How police missed several opportunities before bringing serial killer Steve Wright to justice
The ‘Suffolk Strangler’ was jailed for 40 years for murdering Victoria Hall
Details emerging from the 26-year wait to bring Victoria Hall’s murderer to justice have revealed several missed opportunities that might have allowed police to apprehend him sooner.
Steve Wright, known as the Suffolk strangler, abducted the schoolgirl on 19 September 1999, sexually assaulted and killed her, before dumping her naked body in a ditch.
The 67-year-old was only arrested over Ms Hall's death in 2021.
By then, he was already serving a whole life jail sentence for murdering five women he snatched near his Ipswich home in 2006.
Here, we detail some of the missed opportunities that have led to more than a quarter of a century’s wait for Wright to be sentenced for killing Victoria.
Dismissal of Emily Doherty’s account
Wright tried to kidnap another woman, Emily Doherty, then aged 22, in Felixstowe the night before he snatched Victoria.
Ms Doherty realised she was in danger and managed to escape Wright’s clutches after finding refuge in a couple’s house and phoning the police.
In a statement, she described how the special constables who came to the address dismissed her account.
“When I told them what was happening their first question to me was, ‘How much have you had to drink tonight?’,” she said.
“They didn’t believe me.”
She told them the car registration, but she said they made no note of anything she mentioned and declined her offer to go the police station the next morning.
She said: “They told me to forget all about it. When the police decided they did want my information, I wasn’t in the UK. I gave as much detail over the phone as I could remember. I could certainly remember his face, but the number plate was gone.”
Ms Doherty went on: “For 25 years, I have wondered what if. What if they had taken my statement, could Victoria still be alive right now?
“Or at the least, they could have found the murderer sooner. And then, if it was indeed Steve Wright, the London Road murders wouldn’t have happened.”
Halting research into Wright’s car
In 2000, police stopped their research into possible vehicles linked to Victoria’s abduction based on a description by Ms Doherty, the court heard.
It had been established there were 56 vehicles with registered owners in Suffolk which matched the partial registration number Ms Doherty provided, and this included Wright’s Ford Granada Scorpio.
A senior investigating officer at the time marked research into the car owners as needing “no further action”, the court heard.
The prosecution said police had failed to take into account a possible additional part of the registration provided by Ms Doherty, and that if they had, the list of suspected vehicles would have narrowed to 10.
The court was told Wright sold his Ford Granada Scorpio in part-exchange within days of the murder.
Wright’s DNA
In 1995, Wright accepted a police caution after it was alleged he damaged and stole a car belonging to a former partner.
No DNA sample was taken from him at the time, the court heard.
In 2001, Wright was charged with a series of thefts, which he admitted, and his conviction led to his DNA being added to the national database.
The DNA eventually led to his identification as a suspect in the murders of Tania Nicol, Gemma Adams, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls.
However, it took further scientific advances for Wright’s DNA to be linked to swabs taken from Victoria’s body.
Wright’s behaviour
The defendant’s behaviour after Victoria’s murder could have aroused suspicion among colleagues at Felixstowe docks where he worked.
On the day her body was found, he reported an injury at work and did not engage in conversation when workmates began to talk about the killing.
A few days later, a colleague asked him what he thought and Wright gave a menacing look and said: “You do not want to know.”
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