In a grisly case that British newspapers have compared to the Yorkshire Ripper murders of the 1970s, the police on Thursday charged a 40-year-old man pursuing a doctorate in 19th-century homicides with the murders of three women identified by the police as prostitutes.
One victim was caught on closed-circuit television last week being killed with a crossbow shot to the head before her dismembered body was dumped in a nearby river.
The man charged with the killings, Stephen Griffiths, is a former van driver with a psychology degree who was enrolled in a postgraduate course in criminology, the Times of London reported.
In a case that terrorized much of northern England and led to years of inquiries about police investigative failures, Peter Sutcliffe, the so-called Yorkshire Ripper, was convicted in 1981 of murdering 13 women, including several prostitutes, and of attempting to murder seven others.
He was given 20 concurrent life sentences and has been held for nearly 30 years in the Broadmoor high-security psychiatric hospital west of London. After a legal battle to be considered for parole, he was told by officials this year that he would never be released.
With the country’s voracious tabloid papers competing in a frenzy over the latest killings, the police sealed off the third-floor walk-up on the edge of Bradford’s red-light district where Griffiths lived alone for more than a decade.
Griffiths was arrested after the police investigating the disappearance of the three women he is accused of killing reviewed closed-circuit video footage from security cameras outside his apartment. The Times of London quoted officers as saying the video showed one of the missing women, Suzanne Blamires, 36, a former nursing trainee who friends said had taken up prostitution to pay for an addiction to drugs and alcohol, being chased down a corridor by a man who knocked her to the ground. Moments later, the officers said, the man returned with a crossbow and shot Blamires in the head.
These accounts said the video later showed the same man taking several plastic garbage bags away from the property. After Griffiths was arrested on Monday, parts of Blamires’ body were found floating in the River Aire near Shipley, a town a few miles north of Bradford, and a woman’s head was found in a rucksack by the riverbank. The bodies of the two other women Griffiths is charged with murdering, Shelley Armitage, 31, and Susan Rushworth, 43, both said to be friends of Blamires, have not been found.
The Times said that according to neighbors, Griffiths was hauled from his apartment by the police and made to lie facedown at gunpoint before being led away, showing no emotion.
Nearly half of China’s major cities are suffering “moderate to severe” levels of subsidence, putting millions of people at risk of flooding, especially as sea levels rise, according to a study of nationwide satellite data released yesterday. The authors of the paper, published by the journal Science, found that 45 percent of China’s urban land was sinking faster than 3mm per year, with 16 percent at more than 10mm per year, driven not only by declining water tables, but also the sheer weight of the built environment. With China’s urban population already in excess of 900 million people, “even a small portion
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
HYPOCRISY? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs yesterday asked whether Biden was talking about China or the US when he used the word ‘xenophobic’ US President Joe Biden on Wednesday called for a hike in steel tariffs on China, accusing Beijing of cheating as he spoke at a campaign event in Pennsylvania. Biden accused China of xenophobia, too, in a speech to union members in Pittsburgh. “They’re not competing, they’re cheating. They’re cheating and we’ve seen the damage here in America,” Biden said. Chinese steel companies “don’t need to worry about making a profit because the Chinese government is subsidizing them so heavily,” he said. Biden said he had called for the US Trade Representative to triple the tariff rates for Chinese steel and aluminum if Beijing was
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese