Prostitute killer 'may not have acted alone'

A forklift truck driver murdered five prostitutes within weeks and left the bodies of two posed in a “cruciform” shape, a jury in England was told today.

Former pub landlord Steve Wright, of Ipswich, Suffolk, might not have been alone when he killed the women in late December 2006 before dumping their bodies in isolated spots, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

Wright, who lived in the Ipswich red light district when the women died, denies murdering Gemma Adams, 25, Tania Nicol, 19, Anneli Alderton, 24, Paula Clennell, 24 and Annette Nicholls, 29.

Prosecutor Peter Wright QC today outlined evidence against Wright at the start of a trial expected to last at least six weeks.

He told jurors that the women vanished between late October and early December 2006.

He said all worked as prostitutes in Ipswich and all were found in isolated locations near the town between December 2 and December 12 2006.

He said the bodies of Miss Alderton and Miss Nicholls had been left in similar positions, adding: “As with Anneli, (Annette’s) body appeared deliberately to have been posed in a cruciform shape with her arms outstretched.”

Mr Wright said: “It is the prosecution case that either alone or in conjunction with another or others, these deaths were the handiwork of the defendant and for a period of some six-and-a-half weeks he preyed upon women working as prostitutes in and around Ipswich, killing five before his campaign was brought to an end by his arrest.”

Mr Wright told the court that all five victims had a drug problem and had resorted to prostitution to fund their addiction.

He said that decision was “ultimately to prove fatal” for all five.

He said all five women were thought to have been asphyxiated or strangled.

Each was totally naked and all were “vulnerable”.

“The disappearance of these women, the circumstances of their deaths and the state of their bodies revealed striking similarities,” Mr Wright told the jury of nine men and three women.

“All five victims were young or relatively so – the youngest, Tania, being 19 and the oldest, Annette, being 29.

“All were addicted to hard drugs such as heroin and cocaine and were reduced at the time of their deaths to working the streets of Ipswich as prostitutes in order to survive and to fund their habit.

“Each of them was accordingly vulnerable to the predatory conduct of a killer or killers acting alone or together with another – such vulnerability arising by virtue of their very occupation and the risks that women engaged in this sort of conduct routinely have to endure.

“Each of them met their death in circumstances with their being either asphyxiated or by manual compression of their neck.

“Each of them was totally naked when found abandoned on the outskirts of Ipswich.

“In all likelihood, each had their clothes removed before they were abandoned by their killer or killers.”

Mr Wright said the five women were “systematically selected and murdered”.

“All of them were slim, slightly-built young women,” he said.

“Each of them was undoubtedly affected by opiates at the time of their death.

“In the circumstances, you may conclude that none of them in their intoxicated state, together with their slightness of stature, would be any match for their assailant or assailants – particularly when in private with him or them and vulnerable to attack by virtue of the occupation in which they were engaged.

“It is the prosecution case that there was a common denominator in each of their untimely deaths and that common denominator was the defendant, Steve Gerald James Wright.

“Mr Wright was a user of prostitutes, a local resident of Ipswich, a man with transport and also the wherewithal not only to pick up prostitutes in the red light area of Ipswich but also to transport and dispose of their bodies after killing them.

“A man who had the opportunity to commit these offences at a time when his partner was at work and accordingly out of the house.

“A man who was no stranger to the prostitutes of Ipswich, women who would therefore be at ease in his company, unsuspecting of him or his motives in picking them up.”

He went on: “Further, it is the prosecution case that not only did he have the opportunity to kill these women but there are also a number of links between the defendant and each of these deaths that point unerringly to his responsibility.”