her killer. Some facts were still puzzling though.

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When Sutcliffe was eventually detained, he had a gap in his teeth which could have matched marks on Mrs Harrison's body. The possibility that Joan was hit in the head with a ball hammer, a weapon used by Sutcliffe, aroused suspicion as did the fact her shoes were taken off and placed on her legs, again a trait of Sutcliffe’s murders.

The scene of Joan’s murder also had chilling similarities to the northern back streets trawled by Sutcliffe in his hunt for victims.

But at his trial at London’s Old Bailey, attempts were made to put any links between the crimes to bed.

The judge told the court, “The scent was falsified by a cynical, almost inhuman hoaxer – I refer to the tape and letters. I express the hope that one day he may be exposed.”

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After the trial the investigations into both Joan Harrison’s murder and the Ripper hoaxer – dubbed Wearside Jack – went quiet.

At the end of 1981 the Wearside Jack inquiry was wound down.

Embarrassed by the costly red herring, the police left the trail of Wearside Jack to go stale, brushing aside the possibility that he could have been Joan’s real killer. Although both cases remained open, police resources were diverted elsewhere. So the scent went cold, leaving the field open for speculation and investigation by several journalists determined to get to the bottom of the mystery.

One such journalist was Patrick Lavelle, an investigative journalist who for many years maintained Peter Sutcliffe was Joan Harrison's killer. He has now changed his mind.

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In one of his three books on the subject "The Shadow of the Ripper" and during television documentaries he claimed the Ripper carried out the killing in the company of another man - the same man who sent hoax letters and a tape to police.

His past theories, rejected by police, Mr Lavelle said the links between the Ripper killings and Joan Harrison's death were more than coincidence.

In his book, he calls for Sutcliffe to be questioned about her death. He told the Evening Post in 2003 that Sutcliffe would never admit to killing Joan because of his loyalty to a "friend" present at the time.

But on the 30th anniversary of the day Joan’s body was discovered, he was to tell the Lancashire Evening Post, “The murder has been a running story and what I thought originally does not really stand now because of new evidence.

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“I hope that this new evidence and scientific developments will see the case eventually solved.“I now believe Wearside Jack, who sent letters and a tape to police claiming to be the Yorkshire Ripper, was just a hoaxer who got information from national newspapers and used phraseology of the Ripper to write his letters.”

And Mr Lavelle was not the only author to have claimed to have unearthed the truth behind the Preston murder.

Another man, Irish author Noel O'Gara, claimed to be able to prove that although Sutcliffe carried out some of the killings, a second, ‘real Ripper’, was on the loose and responsible for killing Joan.

Mr O’Gara claimed, “Both Leeds prostitute Wilma McCann and Mrs Harrison had been violently murdered and robbed of their jewellery. Both had been sexually assaulted and both had their boots removed and coats draped over their dead bodies.”

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In March, 1977, Scots girl Irene Richardson was also found murdered in Leeds with the same bite mark in her left breast.

By the time Sutcliffe was arrested in 1980 building society clerk Josephine Whittaker had also been killed and had the same bite mark on the breast.

According to O’Gara, although Sutcliffe had a gap in his front teeth, the imprint did not match those on the murdered women. His blood group also differed from that found in the saliva and he was cleared of the Harrison murder.

But, Mr O’Gara disputes, if the original murder victims bore identical teeth marks and saliva traces to those on Joan's body, they must have been committed by the same person.

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Mr O’Gara said, “If Sutcliffe had not killed Mrs Harrison, he could not and did not kill the prostitutes. It was well known that there was a copy-cat killer at the time and I believe Sutcliffe was this copy-cat killer.”

When Sutcliffe was caught, Sir Lawrence Byford, an inspector of constabulary, concluded the West Yorkshire Police incident room was “sadly inefficient” which lead to a failure to pinpoint the Bradford man as a prime suspect.

His report – written in 1982 but only coming to light in 2006 through the Freedom of Information Act - led to a complete overhaul of the way murders are investigated and the introduction of the computer system Holmes to put on one database all murders in the UK.

The report also revealed a new twist.

A chilling painting by Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe which reopened the decades long debate - did he kill Joan?

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The picture, created behind bars by the serial killer, bears an eerie similarity to one of Preston's main streets and the cafe in the foreground is called Joan's.

The Byford report said Sutcliffe probably did commit more attacks than the 13 killings and seven attempts he admitted pointing to an “unexplained lull” in his activities between 1969 and 1975.

It said a number of assaults on women between 1969 and 1980 “clearly fall” into the pattern of Sutcliffe's method of working. And this artwork painted by the killer shows an unnamed street with a distinctly 1970s feel which is similar to the Preston that Joan would have known.

The likeness to an archive LEP photograph of the city's main street Fishergate, where Joan was a familiar face to pub goers and landlords, was unmistakeable.

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The painting was dominated by a church which bears a similarity to the city's Minster and in the foreground, two men chat outside a cafe called Joan's.

Detectives in Preston say their colleagues investigating the case saw the findings of the report at the time.

Det Insp Chris Wilde of Preston CID, who had not seen the painting, told the Evening Post, “Whether a picture that looked a bit like Preston would be damning evidence, I don't know.

“It does seem a bit weird that there is a cafe called Joan's.

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“But it might just be his sick twisted mind and he would do something like that just to get us all doing what we are doing now.

“I can say with some degree of certainty that Peter Sutcliffe was suspected of killing Joan Harrison back in the 1970s.

“He has been questioned about it but has always denied it regularly."

Twenty years after her death, police said the police file was still open.

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Det Chief Insp Bill Hacking, head of Lancashire CID in November 1995, told the Post then, “It was 20 years ago, but it is still a life that has been lost and the file remains open.”

He added the Yorkshire Ripper connection were now closed down, saying police “were as satisfied as we could be that he was not responsible.”

It was to be almost 25 years after Sutcliffe went to prison for life that Wearside Jack would hit the front pages again.

A cold case review by West Yorkshire police’s new homicide and enquiry team using new DNA and forensic technology to examine letters and envelopes, led detectives to a two bed-roomed terraced house in Flodden Road, Sunderland, and an alcoholic former hospital porter and security guard John Humble.

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In October 2005 the 49-year-old unemployed divorcee – blood type B secretor - was arrested on suspicion of attempting to pervert the course of justice by posing as the Yorkshire Ripper.

Rumours immediately spread that he would be questioned about Joan’s murder but they fell flat when police just charged him with perverting the course of justice.

John Humble admitted he was Wearside Jack.

In March 2006 he appeared in Leeds Crown Court in front of packed press and public galleries, pleading not guilty to four counts of perverting the course of justice.

He claimed he had retracted his hoax claims but was found guilty and jailed.

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Then in 2011, police in Lancashire announced they may have solved themurder case thanks to advances in DNA evidence.

Detectives said DNA found at the scene matched that of Christopher Smith from Leeds, who died in 2008 aged 60.

The Crown Prosecution Service said police had enough evidence to charge him with murder if he were still alive.

Was the mystery finally solved?

45 years on from Joan's death and the Ripper has died but there will always be question mark over his involvement in Joan's death.

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To some she was a prostitute, to others simply a good-time girl who had a lot of friends.

But she was a young woman who still had a chance of bringing her life back on track, if it had not been stolen away from her on that cold winter day.

THIS CHAPTER IS TAKEN FROM THE BOOK 'LANCASHIRE'S MOST NOTORIOUS MURDERS' BY MIKE HILL AND NICOLA ADAM

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