solicit clients. ‘Sometimes she would leave the van in the Gaiety car park and go with clients in their own cars, when they would drive to some secluded place for sex. It was probably on one of these excursions that she met her killer.’ Newspapers quickly linked the murder of Jackson with that of McCann: ‘RIPPER HUNTED IN CALL-GIRL MURDERS’ announced the Sun on 23 January.
A month later a witness came forward to say she had actually seen Emily around 7 p.m. getting into a Land-Rover. Police had begun questioning all convicted and known prostitutes in the area. One, a nineteen-year-old streetwalker, had been casually chatting to Emily moments before she got in the vehicle. A description of the driver, a man with a bushy beard, was widely circulated and an artists’ impression issued to the media. All Land-Rovers registered in West Yorkshire were checked, with negative results. Some time later a man answering this description, the owner of a Land-Rover registered in Essex, was interviewed and cleared. He had been temporarily staying in Leeds and admitted consorting with prostitutes. However, he denied that on the night in question he had been out looking to pay for sex with a woman. He had a cast-iron alibi. Some detectives believe he may well have picked up Jackson, and even had sex with her, but denied it emphatically because he had been driving while disqualified. There were searches for other vehicles. Sydney told police Emily had spoken of one of her clients as being ‘funny’ – they failed to locate him or the Moskovitch estate car he drove. Another witness saw a dark blue ‘L’ registered Transit van near the murder scene around 3.30 a.m. A list of 329 vehicles registered in Leeds was drawn up and 278 owners were eliminated from the investigation. The remaining fifty-one were never traced. It proved another frustrating investigation.
No attempt was made to trace the boots the killer wore. Hoban thought too many workmen in the city used this type of footwear to waste time on this particular line of inquiry. It did suggest the killer was not an office worker, but was perhaps involved in manual work. He sent an urgent telex to police stations in West Yorkshire asking that anyone brought into custody wearing similar boots, who might have a vehicle containing tools, such as a workman’s van, be held for questioning. He also wanted local criminal intelligence cells in collators’ offices to begin examining records for the names of people convicted of series attacks on prostitutes.
Hardware shops were visited to positively identify the kind of weapon used. Hoban was convinced a cross-head screwdriver was the answer; but Gee, when he carried out a variety of tests using different tools, could not reproduce the same kind of wound. When he tried to produce wounds with a Phillips screwdriver, he found that although the flanges of the tip would indeed produce a cruciform wound, as soon as you drove the weapon in with any degree of force, the rounded shaft destroyed the pattern and left simply a round hole. He began searching for a weapon with flanges all the way up its length. ‘The explanation of course had to be that some of the wounds were not driven home with sufficient force to extend right up the shaft of the weapon, but there were fifty-two of them and it was difficult to follow the tracks of all,’ he said later.
Gee wrote confidentially seeking assistance and suggestions from a number of senior forensic pathologists around Britain and Ireland, including the eminent Professor Keith Simpson. All kinds of possibilities were offered: a carpenter’s awl; the implement in a boy scout’s knife for taking stones out of horses’s hooves; a spud lock key; a roofing hammer; and a reamer. Several pathologists backed the idea of a Phillips screwdriver. ‘I am surprised that you had difficulty in getting a Phillips screwdriver through the skin,’ replied Professor Keith Mant of Guy’s Hospital. ‘I have seen fatal stab wounds from such instruments as pokers, and in one case, a boy was stabbed through the heart with a poker during some horseplay with his brother, who had no idea that he had hurt the deceased, especially when he subsequently walked upstairs to his bedroom. He was found dead in bed the next morning – no blood having issued from the wound!’
More media coverage was generated when a police Range Rover, complete with flashing blue light on top, toured the Chapeltown and Roundhay Road area. It contained a large photograph of Emily Jackson and appealed for witnesses who might have seen her on the night of the murder to come forward. Loudspeaker vans toured Leeds, interrupting weekend rugby and football matches. Cinemas and bingo halls suspended proceedings to broadcast appeals from the police. Publicity about two prostitutes having been murdered within three months caused some local women to stop soliciting. Others said they had no choice and accepted the risks: ‘There is always a danger when you do this game, but you have got to find a quiet spot, a dark spot,’ said one.
Everything told Hoban that Emily Jackson had been picked up in a vehicle while offering herself for sex; she was taken less than half a mile from the Gaiety to Elmfield Terrace, a quiet spot with little street lighting, where she met her terrible end. It was a place to which prostitutes took punters. Some of the girls on the street told him they also had been to precisely that spot. Women gave descriptions of clients, particularly of ones who had been violent. A month after the murder the West Yorkshire Police issued a special notice to all police forces in the country, officially linking the McCann and Jackson murders. They also circulated a description of a Land-Rover driver with the bushy beard. Throughout the next year, a hundred of Hoban’s officers worked more than 64,000 hours. Nearly 6,400 index cards were filled in in the incident room, making reference to more than 3,700 house-to-house inquiries and 5,220 separate actions. A total of 830 separate statements were taken and more than 3,500 vehicle inquiries carried out.
‘We are quite certain the man we are looking for hates prostitution,’ Hoban said. ‘I am quite certain this stretches to women of rather loose morals who go into public houses and clubs, who are not necessarily prostitutes, the frenzied attack he has carried out on these women indicates this.’
He knew that a man capable of killing twice probably enjoyed it, which meant he would go on doing it till caught. He was never more serious than when he issued a dark warning to the public via the press: ‘I believe the man we are looking for is the type who could kill again. He is a sadistic killer and may well be a sexual pervert.’ Emily Jackson had been killed with a ferocity ‘that bordered on the maniacal’. ‘I cannot stress strongly enough that it is vital we catch this brutal killer before he brings tragedy to another family.’
After several months, to Hoban’s obvious distress, his men were getting nowhere. He had tried everything he knew to push the inquiry forward, but the search for the killer was like hunting for a ghost. Every line of inquiry that could be followed was followed. A thousand Land-Rover drivers were checked out. Nothing. Dodgy punters were closely questioned. Nothing. The prostitutes were asked time and again to rack their brains to identify clients who might have been capable of two brutal murders. Countless men were checked as a result. Nothing. An artist’s impression was drawn of the man with the bushy beard. Nothing. He wrote to local family doctors asking them to come forward with the names of patients who might be capable of killing prostitutes. He was frustrated yet again. The Patients’ Association said such a request would prevent men with violent impulses from seeking medical help. The British Medical Association merely restated that the relationship between doctors and patients was confidential.
Hoban was getting weary and his health was suffering. His diabetes was taking its toll and he began to complain to Betty about a pain in his eye. The strong possibility of the killer striking again continued to bother him. By the time the inquests into both the deaths opened in May 1976, he had little new to say apart from the fact that he was certain the two women had been murdered by the same man. Hoban also knew there was a desperately cruel paradox. If there was to be any hope of apprehending the killer, more clues were needed: fresh clues and lines of inquiry that could only be forthcoming if the killer struck again. Another woman would probably have to die. Hoban could only wait.
2
The Diabetic Detective
Dennis Hoban liked what he knew and his entire life was spent living in the north-west quadrant of Leeds. It was his town, he knew its people, and via the medium of local television and newspapers they knew him. It was the
