Wearside Jack

Wearside Jack is the nickname given to John Samuel Humble (8 January 1956 – 30 July 2019), a British man who pretended to be the Yorkshire Ripper in a hoax audio recording and several letters in 1978 and 1979.

Humble sent a taped message spoken in a Wearside accent and three letters, taunting the authorities for failing to catch him. The message, recorded on an audio cassette, caused the investigation to be moved away from the West Yorkshire area, home of the real killer, Peter Sutcliffe, and thereby helped prolong his attacks on women and may have delayed his arrest by eighteen months.

More than 25 years after the event, a fragment from one of Humble's envelopes was traced to him through DNA, and in 2006, Humble was sentenced to eight years in prison for perverting the course of justice.