Return of the Ripper?

Rash of murders has England fearing another 'ripper' - Los Angeles Times: "Rash of murders has England fearing another 'ripper'
By Janet Stobart, Times Staff Writer
5:48 PM PST, December 12, 2006

London -- Dread mounted that the peaceful east coast of England had given birth to a new 'Ripper' as police hunted Tuesday for the killer of five women whose bodies were discovered in the past two weeks.

In recent days, police reported that three bodies had been found naked and abandoned around the city of Ipswich in Suffolk county. Tuesday afternoon, Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull, head of the Suffolk police crime-management team, told journalists that officers had found two more bodies.

Gull said the women were believed to be prostitutes, although the bodies found Tuesday had yet to be identified. The discoveries revived memories of the reign of 'Yorkshire Ripper' Peter Sutcliffe, who killed 13 women, many of them prostitutes, in northern England in the late 1970s. Nearly a century earlier, Jack the Ripper slit the throats of five prostitutes in London's East End; his identity is still a mystery.

Helicopters and divers were hard at work Tuesday in fields, rivers and woods dotted around a countryside known for pastoral tranquillity. Police were in a race against time to track down a criminal they refrained from calling a serial killer.