Suffolk Strangler: How it took 26 years to finally solve Victoria Hall’s murder
Staggering to his feet in the Old Bailey dock this week, serial killer Steve Wright uttered a word he had refused to use for 20 years: “guilty.”
This seismic moment marked the first time one of Britain’s most notorious murderers, a bald pensioner who will now die in prison, confessed to one of his crimes.
But his confession to the Victoria Hall murder in 1999, seven years before the horrific murder spree that earned him the nickname the Suffolk Strangler, also sparked important questions.
Was Miss Hall, whom he kidnapped and killed on his way home from a night out in Felixstowe at the age of 17, his first murder victim? And did he remain inactive for the intervening seven years until the six-week rampage in 2006 that led to his capture for murdering five women he had kidnapped from Ipswich’s red-light district? On Friday, he was sentenced to 40 years in prison for her murder.
Following the confession of crime, police faced renewed calls to investigate Wright in connection with a string of other unsolved murders and disappearances.
Wright’s ex-wife Diane Cole, 71, said: “I think this is just the beginning. I suspect he killed many more women.”
He appealed to police to question him about the 1986 disappearance of 25-year-old real estate agent Suzy Lamplugh, whom he knew while working together on the QE2 ocean liner.
Ms Lamplugh disappeared without a trace after leaving her London office to meet a client known as ‘Mr Kipper’.
Killer John Cannan, who died aged 70 at HMP Full Sutton in East Yorkshire last year, was the prime suspect in her disappearance but the Crown Prosecution Service said there was not enough evidence to charge him.
Ms Cole said: Mirror: “HE [Wright] He needs to tell the families and give them closure if he is responsible. Maybe he’ll realize he’s not coming out and might start confessing more.
“He needs to tell the truth, for the sake of Suzy’s family. And for everyone else he ends up doing. This is cruel. I definitely think the police need to take another look at him. I know how bad he can be.”
Wright’s brother Keith, 57, also called on police to investigate his brother for other crimes.
“It’s time to do the right thing and tell the police everything,” he said.Sun. “There’s still so much we don’t know, so many unanswered questions. How many more victims are there?”
Criminologist Professor David Wilson first linked Ms Hall’s murder to Wright in his 2008 book Hunting Evil, years before police investigated him for the crime.
Prof Wilson, who has followed the case since 2006, said: “I felt from the very beginning that what was going on in Ipswich was criminally sophisticated.”Hearing podcast.
“Wright placed the bodies of these young women in the water to eliminate any forensic evidence. I felt that the person who did this was probably known to the police because everything points to the perpetrator having done this before.”
He believes investigators should also investigate the unsolved disappearances of Amanda Duncan, who disappeared in Ipswich in 1993, and Kellie Pratt, who was last seen in Norwich in 2000.
Miss Hall was studying for A levels in English, sociology and business when she was targeted by Wright, a former forklift driver and sailor.
The sixth man, from Trimley St Mary, had left home on the evening of September 18, 1999, with his best friend for a night out at Bandbox nightclub in neighboring Felixstowe. They left the venue at around 1am the next morning and walked back at 2.20am, saying goodnight, just 300 meters from Ms Hall’s home.
But the young man, who hoped to study sociology at university, never got in. The next morning, his parents were alarmed when they noticed he was not in his bedroom.
Miss Hall’s naked body was found five days later by a dog walker in a ditch in Creeting St Peter, about 40 kilometers from where she was last seen.
An autopsy revealed that she had drowned; This was a pattern Wright would repeat in later murders.
At the time of her disappearance, Wright lived less than a mile away. He had tried to kidnap Emily Doherty, 22, as she walked home from Felixstowe the day before, but she escaped and took refuge in a nearby house.
Wright matched the description of Ms. Doherty’s attacker, which included a partial license plate number, but Suffolk Police officers were unable to identify him as the suspect responsible for Ms. Hall’s disappearance or her ordeal.
Instead they accused innocent businessman Adrian Bradshaw of murder. Prosecutors argued that soil samples from the pedal of his Porsche 944 were similar to samples taken from the murder scene, but jurors acquitted him in just 90 minutes after hearing that the samples could have been found anywhere in East Anglia.
Mr Bradshaw, who was at Bandbox nightclub on the night Ms Hall disappeared, always insisted he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Following his acquittal in November 2001, Mr Bradshaw described being falsely accused as “probably the hardest moment of my life”, adding: “The police spent £2 million on this investigation and it took a jury of 12 ordinary people to acquit me in just over an hour. I think that’s clear enough.”
Meanwhile, Wright was released to kill again. His horrific crimes terrorized Ipswich in 2006 when he kidnapped five women in a matter of weeks.
Tania Nicol, 19, disappeared on October 30 of the same year, followed almost two weeks later by Gemma Adams, 25, triggering a major police investigation. Ms. Adams’ body was found in a stream on December 2nd, and then on December 8th, Ms. Nicol’s remains were found in a pond.
The remains of 24-year-old Anneli Alderton were found in woodland two days later, prompting calls for sex workers in the town to stay off the streets. On December 12, the bodies of Paula Clennell, 24, and Annette Nicholls, 29, were also found near the woods.
The bodies of two of the five victims, all sex workers in Ipswich’s red light district, were posed in the shape of a cross with their arms outstretched. According to pathologists, they had all been strangled or strangled.
At Wright’s trial at Ipswich Crown Court in 2008, prosecutors said he “systematically selected and murdered” women after stalking the streets around his home. Each of the women was seen wandering around the red light district when they disappeared. DNA and fibers were found on the women, linked to their clothes, home and car.
Officers reopened the investigation in 2019, on the 20th anniversary of her death, after linking the serial killer to Ms Hall’s murder.
Initially, Wright, now 67 and serving a life sentence at HMP Long Lartin in Worcestershire for five other murders, denied killing the sixth woman.
But he changed his defense significantly on Monday after Mr Justice Bennathan ruled at an earlier hearing that jurors would be told of his other brutal murders. He also admitted trying to kidnap Miss Doherty the night before.
Unfortunately, Ms. Hall’s mother, Lorinda, who died in December, did not live to see her daughter’s killer brought to justice.
Speaking outside the Old Bailey after Wright’s conviction, Ms Hall’s heartbroken father Graham said she had “endured 26 years of hell and it will continue from today and forever”.
