Perhaps the first high-profile murder case which sparked widespread calls for a return of the death penalty was the Moors murders trial in 1966 , the year after the death penalty 's suspension , in which Ian Brady and Myra Hindley were sentenced to life imprisonment for the murders of two children and a teenager in the Manchester area ( they later confessed to a further two murders ) . Later in 1966 , the murder of three policemen in West London also attracted widespread public support for the death penalty 's return . Other subsequent high-profile cases to have sparked widespread media and public calls for the death penalty 's return include " Yorkshire Ripper " Peter Sutcliffe , convicted in 1981 of murdering 13 women and attacking seven others in the north of England ; Roy Whiting , who murdered a seven-year-old girl in West Sussex in 2000 ; and Ian Huntley , a Cambridgeshire school caretaker who killed two 10-year-old girls in 2002
murder of three policemen
Shepherd's Bush murders
Capital punishment in the United Kingdom