[4] Over the years, a number of investigators and writers have asserted that Peter Sutcliffe, the "Yorkshire Ripper", was the real murderer of Wilkinson.

[6] The attack took place in a field at the back of the bakery where Wilkinson worked, about fifteen minutes' walk from the estate where she lived.

Over the years, a number of investigators and writers have asserted that "Yorkshire Ripper" Peter Sutcliffe was the real murderer of Wilkinson.

[14] He put forward these claims in a book titled Deliver us from Evil, pointing out the similarities to Sutcliffe's known attacks in Bradford, Leeds and elsewhere.

[13] The number of similarities between Pearson and Wilkinson's cases led detectives to not only suspect they were copycat killings of each other, but also of the "Ripper" attacks.

[18] Sutcliffe knew the estate she was killed on and was known to regularly frequent the area, and only months before the murder in February 1977 was reported to police for acting suspiciously on the street Wilkinson lived.

[19] Another thing that linked Sutcliffe to the killing was that earlier on the same day as Wilkinson's killing, Sutcliffe had gone back to mutilate Jean Jordan's body before returning to Bradford, showing he had already gone out to attack victims that day and would have been in Bradford to attack Wilkinson after he came back from mutilating Jordan.

[13] In 2015, former detective Chris Clark and investigative journalist Tim Tate also supported the theory that Wilkinson was a victim of Sutcliffe in their book Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders.

[22] They pointed out that her body had been posed and partially stripped in typical "Yorkshire Ripper" fashion, with her trousers and pants pulled down and her bra lifted up.

[23] In 2022, ITV also produced a documentary based on Clark and Tate's book titled Yorkshire Ripper: The Secret Murders.