On Sunday, 10 December another naked body was discovered by a passing motorist in woods near Nacton, close to Ipswich. On Tuesday, 12 December, Suffolk police confirmed that the body was that of Anneli Alderton, aged 24, from Colchester, Essex, also a known prostitute. She had been strangled and was three months pregnant at the time of her death.
On that same day, police confirmed that at 3.05pm, following a call from a member of the public, a fourth body had been discovered along Old Felixstowe Road. The body was that of a naked woman, roughly 6yd from the roadside. About 40 minutes later, at 3.48pm, the police helicopter spotted a further body only a few hundred yards from the first. Suffolk police said that although they had no evidence to support their belief, they strongly believed these bodies to be connected to the first, making a total of five victims. The two new victims were later identified as two women previously reported missing: Annette Nicholls, aged 29, and Paula Clennell, aged 24, again both prostitutes.
On Thursday, 14 December, police confirmed the identity of the fourth victim as Paula Clennell. Paula had been reported missing, and had last been seen at about at 12.20am on Sunday, 10 December, on Handford Road near its junction with Burlington Road in Ipswich, Suffolk.
The police now had a total of five victims, all prostitutes, and all had apparently been strangled while under the influence of drugs and stripped naked before being dumped by the killer. The police were in no doubt that all the victims had been killed by the same hand. There was one unusual feature in the case of Anneli Alderton and Annette Nicholls – their bodies had been laid out in the shape of a crucifix, with their arms outstretched and their hair combed out behind their heads.
More than 500 officers were involved in the enquiry and a team of five investigating officers, one for each of the dead women, assessed and evaluated the evidence on the killings. Sifting this evidence proved to be fraught with difficulties, though. The victims were all known prostitutes and may have been with several men each night, and may also have been driven away from the district to other places to have sex; therefore there could be DNA from a number of different men found on their bodies and at the places where they were dumped. The police also believed that the victims were not killed where their bodies were found; as the locations were so close to each other they were looked on as deposition sites.
Police officers were also trying to establish whether the murders of the five women in Suffolk were linked to the murders or disappearances of other women and teenage girls, including six in East Anglia over the past 15 years.
These victims included:
Diane McInally, aged 23, from Glasgow. She vanished in October 1991. The prostitute and drug addict’s naked body was found dumped near bushes in a wood behind the Burrell Collection in Pollok Park, Glasgow. She died from compression to the neck.
Natalie Pearman, aged 16, from Norwich, Norfolk. She disappeared in November 1992. Her body was found at Ringland, Norfolk, near Norwich. She had been strangled and was found partially clothed.
Karen McGregor, aged 26, of Glasgow, Scotland, was found in the bushes of a car park in Glasgow in 1993. She had been badly beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled.
Johanna Young, aged 14, from Watton, Norfolk. She was reported missing on 23 December 1992. She was found in a nearby frozen pond, half-naked, on 26 December.
Mandy Duncan, aged 26, from Woodbridge, Suffolk. She disappeared in 1993 in Ipswich. Her body has never been found.
Victoria Hall, aged 17, from Trimley St Mary, Suffolk. She vanished on 19 September 1999. Her body was found five days later 25 miles away in a river. A local businessman was later tried and acquitted of her murder.
Kellie Pratt, aged 29, from Norwich. She disappeared in 2000 in Norwich. Her body has never been found.
Michelle Bettles, aged 22, from Norwich. She was reported missing on 28 March 2002. She was found dead three days later near Dereham in woodland. Her body was found fully clothed.
Police in Suffolk acted quickly and arrested Tom Stephens, a former part-time Special Police Constable, at 7.20am on Monday, 18 December 2006. Stephens was a supermarket worker at Tesco in Martlesham. Police arrested him at his home at Jubilee Close, Trimley St Martin, near Felixstowe; the village is close to the A14 road between Ipswich and Felixstowe. The police stated that Stephens had been questioned earlier in the investigation, and that items had been removed from his house at that time. They had taken his mobile phone and laptop computer. It was believed that Stephens knew all five of the dead girls.
However, following lengthy questioning, he was released without charge on police bail for further enquiries to be carried out. Due to the public outcry over the murders, Stephens was forced to go into hiding, despite not having been charged. His bail was later cancelled and he was exonerated from any involvement in the murders, although police would later suggest that the man they finally arrested who was charged and later convicted may have had an accomplice.
At 5am on Tuesday, 19 December 2006, a second man, Steve Wright, aged 48, a forklift truck driver from London Road, Ipswich, was arrested on suspicion of murder. His house and car were subjected to intense forensic examinations. He underwent a lengthy interrogation, which consisted of ten separate interviews during which he chose not to answer any questions. However, following the results of the forensic examinations, which gave the police sufficient evidence to connect Wright to the murders, he was formally charged with the five murders.
The trial of Steve Wright started at Ipswich Crown Court on Monday, 14 January 2008, before Mr Justice Goss. Wright entered a plea of not guilty to all five murders. The prosecution was represented by Mr Peter Wright QC who, in his opening speech, outlined the case to the jury, which was told that the backbone of the prosecution case revolved around DNA evidence linking Wright to three of the five victims. DNA from Wright was found on the breast of Anneli Alderton, as were other fibres that matched fibres found at his home, inside his gardening gloves and on his clothes. Wright’s DNA was also found on the victim Annette Nicholls along with matching fibres from his car, and her blood was found on a reflective jacket he sometimes wore.
Wright’s DNA was also found on the body of Paula Clennell, along with matching fibres from his sofa, his lumber jacket, tracksuit and trousers. Her blood was also found on the same reflective jacket.
The jury was told that no DNA was found on either Gemma Adams or Tania Nichol but the prosecution would suggest that this was due to the fact that the bodies had been immersed in water for several weeks before being found, thereby destroying any DNA evidence that might have been present. However, fibres from Wright’s car were found embedded in the hair of Gemma Adams and Tania Nicol, suggesting a ‘forceful or sustained contact’ with the carpet of the car. No other DNA relating to any other person was found on any of the victims.
In addition to the DNA evidence, the police enquiry had shown that Wright regularly cruised the red-light district of Ipswich, picking up prostitutes. On the night Tania Nichol disappeared, Wright’s Ford Mondeo was captured on a police camera heading out of town towards the location where her body was later found. A car matching Wright’s was also seen in the same area on the nights Gemma Adams and Anneli Alderton disappeared.
Steve Wright was represented by Timothy Langdale QC who, in his opening speech, told the jury that Wright would be denying the murders and had regularly picked up prostitutes, some of these being the victims, thereby suggesting that the DNA evidence was transferred through these meetings and not as a result of him murdering the women. Furthermore, he would state that he had also had sex with one of the other victims where there was no DNA evidence against him.
The majority of the prosecution evidence was unchallenged by the defence team representing Wright. After the prosecution closed its case, Wright took the witness stand. He told the court that he started to pick prostitutes up in the red-light district in the third week of October 2006. He stated that he could have been with all five women on the nights they vanished. He told
Ipswich Crown Court that he had had sex with four of the women and was intending to have sex with the fifth, Nichol, before changing his mind after she had got into his car and he had seen her face was covered in acne. This had put him off so he told her to get out. He denied the murders, stating that he had been the victim of a series of coincidences. He said he recalled having sex in his car with Adams either late on 14 November or early on 15 November. Wright said he could not remember when he had picked up Nichol but it might have been on 8 December 2006, when she was last seen alive. Her blood was found on a reflective jacket belonging to him. But he could not account for this; he had not injured her during sex. Blood from Clennell, whom he also admitted picking up around the time of her disappearance, was also found on the same reflective jacket. He could not explain how this had got there, but said she had told him that she had ‘bit her tongue’ while lying down on a sofa in his home. Wright said that he had used the jacket as a blanket on the floor of his bedroom where he had taken the women, after spending time in his car.
After a trial lasting six weeks, on Thursday, 21 February 2008, the jury finally retired to consider their verdicts. It took them just eight hours to return with unanimous guilty verdicts against Wright on all five counts of murder. The judge deferred sentence until the following day.
On Friday, 22 February 2008, Mr Justice Goss sentenced Steve Wright to the maximum sentence of life imprisonment. The judge said, ‘This was a targeted campaign of murder. It is right you should spend your whole life in prison … Drugs and prostitution meant these women were at risk. But neither drugs nor prostitution killed them. You did. You killed them, stripped them and left them … Why you did it may never be known.’
Wright sat emotionless as prosecutors asked the judge to ensure that he would never be allowed out of jail. The judge said, ‘the case met the legal requirements for a whole life sentence because the murders involved a “substantial degree of premeditation and planning”’.
Wright’s defence team said they would be considering whether there were grounds for an appeal, but said this was routine in all criminal cases.
At the time of writing, police had undertaken to check the outstanding cases previously mentioned to see whether there could be links to Wright. Despite the lengthy investigation conducted by the police, they were never able to put forward a clear motive for Wright killing the five victims. Could Wright have killed before? This should not be discounted, as it is unusual for someone to suddenly become a serial killer at the age of 40.
On 25 February 2009 Wright made an application to the Court of Appeal for leave to challenge his conviction on the grounds that his trial was unfair and therefore the conviction was unsafe. The appeal was heard by Lord Justice Hughes, who sat with two other judges. After careful deliberation the judges rejected the appeal. Lord Justice Hughes, when announcing the decision of the court, said Wright had raised ‘no arguable grounds of appeal’.
EPILOGUE
As you will have seen from reading about all of the aforementioned crimes, there have often been questions asked as to whether some of the murders could have been prevented, often by the families of the victims.
These questions tend to suggest that, in some cases, the police did not act quickly enough to arrest the offender or offenders. Others suggest that police departments were blinkered in their approach as they collected, assessed and evaluated evidence. It is worth bearing in mind, though, that many of the serial killers discussed here committed their crimes long before DNA technology, coupled with new investigative methods, became available. Had all of these been available to law enforcement officers at the time, perhaps these monsters would have been apprehended and brought to justice much sooner and more lives could have been saved. The sad fact is that there are mothers and fathers out there who still do not know what fate befell their missing sons and daughters. Many murders remain unsolved and the bodies of some victims have never been recovered. Serial killers, for various reasons, very rarely confess to all their crimes. Despite the police often having strong suspicions about other murders individuals may have committed, without supporting evidence or a full confession they are powerless to prosecute. One can only hope that, at some time in the future, some of the serial killers already convicted will choose to unburden their consciences further.
About the Author
Trevor Marriott is a retired British Police murder squad detective who joined the service in 1970 and was soon promoted to the Criminal Investigation Department (CID), where he was involved in the investigation of numerous murders as well as assisting in the investigation of many other major crimes throughout his long and distinguished career. He is the author of Jack the Ripper: The 21st Century Investigation, and a new book on Jack the Ripper entitled Jack the Ripper – The Secret Police Files, to be published to mark the 125th anniversary of the Whitechapel Murders.
To contact the author, to arrange press and media interviews, speaking engagements or any other personal appearances please email [email protected] or contact him via his website: www.trevormarriott.co.uk.
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The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers Page 46
