Life Means Life

by Nick Appleyard

  Detectives still wanted to directly link Wright with the girls on the evenings they went missing. After trawling through many hours of CCTV footage, they did just that. A car matching Wright’s Ford Mondeo Mark III was seen being driven in circuits around the red-light district on the night of 30 October, the night Tania Nichol disappeared. A camera with automatic number plate recognition photographed Wright’s Mondeo at 1.30am, driving out of town in the direction of the countryside, where Tania’s body was later found. Judging by her mobile phone records, at this point she was already dead and police believed her body was in the car. Later that morning, at 7.31am, a Mondeo driven by a man wearing a distinctive fluorescent yellow jacket was photographed on London Road. Again, the plate was registered to Wright. A yellow jacket matching the one worn by the Mondeo driver was found at Wright’s flat.

  On 3 December, the night Anneli Alderton went missing, a CCTV camera captured a car matching Wright’s driving round the red-light area at 11.18pm. More than two hours later, at 1.41am, the Mondeo was filmed driving out of town in the direction of the A14, the road leading to where Anneli’s body was found.

  Police knew they had their man and on 19 December, 17 days after the first body was found, Steve Wright was arrested. He denied all charges and his trial, which lasted six weeks, began at Ipswich Crown Court on 14 January 2008. The court was located less than half a mile from the defendant’s home.

  Prosecutor Peter Wright, QC, slowly and deliberately went through each piece of damning evidence against the accused. He told the jury that Wright, ‘systematically selected and murdered’ the five vice girls, while his partner worked the night shift at a call centre. The barrister said each girl was addicted to hard drugs and sold sex to fund their habits, which ‘ultimately proved fatal.’

  He added: ‘He was a user of prostitutes, a local resident and a man with transport. He had 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; a man who was not a stranger to the prostitutes of Ipswich. Women who would therefore be at ease in his company, unsuspecting of him or his motives in picking them up, particularly at a time of heightened awareness as the bodies began to turn up. He simply could not restrain himself. Having sex with them was not sufficient a thrill; he needed more, and achieved it at their expense.’

  On day 25 of the trial, Steve Wright took to the witness box, where he was cross-examined by the prosecution. In an exchange that few in court that day will ever forget, the accused claimed he was a ‘victim of circumstances.’ Wright said it was by chance that he happened to have sex with four girls just before they were murdered, and by chance that a fifth girl had recently been in his car before she, too, met her death.

  The prosecutor suggested to him: ‘It would seem in terms of picking up prostitutes in Ipswich, you have been singularly unfortunate.’ Wright answered: ‘It would seem so, yes.’

  In the course of a woeful witness-box performance, the defendant robotically gave the same answer of, ‘It would seem so, yes’ a total of 53 times. Below is an extract from that exchange:

  QC: There are a number of coincidences in this case, aren’t there, Mr Wright?

  Wright: If you say so, yes.

  QC: You selected five women from the streets of Ipswich amongst others and each of them died. Is that a coincidence?

  Wright: It would seem so, yes.

  QC: On your own account they all died very shortly after they left your company. Is that a coincidence?

  Wright: It would seem so, yes.

  QC:You selected five women from the streets of Ipswich in the order in which they died. Is that coincidence?

  Wright: It would seem so, yes.

  QC: There are further coincidences, are there not? Shall we start with your DNA? That’s another coincidence, isn’t it?

  Wright: It would seem so, yes.

  QC: It would seem your full profile is on the bodies of the three women who were recovered from dry land. Is that a coincidence? Wright: It would seem so, yes.

  QC: It would seem that there are fibres connected to you and your home environment in respect of these women when their bodies were found. Is that another coincidence?

  Wright: It would seem so, yes.

  For the defence, Timothy Langdale, QC, did his best for his client against all odds. In his closing speech, he told the court: ‘In this remarkable and unusual case the prosecution have put before you a mass of evidence. They suggest that it presents an overwhelming case against this defendant. But we ask, an overwhelming case of what? All that evidence adduced by the prosecution demonstrates, you may think, quite clearly there is a close association between Steve Wright and the five young women who died – and a close association between them and him not many hours before they died. That is not in dispute. What all the evidence does not do, we suggest, is demonstrate beyond a reasonable doubt, to use an old-fashioned expression, that Steve Wright is responsible for their deaths.’

  After less than six hours’ deliberation, the jury of nine men and three women found Wright guilty of all five murders and the Suffolk Strangler was told he would die behind bars.

  Judge Mr Justice Gross said: ‘Drugs and prostitution exposed these women to risk, but neither drugs nor prostitution killed them. You did; you were responsible for their deaths.’

  With his arms folded, Wright stared ahead as the judge said that he had carried out ‘a targeted campaign of murder,’ which involved ‘a substantial degree of premeditation and planning.’ Mr Justice Gross added: ‘The stark evidence of the case speaks for itself and points to a whole life order. You selected your victims; sexual activity followed. They were unable to resist and you killed them, stripped them and abandoned their bodies. The women were vulnerable in that they were exposed to the inherent risks of their occupation.’ Looking down at the floor, Wright made no eye contact with anyone else in court as he was led away to spend the rest of his days in jail.

  Outside court, the family of Tania Nicol called for the death penalty for the serial killer. In a statement, they said: ‘While five young lives have been cruelly ended, the person responsible will be kept warm, nourished and protected. In no way has justice been done. These crimes deserve the ultimate punishment.’

  Wright’s six-week murder spree was an unprecedented rate of killing unmatched by even Harold Shipman, whose murderous reign lasted 23 years, Fred West, who killed 12 women and girls over 20 years, or Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, who was convicted of killing 13 women over six years. Experts believe Wright could have killed more. Criminologist Colin Wilson said: ‘There are probably other women Wright has killed in the past. Most serial killers leave a long gap between the first and second murders, sometimes years, so to kill five women in just six weeks suggests the end of a cycle, not the beginning.’

  Indeed, Wright has been linked with several unsolved cases, most notably the disappearance of estate agent Suzy Lamplugh. In the early 1980s he worked as a steward on the QE2, the same time as Suzy worked on the luxury liner as a beautician. The pair became friends and stayed in touch before she vanished on 28 July 1986.

  Wright’s ex-wife Diane Cole – who suffered domestic violence at his hands – revealed he had shore leave around the time Suzy went missing. Diane, who also worked on the QE2, said: ‘I knew Suzy Lamplugh by sight. I saw him talking with her in the corridor. I was too downtrodden to challenge him about it then because he was such a Jekyll-and-Hyde character and you never knew when he would flip, but when I look back I can see how he was probably flirting with her.’ She added: ‘I really want him to tell us if he killed her for my peace of mind – for her family’s sake.’

  Suzy Lamplugh vanished after going to meet a client, whose name she had noted in her work diary as ‘Mr Kipper’, in Fulham, West London. Police never traced the ‘client’ and Suzy, whose body h
as never been found, was declared dead in 1994. Diane said: ‘I’m sure Steve used the word “kipper” as slang for face. He used to say, “What’s up with your kipper?”’

  The person closest to Wright during his killing spree was his common-law wife Pam, whose maiden name is also Wright. She shared a bed with him throughout those six murderous weeks, and once her husband was jailed, she gave a chilling insight into his warped mind. She recalled an evening when, at the height of the murders, they were sat in front of the TV, eating her homemade lasagne, Wright’s favourite meal. As they watched coverage of the murders on the news, she asked him ‘what sort of monster’ might have committed such crimes.

  Pam said Wright merely shrugged and ‘then carried on watching EastEnders.’ She added: ‘He just didn’t seem to want to talk about it like everyone else in the town. But that’s not surprising now, is it? The Suffolk Strangler was my Steve. I was living with a serial killer and I know people will think I’m totally stupid, but I simply didn’t have a clue.

  ‘I told him that night that I was terrified but he said, “You’ve got nothing to be frightened about.” I didn’t need to be frightened because he wasn’t going to kill me; I wasn’t a prostitute. I was the woman who shared his bed and cooked and cleaned for him, and hoped to marry him.’

  ‘AN UNCONTROLLABLE FREAK’

  ‘Be quiet or I’ll kill you.’

  Wilson to elderly victim.

  Name: Simon Wilson

  Crime: Rape and murder

  Date of conviction: 5 September 2008

  Age at conviction: 51

  ‘Everyone thought he was a weirdo’, recalled Dave Garforth, a former drinker at the London pub where sex killer Simon Wilson rented a room. ‘He was friendly but there was a creepiness to him. When he was drunk he was over-friendly, especially with women. He’d look them up and down without any attempt to hide it. And if he was caught doing it, he’d chuckle to himself and mutter stuff under his breath.

  ‘But I never thought for a minute he was capable of the crimes he’s committed. When I read in the papers about the things he’s done, I felt sick. To think I’ve sat next to him at the bar.’

  Calling himself Dave Flynn, Wilson rented a £35-a-night room above the Central pub near West Ham’s football ground. His desire to keep his real name secret from the staff and the clientele was understandable – he did not want anyone to find out that he had recently been deported from Australia for killing and sexually assaulting elderly women

  Born in Northamptonshire in 1958, Wilson was just a toddler when his family emigrated to the Australian capital of Canberra. He was still at school when he was arrested for his first known sex offence – the indecent assault of a girl aged under 16. It was the first of a string of 77 crimes including six rapes and a brutal murder. For a decade Wilson drifted in and out of work, rarely holding down a job for more than a few months. He was a borderline alcoholic and spent every night drinking. When he secured a six-month contract as a night security guard for a cold storage firm, he was unable to change his drinking habits. He lasted a week before being found asleep and drunk in front of the CCTV monitors he was supposed to be watching.

  He became a drifter and in 1985, the balding 27-year-old made his first known sex attack on a pensioner. He followed the 67-year-old along a Melbourne street at night and pounced on her from behind. He dragged her into bushes, put a knife to her face and threatened to kill her if she screamed. The snarling pervert then ripped out her dentures and raped her twice. When the sexual assault was over, he battered his trembling, half-naked victim around the face and left her for dead.

  Wilson was jailed for 10 years for the attack but he was released early after serving two-thirds of his sentence. Within months of being a free man, he progressed from brutal rapist to killer. On July 12, 1992, he spotted Joan Randall, 55, as she took an early morning stroll through a park in Mackay, Queensland. He stripped her naked, smashed her face in with a lump of concrete and kicked and punched her all over her body. Detective Sergeant Dennis Hansen, who led the subsequent murder hunt, said: ‘Her cheekbones were broken, her jaw was fractured, she had broken chest bones and rib fractures and bruised lungs. Her injuries were consistent with being kicked and jumped on.’ Wilson broke his hand punching her.

  The murderer was sentenced to life in prison after psychiatrists and police told the court that he would always be an extreme danger to women. But he was released in January 2008 after serving 16 years and the Australians, under their tough rules for foreigners who abuse their residency, deported Wilson back to his native UK.

  Within days of touching down on British soil, Wilson successfully applied for £70.85 a week in housing benefit and found himself lodgings at the Central pub. He admitted to staff that he had been in prison in Australia for murder but said he was provoked into a pub fight. The authorities could not force him to sign the sex offenders register because while the Sexual Offences Act 2003 dictates that those convicted of sex crimes abroad must sign the register, it says a criminal convicted of such an offence before 1997, like Wilson, does not have to. When asked to sign the register, Wilson refused. He was obliged to tell the police where he was staying and he did so. But they did not have the resources to put him under 24-hour surveillance and so a police liaison officer was tasked with keeping tabs on him, usually by telephone.

  On April 13, three months after his arrival, Wilson attacked a 71-year-old woman on her doorstep in Camden, central London, slashing her across the face and body as he tried to rape her. She spent five days in hospital and doctors fear she may lose the use of one of her arms. His petrified victim later described her ordeal to the Daily Mail. The frail, 5ft tall grandmother told the paper: ‘I was walking home to my flat and had my key in the door when he grabbed me from behind. He had a knife and he said, “Be quiet or I’ll kill you”.

  ‘I lied, telling him my children were in the house and they would hear, but he said, “Shut up or you’ll never see your children again”. He hit me all over and he called me a bloody bitch. I was terrified. He was holding the knife by my chest. I grabbed it around the blade with my left hand. It cut into my tendons and there was blood all over the floor. But he pulled the knife out and used it to cut open my T-shirt down the front. He also cut my skirt the same way.’

  Wilson tried to rape his elderly victim but he fled when disturbed by a couple leaving a nearby bar. He was caught when his image, recorded on a police database when he arrived from Australia, was matched to CCTV footage of him stalking his victim. Nine days after the attack, Wilson was arrested as he entered the Central.

  On September 5, 2008, he appeared at London’s Blackfriars Crown Court where he admitted attempted rape, wounding his victim with intent to cause her grievous bodily harm and causing her to engage in sexual activity without consent. The balding 6ft 2in deportee stared at the ground as he mumbled his guilty pleas in a thick Australian accent. Sporting a bushy moustache and wearing a light blue open-necked shirt under a grubby pink pullover, he remained impassive as prosecutor Constance Briscoe told the court: ‘The victim was severely injured. She was slashed across the face and we understand she may lose the use of an arm as a result of the injury that was inflicted. The victim said she was so scared that being scared made her voice disappear.’ The lawyer added: ‘We will certainly be making submissions at sentence that this defendant is highly dangerous and ought not to be released in the future.’

  Five weeks later, after pre-sentence reports, judge Aidan Marron QC jailed 51-year-old Wilson for the rest of his life, telling him: ‘You are an exceptionally dangerous man.’ After Wilson was sentenced, DS Dennis Hanson said from Australia: ‘This freak needs supervision at all times. Details of what he’s done in Australia would obviously have gone with him to the UK when he was sent over there. I am appalled that he was let loose into the community after a judge had sent him to prison for life. I don’t think he should ever have been allowed to return to society.’ A colleague who worked with him on the Joan Ra
ndall case said Wilson was ‘an uncontrollable freak who should never have been released.’

  The Wilson case reopened the long-running debate over the UK’s policy on dealing with people from abroad who commit crimes on our shores. Tory MP Philip Davies said: ‘Our policies in this country should be more in tune with the way the Australians do it. They have a zero-tolerance approach while we pussyfoot around. We are far too bothered about the human rights of criminals rather than the rights of citizens.’ He added: ‘In an ideal world we wouldn’t want this man back in the country, but it goes to show that we have a lamentable approach to deporting foreign criminals in this country compared with other countries.’

  Wilson’s return to the UK is one of a string of recent cases where Australia has sent back British criminals. In 2005, 66-year-old Robert Excell hit the headlines when he returned after spending 37 years in jail in Australia for child sex offences. Then in March 2008 the Australians deported 61-year-old paedophile Raymond Horne after he had lived there for more than 50 years.