Wright to die in jail for murders

SERIAL killer Steve Wright was today sentenced to a lifetime in prison for the murders of five Ipswich sex workers.

Judge Mr Justice Gross said: “It is right you should spend your whole life in prison.”

He added: “This was a targeted campaign of murder.”

Sentencing Wright, who had denied the murders, the judge said it may never be known why the 49-year-old murdered the young women.

A jury took just under eight hours to find the former publican guilty of the murders of Ipswich sex workers Tania Nicol, 19, Gemma Adams, 25, Anneli Alderton, 24, Paula Clennell, 24, and Annette Nicholls, 29, following a six-week trial.

After the verdicts were returned at 2.30pm yesterday, two of the victims' families had branded Wright a “monster” and urged the Government to reintroduce the death penalty for such crimes.

The judge said between October and December 2006, Wright conducted a campaign of murder, selecting five prostitutes from the streets of Ipswich.

Mr Justice Gross said: “The women in question were vulnerable in the sense they were exposed to the risk of their occupation.”

He added they were especially vulnerable because of their dependence on drugs.

The judge said: “The five women were addicted to drugs that led them to prostitution in order to fund their addictions. Drugs and prostitution exposed them to risk, but neither killed them. You did.”

He added: “You are responsible for their deaths.

"You killed them, stripped them and left them in rural or semi-rural locations.

"Why you did it may never be known but as the jury have concluded disbelieving your denials, murder them you did."

He said the murders of the women had caused much sorrow in their families.

“As a result, there is only one sentence - that of life imprisonment,” Mr Justice Gross said.

Wright was told the offences were so serious he would have to spend the rest of his life behind bars.

The judge said he “reached this sombre conclusion” for a combination of reasons.

The first was that it was a targeted campaign of murder involving five deaths, he said.

He said the murders had also caused "public revulsion".

Mr Justice Gross added they involved a substantial degree of planning.

He told Wright: “You selected the victims for sexual activity while they were incapable of resistance and killed them, stripped them and abandoned their bodies.

“Two of them in the macabre pose in which they were found.

“It demands a whole life order and that's the order that I make. You may go down.”

Mr Justice Gross thanked counsel, court staff and police before leaving the court, ending one of the biggest trials ever staged in Suffolk.

Wright's defence team said they would be considering whether there were grounds for an appeal, but stressed this was routine in all criminal cases.

The naked bodies of the five women were found in isolated spots around Ipswich over a 10-day period in December 2006.

The six-week trial heard that two of the bodies were arranged with their arms outstretched in a crucifix pose.

Forensic analysis revealed Wright's DNA on three of the women and fibres linking him to all five, the jury was told.

Wright admitted frequenting prostitutes in Ipswich and having sex with four of the victims, though he insisted he did not kill them.

But the jurors accepted the prosecution case that he “systematically selected and murdered” the women - either asphyxiating them or compressing their necks - over a six-and-a-half-week “campaign of murder”.

The court heard that Wright, who had used prostitutes since the age of 25, stalked the red-light district near his home while his partner Pam Wright, 59, worked nights at a call centre.