I escaped the Yorkshire Ripper – but racist cops refused to believe he was white… I’ll never forget how I was treated
RECALLING the terrifying moment she was brutally attacked by the Yorkshire Ripper, Marcella Claxton’s hand goes to her head as pain shoots across her scalp.
The mental anguish of the near-fatal assault has never left her, but it is the physical agony which is a constant reminder.
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Over the decades, her torment has been compounded by the fact cops wouldn’t listen as she desperately tried to point them to her attacker — leaving him free to slaughter 10 more women.
Today, nearly 50 years after serial killer Peter Sutcliffe hit her over the head with a heavy spanner, Marcella still suffers crippling, daily headaches.
She also has blackouts, which have led to falls that landed her in hospital and forced her to quit her job.
ITV’s gripping drama The Long Shadow, which centres on the hunt for Sutcliffe, begins on Monday.
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But retired cleaner Marcella, 67, describes the real-life torment that his surviving victims have to endure.
She said: “Peter Sutcliffe ruined my life — I can never escape what he did to me. I suffer pain every day, exactly where he hit me.
“I have headaches and blackouts, daily reminders of what happened.
“The pain is really sharp — it goes all along the top of my head, from the front to the back.
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“Sometimes it feels like my head’s going to burst open. One time it was that bad, I put my head in the freezer.”
Sutcliffe had already murdered two women and attacked at least four others when he spotted Marcella as he scoured the streets of Chapeltown, Leeds, in May 1976 for his next victim.
Now a mum of three with six grandchildren, she was on her way home from a party when a driver pulled up and asked if she wanted a lift.
Oblivious to his murderous intent, Marcella accepted the offer, revealing: “I obviously had no idea it was the Yorkshire Ripper, otherwise I wouldn’t have got in.
“All I saw was a white man with black hair and beard and dark eyes.
‘I thought I’d die’
“His eyes made him look a bit scary, but I got in. Quite soon I realised we weren’t heading towards my home.
“He was driving me towards Roundhay Park in Leeds.
“I was getting more and more scared about what was going to happen as I knew two women had been murdered close by.
“I tried to open the doors to get out, but I couldn’t.”
When Sutcliffe parked up, frightened Marcella told him that she needed the loo.
But as she walked over to a bush and crouched down, Sutcliffe opened his boot and took hold of a weapon.
She recalled: “I was bursting, but when I bent down he hit me over the head with a spanner.
“The pain was awful and there was blood everywhere. I thought I was going to die and he drove away, leaving me for dead. It was deserted, there was no one on the street to help me.
“I crawled to a phone box to call an ambulance.
“They told me to stay where I was, but while I was waiting I realised that he had returned.”
Marcella watched in horror as Sutcliffe’s white car drove slowly back to the spot where he had left her.
She crouched down in the phone box, terrified he would spot her — a scene portrayed in The Long Shadow with almost unbearable tension.
As with the other violent assaults, the programme saves the viewer from the brutal detail.
The attack is not shown and, instead, the camera focuses on an anguished 999 operator as she urges Marcella to hide from her returning assailant.
It is one of the most dramatic scenes in the series and, for Marcella, the memory of it remains vivid.
She recalled: “I was convinced he had come back to check I was dead — or to finish me off if I wasn’t.
“I tried to hide as best I could and thankfully he drove away.”
Marcella — who is played in the seven-part drama by relative newcomer Jasmine Lee-Jones — was taken to hospital for emergency surgery.
But her ordeal was just beginning as bungling cops missed an early opportunity to catch the Ripper.
Bigoted officers wrongly assumed she was a prostitute and refused to accept she had been attacked by a white man, pushing her to say he was black.
Detectives also dismissed an artist’s impression she helped create which later turned out to be the spitting image of Sutcliffe.
The monster — who would hit his victims over the head with a hammer then mutilate their bodies with a knife and screwdriver — died in November 2020 of Covid.
He had been transferred to hospital from jail, where he was serving a whole life term for his crimes.
Marcella said: “If the police had listened to me, they could have caught him. There would have been no more killing.
“I was in hospital and they asked me what he looked like.
“I told them and they said, ‘No, he was black’, and I said, ‘No he wasn’t’.
“They asked me the same things over and over, but they didn’t listen — they didn’t believe me.
“They insisted it must have been a black man. I guess they must have been racist.
“If only they had listened to the description I gave, they might have caught him earlier and all those other poor women would not have died.”
Married Sutcliffe began his killing spree in October 1975.
His first known victim was 28-year-old mum of four Wilma McCann in Leeds.
He then murdered Emily Jackson, 42, in 1976.
During 1977, he killed sex workers Irene Richardson, 28, and Patricia Atkinson, 32, as well as shop assistant Jayne MacDonald, 16.
‘Years of trauma’
Later the same year, Sutcliffe murdered Jean Jordan, 20, in Manchester.
He was interviewed by police but provided an alibi placing him at a family party.
In 1978 he killed prostitutes Yvonne Pearson, 21, Helen Rytka, 18, and Vera Millward, 40.
Two years later, after the slaying of building society worker Josephine Whitaker, 19, cops interviewed Sutcliffe for a FIFTH time.
But he was freed after his handwriting failed to match that in letters written by hoaxer “Wearside Jack”.
Sutcliffe went on to murder student Barbara Leach, 20, in 1979, then civil servant Marguerite Walls, 47, followed by Jacqueline Hill, 20, who was studying for an English degree, in 1980.
He was caught in 1981. Marcella was only acknowledged as a Ripper victim after Sutcliffe was arrested and confessed to her attack.
He was later sentenced to life behind bars for 13 murders and seven attempted murders between 1975 and 1980.
It was a miracle that Marcella survived her assault.
She needed 54 stitches in gaping wounds and would endure years of physical and mental trauma, revealing: “Everyone thought I was a prostitute because I had been attacked by the Ripper.
“I wasn’t. But people gave me dirty looks, even my own parents.
“And a few weeks after the attack, I lost my unborn baby.
“Sutcliffe affected my life in so many ways. Nothing was the same again.
“I recently retired from my job as a school cleaner after blacking out and falling when I was on my own.
“Another time, I blacked out in my garden and my neighbour found me.
“On another occasion I fell on some steps and had to go to hospital.
“The headaches keep me awake at night as well. They have been keeping me awake for years.”
The Long Shadow, with an impressive cast including Toby Jones, David Morrissey and Stephen Tompkinson, is set to be one of the TV hits of the year.
Marcella is pleased the drama highlights the many police failings.
She said: “I am glad the TV shows how terrible the police were, the racism and sexism. I hope lessons have been learned.”
- The Long Shadow, on ITV1 and ITVX, starts on Monday at 9pm.
VICTIMS AT THE SHOW’S HEART
THE Long Shadow hits all the right notes from the very first scene.
Set against a grim 1970s backdrop, when Britain was crippled by strikes and a cost-of-living crisis, the drama instantly builds a brooding, dramatic tension.
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Power cuts and a three-day week had led to Britain being dubbed the sick man of Europe as mothers struggled to feed their kids.
And the country’s most notorious serial killer was about to launch his five-year reign of terror, often targeting those very women.
There was Wilma McCann, a single mother of four, who is shown applying her make-up for what will be her last night out.
And then Emily Jackson, who took the traumatic decision to go with men for money because her family was drowning in debt.
The show’s attention to detail as it follows their stories – from the flared, white trousers Wilma wore on that fateful night to the blue Commer van Emily barrelled along in – is impressive.
The police, and their multitude of errors which allowed Sutcliffe to repeatedly slip the net, feature heavily.
Toby Jones is impressive as Dennis Hoban, the legendary Leeds detective who was in charge of the inquiry for these first two murders.
Episode one shows him telling officers after Wilma’s slaying in 1975: “It starts now, 4pm, October 30, and it doesn’t end until one of us catches the b*****d.”
None of them knew that they would still be trying five years later.
This series is rightly about the victims.
Sutcliffe himself does not play a big part.
He doesn’t even appear until the last two episodes, and some viewers may be disappointed that his story is not explored more fully.
But that’s a different drama. Instead, The Long Shadow keeps the victims and their families front and centre, telling difficult stories in a sensitive way.
The show is bound to feature heavily when awards season rolls around, with one small but important aspect ensuring it will be well received by judges and viewers.
READ MORE SUN STORIES
When a northern drama hits our screens, social media often explodes with accusations of dodgy accents.
But in The Long Shadow, just like the show itself, the actors have it nailed.
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