Steve Wright (serial killer)

Steven Wright
Born	Steven Gerald James Wright (1958-04-24) 24 April 1958 (age 63) Erpingham, Norfolk, England
Other names	Suffolk Strangler, Ipswich Ripper
Conviction(s)	5 counts of murder
Criminal penalty	Life imprisonment (whole life tariff)
Details
Victims	5+
Span of crimes	30 October 2006–9 December 2006
Country	England
Date apprehended	19 December 2006
Imprisoned at	HM Prison Long Lartin

Steven Gerald James Wright (born 24 April 1958)^[1] is an English serial killer, also known as the Suffolk Strangler and the Ipswich Ripper. He is serving life imprisonment for the murder of five women who worked in the sex trade in Ipswich, Suffolk. The killings took place during the final months of 2006, and Wright was found guilty in February 2008.

Early life[]

Steve Wright was born in the Norfolk village of Erpingham,^[1] the second of four children of military policeman Conrad and veterinary nurse^[2] Patricia.^[3] He has an older brother and two younger sisters. While Wright's father was on military service, the family had lived in both Malta and Singapore.^[2][4] Wright's mother left in 1964 when he was 6;^[3] his father divorced his mother in 1978;^[1] both remarried. Wright and his siblings lived with their father, who fathered a son and a daughter with his second wife, Valerie.^[2]

He left school in 1974, and soon afterwards joined the Merchant Navy, becoming a chef on ferries sailing from Felixstowe, Suffolk. In 1978, in Milford Haven, at the age of 20, he married Angela O'Donovan. They had a son, Michael. The couple separated in 1987, and later divorced.^[5] Wright became a steward on the QE2, a lorry driver, a barman and, just prior to his arrest, a forklift truck driver. Former sex worker Lindi St Clair said that Wright attacked her in the 1980s.^[6] His second marriage was to 32 year old Diane Cassell at Braintree register office in August 1987.^[2] They divorced in July 1988 while he was a pub landlord in Norwich.^[2]

It was during this time that he also managed a pub in South London.^[2] This post was lost due to his gambling and heavy drinking. He was convicted in 2001 of theft, having stolen £80 to pay off his debts.^[2] This was his only criminal conviction prior to the murders.^[7]

Wright accrued large gambling debts,^[4] and was declared bankrupt in the late 1990s.^[2] Wright had twice tried to commit suicide, first by carbon monoxide poisoning in his car in 1994; secondly in 2000, by an overdose of pills.^[2]

Suffolk murders[]

Wright met Pamela Wright (no relation) in 2001 in Felixstowe, and they moved to a house in Ipswich together in 2004.^[2] Wright had always admitted that he patronized sex workers, and had done so since he was in the Merchant Navy,^[4] and continually throughout his life.^[2] In Ipswich, he admitted he went to certain massage and sauna establishments that were actually brothels.^[2] During the trial Wright stated he had patronized professional sex workers on many occasions, including three of the murder victims. Wright began having sex with prostitutes again when his partner began working night shifts and their sex life became almost non-existent; he paid at least a dozen women for sex in the final three months of 2006.^[4] Local sex workers nicknamed him "Mondeo Man" and "Silver-Backed Gorilla", because of his hair colour and stocky build.

Between 30 October and 10 December 2006, Wright murdered five sex workers in Ipswich. Forensic evidence led to his arrest on 19 December; tiny flecks of blood were found on the back seats of Wright's Ford Mondeo, and partially matched the DNA profile of murder victim Paula Clennell.^[8]

He was found guilty of all five murders on 21 February 2008. At Ipswich Crown Court the following day, Mr Justice Gross sentenced Wright to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he should never be released.^[9]

On 19 March 2008, Wright appealed his convictions,^[10] but on 2 February 2009, it was announced that Wright had decided to drop his appeal.^[11]

Possible links to other crimes[]

Wright is still being investigated in connection with other unsolved murders and disappearances. Experts have highlighted how it is unlikely for any serial killer to start killing at such a late stage (Wright was nearly in his 50s when the 2006 murders were committed), and that serial killers almost always start killing before their mid 30s.^[12] This indicates that Wright likely killed before in his life, and psychologists told police after the murders that it was 'highly likely' that he had done.^[12][13]

He is one of a number of high-profile murderers or sex offenders to have been identified as possible suspects in the Suzy Lamplugh murder case; he had worked with Lamplugh on the QE2 ocean liner during the early 1980s. Lamplugh went missing in London in July 1986, and was legally declared dead in 1994, but her body has never been found.^[14] However, the Metropolitan Police have stated that this is not a strong line of enquiry.^[15] In 2002, the police named John Cannan as the man they believed killed Lamplugh.^[16]

Cleveland Police have not ruled out a link between Wright and the murder of Vicky Glass, a heroin addict who vanished from Middlesbrough in September 2000, and whose naked body was later found in a brook on the North York Moors.^[17]

In July 2021 Wright was arrested, at HM Prison Long Lartin, on suspicion of murdering Victoria Hall, a 17-year-old who was murdered on her way home from a Suffolk nightclub in 1999. Her body was found in a ditch five days after she was last seen alive in Felixstowe. Suffolk police reopened their investigation in 2019 after receiving fresh witness information. They announced that Wright had been “released under investigation, pending further inquiries”.^[18][19]

Previous East Anglia sex worker murders[]

Wright has also been linked to the murders of other sex workers in Ipswich and the nearby city of Norwich. When investigating the five murders committed by Wright in Ipswich in late 2006, criminologist David Wilson, who was personally involved in the case, stated that he felt that the murders were far too practised for someone murdering for the first time.^[20] There was a cluster of sex worker murders in Norwich in the years before the 2006 murders, which have gone unsolved to this day.^[20] Wright used to live and work in the city, and he frequently returned to the city in the years after he left, usually travelling from Ipswich to Norwich once a month.^[20][21] He ran a pub in the middle of the red light district of Norwich, similar to how he lived in the centre of the red light district of Ipswich at the time of the 2006 murders.^[20]

Wright has been linked to the unsolved murders of:

• Natalie Pearman, Norwich, November 1992^[22]
• Amanda Duncan, Ipswich, July 1993^[23][12]
• Kellie Pratt, Norwich, June 2000^[24][12]
• Michelle Bettles, Norwich, March 2002^[20]

In June 2012, Wilson said that the killer of Norwich sex worker Michelle Bettles was likely Wright.^[20] Bettles was strangled in March 2002, and her body was found three days later in woodland by a lane on the outskirts of the city.^[20] Wright was well known to sex workers in Norwich, often meeting them there, and he was sometimes notably seen doing so while being dressed as a woman (Wright was known to cross-dress).^[20] Before her death, Bettles had told her parents that one unusual client that she had got in a car with one night was a cross-dresser.^[20] Bettles was last seen in the red light district of Norwich with plans to meet a client that night.^[20] Her body was found right next to a stream, which was very similar to how Wright had disposed of some of his victims in 2006.^[20] Bettles had been a regular at the Ferry Boat Inn pub, which was owned and run by Wright in the centre of the red light district of Norwich.^[25] Commenting on the similarities between the Bettles case and the 2006 murders, Wilson stated: "This is screaming out connection, connection, connection... there is no such thing as coincidence when you are dealing with a serial killer".^[20] Other academics have linked the case of Bettles to Wright and have pointed out that it would be very unlikely for two serial killers to have been operating in the same area, at the same time, using the same methods and same body disposal methods.^[20] The police responded to the suggested links between Bettles's case and Wright by saying that they had found no evidence linking Wright to the crime.^[26]

Wright has also been linked by criminal experts to the unsolved murder of Norwich sex worker Natalie Pearman in November 1992.^[22] Pearman was last seen at night soliciting clients outside the Ferry Boat Inn pub – the pub that was owned and run by Wright and that was located in the heart of the city's red light district.^[22] David Wilson stated that the murder appeared to be a "carbon copy" of the murders Wright later committed in 2006.^[22] Pearman had also been found two hours after her last sighting strangled to death and partially clothed, and her body was dumped in a layby off a lane in the countryside outside the city.^[22] The murder occurred in areas Wright used to frequent – he was known to frequent the dogging site in which Pearman's body was found.^[22] The police cross-referenced the DNA found on Pearman's body in 1992 to Wright's, but the results were "inconclusive".^[22]

Ipswich sex worker Amanda Duncan vanished after talking to a man in a car on Portman Road in the town in 1993, a road that Wright was known to acquire his sex workers from,^[27] and from where some of his victims were known to have disappeared from in 2006.^[28][29][30]

After Wright's murders in 2006, the police re-opened and re-examined these four cold cases to establish whether Wright could be responsible, and questioned Wright about them.^[31][32] Family members of the victims stated they believed he could be linked and called for the police to investigate this further and charge him for them.^[31][13][12]

See also[]

• List of serial killers by country
• List of serial killers by number of victims

References[]

External links[]

• Ipswich serial killer Steve Wright, ITV Local