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The man who perpetrated one of the greatest hoaxes in British history has died, it has been revealed.

John Humble - dubbed 'Wearside Jack' - led detectives on a wild goose chase when he falsely claimed to be the Yorkshire Ripper.

The voice recording and letters he sent to police led the police to focus the hunt for the serial killer on the North East during the late 1970s.

In the meantime, Peter Sutcliffe was able to savagely kill at least three more women.

According to the Daily Mirror, Humble drank himself to death in a rundown ground floor flat in South Shields.

The 63-year-old - who eventually admitted his action were "evil" - was living under a fake name at the time of his death.

(Image: No Name)

Humble’s con began in March 1978 with a letter to police and another to the Daily Mirror.

It said: “I told [Oldfield] and I am telling you to warn them wh***s I’ll strike again and soon when heat cools off.”

Police received a third letter in March 1979.

But it was on June 1979 when he cemented his notoriety with a voice recording sent to West Yorkshire police Assistant Chief Constable George Oldfield, who was leading the inquiry.

Humble, 23 at the time, taunted detectives, saying: “I’m Jack. I see you are still having no luck catching me.

“I have the greatest respect for you George, but Lord!, you are no nearer catching me now than four years ago when I started. I reckon your boys are letting you down, George. They can’t be much good can they?"

The recording continued: “At the rate I’m going I should be in the book of records... I’ll keep on going for quite a while yet. I can’t see myself being nicked just yet...

“Well, it’s been nice chatting to you, George. Yours, Jack the Ripper.”

Cops bought the hoax hook, line and sinker and spent valuable time and resources searching for a suspect with a thick Mackem accent.

Peter Sutcliffe - whose soft Yorkshire accent sounded nothing like Humble's - continued his savage run of rapes and murder.

His reign of terror resulted in the deaths of at least 13 women over five years between 1975 and 1980. He was sentenced to life in prison and is locked up at HMP Frankland.

Humble's fraud went undetected for nearly 30 years but in 2005 a cold case review by West Yorkshire police matched his DNA – taken after he was arrested for being drunk and disorderly in 1991 – to a sample taken from one of the letters.

He was jailed for eight years for perverting the course of justice.

Former Northumbria Police Detective Superintendent Steve led the arrest team on the day the net finally closed on Humble.

(Image: ©mirrorpix)

In 2014, he told The Chronicle: “We went into the living room and he was drunk sat on a settee in a very thread-bare house. Then he began to talk in that broad Wearside accent.

"I was standing there looking at this pathetic specimen of a man who was drunk and emaciated and I couldn’t believe he was the man responsible for one of the biggest manhunts this country had ever seen.

"I could remember listening to the audio and I’ll never forget hearing him talk in that thick Wearside accent.”

Under interview after his arrest in 2005, he said: “[The Ripper case] was getting on my nerves. It was on the bloody telly all the time. I shouldn’t have done it. I know that – because it’s evil.”

When freed, he told his family: “It was a spur of the moment thing with the first letter, then I got carried away with it.”

It is thought he was partly motivated by a hatred for police.

Sutcliffe, finally caught in 1981, wrote to Humble to tell him he had “blood on his hands” for the last three murders, which were committed while the officers were looking for someone with a Wearside accent.

After Humble was released in 2009, he was moved to South Shields, Tyneside, and given a new identity, John Samuel Anderson.

It is understood he died in July.

Ian McCabe, 59, who had known Humble since school, said he often spoke of his regret over the Wearside Jack hoax.

He added: “I think that is why he drank, to forget.”