Former Coronation Street star Bruce Jones speaks of moment he discovered body of Yorkshire Ripper victim

Former Coronation Street actor Bruce Jones has detailed the ‘panic’ he experienced when he was accused of being the notorious Yorkshire Ripper after coming across one of his victims.

Bruce, who played the role of Les Battersby in the soap from 1997 to 2007, found Peter Sutcliffe’s fifth victim- twenty-year-old Jean Jordan – at an allotment in Manchester in 1977, where he had been working with a friend.

The actor has now appeared in ITV’s new series, Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders, to detail the emotional toll discovering the body and being accused of the murder took on him.

Recalling the moment he found the body, Bruce told the programme: “There was two of us, me and this older bloke who… managed to get an allotment which we did. We managed to acquire this big shed but it needed a brick base.

ITV

“I’ll go and get the bricks for the base, I’ll just.. big building plot over there, I’ll go and get bricks and that. And it was on the way there, five times I’d, I’d gone, filled the barrow, come back. And the sixth time, there was this body.”

He added: “I ran across the main road I nearly got killed running across that road, to, I rung 999. I thought, ‘What do I do, do I go, do I stay?’ The next minute, I’ve never seen so many police cars.”

However, the police went on to interrogate Bruce over whether he had been to Yorkshire, with the actor explaining that he couldn’t remember where he was on their specified date.

He explained: “[The police asked me] why I had a hammer and big chisel and lump hammer in my wheelbarrow. That was to break the bricks up I needed for the base of the shed.

“Just question after question. Your mind does play tricks on you. It’s like ‘Where was I? Had I been to Yorkshire? No, I’ve never been to Yorkshire.’

ITV

“Right from the minute you find that body your mind is going faster than you can think. And in the end, they come in and tell you, ‘get dressed’, and we’ll run you home and that was it.”

The new series, which aired on Wednesday night, links more than twenty unsolved murders and attempted murders to Peter Sutcliffe for the first time.

ITV says on the series: “Through a thorough re-examining of evidence in several cases, including interviews with victims’ relatives, many speaking on television for the first time, as well as leading experts, the series places these events within the timeline of Sutcliffe’s confirmed crimes and MO, and asks why he has never been considered a suspect.”

Peter Sutcliffe died in 2020 after almost forty years behind bars. He was convicted for the murders of thirteen women, and for trying to kill seven others between 1975 and 1980.