Wearside Jack

Wearside Jack is the nickname given to John Samuel Humble (8 January 1956 – 30 July 2019), a British man who pretended to be the Yorkshire Ripper in a hoax audio recording and several letters in 1978 and 1979.

Humble sent a taped message spoken in a Wearside accent and three letters, taunting the authorities for failing to catch him. The message, recorded on an audio cassette, caused the investigation to be moved away from the West Yorkshire area, home of the real killer, Peter Sutcliffe, and thereby helped prolong his attacks on women and may have delayed his arrest by eighteen months.

More than 25 years after the event, a fragment from one of Humble's envelopes was traced to him through DNA, and in 2006, Humble was sentenced to eight years in prison for perverting the course of justice.

The hoax The three letters Between March 1978 and the end of June 1979, Humble sent three letters claiming to be the Yorkshire Ripper. Postmarked from Sunderland, two were addressed to Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield of the West Yorkshire Police who was heading the Ripper inquiry, and one to the Daily Mirror.

First letter: 8 March 1978

Written to Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield Dear Sir

I am sorry I cannot 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. You and your mates haven't a clue that photo in the paper gave me fits and that bit about killing myself, no chance. I've got things to do. My purpose to rid the streets of them sluts. My one regret is that young lassie McDonald, did not know cause changed routine that night. Up to number 8 now you say 7 but remember Preston '75. get about you know. You were right I travel a bit. You probably look for me in Sunderland, don't bother, I am not daft, just posted letter there on one of my trips. Not a bad place compared with Chapeltown and Manningham and other places. Warn whores to keep off streets cause I feel it coming on again.

Sorry about young lassie.

Yours respectfully

Jack the Ripper

Might write again later I not sure last one really deserved it. Whores getting younger each time. Old slut next time I hope. Huddersfield never again, too small close call last one.

"Preston '75" was a reference to the murder of Joan Harrison. The Yorkshire Ripper was believed at the time to have killed her, but the supposed connection was wrongly thought not to be in the public domain leading the hoaxer's claim to gain undeserved credibility. Sutcliffe denied any knowledge and was not charged for this crime. It remained unsolved until 2011, when DNA evidence from the crime scene was matched to those of a deceased man named Christopher Smith (died 2008) who had been convicted of other offences, including attempted rape and manslaughter.

The recording on a cassette tape ended with a segment from the 1978 single "Thank You for Being a Friend" by Andrew Gold.

Despite this, 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 killer, Sutcliffe, came from Bradford. Police also commenced a substantial publicity campaign, including hotlines, 5,000 advertising hoardings, and advertisements in 300 newspapers. Chief Constable Ronald Gregory diverted £1 million from the inquiry's budget into the publicity campaign alone.

Interviewed by Joan Smith for The Sunday Times in 1980, Olive Smelt, a victim of Sutcliffe who survived his 1975 attack in Halifax, was angry that the police had ignored her insistence that the perpetrator was a local man. Other survivors' evidence, photofits which were close to Sutcliffe's appearance, were also rejected. Each time he was rejected as a suspect because he did not have a North-East accent.

A then unknown victim of Sutcliffe at the time of Humble's first letter was Yvonne Pearson, whose body lay undiscovered, hidden under a discarded sofa in Bradford. This detail raised the suspicion of a Northumbria Police Detective Inspector that the Wearside Jack evidence was a hoax (as the writer of the letter made no reference to this crime) and submitted a report to West Yorkshire police in September 1979, but the report was ignored. Humble returned to the Ford Estate to live with his brother in 2002.

As a result of this cold case review, DNA from envelopes sent by Humble as part of the hoax were matched in the United Kingdom National DNA Database with samples police had obtained from Humble in an unrelated incident in 2001, when he had been arrested and cautioned for being drunk and disorderly. By this time, Humble had become a chronic alcoholic. Described as an unemployed labourer at the time of his arrest at home, Humble and his brother were so inebriated that the police were required to wait almost a day before he could be interviewed; when he sobered up he needed to be told he was now in police custody.

Humble was motivated, according to Gregg after Humble's conviction, by a wish for notoriety, a hatred of the police and a fixation with the Jack the Ripper Whitechapel murders in late-19th century London. The contempt for the police dated back to 1975 when he was imprisoned for assaulting an off-duty police officer (for which he served three months in a young offenders institution),

Before Sutcliffe was arrested, Humble twice phoned the police anonymously to indicate they had been hoaxed because he felt guilty for misleading the investigation, but his calls were discounted. He was tried at Leeds Crown Court on 9 January 2006 and initially pleaded not guilty. He admitted to being Wearside Jack on 23 February 2006, and on 20 March 2006, changed his plea to guilty on four counts of perverting the course of justice.

The prosecution said Humble did not contact the police to acknowledge his direct responsibility, even when it was obvious his tapes and letters were diverting police resources away from the real murderer. His defence counsel said in court that Humble had attempted suicide in November 1979 by jumping off the bridge spanning the River Wear, as well as on other occasions. In July 2006, he launched an appeal against his sentence, which was rejected in October of the same year.

Release and death Humble was released in 2009 after serving four years of his sentence; he was given a new identity as John Samuel Anderson. he died from heart failure and the effects of his alcoholism.