Wearside Jack - Wearside Accent

Wearside Accent

On 17 June 1979, Humble sent a cassette to Assistant Chief Constable Oldfield, where he introduced himself as Jack and claimed responsibility for the Ripper murders to that point.

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. I reckon your boys are letting you down, George. They can't be much good, can they?

The cassette ended with a segment from "Thank You for Being a Friend" by Andrew Gold. The police focused on Humble's Wearside accent. Together with voice analysts they decided (based on dialectology) that the accent was distinctive to the Castletown area of Sunderland. This led to 40,000 men being investigated – to no avail as the real killer actually came from Bradford, approximately 78 miles southwest. Police also commenced a substantial publicity campaign, including 'Dial-the-Ripper' hotlines, billboards, and full page ads in newspapers. Around £1 million was invested into the publicity campaign alone.

Peter Sutcliffe (who actually committed the murders) was interviewed about the murders a total of nine times, both before and after Humble's correspondence, before he finally confessed to the crimes in January 1981. The police concentration on the voice on the tape as a point of elimination rather than as a line of enquiry was one criticism of a notoriously botched police investigation. The satirical magazine Private Eye (no. 463 of 14 September 1979) reported under the headline "STOP PRESS: Ripper – 'I'm a woman'" the receipt of "a video cassette in which (the Ripper) claims, in a strong Irish accent, to be the Leader of the Liberal Party".