Snatched, killed and discarded

I mostly discuss politics on here but thought American readers might be unaware of an extraordinary case that is breaking in Britain. A serial killer has killed five women in the UK, but what makes the case staggering is that all five bodies have turned up within the last ten days.

People like Sutcliffe killed every six months or so, but whoever is behind this latest spree is killing at a rate that I think is probably unheard of. We heard of three women killed over the last week or so and yesterday another two missing women were presumed dead when two bodies were found near Ipswich.

Any lingering hope that this was not a serial killer disappeared in the late afternoon with the discovery of the suspected fourth and fifth victims of a predator on an apparent mission to murder young women who work in the red light area of the East Anglian city.

What they were witnessing, Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull said, was what he called a "crime in action".

Perhaps spurred by the publicity, the murderer was on a frantic killing spree. Where at first he had carefully hidden the bodies in a brook, he was now snatching women off the street within days of each other, killing them, dumping their bodies and moving on to his next victim.

Half an hour after the bodies were found, Det Chief Supt Gull appeared before the media. With shaking hands, he asked for water as he spoke of the latest horrific discovery in a county where until now crime has been comparatively low. He could not say whether the young women were the two that the police had been searching for since their relatives reported them missing a few days ago. But the families of Paula Clennell, 24 and Annette Nicholls, 29, were being told of the discovery of the bodies as he spoke.

"I can't be sure. It is an assumption at this stage. But it is a natural assumption that these are the bodies of the two missing women," he said.

Like Gemma Adams, 25, who was the first woman to be found on December 2, her good friend Tania Nicol, 19, whose body was discovered six days later in the same stretch of Belstead brook, west of Ipswich, and Anneli Alderton, 24, found in the village of Nacton on Sunday, these girls were prostitutes.

Pock-marked and painfully thin, they all bore the obvious signs of heroin and crack addiction and were locked in a vicious cycle of selling their bodies to feed their crippling habit.

"This is an unprecedented inquiry," said the chief constable of Suffolk police, Alistair McWhirter. "When you look back to the Yorkshire Ripper, you are talking about murders carried out over months and years."

It's simply staggering. I don't think I've ever heard of anything quite like it. Ipswich is a sleepy little town with a small police force and help is being called in from police forces all over the country.

There's an interactive guide on where the bodies have been found here.

As I say, I don't normally carry this kind of thing, but I thought American readers should be made aware of this story.

All the bodies were found dumped close to the A14, which runs from Ipswich to the port of Felixstowe. In the last three cases the victims appear to have been hurriedly abandoned with little effort made to conceal them.

A forensic psychologist suggested last night that this indicated the serial killer was "taunting" the police. Keith Ashcroft, a specialist in sex crimes, said the fact that bodies were left in relatively open surroundings in an area close to police headquarters offered a clue to the killer's attitude.

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tag: Ipswich murders,