What happened to Marcella Claxton, as seen in The Long Shadow?

One of his victims, Marcella Claxton, is introduced in the drama's second episode, which unfolds 191 days on from the murders of Wilma McCann and Emily Jackson.

Sutcliffe struck the 20-year-old over the head – some reports say he used a spanner, others a hammer – but, miraculously, she survived her ordeal.

What happened to Marcella Claxton?

Claxton was returning from a party in Chapeltown, Leeds, in the early hours of one morning in 1976, when Sutcliffe spotted her. He thought she was a sex worker, but she refused his request. She then asked him for a lift home.

In an interview with The Sun, she described the moment she first came face to face with the man who tried to kill her.

"All I saw was a white man with black hair and beard and dark eyes," she said "His eyes made him look a bit scary, but I got in. Quite soon I realised we weren't heading towards my home."

With the knowledge that two local women had been murdered, Claxton became "more and more scared about what was going to ­happen" and tried to open the door to escape, but was unable to.

Read more:

• The Long Shadow isn't about the 'Yorkshire Ripper' – and that's vital
• The Long Shadow praised by murder victim's son: "We don't often see that"

He was driving Marcella towards Roundhay Park. When he pulled over, she asked if she could go to the toilet and he allowed her to walk to some bushes, where she crouched down. It was then that he attacked her, before driving off.

"The pain was awful and there was blood everywhere," she said. "I thought I was going to die."

She managed to get to a phone box and call for an ambulance, but while she was waiting, Marcella could see his car heading back towards the scene.

"I was convinced he had come back to check I was dead, or to finish me off if I wasn't," she continued.

She remained crouched down in the phone box, and thankfully, he drove away once more.

She needed brain surgery and more than 50 stitches following the attack.

Claxton, who was four-months pregnant at the the time, also suffered a miscarriage, which Sutcliffe wasn't held legally accountable for.

In The Long Shadow, chief superintendent Jim Hobson, who replaced DCS Dennis Hoban, dismissed her account, claiming that she was a sex worker who had either been attacked by a "pimp" or a "punter" who she had wronged. We also see another detective attempt to pin the crime on a Black man.

"Everyone thought I was a prostitute because I had been attacked by the Ripper," Claxton said to The Sun. "I wasn't. But people gave me dirty looks, even my own parents."

The facial composite created from Claxton's description produced an accurate image of Sutcliffe, but it wasn't used by the police, and in the drama, Hobson leaves it in his desk drawer.

"If the police had listened to me, they could have caught him," Claxton told The Sun.

"There would have been no more killing... they asked me the same things over and over, but they didn't listen — they didn't believe me... if only they had listened to the description I gave, they might have caught him earlier and all those other poor women would not have died."

Where is Marcella Claxton now?

Claxton is now 67 years old, with three children and six grandchildren. But almost 50 years on from that morning, she stills bears physical and psychological scars.

"Peter Sutcliffe ruined my life," she told The Sun. "I can never escape what he did to me. I suffer pain every day, exactly where he hit me."

She's plagued by "headaches, dizzy spells and black outs" (via Sky News), which cause her to fall, and eventually forced her to retire from her job as a school cleaner.

"It's like my brain is bursting and hitting the inside of my head, often all day," she told The Guardian.

As for what she thinks about The Long Shadow, Claxton is pleased that her story is in the spotlight once again.

"I am glad the TV shows how terrible the police were, the racism and sexism," she told The Sun. "I hope ­lessons have been learned."

The Long Shadow airs on ITV1 and ITVX. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on.

Try Radio Times magazine today and get 10 issues for only £10, PLUS a £10 John Lewis and Partners voucher delivered to your home – subscribe now. For more from the biggest stars in TV, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.