Steve Wright

8 years ago
Posted in:Child Sexual Abuse, Domestic violence, Kidnap/Abduction, Misc. non-violent offences, Murder/ Manslaughter, Possession of weapons, Rape / Sexual Assault, Sexual Offences, Theft/ Fraud/ Money laundering, Violent Offences
0
Author: melodie
Tags: 10+ years imprisonment, 15+ years imprisonment, 20+ years imprisonment, Alcohol, Autogynephilia, Changed plea on first day, Convicted 2001, Convicted 2008, Convicted 2026, Cross dresser, Debt, DNA, Domestic abuse/violence, England, Extreme violence, Female victim, Fetish, Gambling, HMP Long Lartin, Indeterminate sentence, Ipswich, Life sentence, Misogyny, Multiple victims, Offended 1990s, Offended 2001, Offended 2006, Prostitution, Relationship break-up, Serial killer, Strangulation, Suffolk, Suffolk Constabulary, Transvestite, TV documentary, Whole life imprisonment, Wig

Steve Wright, a violent male transvestite, was convicted of murdering five women in Ipswich over six weeks in 2006. He is suspected of being responsible for further unsolved murders of women in East Anglia.

Wright, 49, was given a whole life jail term at Ipswich Crown Court in 2008 for the murder of Gemma Adams, Tania Nicol, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls.

At sentencing Mr Justice Gross, said: “This was a targeted campaign of murder. It is right you should spend your whole life in prison.”

Dr Glenn Wilson, a consultant psychologist, commented in The Daily Telegraph that Wright’s motive was almost certainly sexual, and that he strangled the women to satisfy a long-standing fetish.

Wright was well known to women selling sex in Ipswich, many of whom were afraid of him because of his aggression and weird behaviour which included cruising the streets dressed in high heels, PVC skirts, earrings and a wig or sitting naked in his car with the headlights on. He was described as “perverted, nervous and quiet”. One woman who previously sold sex in Ipswich was quoted as saying “He was very strange and used to scare us. I didn’t want to get in a car with him and would never have got in a car with him”. Another quote in a media article reveals: “Most of the girls never got in the car with him. The police were aware of him because he sometimes scared the girls.” In 2016, Anglia Ruskin University criminologist Colleen Moore dismissed the idea that the break-up of his family when he was a child had scarred Wright saying, “Steve Wright was not a fool. He was a cruel man who hated women and did what he did because he wanted to”.

Wright had a history of domestic violence against his former wife, Diane Cassell. A former friend recalled that “Steve used to strangle Diane right in front of us. He would pin her up against the wall and put both hands around her throat. There were at least three times when he did it in front of witnesses. It would end when either my ex-husband or I would pull him off or he would come to his senses.”

In 2001, Wright worked as a barman in Kent where he was sacked for stealing several hundred pounds – he had gambling debts of many thousands of pounds. He received 100 hours of community service for the offence. However, the DNA sample he provided when he was convicted of the theft was still held on a criminal database and he was arrested when it matched DNA found at the murder scenes.

In 2012, Professor David Wilson, head of criminology at Birmingham City University, called for police to reopen the 2002 case of Michelle Bettles, one of a number of other unsolved killings/disappearances of women in and around Norwich and Ipswich. The other missing or murdered women include Jeannette Kempton aged 32, Natalie Pearman aged 16, Amanda Duncan aged 26 and Kellie Pratt aged 28. Ms Bettles’ parents told Professor Wilson that just before she went missing she had talked about having a cross-dressing client. At the time, Wright ran a pub in Norwich’s red light district. In Channel 5’s Killers Behind Bars: The Untold Story Professor Wilson described the murders Wright was convicted of in 2008 as “These crimes were far too practised for someone murdering for the first time.”

In July 2021 Wright was arrested, at HMP Long Lartin, on suspicion of murdering Victoria Hall, a 17-year-old A-level student who was murdered on her way home from a Suffolk nightclub in 1999. He was bailed pending further enquiries.

*Update December 2023*

Wright was re-arrested in connection with the unsolved murder of 17-year-old Victoria Hall in December 2023. Ms Hall went missing on the 18 September 1999 and her naked body was found in a ditch five days later.

Suffolk police asked for anyone with information about the case to contact them.

*Update September 2024*

Steve Wright was charged in May 2024 with the murder and kidnap of Victoria Hall in September 1999. Now aged 66, Wright was also charged with the attempted kidnap of a 22-year-old woman the previous night. Wright pleaded not guilty to one count of unlawful kidnap by force or fraud and one count of murder in September 2024 and his trial is due to start on 2 February 2026 at the Old Bailey in London.

*Update February 2026*

At a hearing at the Old Bailey on February 2, Wright (now aged 67) unexpectedly changed his plea to guilty and admitted the murder of 17-year-old Victoria Hall in 1999 and the attempted kidnap of 22-year-old Emily Doherty the previous night.

He was sentenced to 40 years in custody and told he will die in prison. It was the first time Wright had publicly admitted any murder. The reason for his change of plea is unknown but it is speculated that the DNA evidence was compelling. The judge referenced DNA swabs taken from Ms Hall’s body “showed you not only abducted and murdered that child, you also raped or sexually assaulted her”.

Among the large amount of 2026 media coverage, not a single article referenced involvement of Wright’s transvestism/cross–dressing/fetishism in his sexually motivated murders of women, although it was relatively widely covered at the time of his convictions in 2008 (e.g. see articles in The Daily Telegraph/ Daily Mail/The New York Post).

Many media articles covered fears that Wright may be responsible for the murders and disappearances of several other women and girls in and around Ipswich and Norwich at the time he was living there. Others have focused on the missed chances to catch him earlier, particularly the fact that police reportedly dismissed Ms Doherty’s account of her attempted abduction and did not take a formal statement from her until two years after Victoria Hall’s murder. According to the Daily Mail, the court heard Ms Doherty had given an accurate description of Wright, his car and number plate which should have identified him – a chilling and infuriating parallel with how women’s testimonies and descriptions that could have caught Peter Sutcliffe (who murdered 13 women and girls in the 1970s and 1980s) were disregarded by police. The two attending male officers apparently did not believe Ms Doherty, failed to make notes and did not log it as a crime at the time, telling her to ‘just forget all about it’ and claiming she probably made it up just to get a lift home. She told the court ‘When the police arrived, their first question to me was, “How much have you had to drink tonight?” They didn’t believe me. To this day I am furious.’

Main image credit: BBC. 2026 custody image via Suffolk Police