The life of a serial killer

Danielle Nuttall

HE was the quiet man in the pub, the neighbour that no-one knew. No-one ever took much notice of Steve Wright.

The twice-divorced, father-of-two appeared to be a shy, homely man. He kept himself to himself. He gave one word answers to questions. If you asked the people who lived in his street who Steve Wright was, not many would be able to tell you.

But that was until the early hours of Tuesday, December 19, 2006, when news of his arrest broke around the world.

Wright was born in Erpingham, Norfolk, on April 24, 1958, and began life in West Beckham.

His father, Conrad, served as a policeman in the RAF, and his family lived at the base in Coltishall, Norfolk, and also had spells in Malta and Singapore.

Wright's father was married to his mother, Patricia, for 12 years - they also had an elder son, David, who is in his 50s, and two daughters, Tina and Jeanette, both in their 40s. They split while Wright was still a child, with his mother moving to America.

Conrad married his second wife, Valerie, in 1968. They had two more children, Keith, 39, and Natalie, and the family, including Wright, lived in Wyton, Huntingdonshire, before moving to Felixstowe.

An unremarkable youngster, Wright left school at 16 with no qualifications and went to work at a hotel in Aldeburgh, before leaving to join the Merchant Navy when he was 17.

He told his trial he worked on the QE2 for about six years - during which he first used prostitutes - as a waiter. During this time, as a 20-year-old, he married his first wife, Angela O'Donovan, in Wales, with whom he has a son who is in his 20s.

They divorced in 1987, around the time he was made redundant from the Merchant Navy. Wright moved to Halstead, Essex, where he bought a bungalow and married his second wife Diane Cassell, who he had met while on the QE2. But the marriage lasted less than a year was “a total disaster”, according to his ex-wife.

By that time, Wright moved into the pub trade and managed pubs around the region while managers were away on holiday. He ran the Ferry Boat in Norwich - with his wife - for a time in 1988 before working in east London - where he had a year-long relationship with a girlfriend that bore a child - and Essex.

After leaving London, he moved to a pub Haverhill, at a time when he had started gambling heavily and had built up huge debts. There he had a brush with death that changed his personality. He was found lying in an alleyway and rescued by a Good Samaritan. It was never clear exactly what had happened - but the effect on Wright was profound.

"After that he went sort of a bit quiet. He wouldn't say boo to a goose,” said his half- brother, Keith Wright. Before that he used to be quite outgoing. He would go for a beer and a laugh and a joke but then it was hard to get much out of him. He kept himself to himself. We didn't see much of him."

Wright's ferocious gambling continued after he moved to a flat in Felixstowe and he got into further financial difficulties.

“I just got myself into so much debt - I was gambling on horses,” he told his trial.

Around this time, the court was told, Wright packed up his entire life and left for a fresh start in Thailand. But after hooking up with a woman in the country, he was “scammed for everything he had”, according to his family, and took an overdose of pills on his crestfallen return.

He moved in with his father and stepmother in Felixstowe and for a time lived with his half-brother, before he started a relationship with Pamela Wright, a divorcee several years older than him. They met in a bingo hall in Felixstowe in 2000.

It was this relationship that finally gave some stability to Wright's life. But his family failed to warm to his new girlfriend and Wright found himself caught between the two. He said he felt like Pamela was pulling him one way and his family the other. Wright, besotted, chose his new relationship over his family.

"I didn't really hear a lot from him (after that),” said Keith. “He just started playing golf and loved it. When we did see him it was hard to speak to him. You couldn't have a conversation with him. He spent most of his time with Pam.

Wright got a job as a barman at the Brook Hotel in Felixstowe and lived with Pam in the town before moving to Ipswich.

It was while working in Felixstowe in 2003 that he was fined £80 in the courts for stealing from the bar, and it was a consequence of that conviction that a sample of Wright's DNA was on a police database - which was to prove crucial in his arrest.

After living together in Felixstowe, Wright and Pamela moved to a flat in Bell Close, Ipswich. By this time Wright had registered with the Gateway recruitment agency, which was then based in Levington.

He moved to Nacton shortly after, and began a number of jobs in the labour trade, the most recent at Celotex in Hadleigh, where he was employed as a forklift driver at the time of his arrest.

One Celotex worker, who did not want to be named, said: “He wasn't an approachable sort of person and it was rumoured that he would often stand and stare at people.

“Obviously his arrest was a surprise. He pretty much kept himself to himself from what I can tell and didn't seem to talk to many people - but that's not necessarily that abnormal for a new guy in the factory.

“We have quite a few large containers on site and I remember at the time people saying it would be easy for him to dispose of things in them if he wanted to. He would just have to walk past and swing a carrier bag in and nobody would think any the different.”

Residents of Bell Close described Wright and Pamela as “good neighbours” and never a problem. The couple moved to London Road, in the heart of the town's red light district, at the start of October 2006.

The couple were regulars at Ipswich pub, Uncle Tom's Cabin, where they got to know landlady Sheila Davis and her partner Eddie Roberts.

Ms Davis said: "He normally came in on a Sunday but she used to come in more on her own, at one point virtually every day.

“He was just very quiet, it was hard to get a word out of him, he would only speak when spoken to. On more than one occasion he was a bit strange, a bit weird."

A drinker at the pub, who would not be named, said: "I always knew him as Pam's husband. Pam was the life and soul and Steve was sat there quietly.”

Another acquaintance, who also asked for anonymity, said Wright was an invisible man who nobody noticed until he was arrested.

"If you asked 50 people around here before last December if they knew Steve Wright, no one would've said yes," he said.

"Now everybody knows his name - but nobody really knows him."

Detectives arrested Wright at 5am on Tuesday, December 19, 2006, at his home. Neighbours said he was wearing a dressing gown when led away by police.

He was not a man police were interested in until scientists found his DNA at crime scenes. And as news broke of his arrest later that day, soon the whole world knew the name of Steve Wright.