Eddie Dunford and Barry Gannon, crime reporters for the Yorkshire Post are sent to a press conference where they find a Mrs Kemplay pleading for someone to help find her missing daughter, Claire. Finding out that there have been two previous missing girls in the past few years, Eddie decides to help, unaware of the violence, corruption and blackmail that awaits him.
After 6 years of brutal murders the West Yorkshire Police fear that they may have already interviewed The Ripper and let him back into the world to continue his reign of terror upon the citizens of Yorkshire, but things become more difficult for the Police when they discover they not only have The Ripper to catch, but a copycat killer is also at large. Assistant Chief Constable of the Manchester Police, Peter Hunter, is called in to oversee the West Yorkshire Police's Ripper investigation, with the help of John Nolan and Helen Marshall, both detectives from the Manchester Police, they decide to go back and look at the crime reports from the Rippers victims to see what they could have missed.
The action moves to 1983 for the conclusion of the drama trilogy. A schoolgirl's disappearance bears striking similarities to the abduction and murder of Clare Kemplay in 1974, forcing Chief Superintendent Maurice Jobson to realise he may have helped convict the wrong man. Meanwhile, solicitor John Piggott is persuaded by the imprisoned man's mother to fight this miscarriage of justice - and soon unearths a trail of cover-ups.
