ТОП просматриваемых книг сайта:
Insanity - My Mad Life. Charles Bronson
Читать онлайн.Название Insanity - My Mad Life
Год выпуска 0
isbn 9781782192527
Автор произведения Charles Bronson
Жанр Биографии и Мемуары
Издательство Ingram
Having mentioned the Ripper, it’s probably a good time to talk a bit about the attacks on him. The first happened on 10 January 1983 in Parkhurst, two years after his trial in 1981. The Ripper’s attacker, James ‘Jock’ Costello, 35, from Glasgow, had the right qualifications for the job — 28 court appearances between 1963 and 1980, nine of them in relation to violence, and 15 appearances resulting in prison sentences. He had been convicted in 1980 for possessing a firearm with the intent to endanger life, possessing a firearm with intent to resist arrest and possessing a firearm without a certificate. He had received a ten-year sentence. He had been diagnosed as mentally ill at Parkhurst, and was awaiting transfer to Broadmoor.
The attack took place while Sutcliffe, the Ripper, was getting water in a plastic bowl. Jock Costello entered the recess and, as Sutcliffe turned to leave, he smashed him twice on the left side of his face with a broken coffee jar. Sutcliffe, the lucky bastard, managed to push him away, but by this time he had four nice wounds requiring a lot of stitches. One deep cut ran five inches from near his mouth to his neck, leaving a nice Mars bar, and another was 2⅕in long, running from his left eye to his ear. He also had two smaller cuts on the eyelid and below the eye. The Ripper had lost about a pint of blood and had gone into a mild state of shock. He required an operation to repair superficial muscle damage. So you see, these attacks on monsters are well worth it … it gets the desired result and leaves them with a label.
The Home Office doc and a visiting professor soon sectioned the Ripper off to Broadmoor under the Mental Health Act. In September 1982, my old friend, the prison medical officer Dr David Cooper, and a consultant forensic scientist, Professor John Gunn, both recommended that Sutcliffe should be transferred to a top-security mental hospital under Section 72 of the Mental Health Act. Section 72 states that the transfer to a mental hospital cannot be made without the approval of the Home Secretary. In December 1982, the Home Secretary, William Whitelaw, rejected the transfer, saying that Sutcliffe would remain at Parkhurst in the public interest. Good on Willie Whitelaw to make this move; the Ripper was done good style by Willie’s insistence that he stayed at Parkhurst.
The new Home Secretary, Leon Brittan, finally transferred Sutcliffe to Broadmoor on 27 March 1984. Now bear in mind that Jock Costello, the man responsible for the Ripper needing stitches in his face, has already been transferred to Broadmoor … good on you, Leon – method in your madness! Get Jock to Broadmoor first and then send the Ripper on to him.
When Jock Costello was asked what had happened, he said that Sutcliffe had attacked him. Sutcliffe said, ‘As I was turning the tap off I became aware of someone else in the recess. I didn’t pay particular attention to who it was. I took about two strides, that’s all, and all of a sudden I was the subject of a particularly nasty, unprovoked attack. The first thing I was aware of was a glinting coming from a glass container. I saw it glinting just before it hit my face. That was the first I saw of it when a person used it to cause severe damage.’
The Ripper pointed to the left side of his face. ‘It hit me there. He had time to smash into my face twice before I could do anything. I just put my arms out. Before I held him at arm’s length, the glass smashed on the floor. I quickly put the bowl in the sink and stuck my arm out to keep him away from me. Blood was coming from his hand and then some hospital officers came running in. The only thing I noticed was when it was practically in my face. There was only a thousandth of a second before it smashed into my face. There was no chance to avoid it or anything.’
Yeah, just the same sort of chance he gave all those innocent women when he disembowelled them.
Costello was committed for trial at Newport Crown Court and was granted legal aid. The magistrates also rejected a request for the trial to be held at Winchester Crown Court. James Costello, just as I had in my last trial, had dismissed all his lawyers and was defending himself.
Would you believe that the prosecutor, Christopher Leigh, told the jury to put anything they knew about Peter Sutcliffe from their minds? Is he for fucking real! Sutcliffe spent over two hours in the witness box swearing Costello’s life away; he might as well have brought a packed lunch.
When Jock Costello questioned the Ripper — several times they had a verbal ding-dong — the Ripper admitted that he had become ‘a cell recluse’, and didn’t want to mix with other prisoners.
Jock claimed the Ripper attacked him after a confrontation between the two of them when Jock said the Ripper had ‘censored’ an article in the Sun newspaper about the January prison siege at Parkhurst. The Ripper admitted that he had blotted out an article about vice and prostitutes in the Sun newspaper with his artist’s paint, and occasionally cut out libellous comments before passing it on to other cons.
During his testimony, the Ripper said to Jock, ‘I am being generous answering these questions, because you need all the help you can get from psychiatrists, not from the courts.’ After all that, the judge ordered a retrial. He wouldn’t give a reason; now that’s what I call insanity!
The evidence was again presented to the new jury. Jock Costello and the Ripper again clashed. When Costello suggested that Sutcliffe had attacked him, Sutcliffe replied, ‘I didn’t, and you know it. There was no question of any argument or fight.’
Jock asked, ‘Have you ever thought you heard me say I was going to kill you?’
‘Yes, at the time of the incident. But I didn’t put it in my statement to the police because I could not swear to it.’
Jock asked, ‘Do the voices tell you to attack people?’
‘You won’t raise that with me. You are getting into something you can’t understand.’
Dr Cooper agreed that the Ripper was mentally ill at the time of the attack.
Jock asked, ‘Would his mental illness make him likely to attack someone?’
Dr Cooper replied, ‘Women,’ and said it would be unlikely that the Ripper would ever attack a man.
The Ripper was becoming braver when he started giving Jock the lip. ‘I answer questions like that to qualified people, not idiots like you.’
Jock responded, ‘You are the one that has got the scar.’
The jury found Jock Costello guilty, by a ten to two margin, of wounding the Ripper with intent to cause him grievous bodily harm. I hope if you were one of the jurors that you never have to see any member of your family on the mortuary slab after someone like the Ripper has finished with them. Jock Costello was sentenced to a further five years. Judge Lewis McCreery said to Jock, ‘You inflicted appalling injuries on Sutcliffe. You are one of the most dangerous and evil men it has ever been my misfortune to encounter.’ What about the Ripper? Wasn’t he one of the most evil and dangerous men that Judge Lewis McCreery has had the misfortune to encounter?
Jock told the judge, ‘I don’t understand how any man can get sentenced for using too much violence against a guy who has killed 13 people and had me by the throat. I know I am a violent man. I was not well at the time. I was on my way to Broadmoor.’
In 1996, Jock told the Daily Record, ‘We were both in the Parkhurst psychiatric wing. I was doing 22 years for carrying a gun and resisting arrest. Peter Sutcliffe was always swaggering about with his minder, a nutter called Wakefield. So I got my chive and done him when his minder was slopping out. I remember Sutcliffe roaring like a wounded animal.
‘My original diagnosis at Broadmoor was that I was a psychopath. The consultant read this out in court and the newspapers took it up, which was degrading. I felt Sutcliffe was a psycho, but not I. I hadn’t slaughtered all those women. But then I was re-diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic when I admitted hearing voices.’
Paul Wilson carried out attack number two on the Ripper in Broadmoor on 23 February