‘Yorkshire Ripper battered me so hard I was covered head to waist in blood’

The crimes of Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe are as horrifying and notorious today as they were 40 years ago.

But all too often the 13 women he viciously murdered as well as those he tried to kill are forgotten.

Now a new book rights that wrong, telling the true stories of his victims and the survivors.

In Somebody’s Mother, Somebody’s Daughter, bestselling biographer Carol Ann Lee brings their individual ­experiences and personalities to life.

Sutcliffe, now aged 72, was sentenced to 20 concurrent sentences of life imprisonment after his trial in May 1981.

But the women he attacked are also serving life sentences after the horrific experiences they will never forget.

This extract from the new book reveals how survivor Tracy Browne, now 57, who lived in Silsden, West Yorkshire, was at first charmed by the monster Sutcliffe.

Then aged just 14, that terrible day in 1975 she had been allowed to stay out beyond normal time by her parents.

"We were allowed half an hour later to get home. Normally it was quarter past ten and we were allowed to be home for quarter to eleven, she explained.

"It was Wednesday, August 27, 1975, Tracy and twin sister Mandy had visited friends on the other side of Silsden in Weatherhead Place, a 30-minute walk from home.

“The village being so sleepy as it was, you just couldn’t imagine anything bad happening,” she said.

Born in 1961, Tracy and her twin sister Mandy were known by their middle names, as were their two older sisters.

Parents Tony and Nora Browne provided them with a loving home at Upper Hayhills Farm, in the rolling hills above Silsden.

“They were still fairly light nights as well. We started walking back, took a short cut through the park, which took about five or 10 minutes off the journey.

“But I hung back to chat to my friends, whereas my sister, she carried on.”

Realising Mandy was out of sight, Tracy reluctantly left the park and headed up the steep lane.

Resigned to being home later than her sister, Tracy sat down on a large stone to rest her feet, ­removing her sandals.

A man appeared from the lower reaches of the lane. Disconcertingly, he stood silently for a moment as he drew level with her. “He had this beard, and Afro-style hair and dark eyes.

“I remember his eyes being almost black,” Tracy recalled.

“He was about two feet away but directly in front of me. I looked at him but he just stared intensely down at me for a few seconds and then walked on without saying a word. I assumed he must be a local guy and I was too busy rubbing my sore feet to feel scared. After a few seconds, I set off again.”

The bearded man was ahead, but his pace was slow. Tracy soon fell into step with him and he remarked: “There’s nothing doing in Silsden, is there?”

“No, not really,” Tracy agreed.

“What’s your name?”

“Tracy Browne. What’s yours?”

“Tony Jennis.” His reply surprised her. Tracy had spent most of her holidays with a friend called Tony Jennison.

But the man was already speaking again. “He asked, ‘Have you got a boyfriend?’ and I told him I had and that he lived in Silsden’,” Tracy said. “I felt quite comfortable with him because he seemed such an unassuming, charming sort of guy.

“I said, ‘I’ve never seen you walking up here before. Where do you live?’

“He told me, ‘Up at Hole Farm’, which is at the top of Bradley Road, about half a mile from my home.

“Our conversation tailed off into complete silence for a time but then he said, ‘My pal normally gives me a lift but he’s in the nick for drink-driving’.”

The man stopped twice to blow his nose, muttering about a summer cold, and once to fasten his shoelace.

“Other than that, he never took his hands out of his pockets,” Tracy said. “We had walked together for almost a mile – for about 30 minutes – and I never once felt intimidated or in danger.”

Dusk had fallen as they reached the turning to Tracy’s home in the hollow of the fields; light shone from its windows.

She turned to thank the stranger for his company, but before she could speak, he lunged at her.

“The first blow sent me crashing down on my knees,” she recalled. “I fell into the side of the road. I pleaded with him, ‘Please don’t, please don’t’, and screamed for help.

"But he hit me five times and with so much force and energy that each blow was accompanied by a brutal grunting noise.”

Earlier that summer, she had watched Jimmy Connors lose his Wimbledon title; the sounds her attacker made reminded her of the tennis player delivering a serve.

Then she thought of the man being hunted for killing heiress Lesley Whittle and shouted, “Black Panther! Black Panther!” while trying to fend off the blows.

She survived because of a passing motorist. At the rumble of car wheels, the assailant put one arm around Tracy’s waist and the other under her legs, dropping her over a barbed wire fence.

She heard him running off, his suede boots making a soft, insistent thud.

Her world turned crimson: “My vision had gone because I was so stunned from the attack and my eyes had filled with blood.

“I pulled myself up and slowly managed to stand up. I was very shaky and began staggering around the field, disorientated and still unable to see anything.

“I fell several times but forced myself back up. I told myself I had to get home in case he came back to finish me off. That fear drove me on. I knocked on the door of a farmhouse but no one answered. I staggered around for another hundred yards, I was covered from head to waist in blood.”

Tracy stumbled to a farmhand’s caravan. It took all her strength to bring her fist down on the door. “Oh, my God …”

Elderly Fred Hargreaves pulled himself together and helped her into his caravan. She was unable to speak coherently and shook uncontrollably. He led her home, but when Nora Browne opened the door it took a moment to understand what had happened to her daughter: “I thought someone had thrown red paint over her.

“But it was blood … her jumper was squelching with blood.”

Neurosurgeons at Chapel Allerton Hospital in Leeds operated on Tracy for five hours.

In recovery, she gave ­detectives a detailed description of her attacker: “I remembered his taupe-coloured V-neck jumper over a light blue open-necked shirt and dark brown trousers which had slit pockets at the front, rather than the side. I told the policeman he was 5ft 8in, had very dark, almost black Afro-type hair and a full beard. I even mentioned.

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