Britain:A forklift truck driver "systematically selected and murdered" five young women before stripping and dumping their bodies in isolated spots, deliberately arranging two of them in a cruciform pose with their arms outstretched, a court heard yesterday.
The jury was told that Steve Wright (49) may have had an accomplice when he conducted a "deliberate campaign of murder" against women working as prostitutes for a period of 6½ weeks before it was brought to an end with his arrest. Mr Wright, a former publican who lived in Ipswich's red light district where they worked, denies killing Gemma Adams (25), Tania Nicol (19), Anneli Alderton (24), Paula Clennell (24) and Annette Nicholls (29), between late October and early December 2006. All five died fighting for breath, asphyxiated, while under the influence of the drugs to which they were addicted.
DNA found on three of the bodies matched Mr Wright's. The court was told that the probability of this coming from someone other than or related to him was one in a billion.
Yesterday, Mr Wright, wearing a dark suit, white shirt and dark tie, listened intently to the evidence through headphones as he sat behind a glass screen in the dock at Ipswich crown court.
Opening the case for the prosecution, Peter Wright QC said: "It is the prosecution's case that either alone or in conjunction with another or others, these deaths were the handiwork of the defendant." He spoke of the vulnerability of the women to their killer or killers due to their dependence on hard drugs.
"Each of them had resorted to prostitution in order to fund their addiction," said Mr Wright. "In each of their cases this decision was to prove fatal." There were "striking similarities" in the circumstances of their deaths, he said. All were young, between 19 and 29, slightly built, and all were found naked and abandoned in semi-rural locations on the outskirts of Ipswich. All had been found with hyper-inflated lungs, consistent with interference with breathing, such as being suffocated or by manual compression of their necks, the court heard.
It was over 10 days in December 2006 that the naked bodies of missing women began to turn up to the southwest and southeast of Ipswich. Mr Wright told the jury that the "common denominator" in each of their deaths was the defendant. He said: "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." That Wright was no stranger to the prostitutes of Ipswich meant the women were at ease in his company, unsuspecting of his motives in picking them up, "particularly at a time of heightened awareness" as the bodies of missing women began to turn up, the jury was told.
- (Guardian service)