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Watched the "The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper" drama repeated on UK Gold last night to coincide with the arrest of the suspected hoaxer who wasted so many police hours and may have stopped Sutcliffe being arrested before he killed his last 3 victims. Excellent drama with another fine performance from Alun Armstrong surely one of our best actors.
Begs the question, if the suspect is found guilty what sentence should he receive?

Good question. If he stopped the Police from catching the Ripper, Life. If not a lesser sentance. But how would you prove it either way? And the Ripper was caught through luck not through good Police work so would that come into play also?

I think, if found guilty, the sentence should be ten years. Enough to deter similar types. Whatever our views on the police investigation, it's clear that significant time and resources were spent in following up the stuff this guy sent to the detectives.

it's my understanding that if charged with perverting to course of justice the sentence can be the same as the offence he was 'perverting' . Following that logic he prevented the capture of a murderer so theoretically he could get life, could be wrong on this one though

...must be a right pisser for him though, getting the book thrown at you for some hoax stunt pulled 25 years earlier.
Not that one can sympathise, there are more tasteful ways of making monkeys of the police than interfering in a case of mass-murder

Interesting development ... but was it just dropped in their lap by an informant. Investigating this aspect of the crime a quarter of a century on doesn't change history or gain anything and a lot of people are too young to even know about it. If anything it highlights how incompetent the police actually are in taking so long to get their man. Bar revenge, what good would jailing him actually do? and it can never be proved the Ripper would have been caught earlier anyway as most crimes are solved by the person making a mistake, not the police actually detecting them like in the movies or on TV (they're just not that good at much apart from harassing motorists). What he did was not acceptable by any means, but did even he think it would be taken so seriously, maybe just a bad taste practical joke that went spectacularly wrong, but then how could he own up to it, because at the time he would probably have been lynched. If he has to be punished, because there are enough red-tape jobsworths in the police and judiciary,maybe a year jail, but suspended. The sad thing is there are people who will see him as somehow complicit with the murders when he's nothing but a bit of a loser.

They've been after him for a long time, and the technological advances are the reasons they keep trying.

Whoever was at fault in the Ripper investigation, it can't be denied that the person behind the hoax letters and tapes caused a shift in the way the police operation was going. Therefore, he was potentially responsible for Sutcliffe not being caught sooner, and in some way responsible for three murders.

A loser? Yes. But a dangerous one----like the plonkers who make hoax calls to the fire brigade, or claim they've planted bombs. As I said, ten years would be about right.

It just shows that the rozzers never give up. I do admire a lot of cops although some of them are total twats.

The West Yorkshire police, and the lot dealing with the Wests (West Mercia? Too many Wests!), were appalling during their inquiries. Sutcliffe was interviewed goodness knows how many times, but was given an alibi by Sonia. As for the Gloucester lot, a number of beat bobbies were getting their jollies courtesy of Fred, Rose and their "friends," yet somehow never suspected a thing.

Not exactly the constabularies' finest hours. And the fact that Sutcliffe got nabbed by two bobbies while stealing licence plates, thus giving them their man, says it all.

These so-called retro crime units are fine when they unearth murderers and rapists, but there are only so many of these cases and the police being what they are won't want to disband the squads once they've solved what is possible, they'll just lower their sights and go for anyone they can nab for whatever crime. If they ever got a DNA database of the entire population, given time they'd probably end up convicting 20% of the population for 'crimes' going back maybe 50 years ... little Johnny Higgins, now 73, will live to regret that pint of milk he stole in 1958. No matter how good a job the police seem to have done in isolated high profile cases, you've got to remember they can't be trusted - because they do like to lock up innocent people as well when it suits them.