Serial Killer Documentary - Steve Wright： The Prostitute Serial Killer

Serial Killer Documentary - Steve Wright： The Prostitute Serial Killer

Speaker 1: You going to book me?

Speaker 2: I got a mug here.

Speaker 3: Is that gorgeous or what, eh?

Speaker 4: And I believe I can run to see some marathons.

Speaker 5: Download Vealy now.

Speaker 3: During the winter of 2006, Ipswich in Suffolk was paralysed

with fear. The bodies of five missing prostitutes had been

found by police, sparking the biggest ever manhunt in the

east of England.

Speaker 1: He's targeting these women because they are vulnerable, because they

are easy for him to access and easy for him

to control.

Speaker 3: As the horror began to unravel, it became a race

against time to catch the killer. The police questioned over 2,000

motorists with no success.

Speaker 6: He had to be caught because he wouldn't stop until

he was.

Speaker 4: Steve Wright, through this whole period... was sitting at home

watching this whole drama played out on 24-hour news channels,

thinking to himself, I'm doing this, I'm controlling this, I'm

going to try and get away with this.

Speaker 3: Steve Wright, the man dubbed the Suffolk Strangler, had earned

his place as one of the world's most evil killers.

Speaker 5: MUSIC PLAYS.

Speaker 3: Steve Wright is one of Britain's most prolific serial killers.

In the space of just six weeks during the winter

of 2006, he murdered five young women who were working

as prostitutes on the streets of Ipswich. As the girls

disappeared one by one, the world's media descended upon Suffolk.

There was an inevitability with each breaking news report that

another body.

Speaker 5: Would be found.

Speaker 6: Two bodies have been found near Ipswich. This is breaking

news and we're giving it to you as we get it.

Speaker 3: But Steve Wright's story begins over 40 years before. Wright

was born in the Norfolk village of Irpingham in 1958,

one of four children. He grew up in a military family,

living on RAF bases around the world with his father, Conrad,

a retired corporal.

Speaker 7: He was a normal child. No aggression.

Speaker 3: Typical boy.

Speaker 7: Just wanted to play.

Speaker 3: But family life was far from happy and Wright's mother

left when he was just eight years old. Wright and

his siblings stayed with their father, who went on to remarry.

Speaker 7: Whilst he was living with me, there was never a problem,

you know, never see one even.

Speaker 2: He was happy.

Speaker 7: He had little barnies, I suppose, with his stepmother at

times when he weren't a bit mischievous, if you like,

but it was nothing that you would sort of think

about an hour later.

Speaker 6: Steve was not a particularly bright young man, but cheery

enough in his own way. left school at 16 without

any qualifications to speak of, and got a job working

as a chef on the ferries which sailed from Felixstowe

to the Continent.

Speaker 3: By the early 1980s, Wright had become a steward on

the cruise ship the QE2, and it was during this

time he reportedly spent money on sex workers during trips

to Thailand, which some experts believe may have altered his

perception towards the opposite sex.

Speaker 1: I think he's got an expectation of women. Women are

there to perform a service for him, to play a

particular role. They serve a function for him. And that's

something that we continually see throughout the rest of his life.

Speaker 3: He would often return home from sea penniless.

Speaker 7: He was a bit of a loner, like, in a way.

He didn't mix that much. But he did come out

with me at the weekends, when he lived here especially,

because he looked after the dogs when I had two then.

Copped the beers down the end of the road.

Speaker 5: Normal.

Speaker 1: So Steve Wright was a performer. He was performing a

role as a guy who was interested in playing golf

and going to the pub and going on holiday. He

appeared to be somebody who was normal, somebody who fitted in,

but behind that, there was something altogether different going on.

Speaker 3: Wright married twice, but both ended in divorce with rumours

of domestic violence. He struggled to hold down a job

and ran up large gambling debts.

Speaker 7: I knew he'd put money on the horses. because when

he got his wage from the bingo hall, I used

to take his wages off him, believe it or not,

and I said, I'll give you enough to see you

through the week, because I wanted him to build up

a kitty to sort himself out.

Speaker 3: Wright continued to gamble and was eventually declared bankrupt. Unable

to see a way out of his debts, he tried, unsuccessfully,

to take his own life.

Speaker 7: For him to want to gas himself in a car,

it must have been something that I went a lot of.

Speaker 5: aware of for.

Speaker 7: Him to get pushed to that limit. Whether he was

trying to befriend young females, I think the girls that

he was getting, they were younger than him, and whether

in the end they turned him down and he couldn't

face it or something, and he felt rejected or whatever,

I don't know. When he was here, there weren't a problem.

Where did he get them? Did he get so much

in the debt that it pressurised him so much that

he just broke?

Speaker 1: I think Steve Wright's alleged suicide attempts are quite significant.

So what does suicide represent? It represents somebody trying to

get control back, somebody whose life has kind of gone

beyond their grip and they're desperately trying to reel that

power back in. And I think for Steve Wright, If

we look at some of his earlier experiences, this is

somebody who came to crave control. He wasn't in control

of his life as a child. The family were moving around.

It was quite transient. It was quite chaotic. And as

an adult, I think he felt an intense need to

be in control. And that was what he was essentially

doing here. He was internalizing. So he was being violent

towards himself.

Speaker 3: In 2002, while working as a barman, Wright, now age 44,

was arrested for stealing £ 80 from the pub till to

pay off his escalating debt. This petty theft would later

contribute to his downfall.

Speaker 7: He'd been to court because he'd taken money from the till.

But he kept that from me anyway. So, again, if

he can keep one thing from you, can he keep others?

Speaker 3: By October 2006, 48-year-old Wright was living with a new

girlfriend on London Road, in the heart of Ipswich's red-light district.

In the same month, 19-year-old Tanya Nicol went missing from

her home.

Speaker 2: She came round to mine by 8 o'clock at night,

something like that, and she wanted to lift home, so

I gave her a lift. I didn't want to... tell

her off about anything, you know, but we knew, as

far as I was concerned, she was taking cannabis and whatever.

And I didn't know that she was into drugs so heavily,

you see. You don't know. We just talked like friends.

When we got there, she just got out of the car.

One of the things I noticed was she just walked

straight into the house, whereas, you know, you might turn

around and give a little wave. but she just walked

straight in. So I suppose that's sort of like this

drug stuff, it dulls your senses to a lot of things.

So it robs you of your life, really. And that

was the last time I saw her.

Speaker 3: The family was unaware that Tanya was living a double

life as a prostitute to fund her addiction to heroin.

Speaker 2: I didn't know that until afterwards. Obviously she was doing

that to feed her habit, isn't it? That's what I've

been told, you know.

Speaker 8: Before 2006, Ipswich, like many market towns of this size

in the UK, experienced problems with drugs. We had a

quite vivid and lively street prostitution scene. There was around,

in the summer of 2006, we'd done some research and

identified around 70-odd women that were working on the streets

of Ipswich as prostitutes. The main issue, obviously, why they're

out on the streets in the first instance, all these

women were out there to feed a drug habit.

Speaker 5: They were all class A addicts.

Speaker 3: Another young woman working on the streets of Ipswich in

2006 was Jade Reynolds.

Speaker 9: Every morning I'd wake up, you know, I have a

heroin addiction to fund, you know, so unless you've probably

saved money from working on the streets the night before,

you've either got to lay there not very well for

the morning and for the day, and then I'd get

up at night time, put on make up and clothes

and pretty much go and sell myself down on the street,

you know. It was cold, dark, you know, very dangerous.

but you don't think about the danger, you really just

go out there and do what you've got to do.

But it wasn't a good lifestyle, it wasn't an easy lifestyle, really.

There is a lot of emotion that go with it

and you either have to learn to switch it off

or let it overrun you, you know? And heroin is

an easy way to switch off all your emotions.

Speaker 3: After Tanya Nicholls' family hadn't heard from her for 48 hours,

they reported her as missing. Police began to investigate, but

it appeared she'd just vanished off the face of the earth.

Speaker 2: We possibly thought she went with a load of people

down to London somewhere and just stayed in a house

or something like that.

Speaker 6: Prostitutes go missing all the time, change cities. That's not unusual.

Very seldom do they have many relatives who will identify

their disappearance. Sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.

Speaker 3: As time passed, Jim became increasingly concerned about his daughter.

Speaker 2: You're terribly... You're worried beyond... You just go out of

your head, you know. You just... You just can't think straight.

You know, you're so worried. It really hits you for six.

And I think after about two or three weeks, it

was sheer hell not knowing where she was.

Speaker 6: And.

Speaker 2: By then, you know that something's up.

Speaker 3: While Jim waited desperately for any news about his daughter, Tanya,

on November the 15th, another young woman was reported missing,

25-year-old Gemma Adams.

Speaker 9: For Gemma to go missing, that's when you worry, because

Gemma would never go missing. You know, she's not like that.

You know, she's always certain times, certain places, this, that, that,

you know. Yeah, so that was... When Gemma went, that's

when you knew something was wrong.

Speaker 3: The police stopped nearly 2,000 people and over 500 cars

travelling through Ipswich's red-light district to see if anyone recognised

photos of Tanya and Gemma. But they drew a blank.

And it was a similar story when they spoke to

the local sex workers.

Speaker 9: You don't report every attack, but there's loads of times

where we get people trying to steal our handbags or, like...

trying to accost us because we're saying no to them.

You are worried and you are scared thinking, hang on,

Gemma's gone now. I didn't know Tanya, but she's gone.

Where are they? And you think, yeah, it could be me.

I could be next, but I've got to go and

get my money for my drugs. And you have to

go out there. You have to learn to put emotions

to the back of your mind while you're out on

the street. I can then go home and be really scared.

But if I was going to be scared that the

girls are going missing, I'm not going to be able

to earn the money for my drug addiction.

Speaker 3: Then, on December 2nd, 2006, the police got the call

they'd been dreading. A body had been found in a

brook on the outskirts of town.

Speaker 10: Right on the bend, right on the corner, with her

head this end, facing upstream, her legs downstream, arms beside

her body. Saw the hair flowing and the golden earring,

and the head was on its side, and my immediate

thought was.

Speaker 2: one of the missing girls.

Speaker 3: Tanya's father, Jim Jewell, feared the worst.

Speaker 2: By this time, I concluded that she'd gone, quite honestly.

I concluded that she was dead. That's what I concluded.

Because by this time, she would have phoned her mother.

Because she always phones her mother if she's going to

be back late or anything. She was good at it.

Speaker 3: But it wasn't Tanya. Police identified the body as that

of 25-year-old Gemma Adams. There was no sign of a

sexual assault, but her naked body had been dumped in

flowing water. So finding any DNA evidence was going to

be difficult.

Speaker 11: When someone dies, then there will be all sorts of

evidence on the body, in the body, that tells you

all sorts of information. If you leave a body in

running water... then the water will quite literally wash away evidence. Equally,

the water will bring other things onto the body that

can contaminate it. So you've got a double problem, really,

of things being lost and things being brought to the body,

which makes interpretation more difficult.

Speaker 3: Unsurprisingly, the media were starting to take notice, including Paul

Harrison of Sky News.

Speaker 4: My boss said to me that I should go to

Ipswich at the weekend. One body had been discovered. To him,

something didn't seem quite right. He wanted me to get

under the surface of what was happening in the red

light district because we knew that two prostitutes had gone missing.

So what was this all about? Was this going to

be something bigger?

Speaker 3: For a week, forensic teams scoured nearby woodlands for clues,

and divers explored the brook. Then, just when they were

about to call off the search, divers found another body.

This time, it was Tanya Nicol.

Speaker 2: I think when I got the actual news, I can't

remember my reaction, because it was something like, well, that's,

you know... In my heart, I knew already.

Speaker 3: Just like Gemma Adams, there was no sign of sexual

assault and the rushing water had stripped Tanya's body of

any DNA evidence. Suffolk Police called on Commander David Johnston

from Scotland Yard, a homicide expert.

Speaker 12: So I joined the investigation around the time the second

victim body had been discovered and that initially meant I

went to Suffolk to speak to the chief officer team

to assess the situation.

Speaker 5: I'm not sure I would say they were overwhelmed.

Speaker 12: I think they recognized the need to bring additional resources

in to avoid that situation, and that's what they did.

And Suffolk, I know, had probably 100 to 200 people

initially engaged in this inquiry. But that number quickly grew,

and Suffolk suddenly found themselves, of course, at the center

of a huge incident with significant media interest globally.

Speaker 4: So by the time they discovered the body of Tanya Nicol,

we had already begun to spend a bit of time

in the Red Light District late in the evening, early

in the morning, just to see how prevalent prostitution was

in Ipswich. And it wasn't difficult to find girls on

the streets very late at night. We spoke to a

number of them.

Speaker 5: They were aware.

Speaker 4: That two girls had gone missing. We were almost delivering

them the news that a second body had been found.

We were almost telling many of these girls for the

very first time that the body of a second woman,

almost certainly a prostitute, and almost certainly Tanya Nicholl, had

been discovered in Kopdark. Their reaction, they weren't fazed by it,

it seems.

Speaker 9: It's scary every night going out on the streets. It's

scary every night. You could get attacked every night, you know.

To be honest, it doesn't matter how scary anything is, really,

you've still got to go out there and do it.

It tears at your heart and you think, oh, God,

you know, what's happening? Who's next, you know? But even

though you're discussing what if it could be me, you're

still out there on the streets and you're still selling

yourself because you still have a drug addiction to feed.

You've got to put all them worries to the back

of your mind.

Speaker 3: Police were at a dead end. They had no clues

and nothing to link the two murders. They watched hours

of CCTV footage from Ipswich's red light district and finally

found something of significance. Tanya had been caught getting into

a dark car on the night of her disappearance. Could

the driver of the car be the killer?

Speaker 2: Hanford Road, Burlington Road, that was a place you would

stand there, which went out at night on that corner.

and they found footage of just a brief glimpse.

Speaker 3: The CCTV was captured outside of a supermarket on London Road,

the same street where Steve Wright was living. Unfortunately, the

footage wasn't clear enough to reveal a number plate or

identify the driver.

Speaker 5: From my point of view, it's professionally very frustrating. The whole.

Speaker 12: Emphasis of our role is to protect the public, and

we take that very seriously. And so each day when

we're carrying out the investigation and trying to identify this offender,

it's very concerning to us when we still don't have

an identification made.

Speaker 3: It had been eight days since Gemma Adams had been

found murdered. As the police continued with their investigation, they

received some more shocking news. On December 10th, Just two

days after the discovery of Tanya Nicol, the body of

a third woman was found in a woodland in nearby Nacton.

Speaker 4: The 10th was a huge day, really. I had literally

driven out of Ipswich for about 10 miles when I

got a phone call from the news desk. And the

blood really felt like it drained from my face, from

my body, because shivers down the spine... We were now

in serial killer territory.

Speaker 12: I think it would be fair to say, yes, there

was extreme concern being expressed in Ipswich, not just amongst

sex workers or women involved in that line of work,

but across the.

Speaker 5: Whole of the community.

Speaker 12: This was a significant event, completely unparalleled, as far as

I know, in the history of Ipswich and that area,

which is normally a very quiet, rural town.

Speaker 4: We were now dealing with a serial killer, almost certainly,

and also, whilst the national media, the UK media, were

all over it by now, this is when you began

to see the beginnings of the international interest in it

as well.

Speaker 3: Distinctive tattoos on the third body led the police to

identify her as Annelie Alderton, who'd not been reported missing.

She'd also been working as a prostitute in Ipswich. She

was a 24-year-old mother of one.

Speaker 9: She was a mad, kind of happy-go-lucky, crazy chick. You know,

I lived in my first squat with Annelie. Really nice girl.

I would say she's like a free spirit, you know,

she's like, you know, great, like, I'm Annie, you know,

this is me, you know, so she's kind of cool, like,

to hang around.

Speaker 2: With, you know.

Speaker 3: The media's focus on Ipswich intensified even further.

Speaker 4: I'd raced back to the scene in Nacton where the

body of Anna Yalderton was discovered. We knew very little

at that stage about in what position it lay, but

what we did know was that it was on dry land.

And this was a twist in the story because the

two previous victims had been deposited in water. So the police,

for them, it was very exciting that in terms of DNA,

this could be something that they could work with.

Speaker 3: The autopsy showed that Annalee had been strangled and tragically revealed...

She'd been three months pregnant.

Speaker 11: So the evidence that you'd see in a strangulation, you'd

see bruising on and in the neck, you'd often see

fine pinpoint haemorrhages in the eyes, these things really point

you very directly towards that cause of death.

Speaker 3: She'd been left in the crucifix position with her arms outstretched.

Speaker 1: There is a tendency to want to attach a lot

of meaning to that. Many people were looking at this

as it unfolded, saying, well, there's some religious motivation here.

But I don't think it was about that at all.

It was about essentially getting attention. Even serial killers get bored.

They want to mix things up a bit. They want

to try something new.

Speaker 3: The police still had no DNA, no clues, and no leads.

The pressure to catch the killer was mounting.

Speaker 12: There's always pressure because you have the media, who are

consistently requiring information because there's 24-hour media. They want to

know what's happening. There's anxiety being expressed in the community. And,

of course, the police themselves want to catch this man

as quickly as possible.

Speaker 9: I'm losing my friends. I don't want to keep losing

my friends. I don't want to lose my own life.

You do think about stuff like that. It's not something

that you don't think about.

Speaker 3: The world's media descended on Ipswich and the cameras were

all pointed at the police.

Speaker 1: I think this case was one that attracted so much

attention because it was unfolding in front of our eyes.

This was the era of reality television when that started

to become very popular. We were seeing it as it

unfolded on 24-hour rolling news, and you never knew what

was going to happen from one day to the next.

Speaker 3: Detectives told prostitutes to stay off the streets, but their

warnings were largely ignored. A local news crew interviewed one

of the girls anonymously. Why have you decided to come

out tonight?

Speaker 13: Because I need the money. I need the money, you know?

Speaker 3: Despite the dangers?

Speaker 13: Well, that has made me a bit wary about getting into.

Speaker 1: Cars, you know?

Speaker 11: But presumably you will do that tonight?

Speaker 1: Well, probably.

Speaker 3: The woman interviewed was Paula Clennell.

Speaker 9: Paula Clennell, she had children and she was always trying

quite hard to change her life, You know, she was

happy when she saw her, you know, nice girl, but, yeah,

she tried quite hard, you know, to get out of it,

you know, because it's a very hard thing to get

out of the addiction if you still live generally in

the same town. But, yeah, she was trying, you know,

to get away from it and change her life, bless her.

Speaker 3: Just six days after that news report aired, Paula Clennell

was missing. In December 2006, the police in Ipswich were

under mounting pressure to catch a prolific serial killer. The

bodies of three dead prostitutes had been found in just

ten days. They had no clues or potential suspects and

the killing wasn't about to stop. Two more young women

had gone missing. 24-year-old Paula Clennell, who'd been interviewed on

the news just days before, and now police receive reports

of a fifth missing woman, 29-year-old Annette Nicholls, the best

friend of fellow prostitute Jade Reynolds.

Speaker 9: Annette was a girl, for me, that I was so

humbled to know. You know, she always... Took time for me.

She'd want to know if I was all right, if

there was anything she could do. She'd do anything for

anybody else. She was always well kept. She'd greet you

with a smile and a happiness. You know, you felt

all right when you was with Annette. I did. I

could think, oh, yeah, wicked. There she is, you know.

It was a relief because I know that I could

talk to her. She'd understand my problems. So when she

went missing, that's kind of like tearing out a piece

of my heart.

Speaker 3: As the police searched for Paula and Annette, there was

a macabre inevitability in the air amongst the mass of

international journalists who'd gathered in Ipswich.

Speaker 4: There was almost certainly going to be another discovery. Where

was it going to be? Who was it going to be?

It was nail-biting. And whilst it can't be described as fear,

it was really palpable. You sense that from the people

in the town. You sensed it from your colleagues, but

also from other colleagues from other media organisations and the

police as well.

Speaker 3: On December 12th, another body was found in Levington, just

a mile away from Nacton, in the same woods where

Annalee Alderton had been discovered days before.

Speaker 4: While somebody was out walking their dog, they stumbled upon

the body of a fourth victim. just a few metres

away from the main road in Levington, in the undergrowth,

also this time not in water. Again, the DNA was

important in this case. But what seemed quite strange about

this one is that it almost had an appearance of

a rushed approach, that this body was deposited by the

side of the road, albeit a few metres off the

main road, It had the appearance, or it seemed as

if it had been done quickly.

Speaker 3: The police sent a helicopter up to survey the woodland

for evidence. As it circled the area, they made a

further gruesome discovery. Another body was lying in the woods

only 100 yards away. The naked bodies were those of

the missing women, 24-year-old Paula Clunell and 29-year-old Annette Nichols.

Speaker 9: I don't think I'll ever get back what I had

with Annette with another girl. You know, this is the

most beautiful woman that I'd ever known, that had become

quite important to me, that I could trust. You know,

and now it's not there. I didn't go out after that.

It was quite sensible, because, like, I couldn't, I emotionally

couldn't go out and work on the streets after Annette

was found.

Speaker 3: Five women had been murdered in Ipswich in just six weeks.

The press had named the killer the Suffolk Strangler.

Speaker 11: Alderton and Clennell, they were both asphyxiated. That was the

cause of their death. In the other cases, the changes

after death really prevented pathology giving a definitive answer, although

I think it's reasonable to assume that someone who's killing

someone Five people in a short space of time probably

used similar methods.

Speaker 6: Interestingly, none of the five victims showed any sign of

sexual assault. So it isn't a rape murder. It's not, oh,

I've satisfied myself, now I'm going to kill you, murder.

It is a targeted murder without a sexual element.

Speaker 1: He is very much feeding off the media frenzy that's

being created around his crimes. And he's increasingly feeling even

more in control of what's going on. So he's changing

the way that he's doing things. And he's looking at

the reaction from the media when he does that. And

he's absolutely loving it.

Speaker 6: He believes he's fulfilling something. Maybe he's convinced himself that

he's clearing the world of prostitutes. They're all dumped really

quite close to each other. Demonstrates that he thinks he's

doing something. in his own fantasy world that is cleansing

the world of evil or cleansing the world of dirt

or cleansing the world of inappropriate sexual appetite, we'll never know.

I don't think Wright probably knows now. All I do

know is that he had to be caught because he

wouldn't stop until he was.

Speaker 3: On December 15th, Tanya Nicholl's dad, Jim Jewell, made an

emotional plea for the killer to turn himself in.

Speaker 13: Tanya has been taken by someone who needs to be found.

We ask for anyone who knows this person or persons

to come forward and contact the police.

Speaker 3: With increasing pressure to make an arrest, police decided to

question a local 37-year-old man.

Speaker 12: He was identified because he had spent considerable time in

a radio car talking to a radio.

Speaker 5: Journalist and other TV journalists.

Speaker 4: I spent a bit of time with him to try

and get to know his relationship with the girls. There

was a kind of an understanding between them that you

scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.

Speaker 12: He was loosely associated as a friend of one or

more of the girls who were murdered and at that

stage he became of significant interest to the inquiry. There

was a very strong feeling from some of the media

people present that this man was the right man and

should be looked at more seriously.

Speaker 3: With a suspect in custody, detectives received a lead from

the forensics lab. The three bodies that were found on

dry land did have DNA evidence on them. In a

one-in-a-billion chance, the DNA found on all three women was

the same, but whose was it? The DNA was run

through the national database, and police got a match. But

to their surprise, it wasn't the man they had in custody.

Speaker 12: At that time, and as it still stands today, if

a person is arrested or convicted of an indictable offense

or a serious offense, they can have their DNA taken

and held on the database.

Speaker 3: The DNA matched that of a local man who'd been

convicted of stealing 80 pounds from a pub till in 2002,

48-year-old Steve Wright.

Speaker 12: And it was that match which led to significant additional work,

including then the CCTV evidence, which showed a vehicle being

used by Wright moving between some of the locations around

the relevant times. So he became a major suspect in

the inquiry.

Speaker 3: Over just six weeks, five prostitutes had been murdered in Ipswich.

The police finally believed they'd found the killer, 48-year-old Steve Wright,

whose DNA had been found on three of the bodies.

Wright had not been a suspect at any point during

the police investigation, even though he had been stopped during

routine checks of the red-light district. Whilst the world's media

was focusing on a local man who police currently had

in custody, Wright was put under surveillance.

Speaker 4: Once the police had discovered the DNA, it matched Steve

Wright immediately, although from a distance, making quite a brave move, actually,

not by arresting him straight away, but watching him, seeing

his movements, what was he doing, where was he going,

just for a 24-hour period. And ultimately, as we were

all elsewhere looking at somebody else, another suspect, bang, they

had made an arrest. They'd arrested Steve Wright.

Speaker 3: It was a huge shock to Wright's father, Conrad.

Speaker 7: I didn't believe it.

Speaker 5: It was similar as that.

Speaker 7: Two people come to my door to say, your son

has been arrested, and I didn't believe it.

Speaker 1: I think the only emotion that Steve Wright would have

felt upon getting arrested was annoyance. This has stopped the

media circus that I've been at the centre of. And

I think also self-pity. Oh, terrible. I'm now going to

be in prison or I'm going to be in a

police station. I'm not going to be able to do

the things I want. He would never have had any

kind of expressed empathy for his victims or their families

because they just didn't matter to him.

Speaker 9: At the time I split up with my partner, moved

into my mum's house and I woke up one morning with, uh,

the world's media on my doorstep to put it bluntly.

And they said, did you know Steve Wright was like

a client to your daughter, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And I didn't even know my mum didn't even know,

you know, but then it all came out, you know,

that it turned out he's actually my first partner, which

was shocking, you know? And I thought, Oh my God,

I was right with him right there, right then, you know? And, uh, Yeah,

I was kind of shocked, really. Really shocked, to be honest,

thinking I was that close to him. Made me feel sick.

Speaker 3: During eight hours of interrogation, Wright made no comment.

Speaker 1: The no comment at police interviews is indicative of that

power and that control. So I have all of this

knowledge and all of this information. I know everything about

these crimes and you want that knowledge. So I'm going

to use this to my advantage. He knows everything that

the police want to know. And is he going to

tell them? Is he not going to tell them? That

gives him a massive sense of control.

Speaker 3: Although Wright didn't confess to the killings, on the 21st

of December 2006, the police charged him with all five

murders based on the forensic evidence they'd so far found.

The other suspect was released from custody without charge. Prosecutors

now began the arduous task of building a solid case

against Wright for the upcoming trial. Michael Krimp was part

of the legal team.

Speaker 14: Of the five bodies that were recovered, two of them

had been immersed for some time in water, and if

there had been any DNA on their bodies, it had

long since gone. And so in terms of DNA evidence,

there was nothing to link Steve Wright with them.

Speaker 3: Detectives impounded Wright's car. In it, they found fibres from

a fake fur jacket owned by Annette Nicholls and, more significantly,

traces of Paula Clennell's blood.

Speaker 6: Wright really didn't do very much to conceal his movements.

He drove his own car. He dumped the bodies from

his own car. He wasn't very forensically aware, as so

many determined killers are these days... He didn't know about

DNA and fibre analysis and trace and all the other

things we've all become so familiar with as a result

of television series and the rest. Wright pretty much did

as he pleased and thought he could get away with it.

And he thought he could get away with it because

he thought that no-one was going to miss a prostitute.

Speaker 3: Forensic experts also examined Wright's home. They found the blood

of Paula Clunell and Annette Nicholls on a high-vis jacket.

more conclusive proof that his encounter with the women had

taken a sinister turn. But there was no link between

Wright and the deaths of Tanya Nicol and Gemma Adams,

the two women whose bodies had been found immersed in

running water. Investigators re-watched the CCTV from the night Tanya

Nicol went missing, and they were now certain the car

that she got into was Wright's blue Ford Mondeo. Forensic

teams painstakingly analysed microscopic debris found in the women's hair. Remarkably,

they found fibres from Wright's tracksuit bottoms, sofa and carpet

fibre from his Mondeo.

Speaker 14: Both fibres in their hair and fibres on gloves and

other items that belonged to Steve Wright clearly linked him

to those two as well.

Speaker 3: The game was up.

Speaker 11: This was a case that involved a lot of experts

and a lot of expertise. And what it came down

to was that they were able to place fibres from

the bodies at Wright's property. They were able to place

blood on articles of clothing and in his car. We

call it Locard's exchange principle. You go and interact with somebody,

you leave something of yourself there and you take something

away from it. And as clever as you may try

and be, you're always going to leave evidence of that interaction.

Speaker 3: Steve Wright was now linked to all five women. His

trial began at Ipswich Crown Court on 16th January 2008.

Wright pleaded not guilty.

Speaker 14: To me, he looked pretty cool about it all. He

didn't seem particularly emotive about the evidence as it was

being put to him. Well, he had to explain the

scientific evidence in this case, which linked him very closely

with all five of the victims, and so his explanation

was that he'd been in close association with all five

of them, and obviously not long before they'd disappeared off

the street.

Speaker 3: Wright argued he'd picked up the women for sex, and

that was why there was evidence of them in his car.

Speaker 14: The defence were arguing that it might have been a coincidence,

but no more.

Speaker 3: But his case began to fall apart under intense questioning.

Speaker 14: It was an odd picture that he portrayed because there

was just too much coincidence in this case. The evidence

provided more than just coincidences, it provided the evidence that

damned him. We put to him various bits of evidence

and said, well, was that just a coincidence? And to

each question like that, all that Steve Wright said was

something like, well, so it would seem or it appears so,

and he just couldn't deal with the questions that he

was being asked about how all these apparent coincidences existed.

Speaker 3: On February the 21st, 2008, after only six hours of deliberation,

the jury found Wright guilty of all five murders and

he was sentenced to a whole life term. He was

immediately sent to Belmarsh Prison. He will never be released.

Speaker 12: I think the thing that's striking about this case is

the speed with which Wright moved from being a relatively

unknown minor offender involved in a minor theft... to killing

five women in a very short period of time.

Speaker 5: And I am.

Speaker 12: Strongly of the belief that had he not been arrested,

he would have continued to kill.

Speaker 4: This was a man who was desperate to be known,

desperate to be someone. And by killing those five women,

the notoriety that he achieved effectively made him into someone.

We talked about the Suffolk Strangler, this man who nobody

really knew. Suddenly, everyone knew him. He was world famous

for being the Suffolk Strangler.

Speaker 6: I find it very difficult to call Wright a truly

evil man. Deeply wicked. Deeply, with no sense of remorse.

Speaker 4: To this day, he has maintained his innocence. He says

he did not kill those five women. He goes even

further to write to his father who, in his father's eyes,

he did what he did. And it hurts Steve Wright, actually,

that his father doesn't believe him when Steve Wright says,

I didn't do it. His father looked in his eyes,

turned and walked out of prison when he said, look

into my eyes, do you think I did it?

Speaker 7: It wouldn't make me feel any different whether I forgive

him or not. I mean, the deed is done, and.

I'm, in a way, responsible for him being out there.

You know, I brought him into the world.

Speaker 3: Life will never be the same for the friends and

families of those who were killed.

Speaker 2: You know, I got to a resting place and say

and then have a little conversation, like you would, you know,

and say, I've come up to see you, dear, you know,

and have a little bit of emotion going there, you know.

But there you are, it's love, isn't it? It's always

in our memory, of course she is.

Speaker 9: Even now, 10 years later, I can still... I'm sitting

here and I'm trying to be clean and I'm trying

not to let my emotions get the better of me,

but there's so many things that I see and I think, oh, yeah,

Annette would love that. I still, I find it hard

now and I find it hard, like, 20 years' time,

you know, that she's not here anymore. It tore a

piece of me out that I won't get back.

Speaker 8: Something positive has happened in Ipswich out of such a

tragic turn of events. And that is for me, is

that there's no longer any street prostitution occurring in Ipswich.

If I wanted a legacy for the five women, that

would be it. That no other women have put themselves

in such perilous and stark and dangerous situations.

Speaker 4: I think Ipswich will never forget those terrible times, those

few weeks. in December 2006, where the world's eyes were

on them for all the wrong reasons. And they will

take the vital lessons learned during that period forward. They

won't forget the women, they won't forget the girls who

were killed, but they will move forward and try to

not allow that period to effectively dictate their future.

Speaker 3: We may never know why Wright carried out these frenzied

attacks or if there are other victims that have perished

at his hands. He remains one of the UK's most

prolific serial killers. For six weeks, the whole world watched

in shock as the body count in Ipswich continued to grow.

But eventually, the forensic evidence brought justice for the families

of all five victims. and put pay to the killing

spree of Steve Wright, the Suffolk Strangler.