| AGE | DATE | PLACE | OUTCOME | LAST ATTACK |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20 | September 2 1979 Sunday morning 1:00 am | Bradford | Murdered | 150 days |
Barbara Leach, a twenty-year-old university student, about to start her third and final year in social psychology, was murdered in the early hours on Sunday, September 2 1979 just west of Bradford city centre. She had been at the Mannville Arms on Great Horton Street with her friends. The Mannville Arms closing time was 11:00 pm, and Barbara Leach and her friends helped the landlord, Roy Evans, with collecting the empties and tidying up. He rewarded them, as his personal guests, with a drink after time. When the group left the Mannville Arms at around 12:45 am, even though there was a light rain falling, Barbara Leach decided to get some night air and go for a walk. None of her friends had wanted to go along with her for the walk.
Peter Sutcliffe, driving through the area, saw her leave her group of friends and go off walking by herself. He quickly drove past her and turned left into Ash Grove. As he opened the car door to get out of the car she was walking towards him. He let her walk past him before attacking her with a hammer from behind. He then dragged her into a backyard and, after pushing up her shirt and bra to expose her breasts and undoing her jeans and partly pulling them down, he stabbed her with the same screwdriver that he had used on Josephine Whitaker. He then placed her body in a distorted jack-knife position behind a low wall into an area where dustbins were usually kept. He covered her body with an old piece of carpet and placed some stones on top of it.
Barbara Leach's roommates were concerned when she still had not returned late Sunday night and called the police. The following day at 3:55 pm, while engaged in a police search of the area to find the missing student, Police Constable Simon Greaves found her body where Sutcliffe had hidden it in Back Ash Grove, about 200 yards from where she had left her friends. Her wounds, similar to the wounds received by Josephine Whitaker, clearly indicated to the police that the Yorkshire Ripper had struck again, and as in the previous murder, not in a red-light area.
EXTRACT FROM PETER SUTCLIFFE'S CONFESSION (January 4/5 1981)
"My urge to kill remained strong and was totally out of my control. The next victim of mine was Barbara Leach at Bradford. At that time, September 1979, I had my Rover 3.5 FHY 400K. I think I had been working on my car one Saturday night and I took it out for a run. I had the urge which was in me and I went to look for a victim. It was late so I drove straight into town and then found myself going up by the University. When I reached the Manville Arms, I had just passed it, when I saw a girl, who I later found out was Barbara Leach. She was walking up the road on my left."
"I drove past her and turned left into a wide street. I just drove a few yards and stopped on the nearside. I was just going to get out of the car when Miss Leach turned the corner and walked towards the car. She was walking at a very slow pace. She was wearing jeans. She carried on walking past the car. I left the car and followed her for several yards. I had my hammer out and I think I had my big screwdriver with me. When she reached an entrance yard to a house, I hit her on the head with the hammer, she fell down. She was moaning."
"I took hold of her by the wrists, or was it by the ankles, and dragged her up this entrance to the back of the house. She kept making loud moaning noises. There was like a dustbin area at the rear of the house. I remember that I stabbed Barbara with the screwdriver, the same one as Whitaker, and I remember that I put her in the dustbin area and covered her up with something, but I was acting like an automaton and I can't seem to remember the sequence of actions."
"I think I was wearing my brown coat that night. When I left her, I went to my car and drove away and went straight home. I remember I later threw the big screwdriver away over the embankment near the the lorry park on the westbound side of Hartshead Service Station."
 
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