For five decades Neil Jackson has been grieving his ‘amazing mam’, but now he is planning to be reunited with her in death. He wants to make sure he has a plot near her grave in Leeds
The son of a Yorkshire Ripper victim visited her grave to mark the 50th anniversary of her ‘unimaginable’ murder and said: “I want to be buried near my mam’.
Emily Jackson, 42, was Peter Sutcliffe’s second victim, battered and mutilated after she was snatched off the streets of Leeds. Her loyal son Neil Jackson, 67, who says he has “lived through a nightmare”, took several bouquets including carnations – his mum’s favourites – on Tuesday, during his regular pilgrimage to see her grave at Leeds Cottingley cemetery.
Neil, now a grandad, told her: “I’m here again, mam”. He told The Mirror how his house is full of photos of his mum and he speaks to her all the time: “I would like to be buried near her. Losing our mam and not seeing her again was really devastating. I hope there’s space for me when it’s my time in the same cemetery.
“It would give me some comfort to know we’re back together. She was the best mum in the world. Jolly and with a heart of gold.”
Twisted Sutcliffe, after murdering Emily, went on to conduct a campaign of terror between 1975 and 1980 that saw him murder 13 women and attempt to kill at least seven more.
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Neil was just 17 and living at home with his mum and family, when this awful tragedy struck on January 20 1976, and ‘knocked the family for six’. After police arrived on their doorstep to break the news, his dad could not cope with identifying her body, so it was left to the traumatised teenager to confirm the murder victim was his mum.
“It was very, very, upsetting, especially at that age. I just nodded to them that it was her. I found it difficult to speak. That’s a nightmare I don’t ever want to repeat,” he said.
His mum died after she came under the steely and murderous gaze of Sutcliffe, after she left her husband at the Gaiety pub in Leeds. She had been told to work as a sex worker to help pay the bills.
It was around 7pm when she got in Sutcliffe’s car, saying it would cost £5 and he drove her to some derelict land.
According to Sutcliffe’s confession he told of her ‘cheap perfume’ and said: “I felt an inner compulsion to kill a prostitute. This was about a month after Christmas.”
Sutcliffe pretended the car would not start and she apparently held a lighter above him to give him some light to look under the bonnet. But as she did so, he took a couple of steps back and hit her twice with his weapon of choice, a hammer. He then stabbed her 52 times around her body.
Her son visits her grave at Leeds Cottingley Cemetery several times a year, but finds the one on January 20 particularly painful, with reminders of how her body was found terribly mutilated, the following day on derelict land.
A close friend of Neil’s, Dr Jane Carter Woodrow, who has known his family for decades, wrote a book with Neil called ‘After Evil’, joined him at the graveside on Tuesday.
She said: “I still remember one of the first things that Neil told me: that the heart of the family had been ripped out the night his mum was murdered, and their home turned cold and dark.
“He also recalled how he’d been worrying for hours what to tell his little brother and sister when they returned home from school that fateful day. And when they’d finally come running through the door and asked, ‘Where’s mummy?’ he’d frozen. Then replied with the only thing he could think of, ‘Summat’s happened. Now get up the table and I’ll get you your teas.’
“As the little ones were packed off that evening to stay with relatives, little did Neil realise as he waved them off, that the four of them would never live under the same roof again. Or that he and his father would soon become estranged.”
Neil added: “It really did go dark in that house after she died. She was like the backbone of the family. She did everything office work for the business. The book keeping. Looking after the family, if any neighbours wanted anything, she’d give them it.
“It was cold and dark in the house because dad kept the curtains closed, it was like a grieving thing, out of respect. It was like that for many days. It was weird. And it was cold because the heating had gone off too. It had knocked him for six. It had knocked all the family for six. It’s like I keep saying, when Sutcliffe killed mam, they didn’t just kill mam he killed the whole family.“
Sutcliffe died in prison in 2020 after getting Covid, and Neil said: “It was a big relief when he died. He conned the Government, the prison service out of millions. He was crying insane when he wasn’t. He got better fed and watered than I did working 6 days a week in the building trade.”
Neil, who has a son aged 40 and a grandson of 17, said he is upset her grave has been left without a headstone for five decades after a family feud.
“My dad got married again 18 months after, so needless to say he washed his hand of her more or less. It’s fallen down onto me. I visit her grave two or three times a year. It’s always upsetting. So I am having a memorial made for her. I’ve got the money now. I’ve got a memorial with a heart on it and her name. ‘Son, grandson, and great grandson.
“I’m hoping it will be done by March, April time. It is just a bit upsetting because it’s just a grave and I want to show her that respect.”
Dr Woodrow said Neil and his mum had a ‘special bond’ and she had taken him under his wing after he saw his older brother, Derek, 14, died in a freak accident at home, when Neil was 12. A gust of wind left a glass back door slamming on him. Neil and Emily had become the best of friends since then, and though grieving herself, she had done all she could to help pull Neil through.
“They would get up early to do her fruit and veg round together in the van around Leeds, and later collect Neil’s younger siblings and other children living close by from their junior school, all laughing singing as they made their way home,” Dr Woodrow explained.
“Then there was Goldie, the ragged pony that Emily saved from the knacker’s yard to help Neil’s younger siblings with their loss. They, with other kids in the street, would delight in having rides on Goldie, with Neil at the reigns, running up and down the street beside them.
“And when Emily wasn’t giving away fruit and veg to her customers if they were a bit short, she was burning the midnight oil doing the books for the family roofing business, picking up the roofing materials from the suppliers and driving Sid and the other men to work each day. (Neil’s dad didn’t drive.)
“It didn’t take long to realise that Emily had been the backbone of the Jackson family, and a stalwart of the local community. Only for her life to be tragically cut so short.”
But she is scathing of how the victims and their families were treated by police 50 years ago.
“When senior police officers then referred to some of the victims as being ‘ respectable ’ or ‘innocent’ implying that those labelled as prostitutes, were not, this was not only another blow to the victim’s families like Neil, but made their relatives’ lives seem worth less, and even that they were culpable of their own murders,” she said.
“This was then shockingly doubled down on at Sutcliffe’s trial where the prosecutor, Attorney General Sir Michael Havers told the jury: ‘Some were prostitutes, but perhaps the saddest part of the case is that some were not. The last six attacks were on totally respectable women’.
“Victim blaming however, and particularly of women, was all part of the culture back then…”
And poignantly she added: “For those lost during that awful time, let’s remember the victims as the people they were and might have become. Jayne liked dancing. Barbara wanted to become a social worker.
“Helen dreamed of being in a girl band. Jo liked horse riding. Wilma was clever at school.
And, she said when Neil takes lowers to Emily’s grave on Tuesday, 50 years after her death, he will remember her as he always does, “a wonderful mum, sister, niece, daughter, and a great friend to all who knew her.”
As he left the cemetery on Tuesday he told her: “Mam, I will see you in a couple of months.’
