Murder of Jayne MacDonald

Irene MacDonald was reported to have said that she wished Sutcliffe was going to the gallows. "I hope other prisoners have the decency to make every minute he is inside a living hell for him," she said. On 5 March 1982, Irene MacDonald made legal history when a High Court registrar in Leeds awarded her damages of £6,722 against Peter Sutcliffe for the death of her daughter.

When Sutcliffe was apprehended in 1981 he admitted to feeling regret about MacDonald's killing. He said he thought she was a prostitute because she was walking through a red-light district in the early hours of the morning, saying: "I felt like someone inhuman and I realised that it was a devil driving me against my will and that I was a beast".

Wilfred MacDonald, who had to identify Jayne's body, died in 1979 at the age of 60. He was buried with her.

MacDonald had recently left Allerton High School and since April 1977 had been working as a shop assistant in the shoe department at Grandways supermarket. She was described in police reports as being 5 feet 3 inches (1.60 m) with shoulder-length brown hair. She was a Bay City Rollers fan and enjoyed dancing and roller skating.

On 25 June 1977, MacDonald went to meet friends at the Hofbrauhaus, a German-style bierkeller in Leeds. She missed the last bus home and went back to her friends house to wait for his sister to bring her home. After 45 minutes so, she ended up walking home. She was attacked by Peter Sutcliffe in Reginald Street in Leeds at around 2am.

MacDonald was buried in Harehills Cemetery, Leeds, West Yorkshire on 20 December 1977.

MacDonald's murder changed the police and press's perception of the Yorkshire Ripper murders (later discovered to be by Peter Sutcliffe) and resulted in public furore and increasing anger amongst women. The police reaction led to the Reclaim the Night movement being formed in 1977.

Women - particularly in Leeds and the North of England - felt the police response to the Yorkshire Ripper murders was slow and that the press had barely reported on them until MacDonald's murder. Although her murder led to more coverage, the police responded by telling women not to go out at night, effectively putting them under curfew. Feminists and a variety of student and women’s groups were angered by this response, as well as by the sensationalizing of the serial murders. This led to the Leeds Revolutionary Feminist Group calling for women to march in cities across the UK on the night of 12 November 1977 against rape and for a woman’s right to walk without fear at night.

Jayne MacDonald (16 August 1960 – 26 June 1977) was a 16-year-old shop assistant who was murdered on 26 June 1977 by Peter Sutcliffe, commonly known as 'The Yorkshire Ripper'. She was his youngest known murder victim, although not his youngest victim (he later confessed to attacking 14-year old Tracy Browne two years earlier). Her death led to widespread coverage of the murders, public furor and rising anger amongst women.

Jayne Michelle MacDonald, born in Leeds in 1960, was the second child of Wilfred MacDonald (a railwayman) and his wife Irene. She had two half-sisters - Carole and Janet (born 1957) - from her mother's first marriage, and siblings Debra (born 1961) and Ian (born 1964). Carole married Victor in 1964 and moved with him to Johannesburg, South Africa with Janet remaining with her mother and half-siblings.