Nella Jones was one of the many psychics who claimed to have helped the police in their search for the Yorkshire Ripper - Peter Sutcliffe - who was arrested on 2nd January 1981.
This is what Psychic News had to say about her in the 5/6/82 issue:
"Eighteen months before the police arrested Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, Kent medium Nella Jones drew a picture of him, described where he lived and worked and accurately predicted two more murders before he was caught...Eventually Nella went to Yorkshire and accompanied police to help them locate clues and places. Her mental pictures were always accurate. Nella could exactly describe details of a location before they even arrived at the spot. Police were amazed that the psychic could direct them to places she had never seen."
This would of course be remarkable if her claims are true, but researchers are immediately faced with a problem. Although Jones insisted that her major predictions were witnessed, they were made public long AFTER the event. When Melvin Harris - author of Sorry, You've Been Duped!, to which I am indebted for much of this article - wrote to her to suggest that she deposit copies of the relevant items with the Society for Psychical Research she did not respond to his letter. However, it is clear from newspaper reports and Jones' own book Ghost of a Chance that she did NOT provide any worthwhile information to the police. Here's a breakdown of her most impressive "prophecies":
1) Fourteen months before the murder of Jacqueline Hill on 17/11/80 Jones "saw" that "The next victim will be found on a small patch of waste ground". She later added: "I suddenly saw with tremendous clarity the scene of the Ripper's next attack...The girl, I knew without seeing, had dark hair."
Of the Ripper's previous victims six had been found on waste ground, two on grass land, one in a wood yard and one on a rubbish pile. Only one had been killed indoors. Ten of the Ripper's twelve victims had dark hair. Jones hardly needed psychic abilities to predict that the next victim would be a dark-haired woman whose body would be found on waste ground.
2) Back to Jones' own words about the killer: "I believe he lives in Bradford and that he is a long-distance lorry driver...I had the strongest feeling that the police had already spoken to him."
This sounds impressive, but as early as October 1975 the police were already looking for a lorry driver in connection with the murder of Wilma McCann. Two years later, after the murder of Jean Royle, a vital clue was found in her handbag - a £5 note issued from the Shipley and Bingley branch of the Midland bank in Bradford. Detectives from Manchester and Bradford visited factories in Bingley, Shipton and Bradford to interview all male employees, who were also asked to check their wage packets for £5 notes within a short range of serial numbers. The search took three months and over five thousand men were interviewed. DCS Jack Ridgeway didn't need a psychic to tell him that "It is more than likely that we have interviewed the person who received the fiver."
3) According to Jones, "The murders, it was disclosed during the trial, did involve the use of a hammer, among other weapons..." This seems to be a reference to a horrific dream experienced by Jones in August 1979. In fact the Bradford Telegraph and Argus had already revealed the Ripper's choice of a murder weapon. According to the 12/7/79 issue, the Ripper "Kills with an engineers' ball-pein hammer". The article went on to state that the murderer "Wears size 7 boots", an important clue that the Ripper was of small stature, and one that could have suggested to Jones that his height would be 5' 7" or 5' 8".
4) Jones' psychic skills served her no better when it came to a description of the Ripper's house. She saw "...a grey house with a wrought iron gate in front...the impression of a small garage nearby." Most unusually she risked giving an address - 6 Chapel Street.
She struck lucky with the number six, but although there are four Chapel Streets in Bradford (plus Chapel Walk, Chapel Lane, Chapel Place, Chapel Fold and Chapel Lane) Sutcliffe lived in Garden Lane. And the house was painted pink.
5) By means of clairvoyance Jones "saw" the Ripper's face several times in July 1979. She drew a clean-shaven man who would have been capable of disguising himself as a woman (remember that the Bradford Telegraph and Argus had mentioned the Ripper's small shoe size).
In fact, Peter Sutcliffe had a beard and would have been a somewhat unconvincing female impersonator.
6) In July 1979 Jones made her most dramatic prediction to date - the Ripper's next victim would be a boy of fifteen or sixteen.
"He" turned out to be twenty year old Barbara Leach.
7) Jones made the claim: "I don't think he has ever been married, but I believe his mother is dead and that his father was a cripple...I have the feeling that he was taken away from his mother when he was ten or eleven years old."
The only correct statement here is that Peter Sutcliffe's mother was dead.
What about Psychic News' claim that Jones had "accurately forecast two more murders before he was caught?"
In fact there were three more murders - those of Barbara Leach, Marguerite Walls and Jacqueline Hill.
9) Jones came up with a truly bizarre scenario for the murder of Jacqueline Hill in which the Ripper parked his car in the centre of Leeds, walked to Headingley, killed Jacqueline, walked back to Headingley railway station, took a pay-train to Leeds and drove back home.
Needless to say, Jones' account of the killing is sheer nonsense. Sutcliffe was in his car outside the Arndale Centre in Headingley when he saw Jacqueline getting off a bus, followed and eventually overtook her in the car, got out of the car and knocked her unconscious, then dragged her onto a patch of waste ground and stabbed her to death with a sharpened screwdriver. Common sense alone should have told Jones that a killer covered in blood would hardly risk using public transport.
10) In her book, published in early October 1980, she wrote about the Ripper: "He is killing indiscriminately now. But he is coming to the end of the road. He will try to do another, but it will go wrong and he won't finish the job. He will be caught before he gets the chance."
Jones was wrong yet again and continued to contradict herself. The Ripper managed to "finish the job" when he killed Jacqueline Hill on 17/11/80. Only four days later Jones told the Daily Mirror "...he will strike again almost immediately. I see him coming back to claim another victim within the week." According to the Mirror reporter, "She said the next victim would be a youngish woman but refused to give further details. 'I do not want to frighten the life out of some poor young girl with a similar description'". Bearing in mind the fact that the only description she could have offered, based on previous murders, was that the victim would be young (ish) with dark hair, a sizeable proportion of Bradford's female population would have been at risk! In fact Jacqueline Hill would be the Ripper's final victim.
11) Jones did come up with a few rather curious "hits" but none of them were of the slightest use in solving the case. However, they demonstrate that like other psychics Jones revamped mundane scraps of information and coincidences from the past and recast them as predictions of the future.
a) The name 'Peter' was already associated with another sadistic murderer and rapist, Peter Kuerten - the famous "Dusseldorf Vampire". Indeed, the first book about the Yorkshire Ripper, published in 1979, drew a parallel between the two killers. There is nothing mysterious about Jones' choice of the name.
b) Jones had a feeling that the name "Ainsworth" was important in some way, and sure enough she discovered that one of the Ripper's victims had been found on land belonging to a man surnamed Hainsworth. Also, long before Jacqueline Hill was killed Jones had a premonition that the initials "JH" would be of significance in a murder committed in November.
Again, there are no supernatural forces at work here. At the time it was suspected that Joan Harrison, killed in November 1975, may have been the Ripper's second victim (although Sutcliffe later denied killing her). "Harrison" and "Ainsworth" are coupled in the name of the bestselling Victorian novelist Harrison Ainsworth, one of whose books - Preston Fight - may have provided Jones with a coincidental link with the town in which Joan Harrison died. In short, "JH" was a memory of Joan Harrison's murder, not a premonition of Jacqueline Hill's.
c) But what about Jones' apparently successful prediction of the date on which Hill would die - the 17th or 27th of November?
Firstly, most of the Ripper attacks took place in the last fortnight of the month. Secondly, another medium - Reginald du Marius - had already predicted that a murder would take place on the 27th of a month. Jones was not taking too great a risk by choosing the same date as du Marius and adding its ten-day interval partner as another option, and a lucky hit hardly compensates for the rest of her grossly inaccurate information about the Ripper.
Melvin Harrison sums up Jones' claims about the case in a single paragraph:
"It can be said with certainty that at no time did she supply a single name, location, address, or description connected with any of the murders that was of any use to the police. The impression that she in some way co-operated usefully with them and supplied valuable information is false."
