THE Yorkshire Ripper has insisted he is sane and hopes to win his freedom one day, telling his family: “I’m all right now”

The multiple murderer told his younger brother Mick he is going to the law courts to find out how much longer he will be locked up.

And 62-year-old Sutcliffe still holds out the hope that he will be free before he dies.

Thirteen-times killer Sutcliffe has spent the last 24 years in Broadmoor top security hospital after being diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw last month told Parliament that the former lorry driver and gravedigger could not be considered by the Parole Board for release while he is detained under the Mental Health Act.

But Sutcliffe’s lawyers want him to be declared sane so he can be transferred back to the prison system and a bid for his release can be made under the European Convention of Human Rights.

His London solicitor, Saimo Chahal, confirmed an application has been made to the High Court to set the tariff – the minimum sentence Sutcliffe should serve – which was not made by Ministers at the time. Mick Sutcliffe, 57, of Bingley, said his brother told him, in a phone conversation last week, that he was no longer insane.

“He thinks he’s all right. He said to me 'I'm all right, now’,” Mick said.

Sutcliffe conducted a five-year reign of terror across the north in the 1970s.

He was found guilty in 1981 of the murders of 13 women and attempting to murder seven others and given 20 life sentences with a recommendation by the judge that he serve at least 30 years.

His murder victims included teenage Huddersfield prostitute Helen Rytka.

He also tried to kill schoolgirl Theresa Sykes, at Oakes. His brother said: “He isn’t trying to get out with this legal action. His lawyers are fighting to ask for his tariff, how much he has to do. Is it going to be the rest of his life, or another 30 years, 20 years or five?

“It might not mean that he is ever coming out but he wants his legal right to know whether he is going to be detained for the rest of his life.”

Mick added: “Peter said that if he only had to serve another five or 10 years he hoped he would be moved to a lower category place. A few of his mates have moved to a lower category hospital in Wakefield.

“I still can't see him ever coming out, but he gave me the impression he was hoping he would get out one day. It is something he would want eventually, whenever it was. But he is not expecting to be released and if it was in another 20 years his life would be gone anyway.

“I don’t know where he would go if he were released. There would always be someone after him and they would have to give him a new identity.”