Suffolk murders investigation marks 20 years since the first victim disappeared

Simon Dinsdale was visiting his daughter in Ipswich for lunch, twenty years ago, when she held a local newspaper up to him and said: ‘What do you think of that, Dad?’

It was November, and Kate, then in her twenties, was looking forward to going out for a Christmas party – but was worried she wouldn’t be safe.

The headlines showed that 25-year-old Gemma Adams had gone missing, alongside Tania Nicol, 19, who had disappeared on October 30, 2006. 

Simon’s internal response was stark. ‘I remember thinking, well, they are dead. Women who were settled, who had family in Ipswich, do not just completely drop off the map,’ the retired detective from Essex, remembers.

But despite the fact that they had roots in the community, the women were especially vulnerable given that they were both sex workers who operated on the streets.

Local police had been hunting for them, handing out leaflets and running a local press campaign – and their parents were desperate.

Shortly after that lunch, the bodies of both women were found six days apart in waterways near Ipswich. Then, in rapid succession, three more women went missing and were later found murdered: Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls.

Suddenly, the tiny rural force of Suffolk Constabulary was facing a serial murder investigation, the likes of which it had never before known.

‘It was a shock when Anneli’s body was found because no one had realised she was missing,’ Simon says. The force did not have the resources to deal with such a serious case, so it called in reinforcements.’

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‘I was at home on the 12 December, off duty, when I got a call from my boss who told me to go to Ipswich because I was being seconded. I didn’t come home until the following April,’ Simon, who retired 16 years ago and now works as an author and speaker, remembers.

He took his entire investigation team with him, filling up hotel rooms across Ipswich, where, as detective superintendent, he took on the Senior Investigating Officer role for Annette and Paula’s murders.

Simon and his team began working 16-hour days in whatever space they could find at Suffolk Police headquarters.

‘Two young women go missing and nothing is seen or heard of them for nearly a month. Their bodies are then recovered in quick succession. It became clear very quickly that it was the same person responsible.

‘Then, over a period of four days, another three bodies are found dumped around Ipswich. That is five young women all murdered by the same person in a very short space of time. We had to stop the killer doing it again,’ Simon remembers.

One of his first tasks was to inform Gemma’s family that her body had been found. A woman who had been described as ‘bright and bubbly’ by her parents, who loved the Brownies and grew up playing the piano and riding horses, had been murdered at the age of 25.

‘In the police, we refer to these visits as “the agony”, because you’ve got to tell someone a loved one is dead. By that point, I had 25 years’ experience, so I had done it a few times, but it is never easy. It is desperately sad.

‘The family are victims as well, just as much as the poor girl that’s lost her life. And when you mention the word “murder”, that brings even more disbelief and so many questions from the family,’ he explains.

For Simon and his colleagues, it was a huge job.

‘Someone was killing people. You’ve got to find them and get the evidence to lock them up. That is a huge job to be involved in, one of national importance.’

He turned up to work each day to find TV crews and the world’s media camped outside police headquarters. The small force didn’t have room for the influx of officers, so Simon found himself using whatever space he could find.

‘I’m briefing my guys in the canteen, and I look over my shoulder and the crime correspondent for Sky is sitting there having his bacon and eggs. And Fiona Bruce is there. It was utterly surreal. I thought – I bet they’re bleeding listening.’

The speed with which the women disappeared and were later found dead, and the proximity in which their bodies were discovered, led detectives to conclude they were dealing with a serial killer.

They flooded the area with officers, mounted roadblocks, examined thousands of CCTV images, collected DNA from hundreds of men and urged women involved in street sex work to stay off the streets while the killer remained at large.

Seven weeks after Tania Nicol was reported missing, investigators identified a man called Steve Wright’s DNA on three of the victims.

Unknown to the police, the forklift truck driver lived near the women’s ‘beat’ and frequently paid for sex. One woman who had encountered him five years earlier called him a ‘cruel, nervous, perverted and quiet little man’.

The next day, he was arrested, which was ‘the easy part’, according to Simon.

‘That’s a piece of cake. It’s: “You’re nicked”. Thereafter, you’ve got to prove it. Knowing someone has done it and proving it are two completely different things.’

‘It took over a year before he went to court. It is an enormously intensive investigation to take every single piece of evidence you are going to rely on and stress-test it to the point that it proves beyond reasonable doubt this person is responsible. It was a huge piece of work.’

After a six-week trial at Ipswich Crown Court in 2008, where Wright denied murder, he was found unanimously guilty of murdering all five women and was sentenced to life imprisonment.

‘The investigation was a huge learning curve for me, and I did feel a certain amount of professional pride after he was convicted,’ Simon says.

But Simon remains troubled by how the women were portrayed at the time of the investigation. The victims’ disappearances were initially viewed through the lens of their lifestyles because they were involved in street sex work and had drug addictions.

Headlines referred to the women as ‘prostitutes’ before mothers, sisters and daughters, and until that point, policing in Ipswich had focused on enforcement and residents’ complaints rather than women’s safety.

‘The thing that should always be made very clear is that those five women were victims. They made some mistakes in their lives. None of them grew up wanting to be a sex worker. Not one of them really wanted to be so badly affected by drugs that they had to sell themselves to buy them. They were victims first and foremost.

‘It does bother me that even today the case is regarded as “the prostitute murders”, like they were disposable. One of them was a mother, one was pregnant when she was murdered. They did not deserve that.’

After a breakthrough in DNA technology and new witness evidence, Wright was sentenced in February to a further 40 years for the kidnap and murder of 17-year-old Victoria Hall, and the attempted kidnap of another woman, more than 25 years ago. The judge told him he would die in prison.

For Simon, the case needs further investigation. He believes Wright may have killed other women.

‘He was arrested when he was 48. You don’t suddenly start murdering people in your forties. He is a predatory serial killer.

‘My concern now is, are any of my former colleagues going to talk to him and ask him what else he has done? There is no doubt in my mind that he has killed other people.’