Original subtitles

The most notorious killers

hide in plain sight, freeto kill and kill again.

But most are not the criminalmasterminds of fiction.

In their minds, theycommit the perfect murder.

In reality, it is their foolishmistakes that get them caught.

In the town of Ipswich inthe rural East of England,

murders are rare.

The average number of murderswithin Suffolk was about seven

a year.

But in the winter of 2006,

that would change.

2nd of December, the rivers around Ipswich

are bursting their banks.

As a government official checks water levels,

he makes a horrific discovery--

the body of a young womantrapped amongst flood debris.

Police comb the brook forclues as to how she died.

A mere six days later, they discover

another woman's body upstream.

The bodies are identified asthose of two local women, Gemma

Adams, 25, and Tania Nicol, 19.

For us to have two at thatstage in very close proximity,

probably linked, was very unusual.

And so we didn't know whatwas going to happen next.

There was afeeling of shock and fear.

And of course, the big questionthat everybody was asking

was, how many more?

The sleepyEnglish town finds itself

in the grip of a nightmare.

No woman is safe.

This is a murder mystery played out

before the media in an usuallyhorrific and intimate manner.

Janet Humphrey is a memberof the Suffolk Constabulary.

She knew the two dead women.

It was horrific.

It was a really scary time.

I think the whole of Ipswich and Suffolk

were holding their breath.

We're a very small, littleforce in a rural area.

And this kind of thing doesn'thappen in a small county town.

For crimewriter Mark Billingham,

it is one of the most intense murder

mysteries of recent times.

I remember being very aware of it

and following it on the news.

Not just in a sort of professional, you know,

I write about this kind of thing,

but it was just deeply shocking.

The crimescene poses a major challenge.

Detective SuperintendentAndy Henwood is at the center

of the investigation.

We did everything we couldin respect to those bodies,

those victims, to try and find any evidence

that might be helpful in establishing

who the murderer was.

But there is no obvious clue

to who is doing the killing.

So you start to think youare dealing with somebody

very organized, very clever.

And what that means is someonevery difficult to catch.

On the 3rd of December,

the day after the first body is found,

26-year-old Anneli Aldertonis preparing for Christmas.

She has a small child and isexpecting her second baby.

But later that day, she vanishes.

Her body was discovered a week later.

On the 10th of Decemberwhen Anneli's body was found,

I actually was at my son's birthday party.

And I got a phone call.

And I have to say, my heart actually sunk.

One minute I'm with myfamily at a birthday party.

The next minute I know that we've got a third body.

The body wasvery carefully laid out, posed

in a sort of cruciform shape,which, again, started to lead

the police to gather thatthey were dealing with a very

particular kind of killer.

Thecruciform, or Christ-like,

pose of the bodies leadscriminal psychologist David

Holmes to suspect the killer ismimicking something they have

seen on TV or in the cinema.

I would probably go forthe idea that he'd just been

watching some very kind of high-impact film,

some kind ofHannibal-type film, where

this kind of cruciform imagerywas very important in the film.

And he thought of tying itin with the kind of killings.

The killer'sidentity is still a mystery.

But the police soon realizehe's no stranger to the town.

Anneli's body was found downa road which I would be pretty

confident that it is not aroad that you would just happen

across unless you were local.

So putting the two together made us

think that this was someone whowas local to the Ipswich area.

With the police reeling

from the discovery of threebodies in only eight days,

a major investigation begins.

There wasn't anybody at this early stage

that was specifically at the top of the pile.

Two dayslater, two more bodies

are found on the sameday, Annette Nicholls, 29,

and Paula Clennell, 24.

In 10 days, five dead women have been found.

Police have a serial killer on their hands.

The level of violence, the number of bodies,

would be far less shockingin the center of London,

in the back streets of Manchester.

A local supermarket

worker who claims to know thewomen is brought into custody.

A local manwho was very open about the fact

that he knew the girls--

you know, there's something verycreepy about this character who

said, well, I have knowledgeof all these girls,

so you should be questioning me--

and quite rightly, came under a lot of suspicion

and was arrested.

Thesuspect's name is Tom Stephens.

His comments about the dead women in the media

lead to his arrest.

But little do the policeknow, they have the wrong man.

With five women murdered, the Suffolk police

are under pressure to putthe murderer out of business.

They've got a suspect in custody,

but he's not admitting to anything.

To assemble the case against him,

the police join forces withthe finest forensic scientists

in the country.

Ray Palmer leads one of the forensic teams

assigned to the case.

The atmosphere certainly

was intense at the time.

Here was somebody who waskilling very frequently

and, in fact, under the very noses

of the police investigation.

The investigators

know that the best evidence,like telltale traces

of the killer's DNA, is usually found

at the scene of the crime.

With a conviction hingingon a positive DNA match,

forensic teams examine the cluesthat were gathered at the scene

of each gruesome crime.

But finding answers from the first two victims

will be a serious challenge.

Tania Nicol and Gemma Adamswere reported missing one

month before they were found.

Both worked as prostitutesin the center of Ipswich.

Gemma Adams had enjoyed acomfortable middle-class

childhood.

But heroin addiction led to a grim life,

selling her body on the street.

Crime reporter Josh Warwick recalls

the dark side of Ipswich.

Before the murders in Ipswich,there was a sort of acceptance

on one level, perhaps by the authorities,

that prostitution happened in Ipswich.

It had done for years.

Let's turn a blind eye to it,and let them get on with it.

WhenAdams' body is discovered,

it is trapped alongside flooddebris in a swollen brook.

With the torrential rain, it has been rinsed

repeatedly by the floodwaters.

Gemma Adams' autopsyreveals hyperinflated lungs.

They show that she had been fighting

for breath in the last moments of her life.

So we treated it as a homicide right

from the word go, which meantthat we recovered the body

in a certain way so that we could

preserve any evidence that would still

be left upon Gemma's body.

Adams had gone missing

on the 15th of November.

The other prostitute, Tania Nicol,

had been missing for even longer.

Desperate for clues, policeconduct an intensive search

of the brook.

We employed the services of a dive team.

And that dive team wadedthe depths of that brook.

And the next body, which was Tania Nicol's body,

was found some mile and a halfdown the stream some six days

later.

19-year-old Tania

was found on the 8th of December,

five weeks after she was reported missing.

The fact that the bodies are found in water

is bad news for the police.

The first two bodies

were discovered in water.

Water damages the body but, also,

destroys any DNA evidence.

In respect of Gemma and Tania,

who've been in water for some time,

we didn't hold out a great deal of hope

in terms of obtaining any DNA.

Back in the lab,

investigators have no luck finding

DNA on the first two bodies.

It was December.

It was really inclement weather.

It was lots of rain, lots of wind.

And the river in which two ofthe women had been deposited

was in full spate.

So really, conditions thatthey had been deposited in

made the potential for recovering

any forensic evidence virtually zero.

Whoever was doing this was depositing them

in that particular environmentto try and literally minimize

any forensic evidencethat might link him or her

to that particular crime.

For the police,

the situation is challenging.

They have two bodies and a killer

who knows how to kill without leaving

behind a trace of evidence--

a killer who will kill again.

The police badly need firm evidence

to bring the killer to justice.

On the 10th of December, everything

changes for the case.

The third victim,24-year-old Anneli Alderton,

is discover to the southwest of the town.

Anneli's body wasfound in woods at Nacton,

just outside Ipswich.

A passerby in their car had seenwhat they thought, initially,

was a mannequin in the woodsbut, knowing what was going on

locally, went back and checkedand discovered her body, which

was reported to the police.

At that stage, of course, we then

realized we had a third victim.

The likelihood at that stage was that her body

was linked to the other two.

Unlike the first two bodies,

Alderton is found on dry land.

The police get a break.

As far as gathering forensic evidence goes,

that's a huge plus for a case.

And that was the point at which the case really

moved into top gear and thepolice really started to think,

now we're going to get something.

And we're going to get this guy.

Nowthey are able to retrieve

DNA from Alderton's body--

DNA that could lead them straight to the killer.

Discovering DNA on the thirdvictim is a major breakthrough.

Until now, the police have beenunable to zero in on a suspect.

But a DNA match to an individualwould move the investigation

into high gear.

That thirdbody is significant for a number

of reasons--

the way the body was laid out, posed,

the fact that it was going tobe a body that would hopefully

yield DNA evidence, and thefact that it was a third victim,

which meant that, strictly speaking,

they were now dealing with a serial killer.

Very shortly after thethird body had been found,

that's when they have thefirst big press conference.

Media interestsurges with the discovery

of the third body.

Two bodieshave been found near Ipswich

and... can confirm that this afternoon,

at 3:05 PM today, police received a call

from a member of the public.

He saw what appeared to be thenaked body of a female about

20 feet off the road.

And that is when the media start to go crazy.

Thepeople of Ipswich are fearful.

All three women worked as prostitutes.

All three were found naked.

Thepolice admit they could be

dealing with a serial killer.

Cases like this don'thappen in places like Suffolk.

That was what I thought.

But I was very much aware ofthe pressure that was starting

to build in terms of, can the constabulary

find who this person is?

Can they prevent the murders happening?

I actually tried to ignore themedia coverage and the media

scrum, if you like, that was occurring

outside of police headquarters.

As the true horror

of the situation hits home, a feeling of dread

descends on the town.

- I - can still remember

going to collect my own son from a school disco

and walking back in the dark--

and even concerned, myself.

And I think the local womenwere concerned that it--

yes, it was street sex workersthat were being targeted.

But we didn't know who it was.

And could a different woman orsomebody from a different area

be targeted?

So it was the fact that allwomen may well be concerned.

And we all were.

The Ipswich murder

investigation steps up a gear.

300 fresh officers arebrought in from across the UK

to swell the ranks and begin a dragnet.

We had police officersfrom all over the country

helping with the investigation.

We had some 600 people involved at the peak

of the investigation.

The policeare under intense pressure.

I will need you, at some point, to go.

All right?

But behind the scenes,

they had made a breakthrough.

Swabs from the body of thethird victim, Anneli Alderton,

give up a DNA sample.

It will take two days for theDNA to be analyzed and compared

to the DNA database.

But DNA is not the onlyline of the investigation

the police have.

The actual location of the bodies

provides data for another detection tool.

Samantha Lundrigan is an experton geographical profiling.

Geographic profiling is used to predict where

an offender might live based on where

he's committed his crimes.

Offenders have what's called a criminal range,

sort of a safe distance, because you can

actually be too close to home.

And that could be too risky.

But they'll also have a maximum distance

where they won't move beyond.

And that's usually tied upwith this idea of familiarity

because beyond that distance, they

don't know what the opportunities

are either for victimsor for disposal location.

All the women were last seen

near the red-light district.

The first two bodies werefound to the southwest.

The third body was found tothe southeast of the town.

For Lundrigan, a criminalrange for the killer

is coming into focus.

Because wehad these two small clusters,

one on one side of thecity, or beyond the city,

and one on the other side, either it's

the red-light districtthat's acting as this anchor,

or he's traveling in to goto that red-light district

and then moving out in this radial pattern,

or he has some sort of base himself

in that red-light district.

Either way, he knows boththe red-light districts

and these disposal locations well enough

to be comfortable or feel ableto dispose of a victim's body

there.

Policebelieve the killer is local.

Now geographical profiling narrows

the location down even further.

It suggests that the killer probably

lives in the center of Ipswichnear the red-light district.

The killer is still atlarge on the very streets

the sex workers ply their trade.

Ipswich, December 2006,the Suffolk murders spread

fear throughout the community.

It was ahorrific time for all of us.

I was concerned about thewomen's welfare on the street.

And I think you'll find with Paula Clennell,

she's a fine example of that.

Despite thefact that a predatory serial

killer was roaming the streets of Ipswich,

sex workers like Paula Clennellstill walk the streets.

The 26-year-old mother ofthree is addicted to drugs.

She needs up to 500 poundsper day to fund her habit.

She is faced with a grim choice--

stay off the streets, endurewithdrawal and be safe,

or sell her body to pay for another hit.

Clennell's harsh choice wascaught quite by accident

by one of the dozens ofreporters covering the story.

I need the money, you know?

Despite the dangers?

Well, that has made me a bitwary about getting into cars,

you know?

Presumably, you will do that tonight?

Well, probably.

Fivedays after this interview,

Clennell disappears.

Alongside another missingprostitute, Annette Nicholls,

there are now two local women unaccounted for.

On the 12th of December, Nicholls naked body

is discovered by a roadsideto the southeast of Ipswich.

She too is laid out in a cruciform position.

Our force control room had had a call

from a member of the public who'd seen a body

laying close to the roadside.

And we had our force helicopterup and over the scene.

And the helicopter couldclearly see, from the downlink,

the body of a naked female.

And I'd looked away from the screen for a moment

and looked back.

And I looked back at the screen and then saw what

I thought was the same body.

But actually, I did a bit of a double

take because it was a bodylaying in a different position.

And it was very clear very quickly

that this was a second body thathad been found at that scene.

My heart absolutely fell through the floor.

There are two bodies.

The second is Paula Clennell, the woman

who had been interviewed onthe streets a few days earlier.

She knew she was risking her life

and paid the ultimate price.

Within two days, the total number of victims

has risen to five.

By the time the fifth bodyis found, it becomes clear

that you're dealing with a killer who is

killing at a phenomenal rate.

The fifth victim turns out to be a woman

called Paula Clennell, whohas already been interviewed.

She's somebody who's been interviewed

on the local TV station.

And it's almost as if thekiller is looking at them

on television himself, pickingthem off the next night,

it seems.

There really is a growingsense of horror and panic.

Just six days later,

Tom Stephens is arrested.

We had one particularperson who was being seen

very closely--

talking to the media, was known to women

who worked in the red-lightdistrict, and who, if you like,

was putting himself front andcenter and became of interest.

Tom Stephens,a local supermarket trader,

seems to tick all the boxes.

It's odd.

He's the sort of character that,were this a film or a book,

you'd go, it's him.

With Stevens in custody,

there was a major forensic breakthrough.

The sample taken from the third victim

has produced a DNA sequence.

The police now compare the sample

with the National DNA Database.

They have a DNA match.

And of course, the natural assumption

is that it's going to beStephens, the man in custody.

But it isn't.

It turns out to be acompletely different local man,

a man named Steve Wright.

48-year-old Steve Wright looks

an unlikely serial killer.

After a brief period of surveillance,

the police swoop on Wright'sflat in the red-light district

of Ipswich.

Steve Wright was arrestedearly on the 19th of December.

Steven Wright,we're arresting you for murder.

And a team of officers

went to his house to arrest him.

And he was very surprised at that time.

And in fact, such that his legs gave way,

and he had to besupported by the officers.

Now what caused that, we don't know.

Wright is brought into custody.

So interview commences at 3:00 AM.

But he is giving nothing away.

This is Steven Wright.

And he was interviewed

over a number of hours and overthe course of a couple of days.

in custody, he declined to answer any questions.

the last girlto go missing with your DNA,

and the one before with your DNA,

both on their naked bodies.

How can that be?

No comment.

Once Wright is brought in for questioning,

his reaction is one of a manwho is used to being invisible.

Essentially, his reaction iscompletely bland, completely.

He just looks at them andsays, no comment, no comment,

no comment.

There's nothing.

He is a blank page.

He's giving nothing away.

Policebelieve they have their man.

But there is a problem.

All five murdered women are prostitutes.

Wright admits to knowingthem and paying them for sex.

So the fact that his DNA is found on their bodies

does not necessarilymean that he killed them.

To convict Wright, the case needs

meticulous forensic evidence to convince

the jury that Wright is a killer, not

just a user of prostitutes.

At first glance, nothing in Wright's background

stands out as unusual.

I think, outwardly,Wright is somebody who was

not particularly noticeable.

His outward persona, in general,was that of the ordinary chap.

So he could always blend in.

It's not a deliberate thing.

It's just how he was.

His life was characterized

by low-key jobs that neverseemed to go anywhere.

He wasn't particularly good at,

perhaps, pursuing anything.

He left school early.

He did not particularly get good jobs.

He took any old job.

And that changed quiteregularly throughout his life,

as did his relationships.

And he was not particularlygood within relationships.

Behind the facade of normality

lurks an unusually salacious private life.

Despite being married, Wrightis a red-light regular.

He uses prostitutes.

With Wrightand his use of prostitutes,

it actually did kind of coincide with him

having just got married.

And perhaps he's looking for something

where he is in control, wherehe can get sex when he wants it

in the manner that he chooses as opposed

to the rather kind of mundaneregularity of a relationship.

Wright'sunspectacular career

also includes a spell working ata hotel in Felixstowe, Suffolk,

in 2000.

Here, he was to make a mistake that would bring

the police to his doorstep.

Addicted to gambling, he stolemoney from the till of the inn.

When he is arrested, his DNA is taken and put

on the National DNA Database.

It's only because his DNA is on this database

that it is possible to match it to the DNA

found on the murder victims.

The DNA was particularlyimportant to us in that

it focused us on Steve Wright.

For criminalpsychologist David Holmes,

Wright's collapse when is arrested

is an insight into his state of mind.

Wright's behavior when he was approached

by the police, when hewas arrested and charged,

was rather strange.

He didn't overreact as manykind of guilty parties would.

And he didn't massively protest his innocence

as many innocent people would.

Whether the shock was guilt orwhether the shock has one of,

why are you accusing me?

It is difficult for us to determine.

Mark Billingham

sees clues to Wright's motivesin his unusual reaction.

The reaction of Wright whenhe's arrested, almost as if he

is innocent, suggests thatthis life he has been leading,

this life of picking up sexworkers and murdering them,

is something that's done by somebody else.

It's something that he's sortof dissociated himself from.

It's a fantasy life.

It's a life of risk andpower, and sex and killing,

that is almost something he's observing.

So that when that comes crashing in,

and the police knock on hisdoor and arrest him for murder,

that reaction is understandable.

Steve Wright's past

has come back to haunt him.

But the DNA evidence onlypoints the finger at Wright.

Alone, it will not be enough to convict him.

The good news for the cops,in terms of the DNA evidence,

quickly turns out to be notquite as good as they thought

it was because Wright freelyadmits to using prostitutes,

to having slept with these women,

to having had these women in his car.

So of course, his defenseis, well, yes, of course,

you have my DNA evidence because I

have had sex with these women.

So that presents the policewith an enormous problem

is they have to find that keypiece of evidence that is going

to prove that he did rather more than simply

have sex with these women.

Ray Palmerbegins a meticulous analysis

of other forensic evidence.

Once Steve Wright hadbeen identified through DNA,

I was requested to look at the surface

debris tapings which had been taken

from each of the dead women.

Surface debris tapings aretaken at the crime scene.

It involves using Sellotapestrips to actually recover

surface debris that is presenton the skin or clothing

of a homicide victim.

While Palmer and his team

look for fiber evidence on the women's bodies,

CCTV footage is analyzed in the hope

that it might connect Wrightto the women on the day

of their disappearance.

This evidence was looked

at by an expert from theTransport Research Laboratory.

He was able to look at Steve Wright's car,

his own personal car, andthen look at the CCTV images

that we had.

And he could draw a conclusion looking

at the shape of the vehicle.

The tax disc was in a particularlocation on the windscreen.

There was an air freshenerhanging inside the car which

was in a particular position.

Putting all of those things together gave

confidence to the expert that this was

actually Steve Wright's car.

The CCTV is compelling

and links Wright to the women but, again,

is no evidence of murder.

But then Palmer's forensicteam make a breakthrough.

Samples from the three bodiesof the women found on dry land

reveal a particular type of polyester material,

a dark-colored microfiber.

Such fibers are very, very commonly

used in things like sportswear.

Garments that are constructed of them

tend to have a verydistinctive texture, will

tend to feel like peach skin.

So the information we gave the police at that time

was we were looking for something that would be

labeled polyester and would likely have

a label saying microfibers.

And it would have thispeach-skin texture to it.

Unfortunately, nothing of thisnature turned up at that time.

Palmer'steam then look at the interior

of Wright's car.

In the frontdriver's seat of Steve Wright's

car, these microfiber collectorswere present in huge numbers.

But at that time, we had no ideawhat the garment was, in fact,

or where it was.

The fiberfound on the car seats

is the same as thatfound on the dead bodies.

They need to find the source of these fibers.

Palmer and the police return tosweep Wright's house once more.

I remember turningup and walking into this house

and straight into the living room.

And my initial surprise was I saw

this pair of tracksuitbottoms sitting on the settee

and neatly folded up.

And when I touched it, it had this distinctive

peach-skin feel to it.

And the color was right.

And it was clear that thisitem that been packaged

up, ready to go to the laboratory, and somebody

had overlooked it.

Microfiberfrom Wright's tracksuit bottoms

are all over the women and his car.

It's yet more evidence that tiesWright to the murdered women,

but it's no smoking gun.

His defense could explain the fibers

away by saying that he hadsimply been with the women,

not killed them.

The police need more proof.

Even with the mounting circumstantial evidence,

there was another problem.

Serial killers have motives.

But for Holmes, Wright is a blank canvas.

There was no reason for him to kill like this.

One of the curiousfeatures about Wright's killing

is he appears not to haveany other motive than to just

simply kill these people.

Because most killers get some pleasure

either from the killing itself or perhaps

from some aspect of it, sadisticbehavior, with these people.

This seems to be absent in the case of Wright.

Wright is a man who would appear

to be a motiveless killer.

But I think there's something else going on.

Steve Wright might

have been linked to the bodiesthrough forensic evidence.

But because he uses prostitutes, most clues

linking him to the women can be explained away.

The pressure is on thepolice to assemble a case

that will put him behind bars.

The feeling was that thiswas something really serious

and how difficult it was going to be

for us, as a small, provincial force,

to deal with a serial killer.

Despite the DNA match,

the police are still in search of a killer clue.

The prosecution needs something unusual

that couldn't be explainedby a straightforward sexual

encounter between Wright and the women.

And they were about to find it.

Palmer's team find a new kind of fiber

that is present on the bodies.

It is short, wiry, and red.

It belongs to a garment thatis being held by the police,

a reflective workman's jacket that had

been found in Wright's flat.

One of thegarments that we identified was

a yellow fluorescent jacket.

Shining a spotlight

on the reflective jacketreveals another tantalizing

piece of evidence.

A subsequentexamination of that jacket

revealed there was blood onthe right sleeve which matched

Annette Nicholls, blood on the left shoulder

which matched Paula Clennell.

But the tiny drops of blood

could come from a nosebleedor menstrual fluid,

not necessarily from a violent act.

The police were using

every single procedure thatthey had for the gathering

of forensic evidence.

There were, of course, scrapings for DNA,

all that sort of stuff, tapingsfor fibers, hairs, anything

was being analyzed tryingto find that killer

piece of evidence-- the killer piece of evidence

in a fragment of dust.

Palmer ispresented with a problem.

He has helped identify clothingthat ties Wright to the victims

and has even pointed the fingerat a garment that betrays

blood from some of the women.

Despite all of thediscoveries, none of the clues

point to actual violence.

He turns to the first victims to see if their bodies

are still holding any secrets.

Palmer looks at the hair of Adams' and Nicol's.

He's searching for evidencethat the women suffered violence

at the hands of Steve Wright.

After five weeks in ariver, Tania Nicol's hair

is filled with debris.

Palmer decides toseparate out the elements

caught within it using a technique

borrowed from paleontology.

This involved us taking the hair

and washing it in receptacles.

The idea being that the water would allow

any of the hard particulates to sink

to the bottom and any fiber evidence

to rise to the surface.

As theyfilter these particulates off,

they strike forensic gold.

They discover a tiny synthetic fiber.

The investigation really moves up

a gear when the forensic examiners

find a synthetic fiber deepin the scalp of Tania Nicol.

And it's very easy to match those fibers

with particular types of carpet.

The forensicteam scour Wright's flat

and his car, searching for a match

to the fiber from Nicol's hair.

This particular fiber matched the fibers

comprising the carpet of Steve Wright's car.

And there was only one

way this fiber could have got broken

off deep in Nicol's hair.

Now Wright, of course, issaying, yes, she was in my car.

But now the police are thinking, well,

why has her head made very violent contact

with the floor of your car?

And that's when they reallyknow they've got their man.

The discovery of the fibers

and link to the floor ofWright's car is a vital clue.

It is a powerful addition tothe evidence put to the jury.

In court,the evidence was presented.

And there was forensic evidence of fibers.

There was forensicevidence in respect to DNA.

We had CCTV evidence which placed

Steve Wright at thescenes at the right time.

We had ANPR, Automatic NumberPlate Recognition, evidence

which put him travelingalong a main road at a time

when one of the victim's body was deposited.

Wright is bombarded withthe evidence, piece of it

after piece of it.

And all he can do is claim thatit's all just a coincidence.

He's somebody who was in thewrong place at the wrong time.

Yes, I happen to know these women

and used these women sexually.

But, you know, this evidenceis purely coincidental.

He's got nothing.

And to everyquestion the prosecution

counsel put to him, they would say,

is this coincidence, Mr. Wright?

And every answer would be the same.

"It would seem so."

Very impassive, unemotional,very cold responses.

So there is no smoking gun.

What there is is just aphenomenal amount of damning,

circumstantial forensic evidence.

And faced with that evidence, the jury

have no choice but to find SteveWright guilty on all counts.

Despitethe guilty verdict,

Wright remains an enigma.

For Holmes and Billingham,Wright's sheer normality

is the key to unlock the mystery of his motive.

The Steve Wright case,

in general, is a very odd one.

You do not have acharacteristic serial killer.

You do not have someonewho is clearly someone who

has, you know, got kind of psychopath

written across their forehead.

Steve Wright appeared to haveone characteristic that did

set him apart from his peers.

And that was his need for taking risk.

ForBillingham, Wright's life story

shows a steady increase in the amount of risk

he takes with a tragic end result.

He is a man who isdeeply disappointed at just

how ordinary and uneventful his life is.

So what starts off as a bit of theft

because he's got into somefinancial difficulties

escalates into the risk of using prostitutes.

That escalates still further into the risk

of murdering prostitutes.

And that becomes his escape.

That becomes the way he can stop being ordinary.

But if you look across his life,

the one thing that SteveWright seemed to crave and be

motivated by was simplytaking risk, and taking risks

that were greater and greater.

For Andy Henwood,

temptation ultimately played a part.

We know that he'd moved into that area

literally weeks beforehand.

It was an area which wasfrequented by sex workers.

Potentially, he's perhapslooked out of the window,

and he's seen the women working.

And it's become too much of a temptation.

Sadly, until such time as he chooses to tell us

why he did this, we just don't know really

why he went on this spree.

On the 21st of February, 2008,

Wright is found guilty of all five murders

and sentenced to life with a recommendation

that he is never released.

The Suffolk Strangler is finally off the streets.

Remarkably, there has been a positive effect

after Wright's reign of terrorfor the town of Ipswich.

The one really positivething that has come out of it

is the way that prostitutionhas been tackled in Ipswich.

When you look atIpswich today and the area that

was blighted by street sex-working, now

compared to 2006, it is acompletely different place.

Ipswich nowhas the most effective scheme

in place to protect and support sex

workers in the United Kingdom.

And so those young women's

deaths weren't in vain because, in a sense,

they've saved many other women.

I think it's been an absolutely positive

effect from something horrific.

There are no women

on the street for a killerlike Wright to strike down.