Serial Killer Peter Sutcliffe reportedly has 'just weeks to live' as his health deteriorates at HMP Frankland prison

The Yorkshire ripper has 'just weeks to live' and is suffering from nightmares where he is haunted by the faces of his victims.

Serial killer Peter Sutcliffe is reportedly taking a whole range of drugs to cope as he struggles with breathing difficulties, high blood pressure, diabetes and has almost gone blind.

The 73-year-old is serving 20 life sentences in HMP Frankland prison, Durham, after murdering 13 women and being convicted of attempting to murder seven more.

One prison source told the Daily Star that the murderer has reached the 'final stages' of his life.

'Every time he gets ill he never fully recovers and so is on a steady decline,' they said.

'He is in the final stages of his life and his own death is now something he is preoccupied with'.

The former Bradford lorry driver's health has been deteriorating for years, with reports earlier this year stating that he has lost vision in his left eye after another inmate attacked him in 1997.

An attempt to improve vision in his right eye this year left him without vision in either.

Peter Sutcliffe, the Yorkshire Ripper, received 20 concurrent life sentences for his attacks and the murder of 13 women. (Pictured) Sutcliffe on his wedding day on August 10, 1974

Picture of mother-of-four Wilma McCann, one of his first victims, (left) and Leeds University student Jacqueline Hill, his 13th and last known victim, who was found dead in the city in 1980

He murdered women, who mostly worked as prostitutes, between 1976 and 1981 using knives, hammers and screwdrivers.

And two years ago he confessed on tape to a savage attack on a 14-year-old schoolgirl, who he wrongly thought was a prostitute.

He approached Tracy Browne, now 57, as she walked home in Silsden, West Yorkshire, in 1975, and struck up a conversation.

When they reached the turning to her house, he lunged at her and hit her five times, before throwing her over a barbed wire fence when he heard a car approach.

'My vision had gone because I was so stunned from the attack and my eyes had filled with blood', Tracy said, remembering the attack.

'I fell several times but forced myself back up. I told myself I had to get home in case he came back to finish me off'.

Tracy, pictured after the attack, said that while she was being beaten the sounds Sutcliffe made reminded her of Jimmy Connors playing tennis

Crowds gathered outside Dewsbury court in England after the Yorkshire Ripper was caught and appeared there to be charged with the murder of Jacqueline Hill

Despite having suffered two fractures to her skull Tracy managed to stagger to a farmworker's caravan and he raised the alarm.

Two months after the attack he murdered mother-of-four Wilma McCann, sparking one of the biggest criminal man hunt's in Britain. She is thought to be one of his earliest victims.

After being arrested with a prostitute in 1981 and confessing to being the Yorkshire Ripper, Sutcliffe was sentenced in May in the Old Bailey.

He had previously been interviewed nine times by officers in relation to the attacks, but had been let go each time.

In 2017 police suggested that he may have murdered more women than the 13 he was convicted for, and began questioning him about 17 unsolved cases that bear similarities to his previous attacks.

He was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia following his life sentence but was moved to Frankland Prison in Durham from Broadmoor psychiatric hospital last year after a ruling that he was sane enough to be transferred.