Networked Knowledge - Media Report

[This edited version of the report has been prepared by Dr Robert N Moles]

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On 17 January 2008 Adam Fresco and Sean O'Neill of the Times Online reported “Ipswich murders suspect 'washed clothes and car in middle of the night”

They said that a former publican accused of killing five prostitutes in a six-week period in Suffolk went to great lengths to get rid of evidence linking him to the murders, a court was told today. Steve Wright, 49, would regularly clean his car, sometimes at odd hours and even, on one occasion, in the dark, Ipswich Crown Court was told. A neighbour of Mr Wright also heard the defendant's washing machine going late at night or in the early hours of the morning, between midnight and 2am, it was said. The five young women went missing between October 30 and December 13, 2006, usually at night while they were working in the red-light district of Ipswich. Fibres from Mr Wright's clothes and car and DNA evidence strongly link him with the murdered women, the jury was told, despite his attempts to cover his tracks.

Mr Wright, from Ipswich, denies murdering Gemma Adams, 25, Tania Nicol, 19, Anneli Alderton, 24, Paula Clennell, 24, and Annette Nicholls, 29, between October 29 and December 13, 2006. They all worked as prostitutes in the red-light district of the town and each of them was "affected by opiates" at the time of their deaths, the court was told. Peter Wright, for the prosecution, said: "It is the Crown's case that he [Wright] may have been careful, but he was not careful enough and that the fibres linking the defendant with the bodies of each of these five women speaks volumes as to his involvement in their disappearance, their murders and the disposal of their bodies. "Accordingly it is the prosecution case that on the evidence you hear you can and will be driven to conclude that each of these women was indeed murdered and that the common denominator in each of their deaths and the disposal of their bodies was the defendant. "As to what drives a man to embark upon a campaign such as this we may never know, but we submit that one thing you can be certan of from the evidence in this case is that in late October 2006 something caused Steve Gerald James Wright to engage in such a campaign and that he is guilty of the murder of each of these women."

Family of some of the murdered women sat in court listening to the stark details of the evidence as Mr Wright, QC, spent a second day opening his case, setting out the DNA evidence. The defendant's DNA was found on the naked bodies of Ms Nicholls, Ms Alderton and Ms Clennell. The prosecution said it was no surprise that no DNA was found on the bodies of Ms Nicol or Ms Adams because they had been in water for five and two weeks respectively. Mr Wright said: "It is the prosecution's case, therefore, that the defendant must have had some form of close contact with each of these three women and that such contact must have occurred shortly before their deaths. "The presence of his DNA on each of these victims establishes that his close physical contact was with three women engaged in prostitution in Ipswich who shortly after they came into contact with him were murdered."

He added that the findings pointed not to an "unfortunate coincidence" but rather "to the defendant as being engaged in an active campaign of murder ... a campaign that only came to an end with his arrest". "A campaign in which he had deliberately targeted working prostitutes in the Ipswich area as his victims and succeeded in murdering no fewer than five in a very short space of time." Gloves from the accused's car had semen stains on them and the court was told that samples indicated that Ms Nicholls', Ms Alderton's and the defendant's DNA was present but no statistical evaluation was possible, it was said.

DNA from Ms Clennell was also found on the gloves and the court was told that the probability of obtaining these matching DNA components by chance if the DNA originated from a person other than and unrelated to Ms Clennell was one in a billion. Mr Wright, the jury was told, systematically selected and murdered the women and then took time to pose two of their bodies in a cruciform shape with their arms outstretched. Tne, the jury heard, had been "hurriedly dumped" during the murders in the run-up to Christmas 2006. They were all found naked. The trial, expected to last up to eight weeks, continues.

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