Should the 'Suffolk Strangler' have been stopped sooner?

0:02Emma Birchley:Sky News, the full story first.

0:07Niall:Coming up, the Suffolk strangler is convicted of another murder years before the crimes for which he was given the name. Could his killing have been stopped much, much sooner?

0:20Niall:Between October and December 2006, the bodies of five women were found in and around Ipswich in Suffolk. there was an apparent serial killer on the loose, targeting sex workers. The man arrested this morning was arrested somewhere around the red light district in Ipswich, sometime earlier this morning. The killer was Steve Wright. He was eventually caught and sentenced. But did the police miss opportunities to catch him years before he committed those murders? The police came, but they didn't believe me at all.

0:52Emma Birchley:They treated me like a silly little girl.

0:56Niall:Skies, Emma Birchley's been speaking to the only known survivor of the Suffolk Strangler.

1:00Emma Birchley:Suddenly, he was literally right there. He stepped right into me. He said, all right, in a low, sleazy way. In that instance, I knew my life was in danger.

1:14Niall:Emma, take us back to Suffolk in the mid-2000s and Epswich. There was an awful lot of fear around at that time, wasn't there?

1:21Emma Birchley:Yeah, there was an awful lot of fear because it was the end of 2006, people were going missing. And then it seemed like we were getting constant updates of bodies having been found. And there was terror, you know, who was going to go missing next? What body would be found next? And fear from people out walking their dogs, you know, these bodies were all found in rural locations all around the Ipswich area. and people just didn't know who was behind it and what was happening. And the media descended en masse on the Ipswich area, dozens and dozens of people knocking on doors, swarming around the red light district because, of course, the five women who'd all gone missing were all sex workers.

2:08Emma Birchley:They'd all been picked up, it turned out, by Steve Wright in the red light district.

2:14Niall:What did we know about Steve Wright at the time? I mean, obviously he was given the moniker the Suffolk Strangler.

2:19Emma Birchley:Yeah, he lived in London Road, which was really in the red light district of Ipswich. He was a forklift driver. He was someone that was known to many of the women in the Ipswich area who were working as sex workers. But, you know, he hadn't been on their radar for this kind of thing, the police radar. This came as a real surprise to the colleagues who worked with him, but also to his partner. You know, his partner was stunned, had no idea. But this was a man, of course, living in the heart of the red light district. We knew that he would, you know, use prostitutes that would all later emerge. But certainly real shock from the people in the area that it was that it would turn out to be Steve Wright, who was behind all of these crimes.

3:10Niall:We know this from the latest conviction. There were other crimes and one back in 1999 in a part of the world that you knew well, know well, Felix still. What happened back then?

3:21Emma Birchley:I mean, this had such an enormous impact on the community. So it was 1999, 17 year old Vicky Hall had been out at a club called the Bandbox. Now, I have been there, well, used to go there many, many, many times. I was in my mid 20s by that point. but the impact it had on the community of a 17 year old girl a school girl walking back from a club in the early hours with her friend disappearing and that uncertainty when they didn't know what had happened to her and then five days later her body was found 25 miles away in Creting St Peter in a ditch found by a dog walker and we heard in court from that friend who'd left to just 300 metres from her home that morning in September of 1999, that feeling of grief at realising she was never going to see her friend again.

4:23Emma Birchley:You know, when she woke up in the morning and found out that Vicky was missing, she felt this horror in the pit of her stomach. She knew something must have happened.

4:33Niall:What was it like being a young woman in the town at that point?

4:37Emma Birchley:It was incredibly scary for people because they didn't know who was behind this. You know, in the papers, in the national papers, there was this sense that it's sleepy Suffolk. It's really a small town. And so it understandably caused enormous fear and uncertainty.

4:53Niall:We're almost three decades on from, as you say, the crime, absolutely horrific and brutal crime that for many people, you know, is still very fresh in their memory. but I suspect that what will really stick in the craw for those who have been affected by this for so long is that there was a warning, that there was a sign that something like this might be coming and it took place the night before the kidnapping and murder took place.

5:22Emma Birchley:Yes, so it emerged that a 22-year-old woman, Emily Doherty, had been walking back from the same club as Vicky would go to a night later, and Steve Wright would try to kidnap her. So she had been walking back from that same club with her friend. The two men were walking far behind. They were all very drunk. Emily wasn't, interestingly, she'd had a couple of beers earlier and decided to have soda water when she was at the club. But as they were walking back, they got separated. and the friend said, well, I want to go home, leaving Emily on her own. So she then went through this horrific experience.

6:09Emma Birchley:She spent this period of time, she said it was around 40 minutes, she thinks, trying to get away from him on the dark residential streets of Felixstowe. There would have been very few people around at that time. By that point, it was three, four in the morning. You can imagine the terror of that, just banging on doors. No one was answering. And in the end, she would actually get someone to open their front door. They reluctantly let her in.

6:39Niall:OK, so she goes, knocks on the door, clearly in fear for her life, ushered inside, calls the police. What was their response?

6:48Emma Birchley:Well, the person on the phone took some number plate details. She managed to have three of the letters that were proved pretty useful later. And the police came out really pretty quickly. The problem was when they arrived, Emily felt she was treated like a silly little girl. That was the words she used when she was talking to me. She felt they really dismissed her.

7:14Niall:How on earth does Emily feel right now, given that these crimes, the crime against her and the crime against Vicky, took place, what, seven years before the murderous rampage that Wright went on in Ipswich?

7:31Emma Birchley:I mean, she feels glad that her voice is heard, but she feels absolutely gutted that those people went on to be killed. Now, the reality is that for Vicky, it was less than 24 hours later. Even her family, who I spoke to a couple of days ago, I spoke to her brother, Stephen, Vicky's father, Graham. You know, they feel, well, would it have made any difference for Vicky? Their view is probably not. But the reality is, if they pieced together the information from the murder of Vicky, from the evidence given by Emily, if they pieced all that together sooner, surely those five women in Ipswich would not have been murdered.

8:21Emma Birchley:And for Emily, that is a source of enormous frustration. You know, she felt that no one listened to what she had to say. Now, when I spoke to the police the other day, they said, well, actually, the information she did give in that statement, in that hour long statement, was really important. It formed part of the circumstantial evidence that along with the DNA evidence that they would have by that time using modern techniques, which weren't around back in 1999. they were able to use all of that and that would ultimately lead to Wright pleasing guilty and being convicted for Vicky's murder being given 40 years which incidentally for her family is absolutely crucial.

9:09Emma Birchley:Yes he may already have been serving a whole life term but that was a sentence specifically for Vicky and for them this was absolutely crucial.

9:18Niall:Look, I get the point about the advances in DNA technology securing a guilty plea on the first day of the trial. But this was a missed opportunity by Suffolk police, an incredibly big missed opportunity, given the fact that she had identified aspects of the licence plate that, what, could have directed the police to Wright's door years sooner than they actually did.

9:44Emma Birchley:Yes, indeed. So number plate, but also the description that Emily gave of the man who tried to abduct her. You know, it was acknowledged to have been really accurate. And yet there hadn't been that e-fit done. The police say, well, we did take that information she gave us seriously. But of course, it wasn't until days later. and it appears that quite simply those number plates cannot have been looked into in the detail that they needed to be because surely then they'd have brought in two people and they'd have been much, much closer to finding the person responsible for killing Vicky and her family wouldn't have had to wait more than 26 years.

10:28Niall:So presumably this is the point at which Suffolk Police do an internal inquiry into the state of that investigation and whether or not Emily's information could have secured an earlier conviction. I mean, that must just be taking place right now.

10:40Emma Birchley:So you would have thought so, wouldn't you? And during the sentencing at the Old Bailey, the judge interrupted as the prosecution outlined what their case would have been and said, well, did you explore? Did the police explore back in 1999 connections? And has there been or will there be an inquiry into, in his words, what went wrong? And we were told at the end of that morning session, before the judge went off to consider his sentence, that Suffolk police were indeed considering whether there would be an inquiry on what they called missed opportunities. That was the words from the Crown Prosecution Service.

11:23Emma Birchley:But when I spoke to the police earlier this week, they said they haven't yet made a decision on that.

11:30Niall:There are any number of things that are concerning about these cases, not least, of course, the heinous nature of Wright's criminality. But for me, there is a very big gap between the crimes of 1999 and the crimes of 2006. And somewhere within the police force, somewhere across the country, there must be suspicion that Wright has been involved in other offending. What do we know about that?

11:58Emma Birchley:Yeah, there are other cases which have remained unsolved. And there have been people urging Steve Wright, relatives urging Steve Wright, if he was responsible, to come forward to tell them where he hid the bodies. But the fact is, is that the police say he is not an official suspect for any other crimes. But there are, for example, two we could name. Now, one of them was the disappearance of a woman called Amanda Duncan in the Ipswich area. She was a sex worker. That was in 1993. So obviously before Vicky Hall's murder. However, the year after Vicky was killed, a sex worker disappeared in Norwich called Kelly Pratt.

12:43Emma Birchley:She was 28 years old. Wright was living in the area at the time. So certainly there has been much speculation that Steve Wright was behind those, for example, and there are others too. And he has been urged, if he was responsible for any other crimes, to come forward and admit them. You know, Emily, well, I mean, how has what happened, you know, best part of 30 years ago, how has that affected her since then? You know, she was able to talk quite matter-of-factly about a lot of it. But when she spoke of what she called suffering massively from survivor's guilt, you know, she really broke down. It's been incredibly hard to know that the next day someone would die and be murdered after an attempt was made to abduct her.

13:41Emma Birchley:You know, that was terrifying. And going through all of this now with the trial or build up to the trial has really made that come to the fore. She says she's been very shaken. She's been I know she woke in the night with a panic attack one night. But that frustration as well. So you've got the fear, but also the frustration of the missed opportunities that, yeah, she knows it may not have saved, probably wouldn't have saved Vicky. It was so soon after the abduction attempt on her. But surely, she feels, surely, had all of the information she'd given back then been looked at in more detail, then surely they could have got to Steve Wright sooner.

14:27Emma Birchley:And surely those five women in Ipswich wouldn't have lost their lives.

14:32Niall:Thanks, Emma. For much more from Emma's very powerful chat with Emily, just head to the website skynews.com. The Sky News Daily is back tomorrow.