This Is Personal: The Hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper

Dramatisation of the long police hunt for the Yorkshire Ripper. Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield takes over the investigation to track down the killer, who has brutally murdered several women in the North of England. He is confident that his techniques of using painstaking mass interviews and documentation will help catch the killer, but the killings continue and he becomes more and more frustrated. Data amasses and they have several good leads, but the team begins to be bogged down with the mounting paperwork. Oldfield also has to contend with pressures from the Chief Constable, and fear of being undermined through police force rivalries and politics, along with his distrust of colleague Detective Chief Superintendent Jim Hobson.

The police team headed by George Oldfield continue to be thwarted and frustrated, in their investigation to track down the Yorkshire Ripper. Oldfield's health begins to deteriorate under the stress, and the hunt is sent off track by the receipt of several tapes from a man with a North-East accent claiming to be the Ripper. This misleads many officers, and becomes the central point in a mass advertising campaign and appeal for information. Meanwhile, the real culprit has been questioned several times through different lines of enquiry, but the relevance has become lost in the mountain of files and paperwork generated by the investigation over the years. More killings occur and the pressure from the media, women's groups, government and the Chief Constable increases. Oldfield fears that his position as head of the investigation is under threat from old rival Jim Hobson, who takes over when Oldfield finally succumbs to a heart attack. Eventually the Ripper is caught in Sheffield by two police constables who become suspicious, when he is found with a prostitute, in a car which has false number plates. They return to an alley that the suspect went down to urinate, and found a hammer along with a sharp implement. On returning to the police station they double-check in the toilets there, and discover a knife hidden in one of the cisterns. Dick Holland calls Oldfield so that he can be one of the first there when Sutcliffe is brought back to West Yorkshire for questioning.