THE man who tricked police into moving the hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper to the North-East was yesterday jailed for eight years.

John Humble was told by a judge that his crimes were the worst kind of perverting the course of justice.

Judge Norman Jones said Humble would have been locked up for ten years had he been found guilty at the end of a trial.

But the jobless labourer entered guilty pleas to four charges of perverting the course of justice at the eleventh hour on Monday.

Yesterday, Leeds Crown Court heard mitigation from Simon Bourne-Arton QC before 50-year-old Humble, the man behind the Wearside Jack hoaxes, was sentenced.

Humble, of Flodden Road, Sunderland, sent two letters and a tape to Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield and one letter to a national newspaper in 1978 and 1979.

It was said he tried to convince police he was the real murderer by giving as much detail as he could about the killings.

It later became clear he had taken all his information from media reports.

Mr Bourne-Arton said Humble did not realise the police would take his postings so seriously and became frightened when he saw the extent to which they moved their hunt from West Yorkshire to Wearside.

The real killer, Peter Sutcliffe, remained at large and was eliminated from the hunt several times because of his Bradford accent. He went on to kill three more times as efforts were concentrated on the North-East.

Humble called two police incident rooms - in Sunderland and Bradford - to warn them that the tape and letters were a hoax, but he claimed officers took no notice.

"He could have walked into any police station and handed himself in, and he accepts that," added Mr Bourne-Arton.

"His answer, for what it's worth, is he did not have the bottle.

"He was 23 at the time and could not bring himself to do it."

Judge Jones said he had no doubt Humble intended to misdirect the police and that he had a disdain and dislike for them because he was jailed for kicking an off-duty officer as a teenager in 1975.

The Yorkshire Ripper was caught in 1981. Questions have been raised ever since about whether the last three victims - and two survivors - would have been attacked had it not been for the hoaxes.

Judge Jones said yesterday: "The least that could be said was that these victims would have stood a better chance of not being attacked had these police resources been directed in West Yorkshire.

"You planned to manipulate the process of the investigation of one of the most horrific series of murders ever seen in this country.

"You warped and bent its path away from the true killer. You did that with an indifference to the potentially fatal consequences which was breathtaking."

The judge added: "It may be you did not intend to prolong the killings, but what is unforgivable is your failure to put the record straight.

"People's anxieties and fears here in West Yorkshire were increased rather than allayed."

The Ripper hoaxer - Page