In this chapter:
The shadow of a serial killer.
More than one brush with the law.
Student housing.
Characters in the Dojo.
20th century policing in Leeds.
In the summer term of 1980 Mark Harland was returning home from the Polytechnic. He had been putting in overtime for his final year degree show, which involved long hours of pulling everything together. Mark had put his karate training on hold in this final push to the finish line. What he didn’t expect was to have to deal with was a police officer who stopped him in his tracks somewhere between the Leeds city centre and Chapeltown.
‘Who are you?’
‘Where have you been?’
‘Where are you going?’
Then came the pointed question;
‘Where were you born?’
In June 1979 Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield had received a tape cassette in the post by a man with a distinct accent taunting him for not having caught the serial killer who, up until that date, had murdered ten known victims, all women. The voice on the tape introduced himself as the murderer with the words, “I’m Jack”. This was where the mythology of the Yorkshire Ripper started.
The accent and dialect narrowed the killer down to a very localised place in the North East of England. The police had taken too long to bring this monster to book and were desperate to catch him.
But this ‘Jack’ was a hoaxer and while the beleaguered police were busy chasing down a blind alley the real killer continued to wreak havoc.
A huge campaign to try and catch this man.
Despite having a pronounced Yorkshire accent Mark Harland was actually born in the North East, in Gateshead and, in response to the police officer’s question, he answered truthfully.
For the investigators this was enough to peg Mark as a potential ‘person of interest’.
The officer took down Mark’s details and a short time later John Law came knocking on our door.
Mark Harland.
Bexley Grove LS8.
To set the scene.
The summer term of 1979 Mark and I decided to pool our resources and look for rented accommodation somewhere in Leeds. We went to look over many different houses, most of them little more than run-down hovels.
There were three of us involved in this enterprise, all karate types, but the other guy was content to let Mark and I do all the leg-work, which caused some resentment, but we gamely soldiered on until we found somewhere that was half decent.
43, Bexley Grove Harehills, on the cusp of Harehills and Chapeltown.
We were prepared to overlook the shortcomings of this squalid back-to-back house, with the same kind of optimism that kids get when they build dens in the woods – it may be made of bits of tarpaulin and corrugated iron, but it’s was a palace to us.
For me… it was the cellar… a space to train, room enough to practice kihon and kata.
This wasn’t the leafy suburbs of Leeds; it was marked by poverty and low quality tiny rented houses. There was no greenery, and it was not uncommon to see washing lines strung across the street, after all, where was a family of six going to dry clothes with no back garden and only the tiniest patch of scrub out front; enough space for a dustbin?
Mark was in the house on his own when a murder squad detective knocked. Once inside he must have given Mark the once-over and looked around our small living room. We had a large poster on the wall above the gas fire, it had an image of Shotokan karate master Tanaka Masahiko making appropriate ‘karate-like shapes’ and the word ‘Karate’ on it.
The detective carefully scanned the poster, turned to Mark and said, “So you do judo then?”. Afterwards, Mark said, “No wonder it took them so long to catch him then!” I know that since then Mark has told that story many times.
The actual poster.
A city under siege.