The Daily Mail Tendency: The Former Sutcliffe Residence

The Daily Mail smells a new serial killer; The Daily Mail gets a hard-on and reckons it has a new salacious story to milk. You can read their story, if you are so inclined, here. Of course, they are not alone in treating this story in shrill, unpleasant manner - that is pretty much the tabloid way. But where The Daily Mail makes a new benchmark for crassness is with the publication of this map:

Can you see what is wrong with the above picture? Can you clock which caption shouldn't be there? Yep, it's the one showing Peter Sutcliffe's home.

Firstly, that isn't Sutcliffe's home, and it hasn't been since last century. As far as I am aware, Sutcliffe is currently resident here. He hasn't lived in that area of Bradford for nearly three decades. So why highlight it as Peter Sutcliffe's home? Well, it is a way of making an already tragic and troubling story even more tragic and troubling. It is a way of upping the hysteria.

Of course, you can make the case that the positioning of Sutcliffe's former house is relevant - after all, it is very close to the place where Stephen Griffiths was arrested, and no doubt some will argue that there are further similarities between Griffiths' murders and those of Sutcliffe. Just as there will be links between Griffiths' crimes and those of many other prostitute killers. However, the location and similarities still don't excuse pointing to Sutcliffe's house on a map of the area. It is creating undue and undeserved attention on the community. It is compounding the attention being given to a city already trying to cope with another bout of serial murder within its boundaries. It may even put the current residents of Sutcliffe's old house and his old street at risk.

The Daily Mail - and other tabloid rags - can speculate away about this new killer, and make any number of spurious comparisons to other murderers. But to point to a specific location that has not housed a serial killer for thirty years is crass, stupid and irresponsible even for The Daily Hate.