24. Joel Rifkin was just driving around casually with a decomposing corpse in his pickup truck. He was stopped due to the missing license plate and he remarked about how it’s always the “25 cent part that gets you”, something to that effect.
25. Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, was actually interviewed nine times during the investigation. But the police discounted him each time because he had the wrong accent. Some hoaxer had sent a number of letters and a recording claiming to be the Ripper, and the police were looking for a guy with a Geordie (Newcastle) accent rather than Sutcliffe’s Yorkshire accent.
The hoax is believed to have cost three more women their lives, because it was only when he confessed to the murders in 1981 that Sutcliffe was finally caught and the recording was proven to be fake.
The hoaxer was named John Humble, and he was sentenced to 8 years in prison in 2006 for it.
