BINGLEY resident and councillor David Heseltine has said he is glad Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe has been secretly cremated because he would have been unhappy for him to be buried in the town's cemetery.

Yesterday it was reported Sutcliffe's ex wife Sonia had organised for the murderer to be cremated in a secret location with just one other person present.

A planned Zoom link to the service was cancelled.

There had been reports since the killer's death that he had wished to be buried near his hometown.

Sutcliffe was born in Bingley in 1946 and worked at a lorry driver and a grave digger.

"I'm very glad the the good souls of Bingley who are laid in the cemetery will not have someone who carried out such heinous crimes, in their midst. I am sure their relatives will feel the same way as well as other residents of Bingley. I would not have been happy knowing Peter Sutcliffe's body was buried in our cemetery.

"A Bingley burial may well have been his last wishes, but for the crimes he committed and the horror and pain he placed on those women's relatives for the rest of their lives they should have been discounted and I am glad that seems to have been the case.

"I don't know what his ex wife will do with the ashes. That is up to her."

Sutcliffe died aged 74 on November 13 after reportedly refusing treatment for coronavirus.

His killing spree across Yorkshire and Manchester from 1975 to 1980 terrified northern England and launched a huge manhunt and a botched police inquiry.

Sutcliffe was serving a whole life term for the murders of 13 women and the attempted murder of seven more.

He was an inmate of the maximum security Frankland jail and died at the nearby University Hospital of North Durham.