five years. Four of these occasions followed the police decision to search for the man heard on the tape. Each time he was rejected as a suspect because he did not have a North-East accent. In July 1979, Sutcliffe was interviewed by two Detective Constables who became suspicious. One of the officers, Detective Constable Andrew Laptew, in his report wrote that there was good evidence he was the killer, but the document was downgraded because of Sutcliffe's Yorkshire accent and the lack of a match with the hoaxer's handwriting. 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. One coincidence between Harrison's (then falsely suspected) killer and Wearside Jack was the secretion of their B-group blood cells in their saliva and semen, retrieved from her murder scene and from the gum of one of the letters, a quality shared by only 6% of men. It was this which was taken as definitive proof the Yorkshire Ripper was the same man as had sent the letters and the tape. Hoax confirmed While the West Yorkshire Police were investigating the leads, Sutcliffe murdered three more women, and attacked two others. It was only after Sutcliffe's confession that Wearside Jack was demonstrated to be a hoax. ACC Oldfield took early retirement following what he considered to be a total humiliation; he died in 1985 aged 61. It emerged during Humble's own trial that Sutcliffe had told police after his arrest in 1981 that "While ever that was going on I felt safe. I'm not a Geordie. I was born at Shipley." John Humble Earlier life The son of Sam and Violet Humble, Humble attended Hylton Road Junior School and Havelock Senior School on Fordfield Road in the Ford Estate in Sunderland. He had "above average" school results, and gained a few qualifications, before leaving school at 16. His limited periods of employment included a bricklaying apprenticeship (which he gave up after three years), six months in a hospital laundry and a short period as a security guard. In