THE IPSWICH PROSTITUTE MURDERS

 

THE FIVE VICTIMS

 

Tom Stephens

THE REAL KILLER

Steve Wright

THE FALL GUY

 

 

TOM STEPHENS, PIMP, EX COP AND DRUG FIXER FOR THE FIVE MURDERED IPSWICH PROSTITUTES WAS WATCHING OVER THEIR MOVEMENTS AS THEY WERE PICKED UP BY CLIENTS IN THE RED LIGHT DISTRICT OF IPSWICH . STEPHENS STRANGLED HIS 19 YEAR OLD LOVE, TANIA NICOL, THE FIRST GIRL TO DISAPPEAR ON 30 TH OCTOBER 2006 AND IN THE NEXT TWO WEEKS WHILE SHE WAS OFFICIALLY A MISSING PERSON HE DEVELOPED A BIZARRE PLAN TO MURDER ANOTHER PROSTITUTE SO AS TO SHIFT THE BLAME TO ANOTHER MAN. THAT MAN WAS STEVE WRIGHT WHO WAS TARGETED AS A FALL GUY BECAUSE HE HAD BEEN THE LAST MAN TO MEET TANIA BEFORE HER KILLER.

HE WATCHED, WAITED AND PICKED UP HIS FRIEND GEMMA ADAMS MINUTES AFTER INNOCENT SEX PUNTER STEVE WRIGHT DROPPED HER BACK. HE TOOK HER TO GET A DRUG FIX, DROVE TO A REMOTE SPOT, ASKED HER TO GET NAKED FOR SEX AND THEN ASPHYXIATED HER IN AN ARM LOCK AND DUMPED HER BODY IN A SWOLLEN STREAM TOGETHER WITH TANIA’S BODY TO LINK THE MURDERS KNOWING THAT HER LAST PUNTER, STEVE WRIGHT, WOULD BE THE NUMBER ONE SUSPECT.

HE PRETENDED TO BE THE GIRLS’ PROTECTOR AS HE PICKED UP THE NEXT THREE VICTIMS AFTER WRIGHT DROPPED EACH ONE BACK, ONLY TO STRANGLE THEM AFTER THEY GOT THEIR DRUG FIX WHILE NAKED IN HIS CAR. HE DUMPED THEIR BODIES, SOME RITUALLY; BURNED THEIR CLOTHES AND THEN COURTED THE MEDIA. ON THE NIGHT HIS INTERVIEW WITH THE SUNDAY MIRROR WAS PUBLISHED HE PHONED THE POLICE, TOLD THEM HE MIGHT BE THE KILLER AND WAS ARRESTED NEXT MORNING.

AT THAT POINT THE POLICE BELIEVED HE WAS THE SUFFOLK STRANGLER AND HIS ARREST WAS IMMINENT. BUT STEPHENS HAD STOLEN A MARCH ON THE POLICE. HE TRIGGERED HIS PLAN INTO ACTION BY INFORMING THEM THE REG NUMBER OF WRIGHT’S CAR AND TOLD THEM THAT IN HIS CAPACITY AS THEIR PROTECTOR HE WAS SHADOWING THEM AND SAW THAT FORD MONDEO CAR PICK UP THE LAST TWO VICTIMS, ANNETTE AND PAULA.

WRIGHT WAS ARRESTED AT 5.0AM THE NEXT MORNING AND WAS PERSUADED TO RELUCTANTLY ADMIT THAT HE HAD SEX WITH THOSE TWO VICTIMS ON THE NIGHTS THEY WERE LAST SEEN. THE POLICE WERE ELATED AT HAVING WRUNG THE ADMISSION FROM HIM. THIS MEANT THAT WRIGHT HAD BEEN THE LAST MAN SEEN WITH ALL FIVE VICTIMS AND HIS DNA WAS LATER FOUND ON SOME OF THEM. IT WAS A COINCIDENCE THAT HE COULDN’T EXPLAIN TO A JURY. WRIGHT WAS CHARGED WITH MURDER AND THE REST IS HISTORY.

 

Michael Crimp for the CPS and Det Ch Suprt Stewart Gull

On Monday 18th December 2006 Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull called a press conference in Ipswich in Suffolk and stated;

‘A 37-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murdering five women found dead at sites around Ipswich. Superintendent Gull of the Suffolk Police said the man was arrested at his home in Trimley, near Felixstowe.’

He was referring to Tom Stephens although he didn’t name him. Stephens had been arrested at 7.20 am that Monday morning by a team of detectives who arrived at his home with a warrant and took possession of everything he had including himself, just the morning after the Sunday Mirror published a remarkable interview which identified and named him as a suspect in the murders and in which he predicted his arrest. He had volunteered the interview and consented to publication having made free with many journalists who for the previous few weeks were scouring Ipswich for leads on what had become the hottest story in the country. The main thrust of the interview was to portray himself in the role of a protector for the prostitutes of Ipswich most of whom he personally knew. Stephens put on a good act calculated to depict himself as an innocent bystander who knew all the victims but who was full of remorse for having failed to protect them and who felt the loss of his friends deeply, particularly the first two victims, Tania and Gemma. He achieved this by frequent feigned breakdowns into tears as he spoke to the interviewer in his car for two hours. That interview was the talk of the nation that Sunday and no doubt of particular interest to the police who had completely different ideas about him and knew a lot about him having been watching him closely for the previous six weeks. They believed that Stephens was lying and was indeed the killer who was engaged in deception, clouding the facts and preempting their actions because he had correctly stated that they were planning his imminent arrest. Not alone had Stephens been knocking on doors of prostitutes in the early hours that morning before his arrest allegedly looking for sex but he phoned the police only hours before his arrest and said he was worried about whether he had a split personality and was doing things he didn't know about, then was going back to his normal personality.  Clearly Stephens was manipulating the police and then when he was arrested he refused to talk but he did impart that magic ‘intelligence’ that put Steve Wright in the spotlight and led to his arrest the next morning.

 

 

 

 

The Equivocal Woman by German artist Max Ernst. A picture that Stephens had displayed in his flat.

It features a woman in a cruciform shape with one leg raised and hair arranged in a distinctive triangle above her head – eerily similar to the pose Anneli Alderton and Annette Nicholls were discovered in.

Mr Stephens regarded himself as first victim Tania Nicol's “boyfriend” and, after her disappearance, bombarded her fraught mother with a series of bizarre phone calls. In one chilling exchange he asked whether the girls would still walk the streets “if one of them was murdered”.

Stephens web page and a picture of the note that he placed with flowers in the red light district where he used to park his car. In the top picture he has painted over his eyelids.

His web site name was www.myspace.com/hardcorehookerdeath 

Wright was a sex customer for all five victims but while he had Tania in his car he didnt have sexual relations with her. The evidence in court only proved that his DNA was found on the victims as he freely admitted but that didnt prove that he was the killer.

Like the charge of the Light Brigade the police forged ahead with their blinkers firmly in place and their statements after the verdict about DNA and blood all indicate their own doubts about Wright’s guilt. Those statements about his DNA being matched with the national database were a blatant lie but were made to reinforce the verdict and enhance it with the billion to one lie that accompanies every item of DNA in all criminal trials.

On November 16 Tom Stephens went to the Ipswich police station accompanied by a woman called Tracy Russell. That was the day after Gemma Adams disappeared from the streets of Ipswich.

“He told an officer that the prostitutes he knew had 'such an overwhelming addiction to drugs that they would take irrational risks',” said Mr Fenhalls. “He had warned them that if they went out to work then one of them would be murdered.”

Tracy Russell is a woman who has been heavily involved in this series of crimes because of her association with Stephens. She had slept at his flat a few times and was well known to Tom as a friend. Tracy had done drugs with Gemma only hours before she disappeared and she had then accompanied her walking the red light district that fateful night. Now Stephens was taking her to the police station to get her to back up his alibi that kept him out of the area at the crucial time.

A week later she said she told the police that he asked her to lie.

I can’t think of anything more alarming than asking a person to tell a lie to create an alibi when there was a possible murder and an undoubted abduction only hours earlier. If the police didn’t take this on board at the time then it was a serious failure and even now it should be investigated because it is so crucial. It also shows how Stephens was abusing these drug addicts for his own purposes and manipulating them to commit crime for his benefit.

The card Stephens pinned to a pole in the red light district together with a bunch of flowers after the fifth victim was taken.

Postcard found by George Westcott and Patrick Cullinane who were with Noel O'Gara when George found it hidden in a shrine of flowers left by sympathisers at the road block near where the bodies of the last three victims were found.

No sympathiser would dream of leaving such a message under the circumstances but the killer who was prepared to dance on the graves of his dead victims. The handwriting is identical to Tom Stephens writing in his earlier card posted on a pole in Ipswich.

With my two colleagues I went to the central police station in Ipswich to discuss my evidence and my experience with the Yorkshire Ripper case but I received a very hostile reception there and in the end we were shown the door with our request to meet Mr Gull dismissed out of hand.

Now that Steve Wright has indicated that he will seek leave to appeal his conviction I have decided to write the book about the Ipswich murders and this web page will be updated.

HOW STEPHENS DID IT

There were little or no injuries on the victims bodies indicating that they were either drugged or otherwise unconscious when killed. Stephens drove a Renault Clio as in the photo.

He only had to ask these drugged prostitutes to get their clothes off and sit in the back seat before he climbed in too. Once he had them bending over with their knees on the back seat and their legs spread some, their hands on the front seats and him sitting over their legs he could spring his trap by grabbing their wrists and pulling them back when their heads would drop into that well between the seats and they couldnt kick out or strike out as he sat on their backs until they passed out. It is only a prostitute who is also a drug addict that might easily do whatever a client asks and they all trusted Tom, the man who was supplying them or taking them to their suppliers.

Author Noel O'Gara

COURT PUBLICATIONS,
BALLINAHOWEN COURT,
ATHLONE,
COUNTY WESTMEATH,
IRELAND.

00353906430107

email noelogara@yahoo.com