I survived a serial killer

Mo Lea, senior lecturer in Art and former course leader at Masters degree

The Long Shadow, written by George Kay, and based on Michael Bilton’s book Wicked Beyond Belief, is a seven-part ITV drama based on the police hunt for a sadistic necrophiliac who terrorised women in the north of England throughout the late 1960s and 1970s. With the consultation and blessing of the families of his victims, the drama lays bare the violent misogyny and prejudicial policing that came to characterise the hunt for the so-called Yorkshire Ripper. I talk to Mo about how she survived a near-fatal attack by Sutcliffe in 1980.

Mo Lea was an art student in the city when she became a target for the serial killer, Peter Sutcliffe.

Mo, who had moved to Leeds from Liverpool, was out with friends in a pub in the Chapeltown area of the city, planning her 21st birthday.

It was October 25, 1980, and the friends went their separate ways just after 10pm, as Mo decided to walk through the university campus to catch the bus. A man approached behind her, hit the back of her head with a hammer and attacked with a screwdriver. Her life was saved by a passing couple who heard her screams.

She was assaulted so violently that her parents failed to recognise her in the hospital, her jaw broken, her face bloodied and bruised.

At the time, Sutcliffe had murdered 12 women and left another seven for dead.

Several months later, while recuperating at home in Liverpool, she recognised Sutcliffe on the TV as the man that attacked her.

'When you have had trauma like that, it gives you an edge,' she told me. 'If you've been close to death, you feel you've been granted this freedom to live. It has compelled me to be successful in my career.'

Mo’s book:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Facing-Yorkshire-Ripper-Art-Survival/dp/1526777576

Her website: https://www.molea.art/

Peter Sutcliffe, drawn by Mo Lea

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