Sonia Sutcliffe

One other newspaper which formed part of her legal action, the News of the World did not. When the case came to court in December 1990, details emerged which demonstrated that she had benefited financially from her husband's crimes. The jury found for the News of the World, and she was ordered to pay the legal costs of the both sides in the case.

In 1989 a libel action against the satirical magazine Private Eye, brought by Sonia Sutcliffe, came to court. Her decision to sue was made shortly before the limitation on such actions, then six years, was due to expire. The case concerned a January 1981 article which detailed her attempts to make financial deals with newspapers and claimed that she was attempting to profit from her husband's crimes. Private Eye admitted at the time that it had made two errors in the article, but the plaintiff (Sutcliffe) rejected the offer of a correction.

Sonia married Sutcliffe on 10 August 1974, her 24th birthday two years after she began treatment for schizophrenia. Her relationship with her husband was later characterised by writer Gordon Burn as domineering, with Sonia willing to slap him down "like a naughty schoolboy". When her husband was found guilty for the murder of multiple women, Sonia remained married to him and continued to live in the family home in Bradford, eventually divorcing in 1994. Barbara Jones, a journalist who had many conversations with Sonia, described her as "the most irritating, strangest and coldest person I've ever met. She's so incredibly prickly and demanding".

Sonia Sutcliffe (born 10 August 1950) née Szurma) is the former wife of the British serial killer Peter Sutcliffe.