YORKSHIRE Ripper Peter Sutcliffe – who has recently been linked again to an attack at Silsden four decades ago – could be moved to a top security prison within weeks, it has been revealed.

The 70-year-old Bradford serial killer, who changed his surname to his mother’s maiden name of Coonan, is set to move out of Broadmoor top security psychiatric hospital and back into jail after a mental health tribunal ruled he was sane enough to do so.

The move has to be ratified by the Ministry of Justice, which has confirmed the tribunal’s decision.

An MoJ spokesman said: “Peter Coonan will remain locked up and will never be released for his evil crimes.

“Decisions over whether prisoners are to be sent back to prison from secure hospitals are based on clinical assessments made by independent medical staff.

“The High Court ordered in 2010 that Peter Coonan should never be released. This was upheld by the Court of Appeal.”

The spokesman confirmed it was making the statement “in response to the (tribunal) decision”.

Sutcliffe’s brother, Mick, said he had told him about the impending move.

He said: “He thinks it could be in the next couple of weeks, but he doesn’t know. They don’t tell him where he’s going or when. They will take him out of his room at 6am one day and he will end up wherever he’s going.

“He thinks it might be somewhere like Liverpool or Newcastle. I am not in good health and I have not been able to see him for 20 years.”

Mr Sutcliffe added: “He’s not very happy about having to move. He doesn’t want to go. He has his routine at Broadmoor and won’t get the same number of visits.

“I don’t know why they can’t leave him where he is.”

The former lorry driver was sent to Broadmoor in 1984, after he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. He was given 20 life jail terms in 1981 for the murders of 13 women and the attempted murder of seven more between 1976 and 1981, and served three years in Parkhurst Prison on the Isle of Wight.

West Yorkshire Police are currently carrying out a 'cold case' review into unsolved attacks on women and girls in the late 1970s and early 80s.

And Peter Sutcliffe could face new charges if police find any evidence of a link.

Officers have taken statements and DNA samples from women who were attacked.

Sutcliffe has always been linked to the horrific assault on a teenager at Silsden in August 1975.

Tracy Browne, then 14, was attacked with a hammer as she walked home along Bradley Road one evening.

Her attacker – disturbed by an approaching car – dumped her over a fence and ran away, leaving her bleeding and barely conscious.

Sutcliffe later allegedly admitted the attack to former West Yorkshire Chief Constable, Keith Hellawell.

The cold case investigation is believed to focus on files in a 1982 Government report that concluded Sutcliffe was probably responsible for more attacks on lone women, including in West Yorkshire.