The Suffolk Strangler: Steve Wright The Man Who Made the Road Home a Nightmare

[00:01:25] Adam Cox: Welcome to the Compendium, an Assembly of fascinating things, a weekly variety [00:01:30] podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering.

[00:01:34] Kyle Risi: Each week we explore a story from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history, or the jaw-dropping deeds of extraordinary people.

[00:01:43] Adam Cox: I'm Adam Cox, your ringmaster for this episode.

[00:01:46] Kyle Risi: And I'm Kyle Risi, the Interim Fog Machine Governance and Visibility Ethics lead for this week.

[00:01:52] Adam Cox: And what exactly does that mean?

[00:01:54] Kyle Risi: Isn't it obvious?

[00:01:55] Adam Cox: No,

[00:01:55] Kyle Risi: it's a big gap in the market for this. Basically, I own the fog roadmap. [00:02:00] I'm responsible for stakeholder alignment between the mood settings of the fog that gets emitted throughout the circus.

[00:02:07] But also I'm responsible for any respiratory events because last year we lost five guests and a chin chiller because someone accidentally loaded the fog machine with a bottle of drain cleaner. And, you know, I can't have that happen again.

[00:02:20] Adam Cox: No, but I'm pretty sure there's like fog on, fog off,

[00:02:24] Kyle Risi: fog off, fog off.

[00:02:27] Emit the drain cleaner, kill a bunch of [00:02:30] guests. And it's true. But there's also settings because there's lights in there and it kind of creates an ambiance of like horror or like, ooh, it's a, this is the jolly segment of the circus

[00:02:39] do you know what I mean? So that's important. It's about ambiance out. It's about vibes.

[00:02:44] Adam Cox: As soon as there's cuts, Kyle, you're gone.

[00:02:47] Kyle Risi: God, it's a recession. Who's up first?

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[00:03:21] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:03:22] Kyle Risi: That was good. But also, ho Fe, the story of the Million Dollar Treasure Hunt?

[00:03:27] Adam Cox: Yeah. That seems like ages ago, but yeah.

[00:03:28] But let's be honest, [00:03:30] the real reason to sign up Yes. Is that certified freaks and big top tier members get our exclusive compendium key chain.

[00:03:37] Kyle Risi: Oh, Adam is, is bold it's beautiful. It's tacky.

[00:03:41] Adam Cox: It's cold.

[00:03:42] Kyle Risi: It's cold. Especially where, yeah,

[00:03:44] Adam Cox: when it's dangling New York Crotch.

[00:03:45] Kyle Risi: Yes. A proper crotch dangler. It'd be great in the summer. In the winter, not so much.

[00:03:50] Lastly, guys, please follow us on your favorite podcasting app and just leave us a little cheeky. Review your support, really helps others find the show. And it keeps these amazing [00:04:00] stories coming.

[00:04:00] Adam Cox: But alright. Enough of the housekeeping enough because Kyle, today on the compendium mm-hmm. We are diving into an assembly of a Ford Moneo, the Red Light District.

[00:04:11] Kyle Risi: Oh.

[00:04:11] Adam Cox: And a quiet town's worst nightmare.

[00:04:14] Kyle Risi: Oh. So we're talking about me on our little trip to Amsterdam last year.

[00:04:19] Adam Cox: Yeah. To be fair, that could fit,

[00:04:20] Kyle Risi: but I would never be caught dead in a Ford Monday. To be fair, I have no idea what this means, but, um, it sounds bad.

[00:04:27] Adam Cox: Well, I'll tell you.

[00:04:28] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:04:28] Adam Cox: Do you remember?

[00:04:29] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. [00:04:30]

[00:04:30] Adam Cox: Back in 2006, a small British town became the center of a nightmare, and what started as a festive December turned into one of the darkest months in modern UK crime. Our story today is set in Ipswich, Suffolk, not too far where I grew up from. Now, Ipswich is a historic port town, and in December, 2006, Christmas had fully taken hold, high streets glowed with twinkling lights.

[00:04:54] The shops were jammed with people panic buying presents. Officers stacked their fridges with Prosecco and [00:05:00] cheese, all the joyful chaos that only December can deliver. But all of that, the buzz, the bustle, the general holiday madness would come to a dead stop because on a cold Saturday morning, just weeks before Christmas, a woman's body was found. And then another, and then another, and then two more.

[00:05:17] Kyle Risi: Okay,

[00:05:19] Adam Cox: So in the space of just a few days, five women's bodies would be discovered. Abandoned in rural areas outside of town. The town panicked, and this wasn't a tragic accident. This [00:05:30] wasn't random. There was a distinct pattern.

[00:05:32] Kyle Risi: So clearly a murderer,

[00:05:33] Adam Cox: right? Yeah. People locked their doors. Women were urged to no longer walk alone at night, and the city center went quiet. And as the body count grew, so did the headlines and the fest of cheer that had filled the streets were now replaced with this cold dread because there was a serial killer targeting sex workers.

[00:05:52] Kyle Risi: Wow. You said a local town in 2006?

[00:05:56] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:05:57] Kyle Risi: In Ipswich.

[00:05:58] Adam Cox: Yeah. Do you know this? Anything [00:06:00] about the story?

[00:06:00] Kyle Risi: I don't know. I feel like there's something niggling in the back of my mind that makes me recognize this.

[00:06:06] Just out of interest, is this really close to home? Because wasn't the person responsible for this? A guy who worked in our hometown of Norwich? In fact, the pub that he was running, was that not at the bottom of our road where we were living at that time?

[00:06:23] Adam Cox: Yeah. you are recalling this news.

[00:06:26] Kyle Risi: This is the Ipswich Strangler.

[00:06:28] Adam Cox: It is the Ipswich Strangler

[00:06:29] Kyle Risi: [00:06:30] God.

[00:06:30] Adam Cox: so he, we'll come onto that a little bit later.

[00:06:33] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:06:33] Adam Cox: Okay. Don't wanna spoil too much at this point in time, especially if people dunno the story. but essentially, yeah, at this time it was pretty much a shock, a serial killer local to us authorities urged women working in Ipswich Red Light District to stay away from their usual streets where the victims were known to meet their clients.

[00:06:51] the warnings were pretty desperate because the reality was harsh. Many of the women simply couldn't walk away from their jobs.

[00:06:57] Kyle Risi: No, you can't really, if it's, especially at [00:07:00] Christmas, like if you, you need money

[00:07:01] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:07:02] Kyle Risi: To go to the pub

[00:07:02] Adam Cox: one, i, TV reporter approached a woman outside the district. she was a sex worker, and the broadcast identified her as Kelly, but her real name was Paula Clane.

[00:07:12] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:12] Adam Cox: Paula spoke plainly. She heard about the first murder and it did make her sick with fear. But she knew exactly how dangerous it was, but she also needed money. And the truth that the cameras didn't reveal is that Paula was battling a devastating drug addiction. Her habit cost her [00:07:30] hundreds of pounds a day.

[00:07:31] Kyle Risi: A day.

[00:07:32] Adam Cox: Yeah. An amount that will drain even the wealthiest households.

[00:07:36] Kyle Risi: God, like when I think about sex workers, I don't norm, especially when they're desperate, because of course they're addicted to drugs or they need income, they might be under the influence of a pimp. I just never think about how much they're earning per client.

[00:07:50] And when you say hundreds of pounds, just to feed the drug addiction?

[00:07:54] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:07:55] Kyle Risi: Like how much are they getting in a day if she's able to fund her drug addiction and then [00:08:00] also live and pay rent?

[00:08:01] Adam Cox: I think this is the thing. They probably can't. Afford everything.

[00:08:04] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[00:08:04] Adam Cox: Right. they've gotta choose what they're gonna fund.

[00:08:05]

[00:08:05] Kyle Risi: and if you're addicted to drugs, that's the priority, right?

[00:08:08] Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly.

[00:08:09] Kyle Risi: So she's stuck between this catch 22 situation where she knows that she has to go out, like she's fearful of going out because there's a killer on the loose. But then also knowing, hey, I've got bills to pay and I've got a pretty nasty drug addiction.

[00:08:23] Adam Cox: Yeah. The choice is bleak. Does she go out and work the streets? or does she starve her addiction and face even worse [00:08:30] consequences?

[00:08:30] Kyle Risi: Probably. That would be the healthier thing to do.

[00:08:31] Adam Cox: Probably. But you know what, that's probably not the right time to go contact.

[00:08:34] Kyle Risi: You've gotta be in the mindset to be able to want to give up the drugs.

[00:08:38] Yeah.

[00:08:38] Adam Cox: Exactly. So she explains it with this kind of heartbreaking clarity. If you need the money, you just keep going. It's better than stealing. she doesn't wanna resort to that.

[00:08:46] Kyle Risi: in this situation, stealing would be better.

[00:08:49] Adam Cox: It's safer, perhaps.

[00:08:50] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:08:50] Adam Cox: The camera followed her as she turned away and walked back towards the red light strip.

[00:08:54] she was a lonely figure stepping into danger. She fully understood and yet to her, she had no other [00:09:00] choice.

[00:09:00] Kyle Risi: So was this like A news broadcast?

[00:09:02] Adam Cox: It was, yeah. It went on ITV Anglia, I believe.

[00:09:04] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[00:09:05] Adam Cox: Now that brief interview on the evening news would not be the last time we would see Paula on tv. 'cause just a few days later she would be on the news again, but this time as one of the victims.

[00:09:15] Kyle Risi: Really. What are the chances of that? Hey, God.

[00:09:19] Adam Cox: So today, Kyle on the Compendium, we'll be discussing what happened to Paula and the other victims, all at the hands of a serial killer named the its witch ripper, or more commonly known as the Suffolk [00:09:30] Strangler.

[00:09:30] Kyle Risi: Wow. I do remember this guy. I don't remember many of the details, but I do remember.

[00:09:36] He worked in that pub literally at the bottom of our road. What was it called? The ferry boat.

[00:09:42] Adam Cox: The Ferry Boat Inn,

[00:09:43] Kyle Risi: yeah. And I think I've definitely been there a couple times. 'cause they used to have a marquee attached to the side of the pub and was right on the river. And it was okay. It was a bit of like a biker pub.

[00:09:53] But man, when that news came out and then obviously we lived at the top of that street on King Street, which is also [00:10:00] essentially the red light district of Norwich, isn't it?

[00:10:01] Adam Cox: It was, yeah.

[00:10:02] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. At one point. Now it's all fancy.

[00:10:04] Adam Cox: Yeah. But we'll come onto that particular street a little bit later on.

[00:10:08] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. It's a beautiful street.

[00:10:09] Adam Cox: So for today's story, we're gonna start When the first body was discovered eight days prior to the discovery of Paula's body. now it was just outside the sleepy Suffolk Village of Tel Shi. A man is walking by the edge of Ted Brook and he spotted something strange in the water.

[00:10:25] Now it wasn't clear at first 'cause it was pretty muddy and there's drifting [00:10:30] branches. but the shape in the water looked like a mannequin. So the man got into the brook and he started to clear some of the debris away and moved some of the hair away from what he originally thought was the mannequin's face.

[00:10:40] But then he quickly realized this was actually a young woman with her face down in the water. She had no clothing, no id, but she would later be identified as Gemma Adams. Now she's just 25 years old and had been reported missing on November the 15th, so around two weeks earlier.

[00:10:58] Kyle Risi: Wow. So she'd been in that [00:11:00] watery ditch for a couple weeks then?

[00:11:02] Adam Cox: We dunno, at this point in time.

[00:11:03] Kyle Risi: Sure. It is really also surprising how a lot of people, when they do discover these bodies, the first thought is it's a mannequin and we've all been there.

[00:11:10] Adam Cox: Yeah. You've talked about it before where you found a mannequin in a river.

[00:11:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah. In the Hillside strangler as well. The little boy who found the two bodies in the rubbish tip.

[00:11:18] He initially thought that they were. Mannequins.

[00:11:20] Adam Cox: I guess that's what you would hope it is, right? Yeah. If you see

[00:11:23] Kyle Risi: something

[00:11:23] Adam Cox: that looks like a human shape,

[00:11:24] Kyle Risi: because it's just so alien, right? Mm-hmm. No one ever expects to find a human body. But then how often do you actually find [00:11:30] a mannequin? How often do you like see something in the water and go, what is that?

[00:11:33] Oh my God. And then you go, oh, it's an actual mannequin. ' cause for that to be your go-to assumption means that everyone must have been there at that point.

[00:11:40] Adam Cox: Yeah. I wonder actually, what are the stats? Are you more likely to find a mannequin or a dead body?

[00:11:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Crazy.

[00:11:45] Adam Cox: So Gemma's long term partner had raised the alarm after she didn't reply to any of his text.

[00:11:50] Gemma had grown up just a few miles away from where she was found in Kes grave, in another quiet, clean little town. She'd learned piano as a kid. She rode horses, she joined the [00:12:00] brownies. And as a teenager, Gemma had dreamed of becoming a police officer. So pretty kind of normal upbringing and aspiring to do good things, right?

[00:12:08] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And clearly that didn't pan out for her. She obviously had taken a wrong turn somewhere or something Awful had happened for her to have to resort to being, I'm assuming a sex worker.

[00:12:18] Adam Cox: Yeah. And it all started really when she was 15, she had met a boy, he was charming. A bit older, maybe a bit reckless.

[00:12:25] Mm-hmm. But just enough to be exciting when you are a 15-year-old girl. , they started smoking [00:12:30] cannabis together and within a year they were both addicted to heroin. Now that is a slippery slope.

[00:12:35] Yeah. All within a year to go from. Some weed to heroin.

[00:12:39] Kyle Risi: Yeah, that's right. So he's clearly a bad character who's really introduced her to some really troubling behaviors.

[00:12:45] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:12:46] Kyle Risi: But hey, he's got a car. Probably a leather jacket,

[00:12:48] Adam Cox: but at 16 or 17 years old and you're doing heroin.

[00:12:52] That's pretty horrific.

[00:12:53] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And you say it's a slippery slope. But I remember I used to work with a girl, in a restaurant. She was regular family girl. She [00:13:00] had two kids. Like her husband was quite successful. And I remember they were talking one night about how she went to London for the evening and it was like, oh.

[00:13:08] And they were talking very openly about taking heroin.

[00:13:11] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:13:11] Kyle Risi: And I was like, you think about people who take heroin and how they look. I don't know. They're just, they look, they look awful. Right. But she was just completely functioning and she's going out on a Saturday night taking heroin.

[00:13:24] Adam Cox: That's

[00:13:25] Kyle Risi: it's bizarre.

[00:13:25] So she's a functioning heroine. A recreational user. So I guess [00:13:30] maybe it depends on how often you're doing it.

[00:13:32] Adam Cox: I guess so, but I feel like, I dunno that must start out like that. what's she up to now?

[00:13:36] Kyle Risi: She still working in the restaurant. She's, kids are like 18, 19. She's just fine.

[00:13:41] Adam Cox: I've never known anyone that can just do heroin and be okay.

[00:13:44] Kyle Risi: To be fair, I've never met anyone who does heroin unless I've seen people who do heroin because you see them on the streets, right? . True. But I don't know anyone who does heroin apart from this chick.

[00:13:52] Adam Cox: Wow.

[00:13:53] Kyle Risi: So poor Gemma. She is fallen down this slippery slope and now she's 16. Addicted to drugs. Gone from [00:14:00] cannabis to heroin?

[00:14:01] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:14:01] Kyle Risi: Damn.

[00:14:02] Adam Cox: She moved out, of her parents' house and in with her boyfriend. She had tried to put herself out of this life a few times. and she did get help and started to work at an insurance firm, but it didn't really stick.

[00:14:13] The addiction was stronger and eventually she lost her job. She would vanish during lunch breaks. She called in sick too often, and with the bills piling up and with both her and her boyfriend still using, she made a choice. She began selling sex to support them. It started behind closed doors at [00:14:30] massage parlors, but later moved out onto the streets.

[00:14:33] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:14:33] Adam Cox: specifically to Ipswich Red Light District, where she was last seen alive on CCTV around midnight in mid-November. By the time she was found, the brook had flooded and receded, water, meaning her body may have drifted for miles before coming to rest where it did.

[00:14:47] Kyle Risi: I see.

[00:14:48] Adam Cox: The autopsy found no signs of sexual assault. And while the pathologist believed she'd been suffocated, they couldn't rule out drowning either. It was inconclusive. Gemma's parents knew she'd been struggling with drugs and [00:15:00] they did try to help, but what they didn't know was how far she had gone just to survive.

[00:15:04] And it devastated them. And whilst Gemma was the first to be found, she wasn't the first to actually have gone missing. Instead that was 19-year-old Tanya Nichol. She had vanished on October the 30th, 2006. So two weeks earlier than Gemma. Tanya's life hadn't been easy either. She grew up in Ipswich, but after clashing with her mom, she left home at 16 and moved into a local hostel.

[00:15:28] And from there things started [00:15:30] to spiral. She began using heroin and cocaine and to fund it, she started working the streets. Some say she tried to get out of this kind of rut that she was in, and she briefly had a job at a massage parlor.

[00:15:41] But the drugs followed her in. And when staff suspected she was using on the job, they let her go. And at home, her mother didn't know the full truth. She believed Tanya was working part-time as a bartender or maybe a hairdresser.

[00:15:54] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:15:54] Adam Cox: She had no idea that her daughter was working the red light district.

[00:15:57] Kyle Risi: So that seems to be like a theme between [00:16:00] Gemma and Tanya.

[00:16:01] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:16:01] Kyle Risi: Is that their parents don't know what they've fallen into essentially.

[00:16:06] Adam Cox: Yeah. And spoiler alert, this isn't. Just exclusive to them. This is a common thread, a common amongst all the victims.

[00:16:12] Kyle Risi: Wow, okay. Yeah. What I guess, 'cause there's, there is a stigma attached to it because it's not organized, it's not unionized.

[00:16:19] Like in some countries like Brussels or Amsterdam, where actually if you came home and told your mom and dad that you've gone into sex work

[00:16:28] Adam Cox: mm-hmm.

[00:16:28] Kyle Risi: That it's not [00:16:30] as concerning as it is if you said that here in the uk. 'cause normally, you do have protections in Europe, but here in the uk, if you're falling into that line of work, it's typically because you are falling in with the wrong crowd or you are addicted to drugs.

[00:16:45] Yeah. Do you know what I mean?

[00:16:46] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:16:47] Kyle Risi: So of course it would be concerning for them. And of course this is something that they wouldn't be very open about.

[00:16:51] Adam Cox: But they've got these, obviously families that don't really know much about what's happening to their daughter's lives. They didn't realize how deep perhaps this [00:17:00] addiction had taken hold.

[00:17:01] And so when Tanya didn't return one night, it didn't raise alarms. At least not right away. 'cause she'd gone off grid before for a day or two. It was normal for Tanya.

[00:17:09] but actually thinking about it, like you didn't have smartphones back then. All, they were just dying to become like a thing.

[00:17:14] Kyle Risi: Yeah, 2020, sorry. In 2006. So I used to have a smartphone and the ringtone was like Kelly, Roland, and Nelly.

[00:17:20] Adam Cox: When you used to have songs for ringtones.

[00:17:22] Kyle Risi: Yeah. A little and MIDI, little ringtones, I think that is you. but it was like when the ringtone started getting a bit more tonal, [00:17:30] so there was slightly better than the

[00:17:31] Adam Cox: musical.

[00:17:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:17:32] Adam Cox: Not beeps.

[00:17:33] Kyle Risi: And yeah, that was my favorite ringtone. And people did not know I was gay. That's when I came out. I was gay actually, it was that year.

[00:17:38] Adam Cox: your phone rang and everyone's like, what? Yeah,

[00:17:41] Kyle Risi: Kyle's gay.

[00:17:42] Adam Cox: but what my point was,

[00:17:44] Kyle Risi: oh, sorry. Yes.

[00:17:45] Adam Cox: Is they probably didn't have that kind of GPS or the same kind of location ,

[00:17:49] so where

[00:17:50] Kyle Risi: you can ping where they've been their whereabouts, is that what you're saying?

[00:17:52] Adam Cox: Yeah. And follow your relative or your friends where they are, stuff like that. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. So it's probably a lot harder to just keep in contact back then.

[00:17:59] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:17:59] Adam Cox: But [00:18:00] this time it was different for Tanya.

[00:18:01] 'cause by November the fourth, five days since anyone had seen or heard from her, her mother contacted the police. There was a press conference and people were deeply concerned for her safety. And then fast forward to December the eighth.

[00:18:13] , The police are still looking for Tanya. A search team was combing the banks of Ted Brook just outside a quiet stretch of land known as cop Dock Mill. And there beneath the surface of the water police discover a body and it was Tanya Nickol.

[00:18:28] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:18:29] Adam Cox: Gemma Adams [00:18:30] before her, she had no clothing.

[00:18:31] And so Tanya was the second body found signaling to the police. Something horrific was unfolding. Yeah. In Suffolk. The autopsy revealed there was no sexual assault, but also no firm cause of death either. her lungs were hyperinflated, which could mean she died of drowning the signs of asphyxiation suggested otherwise.

[00:18:50] Kyle Risi: Yeah. This is so interesting, Adam, because this is two victims now that have not really shown any signs of sexual assault, right? Mm-hmm. Isn't that strange? And they're sex workers. So you [00:19:00] would think that the person that was targeting these people was someone that frequented sex workers and that sex would be a big factor of this, but there doesn't seem to be any connection.

[00:19:08] Adam Cox: that doesn't mean to say that sex wasn't involved. What was looking at is there's no sexual assault and so therefore, oh,

[00:19:14] Kyle Risi: I see

[00:19:14] Adam Cox: a violent encounter.

[00:19:16] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:19:16] Adam Cox: Yeah. So whoever perhaps did this the victims knew who they were and actually they were just, doing business perhaps before this had happened.

[00:19:24] Kyle Risi: I see.

[00:19:25] Adam Cox: also there's a bit of confusion with whether they were strangled, to death or whether [00:19:30] they drowned. And so there is a thought that maybe some of them were placed in the water Whilst they still could have been alive because there's water found in the lungs.

[00:19:37] Kyle Risi: Yeah. So he drowned them.

[00:19:38] Adam Cox: And the only thing that police can say is that, well, with any confidence is that Tanya had died in fear and alone. Interestingly, Gemma and Tanya had also known each other 'cause they weren't strangers.

[00:19:49] they worked the same patches in Ipswich Red Light District.

[00:19:52] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[00:19:53] Adam Cox: Navigating the same streets, the same dangers, probably the same clientele.

[00:19:57] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:19:57] Adam Cox: And like I said, Tanya's parents were [00:20:00] aware she was struggling with drugs, but they didn't know how she was funding it. And her father had tried to warn her, told her flat out, if you don't stop, you'll end up in prison or worse. And her mother meanwhile believed different version of events. She thought Tanya had started a job at a hair salon, one that seemed in hindsight.

[00:20:18] Far too generous in pay.

[00:20:20] Kyle Risi: Ah, I see. Where'd you get this money? Oh, it got a tip from a client. Yeah.

[00:20:24] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:20:24] Kyle Risi: In hindsight, exactly. You would be like, Interesting.

[00:20:27] Adam Cox: And so the truth was hidden until it couldn't be [00:20:30] anymore. And then amid the chaos of the press and the whispers of a town in panic, Tanya's father, Jim stepped out and said,

[00:20:37] They're not things, they're not sex machines. Sure. They're human beings. They were bright and pretty and innocent, and they grew up in a world of drugs and evil. And then they fell.

[00:20:46] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That's it. Because the, you could, he could probably sense the narrative was about to change. As more and more information came out, and the second it gets established that they were sex workers, it's almost like the care just [00:21:00] dissipates.

[00:21:00] And that's, he's absolutely right. They are. Just people, they are just girls who have just fallen on hard times.

[00:21:07] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:21:08] Kyle Risi: So good for him.

[00:21:09] Adam Cox: Yeah. , we'll talk about the police's attitude and how they sort of responded to the investigation a little bit later. but I think there's almost like this feeling, not necessarily from the police, but just maybe this concept or misconception that okay, they're sex workers,

[00:21:23] Kyle Risi: they had it coming.

[00:21:24] Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

[00:21:25] and that's the point really. 'cause suddenly this story isn't about strangers anymore. It's about [00:21:30] someone's child, someone's sister. Mm-hmm. Someone's granddaughter. Someone who is once full of potential and then they become entrapped in this dangerous and scary world until it was too late.

[00:21:39] So two days later, after Tanya is discovered, the third victim is found on December the 10th. Okay. Now that's three bodies in just over a week.

[00:21:47] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It was crazy.

[00:21:49] Adam Cox: this is really starting to look bad and has authorities and the public very concerned.

[00:21:54] the third victim is Anna Lee Alderton. She was 24 and went missing on the 3rd of December, a [00:22:00] week before she was found. Mm-hmm. She had a fairly tough upbringing too. her parents had split and so she spent several years living in Cyprus with her mother. She'd learned Greek, she did well in school, and she was an intelligent young lady, and like a lot of teenagers, she had big dreams.

[00:22:15] And in Anna Lee's case, she wanted to be a model. But that same year when she was just old enough to imagine her future, Anna's father Roy died of lung cancer and he was her rock. And so she was naturally devastated.

[00:22:29] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:22:29] Adam Cox: And [00:22:30] it's something that people say that she never really got over. Not that you can get over it, it's still,

[00:22:34] Kyle Risi: it gets easier over time, but you never get over it.

[00:22:37] Adam Cox: Yeah. After the funeral AnnaLeigh moved out, she found herself in a small flat and in the orbit of a man who would lead her astray. He was older, controlling, and he introduced her to hard drugs. So again, a very similar, well, actually the same pattern to the other victims. Some guy comes in and influences them.

[00:22:56] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And I'm assuming that all because of all of that, these [00:23:00] girls all end up in the same place, and that is in that red light district.

[00:23:03] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:23:03] Kyle Risi: And it's because of course, the cards that they've been dealt, the trauma that they've gone through, the hardship, lack of money, desperation, whatever it is, and that's what brings them to this killing field for this guy who's essentially picking them off, right?

[00:23:17] Mm-hmm.

[00:23:17] Adam Cox: yeah, she starts to carry out petty theft before she eventually turns to sex work. and again, like the others, she tried to break out of this life. By 2006, she already had a young son, Freddy, who was five and [00:23:30] a half years old.

[00:23:31] She had a new boyfriend, Sammy, and they started to make plans for the future. she felt pregnant again, and was about three months along. Sammy later admitted that he knew Anna Lee had struggled with addiction and he knew she had done sex work in the past, but according to him, those days were behind her.

[00:23:48] He thought she'd been clean, maybe smoked a little bit of cannabis now, and then, but nothing serious.

[00:23:53] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:23:53] Adam Cox: and their family was their motivation to get clean, to start again and to build something better for their children. But on [00:24:00] the 10th of December, police searching, the village of Nins, Southeast of Ipswich came across a clearing near a private school there in the woods.

[00:24:08] They found her naked and lifeless.

[00:24:11] Kyle Risi: God.

[00:24:11] Adam Cox: What was also alarming was the way that she was positioned in a way that stunned investigators, her arms had been stretched out deliberately and her legs pressed together. Oh, she had been posed and laid out carefully in the shape of a crucifix.

[00:24:25] Kyle Risi: That is so crazy, isn't it?

[00:24:27] There's quite a lot of parallels between this story [00:24:30] and what we covered in the hillside strangler. Mm-hmm. And I think you pointed that out at the time. 'cause this was the story that you were researching at the time.

[00:24:37] Adam Cox: That's it.

[00:24:37] Kyle Risi: And Yolanda, one of the first victims, she was arranged in what looked like quite a ritualistic kind of style.

[00:24:45] Yeah. There is debate whether or not it was just by happenstance because she was rolled onto that hill and that's how she landed. But this open clearing near a private school, this sounds more, more concrete. That it was deliberate.

[00:24:57] Adam Cox: Absolutely. the killer wants this person to be [00:25:00] found. The fact that

[00:25:00] Kyle Risi: in that way.

[00:25:01] Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly.

[00:25:02] Kyle Risi: God.

[00:25:02] Adam Cox: Statistically bodies found in this way, suggests that the killer is displaying their power.

[00:25:07] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:25:08] Adam Cox: Or is some kind of symbolic meaning or distorted sense of morality where the killer was delivering judgment or punishment perhaps 'cause she was a sex worker.

[00:25:17] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Interesting.

[00:25:18] So now I'm wondering whether or not this is a frequenter of the red light districts, or if it's some kind of strange guy who's got this warp sense of morality, who's out there to just kill these women [00:25:30] because they are doing what they're doing, right?

[00:25:32] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. Yeah, exactly.

[00:25:33] So people can't quite work out what the motive is at this point. And unlike the earlier cases, Annalee's autopsy was definitive. She had been asphyxiated and killed elsewhere. Her mother would later say that she had suspected the truth all along before the body was found. She knew deep down that Annalee might have returned to sex work and she feared that.

[00:25:52] The last time she saw her daughter was on the platform at the train station on December the third. AnnaLeigh was catching a train to Ipswich [00:26:00] and she smiled and waved and said, goodbye, mom. I love you. And her mother didn't say anything back. She couldn't because she already knew where her daughter was going.

[00:26:09] That's crazy. And what might be happening.

[00:26:10] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Awful. And I bet that lives with her for the rest of her life. Mm-hmm. Knowing that actually she knew she had a sense of what her daughter was gonna be getting up to. She probably also had an understanding of what was happening in the press. Yeah. With all these other bodies and Yeah.

[00:26:24] And going to Ipswich as well. Like she's going to the eye of the storm essentially.

[00:26:29] And [00:26:30] yet she didn't do anything.

[00:26:30] Adam Cox: Yeah. But at that point in time though, in her defense, it was December the third, and so the bodies hadn't really started to

[00:26:37] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:26:37] Adam Cox: Mount up.

[00:26:38] Kyle Risi: Sure. it would've been even worse then if she had

[00:26:40] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:26:41] Kyle Risi: Had heard about these murders.

[00:26:42] Adam Cox: Now with the third victim. it wasn't just Suffolk that was reporting on this, the whole country was now paying attention, but for these women, it was already too late. But whoever was behind these murders wasn't just targeting sex workers. He was hunting them, and he wasn't finished before the police could catch their breath and get ahead of this [00:27:00] case.

[00:27:00] Two more bodies are found two days later on December the 12th.

[00:27:04] Kyle Risi: Wow. On the same day.

[00:27:06] Adam Cox: Yeah. The fourth victim was Paula Lennel. Now you'll remember Paula, she was the woman who we spoke about at the very beginning of the show.

[00:27:12] Kyle Risi: was the one, the ITV, news reporting.

[00:27:15] Adam Cox: Yes, that's right.

[00:27:15] And then she went off and disappeared into the Red Light District.

[00:27:18] Kyle Risi: God, that's awful. I just imagine thatscene on, on that news clip of her just walking, turning around and walking away from the camera knowing essentially that,

[00:27:26] Adam Cox: she's going to her death. Really?

[00:27:27] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:27:28] Adam Cox: Paula's story starts out very [00:27:30] similar to the other woman.

[00:27:31] She was born in Northumberland, but moved around a lot during her childhood. After her parents split, she eventually landed in Ipswich with her mother and by her teens. She had already entered the world of cannabis. By her late teens, it was crack cocaine, and from there it just got worse.

[00:27:45] At 16, she moved in with her boyfriend and to feed both her and her boyfriend's habit, Paul began selling sex on the streets at 20 years old.

[00:27:53] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:27:53] Adam Cox: By the time she was 24, Paula had already lost custody of her three children, and she was still using, still on the streets. and during [00:28:00] that cold December in 2006, just weeks before her death, she wrote a letter to her mother dreading this Christmas She said, instead of it being a happy day of joy and togetherness, it's only a dark, lonely, and depressing day for her

[00:28:14] Kyle Risi: hopeful.

[00:28:15] Adam Cox: And it wasn't meant for the public, but it gave a rare glimpse into what her world really looked like. Her friends described her as a clever, witty, fiercely streetwise woman, but they also said something else.

[00:28:27] Paula had long believed she wouldn't make it to 25, [00:28:30] not because of violence or how she ultimately died, but because of her addiction, she thought the drugs would be the end of her. And on December the 12th, her body was found by a passerby discarded in a patch of scrubland near the old Felix Ow Road on the outskirts of Leviton.

[00:28:45] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:28:45] Adam Cox: The autopsy confirmed she'd been strangled to death. She was heavily intoxicated with opiates at the time, and there was no sign of sexual assault. This cause of death helps police piece together clues about who could be doing this.

[00:28:58] Kyle Risi: Okay. So we have a clue here, a [00:29:00] pattern or a clue that's emerged in this final kill.

[00:29:02] Adam Cox: Yeah. so what we said before is there's no signs of sexual assault.

[00:29:05] Kyle Risi: No.

[00:29:05] Adam Cox: No bruises or marks to suggest that she had to fight back.

[00:29:08] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:29:09] Adam Cox: And because Paula was intoxicated, then perhaps it was much easier to prey on her because, I don't know, the killer might have been with her when she started to take drugs, and then obviously that's when he strangled her and killed her.

[00:29:22] Kyle Risi: and do we know if the other girls were on drugs or had drugs in their system at the time that they were murdered?

[00:29:29] Because then that [00:29:30] might be the way that he's able to Make sure that there's no signs of assault. Do you know what I mean? Because he's got them intoxicated up with heroin or whatever it might be, making it easier for him to then strangle them,

[00:29:42] Adam Cox: I think that is common, at least with some of them.

[00:29:44] I dunno if it's all of them .

[00:29:45] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:29:45] Adam Cox: and so what had already been a horrifying day for Suffolk Police was about to take an even darker turn. Paula Hadn been found on a patch of wasteland, and something about the scene didn't sit right with investigators. The position of the body and the setting, it [00:30:00] looked rushed like the killer had been interrupted and forced to flee before finishing whatever he intended to do.

[00:30:06] So what the police wanted to do straight away was seal off the area and brought in helicopters to scan the area from above.

[00:30:12] But what the crew saw from the sky wasn't just a better view of the crime scene. It was actually, another body, just a few hundred yards from where Paula hadn't found hidden in low growth. Near the same stretch of road, they spotted the fifth victim, and that was 29-year-old Annette Nichols.

[00:30:28] Kyle Risi: [00:30:30] Wow.

[00:30:30] Adam Cox: So she had been also reported missing and just like Annaly Alderton before her, she was the third victim.

[00:30:36] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:30:36] Adam Cox: Annette had been posed deliberately in the same crucifix shape as Annaly.

[00:30:41] Kyle Risi: I see.

[00:30:42] Adam Cox: Unlike with the other four victims, there's no signs of sexual assault, but her breathing investigators had noted, had been restricted. They couldn't confirm an exact cause of death straight away, but asphyxiation in one form of another was likely. Mm-hmm. And

[00:30:55] It's believed Annette had been lying in the same spot, hidden just off the road for several [00:31:00] days and no one knew.

[00:31:01] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Wow. Okay.

[00:31:02] Adam Cox: To those who knew her, Annette Nichols known to her friends as Netty wasn't someone you'd expect to end up in a story like this. She had a reputation for being very careful,

[00:31:12] she recently completed a four year course at Suffolk College and was a newly qualified beautician, a single mom. She was raising her young son. Her home was spotless. She worked hard. She kept to herself that something shifted in. Her friends would say that the change came fast.

[00:31:26] Almost overnight. She had moved into a new housing [00:31:30] estate, and supposedly that was for more space with her and her child. And it was there. People believed that she met someone new. Sure. Someone who introduced her to heroin.

[00:31:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah. The influence.

[00:31:39] Adam Cox: exactly. And so from there, her priorities had changed, her finances, her future, and she started relying on her mother to help with her son more.

[00:31:47] And eventually she turned to sex work to afford her habit. The council home was repossessed, and then the life she had built was gone.

[00:31:55] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:31:55] Adam Cox: Her family heartbreakingly had no idea. And when the news broke about the murdered sex [00:32:00] workers in Ipswich, they reported her missing. They were concerned, but unaware that what she was doing for money,

[00:32:05] Kyle Risi: yeah. Yeah, exactly. It's just so crazy that the profile of these victims and prostitutes, I'm not saying it ends with them being murdered. Mm-hmm. But with so many prostitutes, the stories are all the same. And we have a pretty good kind of social welfare. Set up here in the uk, but I'm wondering if they're able to use that information to identify women that are going down quite an awful path.

[00:32:26] Do you know what I mean?

[00:32:27] Adam Cox: It feels like there are some telltale signs,

[00:32:29] Kyle Risi: so [00:32:30] clearly Yeah, they're all the same.

[00:32:32] Adam Cox: Yeah. And it really shocked me when I researched this, just how similar these lives were and how they changed

[00:32:38] Kyle Risi: yeah. , These people that are influencing them, these are just other men that are also living on these estates that they're just getting caught up with. it's not the killer, is it?

[00:32:47] Adam Cox: No. I guess they're gonna be looked at as suspects.

[00:32:49] Kyle Risi: Sure. but it's not the guy that we're after.

[00:32:51] Adam Cox: Yeah. It's five different men remember as well.

[00:32:53] Kyle Risi: of course, there's probably a stupid question, Adam, for me to ask,

[00:32:56] Adam Cox: and obviously, for these families, they're finding out [00:33:00] about, the death of a loved one, but then there's almost this double grief when they find out exactly what they've been up to.

[00:33:05] Kyle Risi: Yeah. There's a shame attached to it because there is a stigma there and there shouldn't be. And that's why Tanya's dad got ahead in the press and was like, they are still people.

[00:33:14] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

[00:33:15] Kyle Risi: Because there's that stigma.

[00:33:16] Adam Cox: Yeah. So as the body count climbed in Ipswich, Suffolk police found themselves in the middle of an increasingly desperate race. Not just to find a killer, but to stop more deaths before they happened. Assistant Chief Constable Jackie Cheers, stood before the cameras and [00:33:30] she said, your welfare is my priority.

[00:33:32] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:33] Adam Cox: My message to you is simple. Stay off the streets. And if you're out alone at night, you're putting yourself in danger.

[00:33:39] Kyle Risi: Listen, detective, it's not as easy as you think it is.

[00:33:41] Adam Cox: Exactly. And that was everyone's thought, who at least had an understanding of what these women's background was,

[00:33:48] in theory it made sense. But for the woman, this message was aimed at staying indoors simply wasn't an option. Because when you're trapped in addiction. When you've got no safety net, no stable income, and no one to fall back on.

[00:33:59] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. [00:34:00]

[00:34:00] Adam Cox: The streets aren't a risk, they're a necessity.

[00:34:02] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:34:03] Adam Cox: Plus there's this feeling amongst sex workers by the news and the police that they were made to feel it was their fault. That they were the ones that put themselves in danger. That they were addicts, that they were sex workers. What did they expect?

[00:34:15] Not that this was a serial killer, that's who we should be focusing on.

[00:34:18] Kyle Risi: Yeah, exactly. it's probably just men out there going, do you know what I mean? That there's, we can't do anything about the killers out there, but we can do things about how you conduct your behavior. Mm-hmm. And that's just not the right way to do it.

[00:34:29] [00:34:30] sort out the country, make sure that there's welfare available for these women so they don't get into this position where they do need to go out and resort to prostitution.

[00:34:38] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:34:38] Kyle Risi: Makes me so angry.

[00:34:39] Adam Cox: there's a term in criminology, called the Less Dead. I dunno if you've heard of that.

[00:34:43] Kyle Risi: The Less Dead. Tell me more.

[00:34:45] Adam Cox: It describes how certain groups sex work as being one of them. But homeless people,people with addictions are often seen consciously or not as less worthy of protection. And offenders know this, and serial killers have targeted these groups precisely [00:35:00] because they expect slower police response.

[00:35:02] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:35:02] Adam Cox: Fewer missing person reports and less public outrage.

[00:35:06] Kyle Risi: Absolutely. Because we've seen this, we talked about this at length in the, so similar to the Hillside Strangler Adam.

[00:35:12] Adam Cox: Exactly.

[00:35:12] Kyle Risi: But yeah, like they didn't care until it was nice. White girls from a nice neighborhood started cropping up dead.

[00:35:19] So this is a tactic Seen amongst many serial killers where they deliberately target these women that they believe people won't care about.

[00:35:26] Adam Cox: Yeah, , in the UK specialists support organizations like [00:35:30] National Ugly Mugs they have found that only a small percentage of sex workers feel safe enough to report serious violence to the police.

[00:35:37] Kyle Risi: Why?

[00:35:37] Adam Cox: Or most often stay, silent. or they only share information anonymously.

[00:35:42] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:35:42] Adam Cox: Not because the crimes aren't serious, but because they fear of being judged.

[00:35:46] Kyle Risi: Sure.

[00:35:46] Adam Cox: Being arrested themselves,

[00:35:48] Kyle Risi: of course,

[00:35:48] Adam Cox: not being believed or simply not taken seriously. So when violence happens, it often never enters official crime statistics at all.

[00:35:56] And that creates this kind of dangerous blind spot.

[00:35:58] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I get it. [00:36:00] It doesn't help the fact that women are very often overlooked, underestimated, or not believed so. if you're a prostitute and addicted to drugs, it just makes that even worse.

[00:36:09] Adam Cox: Yeah. And so there is a question that would the police's response have been different if the victims weren't working on the streets?

[00:36:16] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Oh, 100%. It would've been way different.

[00:36:19] Adam Cox: Yeah. would they have been labeled missing sooner? Would the pattern have been recognized earlier? I dunno. I think it's hard to know for sure. But what we do know is that serial killers exploit marginalization. [00:36:30] They rely on stigma. They rely on silence.

[00:36:32] and the Suffolk Strangler probably did all of that.

[00:36:34] Kyle Risi: Yeah. . how are the cops gonna catch this guy then?

[00:36:36] Adam Cox: So we're now gonna come on to the police investigation. And I think like with anything like this, there's a lot of evidence and stuff to kind of sift through because there's tip-offs from the public you've got, boyfriends calling up the police saying,, my girlfriend goes.

[00:36:50] Missing at times. Is she a sex worker? Oh God. that generally happened.

[00:36:54] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:36:55] Adam Cox: And so you've then got,the whole of Ipswich has completely changed 'cause you've got women, like taxi [00:37:00] firms are completely booked at this point because no woman sure wants to walk alone.

[00:37:03] Kyle Risi: No.

[00:37:03] Adam Cox: So it's a lot to sift through.

[00:37:05] There's psychic tips, there's fake confessions, there's wild accusations. There's even vigilante groups trying to patrol the red light district before it was shut down. And also innocent men are publicly scrutinized just for being quiet or working nights, so it's not clear Cut.

[00:37:22] Kyle Risi: So chick will be at home and she'll be like, have an argument, take out the trash. No, you take out the trash, that's it. And she'll call the police and be like, my husband works nights. I think he might [00:37:30] be the Suffolk Strangler,

[00:37:31] Adam Cox: but yeah. All this kind of crap that they all have to look through.

[00:37:34] Kyle Risi: Okay. And that always ends up slowing down. it can be really helpful, but at times, depending how big the story gets, it can quickly become very unhelpful to the police to have to sift through all the tips that they received.

[00:37:45] Adam Cox: Exactly. Like all my dodgy neighbor. But the thing is, I guess you almost want to get that off your chest.

[00:37:50] If you even have the tiniest of suspicion, you're like, at least if I put it out there, they can go find out if that's true or not.

[00:37:55] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But again. It depends on the quality of that lead, right? [00:38:00] Like when we did the chow chiller episode, there were people calling in to say, I found a shoe in the middle of the road.

[00:38:05] And they're like, okay, where was it? And they're like, yeah, it was, in Buffalo, New York. And ma'am, that is 12 states away. And they're like, that's not helpful at all. When was this? And she's like, nine months ago. Like, bitch, how do you think this is connected?

[00:38:19] Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly.

[00:38:20] Kyle Risi: So it's those sides of things that can really slow it down.

[00:38:23] but you're right. I'd rather have a lot of uses information with some good stuff in there rather than nothing at all. Do you know [00:38:30] what I mean? So I get it.

[00:38:31] Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly. what the police do think at the moment, or have a strong inclination is this is the work of a single serial killer. There is that point, where they do think multiple people might have been involved because I think, Where certain bodies were placed, they were like, oh, that had to be carried. Mm-hmm. There wasn't any drag marks. Maybe there was two people.

[00:38:48] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:38:48] Adam Cox: But I think quite quickly they realized, no, it is just one person. they know that every victim has been strangled. There's no weapon involved, no gun, no knife.

[00:38:57] so the killer had used his hands

[00:38:59] each woman had been [00:39:00] left completely naked, except occasionally for a piece of jewelry. none were sexually assaulted, as we said. And each body had been placed just far enough outta sight to avoid being found too quickly, but close enough to guarantee discovery eventually.

[00:39:12] Kyle Risi: Wow. So he wanted them to be discovered. But again, of course, Kyle's stupid, stupid, stupid. Um, it's because he's arranged them in this weird ritualistic way. So of course he wants them to be found.

[00:39:23] Adam Cox: Exactly.

[00:39:23] Kyle Risi: Otherwise you would just bury them in a ditch.

[00:39:25] Adam Cox: Yeah. And also, someone that kind of knew of all these different areas, these [00:39:30] lanes or shrubbery or whatever,

[00:39:32] Kyle Risi: shrubbery.

[00:39:33] Adam Cox: Yeah. What they thought is it's someone with good local knowledge, someone who knew the lay of the land, who understood which footpath was barely used, which bit of undergrowth might buy him a few extra days. That's

[00:39:44] Kyle Risi: so fascinating because. Obviously we are very familiar with the story because he, the guy works at the bottom of our street and Suffolk is a good 45 minute drive away.

[00:39:53] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:39:53] Kyle Risi: So is that true? Is he local to Ipswich and the Suffolk area?

[00:39:59] Adam Cox: So yeah, you [00:40:00] are remembering a part of his story. We will come onto

[00:40:04] Kyle Risi: who he is,

[00:40:04] Adam Cox: his timeline of things.

[00:40:06] Kyle Risi: Oh, I see. He's a drifter.

[00:40:07] Adam Cox: Yeah, he moved around.

[00:40:08] Kyle Risi: He moved around after

[00:40:09] Adam Cox: that.

[00:40:09] Kyle Risi: go from Suffolk to, Norfolk isn't really drifting, is it?

[00:40:12] Adam Cox: No,

[00:40:12] Kyle Risi: it is literally

[00:40:13] across.

[00:40:13] Adam Cox: It's a day trip.

[00:40:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:40:14] Adam Cox: Yeah. There are also some inconsistencies though, 'cause the first two victims, Gemma Adams and Tanya Nichol had been dumped in a flooded brook. And that was maybe to wash away DNA, possibly.

[00:40:25] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:40:25] Adam Cox: Um,

[00:40:26] Kyle Risi: and they were his first.

[00:40:27] Adam Cox: Yeah. So that points to some kind of [00:40:30] caution.

[00:40:30] but then the final three, they're left on dry land in open countryside, obviously laid out in certain positions. Speaks that there's something different, something had changed. So there is a question. Are they two different people? Sure. Is there a copycat? but again, these are all the avenues that they look at.

[00:40:46] Did the killer become sloppy?

[00:40:47] Kyle Risi: Or is he evolving?

[00:40:48] Adam Cox: Evolving?

[00:40:49] Kyle Risi: Is he getting more confidence?

[00:40:50] Adam Cox: Exactly. That's the other theory . .

[00:40:52] Kyle Risi: Sounds like it's a confidence. And also potentially if it in a twisted way, if he is now arranging these women in this ritualistic kind of way [00:41:00] that may indicate a morality, a higher morality that he believes he has.

[00:41:05] But then it might indicate that he is

[00:41:08] that he's getting more comfortable with his kill.

[00:41:10] Adam Cox: So the operation that the police, called this was Operation Sumac. an investigation so massive that officers had to be drafted in from across the uk. Just to keep up.

[00:41:19] Kyle Risi: Hang on. Is that what Sumac stands for? Operation. So massive sumac, because if you are

[00:41:26] Adam Cox: sumac,

[00:41:26] Kyle Risi: if you are from Suffolk or Norfolk, that's how you say.

[00:41:29] [00:41:30] So you go,Sue. Massive.

[00:41:31] Adam Cox: Sue. Massive.

[00:41:33] Kyle Risi: Do you think that's what that means? No.

[00:41:34] Adam Cox: I don't think so. But now I'm questioning it.

[00:41:36] Kyle Risi: Well, uh, it's just a little side note. , just a little segue. What is the most common. Allergy that people have on this planet.

[00:41:43] Adam Cox: Hay fever, nuts.

[00:41:44] Kyle Risi: You would think nuts. Hey, fever. And hay fever and pollen is high. It's 39% of people, which is massive. It's actually, a sumac allergy. 85% of the people on this planet have an allergy to the enzymes inside sumac.

[00:41:59] Adam Cox: [00:42:00] Mm-hmm.

[00:42:00] Kyle Risi: which also includes, and this will not be a surprise to you, because they're part of the same family as poison ivy

[00:42:06] Adam Cox: Oh.

[00:42:07] Kyle Risi: And other types of things that can cause the skin to blister. And so even if your dog runs through a sumac bush or poison ivy and you then touch the dog, it's enough to cause an allergy.

[00:42:15] But 85% of people on this planet have an allergy to poison ivy, which includes sumac.

[00:42:22] Adam Cox: I'm guessing. It's not serious though. It's just a light allergy.

[00:42:25] Kyle Risi: Well, of course, the skin to blister, doesn't it?

[00:42:27] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:42:27] Kyle Risi: So it's like a stinging nettle [00:42:30] thing. But yeah. I found that fascinating. So interesting little segue into sumac.

[00:42:34] Which we have in the cupboard. We eat sumac.

[00:42:36] Adam Cox: That's what I was thinking. I don't think I'm allergic.

[00:42:37] Kyle Risi: No, but so if it's the dried red bit on the top, you're probably not allergic to that.

[00:42:42] Adam Cox: It's

[00:42:42] Kyle Risi: the leaves of

[00:42:43] Adam Cox: it. Oh, okay. I see. Anyway, this is Operation Sumac or Sum Massive.

[00:42:48] Kyle Risi: Sum Massive.

[00:42:49] Adam Cox: so at its peak, over 650 police officers were on the case.

[00:42:53] There were 176 locations searched, doors knocked on. Mm-hmm. You know, give or [00:43:00] take. And 11,000 hours of CCTV were reviewed.

[00:43:04] Kyle Risi: Wow. that is a lot. That's a big operation, especially for little Norfolk and Suffolk.

[00:43:08] Adam Cox: Officers,, are drafted in from across the UK to help on this case.

[00:43:12] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:43:12] Adam Cox: so they're not just checking these CCTV cameras. They interviewed over 400 men on the local sex offender register. They even installed surveillance tech in public bins, hoping the killer might toss something away. It became the biggest murder investigation in Suffolk history.

[00:43:29] Kyle Risi: What [00:43:30] surveillance kit or tech are they putting in bins?

[00:43:32] Adam Cox: Oh, just next time you throw something in a bin,

[00:43:34] Kyle Risi: Uhhuh

[00:43:35] Adam Cox: check if there's a camera. Do you want to be putting it in

[00:43:37] Kyle Risi: that bin? Is so what you mean by that? Yeah. They're putting cameras in bins.

[00:43:39] 'Cause that's a lot to have to go through.

[00:43:41] Adam Cox: Basically bins are being like watched,

[00:43:43] Kyle Risi: monitored.

[00:43:43] Okay. Sure.

[00:43:45] Adam Cox: That finally felt like the justice machine turning with the weight it should have had all along.

[00:43:50] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:43:51] Adam Cox: But just as the investigation hit its higher gear, something strange happened. A man walks into a police station and basically hands himself in no [00:44:00] dramatic chase. There's no DNA twists, no Last minute sting operation.

[00:44:04] He just walks in and confesses to it all.

[00:44:07] Kyle Risi: It's not the guy. It's someone who just wants to be seen as notorious.

[00:44:10] Adam Cox: We'll find out after the break.

[00:44:11] So we're back. And a guy has just walked into the police station to confess everything.

[00:44:17] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm. Yeah.

[00:44:18] Adam Cox: But you are not buying it.

[00:44:18] Kyle Risi: I don't think it's him though. I think it might be someone who's like, yeah, I could jump on this bandwagon and become notorious.

[00:44:24] Adam Cox: Let's find out. his name is Tom Stevens.

[00:44:27] He's 37 and he collects the trolleys [00:44:30] in a Tesco in a small village outside Ipswich.

[00:44:32] Kyle Risi: Okay. Definitely not him.

[00:44:33] Adam Cox: Yeah. He's a bit of an oddball.

[00:44:35] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:44:35] Adam Cox: He once served as a special constable,

[00:44:37] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[00:44:38] Adam Cox: but since the breakdown of his marriage three years earlier, Tom had drifted, he'd become lonely and disconnected and irregular in ips Witch's Red Light District,

[00:44:47] Uhhuh.

[00:44:47] Adam Cox: When he heard about the murders, something didn't sit right with him and he told the police, he'd been with all five women

[00:44:53] Kyle Risi: Do you think that he thinks that he's killed them all? But he's blanked out and he's like,I think I've been with all of them for sure, but I [00:45:00] also may have killed them and then I blanked out.

[00:45:01] Adam Cox: you are pretty spot on.

[00:45:03] Kyle Risi: Oh, Adam.

[00:45:04] Adam Cox: So he had driven,

[00:45:06] Kyle Risi: that's what I said,

[00:45:06] Adam Cox: he had driven them around, or a few of them around when they needed to score drugs. He was especially close to Tanya and Annette. He sometimes described himself as a bit of a boyfriend figure to them.

[00:45:16] Kyle Risi: yeah, I mean he's definitely been friend zoned.

[00:45:19] He's not the boyfriend figure to them. They all have their own boyfriend. Thank.

[00:45:22] Adam Cox: now he wasn't confessing as such, but he was deeply afraid that somehow he might have done it maybe during a blackout. It [00:45:30] appears he was suffering, with a mental health disorder or significant psychological distress.

[00:45:34] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[00:45:35] Adam Cox: And maybe while disassociating, or in his words, maybe he was capable of something like this, but he just couldn't remember.

[00:45:41] Kyle Risi: Wow. So what did the

[00:45:42] police

[00:45:42] Adam Cox: say? The police arrest him? of course they did because,

[00:45:45] Kyle Risi: he just conversed basically.

[00:45:46] Adam Cox: Yeah. He has no alibi. His strange behavior and a direct connection to all five victims.

[00:45:52] Mm-hmm. He fits the profile. To be honest. His house is searched and his name isn't necessarily released straight away. but he ends up [00:46:00] telling the news outlets anyway, anyone that would listen to him, that he thinks he's the killer.

[00:46:04] Kyle Risi: Yeah. That makes you think that he probably knows that he didn't do it.

[00:46:08] So I think he might have said that he thinks it blacked out. But I don't think he really believes that.

[00:46:14] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. Well, he loses his job at Tesco,

[00:46:17] Kyle Risi: obviously.

[00:46:18] Adam Cox: and after 96 hours of questioning the police let him go because in actual fact, there's no evidence to pin it on him.

[00:46:25] This is a bit of a red herring. And so whilst Tom Stevens was being [00:46:30] interrogated though mm-hmm. Another man is quietly arrested.

[00:46:33] Kyle Risi: Okay. But before that very important question.

[00:46:36] Adam Cox: Uhhuh,

[00:46:36] Kyle Risi: does Tom get this job back in Tesco?

[00:46:38] Adam Cox: Don't know.

[00:46:39] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:46:39] Adam Cox: I dunno what he's up to now.

[00:46:40] Kyle Risi: Okay, so fine. Let's forget Tom. It's not him.

[00:46:43] Another guy's quietly arrested.

[00:46:45] Adam Cox: Another guy is quietly arrested. Who is he? this one, it didn't come from any confession or anything like that. It had come from surveillance. There was hours of CCTV footage.

[00:46:55] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:46:56] Adam Cox: Were scanned, were logged frame by frame. And finally there it [00:47:00] was this clue, Tanya Nichol, one of the early victims, was seen getting into a car, and that was a blue Ford Mano.

[00:47:08] Kyle Risi: Okay. Blue Ford Monday. Find that mano

[00:47:11] Adam Cox: now. It's a very generic and average car, so nothing suspicious on its own until the exact same car turns up on other CCTV footage parked or creeping around, lurking that every single one of the dump sites and on the night, the bodies were believed to have been moved as well.

[00:47:27] So the car belonged to a man called [00:47:30] Steve Wright.

[00:47:31] Kyle Risi: Yes, Steve Wright. That's his name,

[00:47:34] Adam Cox: He was a 48-year-old former barman. He lived right in the heart of the Red Light District in Ipswich, and with a partner who had no idea what was happening.

[00:47:42] Kyle Risi: A lady partner,

[00:47:43] Adam Cox: a lady partner, and Wright's DNA, was already in the system from a minor offense a few years earlier.

[00:47:51] Kyle Risi: Of what was it?

[00:47:52] Adam Cox: we'll get to that, but first investigators tested a fluorescent jacket found near one of the crime scenes.

[00:47:59] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:47:59] Adam Cox: And [00:48:00] the results came fast that the DNA that was in the system matched Steve Wright and it was also found on three of the victims.

[00:48:07] Kyle Risi: Oh, interesting.

[00:48:08] Adam Cox: quite quickly they're able to connect this all up.

[00:48:11] Kyle Risi: I used to have a fluorescent shirt and I loved it and it had all these triangles on it. And we would go like to Pam's house on a Friday night or whatever.

[00:48:18] It was like one of those teeny bopper nights that the police, believe it or not, would host for like young kids to get them off the streets and be like, at times they would like book out the hole of a big club in Norwich. [00:48:30] And like I had this fluorescent neon shirt that I just loved. And I was walking down through my neighborhood and a bunch of these older boys from my school were like, oh, I love your shirt.

[00:48:39]

[00:48:39] Adam Cox: yeah,

[00:48:39] Kyle Risi: thanks. And he was like, I want it. And I was like, what? And he was like, take your shirt off, I'll give you this, A bullet. And he pulled out a bullet. And he was like, I'll trade you this shirt for this bullet. And I was like, if I take this shirt off, I have no shirt,

[00:48:52] Adam Cox: but I do get a bullet.

[00:48:53] Kyle Risi: And I was like, no.

[00:48:54] And then he grabbed me by the scruff of the front here and crunched up my shirt, pulled me forward and he was like, take [00:49:00] off your shirt. And I shot myself. And then slowly, you could imagine me crying at this point, like, like slowly I'd be crying. Anyway, I started unbuttoning my shirt and then he just started laughing.

[00:49:11] He was like, nah man, I wouldn't do that to you.

[00:49:13] Adam Cox: What?

[00:49:13] Kyle Risi: And I was like, what happened?

[00:49:15] Adam Cox: That was weird.

[00:49:15] Kyle Risi: just happened? And then, and I see him all the time.

[00:49:18] Moving on. Okay, so Steve Wright, we've got some DNA on Steve from a neon jacket.

[00:49:24] Adam Cox: Yes,

[00:49:24] Kyle Risi: he's in the system. Are you gonna tell me what he was in the system for?

[00:49:27] Adam Cox: I will. I'll get to it. I promise.

[00:49:29] Kyle Risi: Not gonna tell me [00:49:30] now.

[00:49:30] Adam Cox: No, I'm not gonna tell you now. Okay.

[00:49:31] Kyle Risi: So

[00:49:31] Adam Cox: we've gotta go through the timeline, Kyle,

[00:49:33] Kyle Risi: at the timeline.

[00:49:33] You gotta respect the timeline

[00:49:35] Adam Cox: yeah, Wright's DNA is found on three of the bodies. the final three. 'cause the first two were placed in water, so obviously

[00:49:41] Kyle Risi: Washed away, man.

[00:49:42] Adam Cox: Yeah. But the last three, that's how they could pin it on him. Now, Wright's defense could have argued, look, he was a client, that's why the DNA is there, but you don't dump somebody's body in the woods after a consensual encounter and you don't show up at every dump site and you don't get DNA on three different [00:50:00] women without a pretty sinister reason.

[00:50:02] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:50:02] Adam Cox: Yeah. so whilst the police are figuring this out, it's obviously unbeknown to write at the time the evidence is stacking up against him.

[00:50:09] So DNA is one thing, but there's also forensic fibers that sealed his fate.

[00:50:14] Kyle Risi: Oh really?

[00:50:15] Adam Cox: Police found carpet fibers from Wright's Ford Ono embedded in Tanya Nichol's hair. Mm-hmm. And now she was found in the water, so that had obviously clung to her hair that whole time.

[00:50:25] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:50:26] Adam Cox: so that's pretty solid evidence. They also discover microscopic [00:50:30] fibers from his home and car across all five victims. And blood traces tiny but undeniable inside his vehicle. And on the neon work jacket Wright used to wear,

[00:50:40] Kyle Risi: . You are right. It's, indisputable. it's amazing that they managed to put this together.

[00:50:44] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:50:45] Kyle Risi: And to have so much.

[00:50:46] Adam Cox: Yeah. So during, once,

[00:50:47] Kyle Risi: so he was sloppy basically.

[00:50:49] Adam Cox: Yeah. Not, yeah, he is not that great, is he? So during the investigation where people think perhaps not a lot is happening. The police are following everywhere he went, where he slept, who he saw. And on December the [00:51:00] 19th, after quietly shadowing him for days, they made their move just one day after politely saying goodbye to Tom Stevens.

[00:51:07] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[00:51:08] Adam Cox: They arrest the actual killer.

[00:51:09] Kyle Risi: Sorry Tom, it's not you. We have to let you go. We will make a quick call to Tesco, hopefully get your job back. But yet we're paring ways here. We found someone else.

[00:51:19] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:51:19] Kyle Risi: And it's Steve Wright. So they make their move to go and arrest him.

[00:51:22] Adam Cox: Yes.

[00:51:23] Kyle Risi: And how do they do it?

[00:51:24] Adam Cox: let's start out with who is Oh, timeline.

[00:51:26] Steve Wright.

[00:51:27] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:51:27] Adam Cox: He was born in 1958 in [00:51:30] a village called Ingham in Norfolk. He is one of four siblings. His dad was a military police officer, and his mom a veterinary nurse.

[00:51:36] Kyle Risi: So a respectful family.

[00:51:38] Adam Cox: Yeah. In the early years, life was actually kind of nice. The family moved around thanks to his father's postings.

[00:51:44] they lived in Malta in Singapore. They had some money, some stability, and when Wright was six, everything actually changed. His parents' relationship collapsed. And when his mother boarded a train young, Steve waved her off thinking she'd be back in a few days. But she [00:52:00] never returned.

[00:52:00]

[00:52:00] Kyle Risi: never came back. Where did she go?

[00:52:01] Adam Cox: She went to, I believe America.

[00:52:03] Kyle Risi: Oh, it's new.

[00:52:04] Adam Cox: California.

[00:52:05] Kyle Risi: I have a new family, Steve. I'm sorry.

[00:52:07] Adam Cox: the thing is the dad thinks it's temporary. The mom, she'd already decided she was gone for good. She moved to California and claimed years later that the marriage had been violent and that she'd wanted to take the kids, but couldn't.

[00:52:18] Whether that's true or not, one thing's for certain, Steve Wright saw it as a betrayal and it's stuck.

[00:52:24] Kyle Risi: Okay. Interesting. It's, it's always the case though, isn't it? Like you, there's happens quite a lot where [00:52:30] women, they are desperate to get out the marriage. They're fearful for their own safety and a lot of the time their only option is to leave and they have to make the heartbreaking decision to leave without their kids, right?

[00:52:40] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And so that obviously has a profound impact on Steve. His father remarried. Steve didn't get on with his new stepmother. He left school at 16. He joined the Merchant Navy working in kitchens and later becoming a steward, aboard the QE two, the famous British Ocean liner, and he would go on to travel the world.

[00:52:59] He married a [00:53:00] woman named Angela in 1978 and they had a son, but the marriage is short-lived. Angela would later say that she didn't wanna say too much, but the marriage was never good and she was glad that it ended. Which kind of sums it up that maybe this guy, he's not that nice.

[00:53:14] Kyle Risi: No,

[00:53:14] Adam Cox: but long before any of the Ipswich murders Had already developed some worrying habits. He was obsessed with massage parlors.

[00:53:21] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[00:53:21] Adam Cox: He,

[00:53:22] Kyle Risi: you don't get many, like he's from this area. I don't know any massage parlors.

[00:53:26] Adam Cox: I don't know.

[00:53:27] Kyle Risi: None.

[00:53:27] Adam Cox: especially the dodgy ones.

[00:53:28] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Like the happy ending [00:53:30] ones.

[00:53:30] Adam Cox: No.

[00:53:30] Kyle Risi: where are these, and like you said earlier on, some of these sex workers, they were working in brothels.

[00:53:35] Adam Cox: Mm.

[00:53:37] Kyle Risi: Where, where are these brothels?

[00:53:38] Adam Cox: I'm guessing they're probably just people's houses,

[00:53:40] Kyle Risi: much a shadow from us. We do. You know what, Adam? . We are so innocent and so sweet that we don't even know where the massage parlors are in the city.

[00:53:49] Adam Cox: Oh. We're just really ignorant.

[00:53:50] Anyway, he basically becomes obsessed with sex. And weirdly, his arrest wouldn't be the first time he'd on TV in 1983.

[00:53:59] There's an old [00:54:00] school travel documentary called WIC as World where he takes a trip to Thailand, specifically their red light district and the voiceover. And there's a guy that basically says this part of town where every sailor dreams of coming to rest and relax. Oh. And in one of the shots among a group of sailors, there he is, Steve Wright grinning, blending into the crowd.

[00:54:18] Kyle Risi: Oh, and he's there. Happenstance to be caught on this camera, or he was there to be filmed.

[00:54:23] Adam Cox: he just happened to be there, I think.

[00:54:24] Kyle Risi: Gross.

[00:54:25] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:54:25] Kyle Risi: And imagine being the person going, oh, there is like spotting that.

[00:54:28] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:54:28] Kyle Risi: You know what I mean?

[00:54:29] Adam Cox: Yeah. [00:54:30] So this guy, towards the end of his time working on the QE two Wright meets a woman named Diane Cole.

[00:54:36] And they get married in 1987. and after years at sea, the couple finally docked for good and tried to set up a quiet life in

[00:54:43] Kyle Risi: mm-hmm.

[00:54:43] Adam Cox: Norwich.

[00:54:45] Kyle Risi: Norwich. So this is where, wow. so he worked obviously at the bottom of our road.

[00:54:50] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:54:50] Kyle Risi: Where was he living?

[00:54:51] Adam Cox: in the pub. So they together

[00:54:53] Oh,

[00:54:53] Kyle Risi: he, they were running the pub.

[00:54:54] Adam Cox: Yeah. They took over the local pub called the ferry boat.

[00:54:57] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[00:54:58] Adam Cox: Cozy little place with a [00:55:00] 180 2-year-old history.

[00:55:02] Kyle Risi: Yeah. I wouldn't say cozy.

[00:55:03] Adam Cox: maybe back in the, this is 19 87, 19 88 that they actually ran the pub. So a long time before.

[00:55:09] Kyle Risi: Oh, so when we were living on King Street.

[00:55:12] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:55:12] Kyle Risi: He was long gone.

[00:55:13] Adam Cox: He was long gone.

[00:55:14] Kyle Risi: okay.

[00:55:14] Adam Cox: So it's a Yeah. A bit of a questionable pub, that used to play, have rock bands, I think there and stuff like that.

[00:55:19] Kyle Risi: Yeah. A bit of a bikery pub.

[00:55:20] Adam Cox: Yeah. And like you said earlier, it was right in the middle of Norwich's Red Light District.

[00:55:25] Kyle Risi: the middle or the bottom.

[00:55:27] Or the bottom. I'd say. I'd say the bottom.

[00:55:28] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:55:29] Kyle Risi: Because then you get to [00:55:30] the bridge and then there's the ion.

[00:55:31] Adam Cox: Yes.

[00:55:32] Kyle Risi: And you know that you've made your way out of the Red Light District.

[00:55:35] Adam Cox: Exactly.

[00:55:36] Kyle Risi: but I would love to have known what the Red Light districts off King Street was like back at this time, because.

[00:55:40] It's beautiful now, right? They've very much cleaned it up and the houses are very expensive. Hence why we live there.

[00:55:46] Adam Cox: I remember because they pedestrianized it at one point you could just drive all the way through. Going to Norwich as a kid, that's one of the route home we would go down King Street.

[00:55:54] Yeah,

[00:55:54] Kyle Risi: that's

[00:55:54] Adam Cox: right. Uh, my dad, I think he was up my brother from Norwich train station. So it's not far from [00:56:00] Norwich train station. I dunno if it was there or whether it was close to the station. But a police man knocked on his window and said, what are you doing? Thinking that he was cruising.

[00:56:08] Yeah.

[00:56:10] Kyle Risi: There's just the, there's so many crazy stories. I have a friend who. used to play in a little bar down King Street, and he was just a young kid. He would come and play his acoustic guitar while the woman's having dinner. We'd pay him like 50 bucks or whatever, and his mom would come and pick him up around about 10 o'clock.

[00:56:25] She pulls up, she parks outside and she's waiting for him to pack up. He [00:56:30] can look out the window. He can see her. And then as she's waiting, A sex worker, opens the door and just gets in. She's whatcha doing? She's oh, sorry. And she gets out.

[00:56:38] Adam Cox: I thought you wanted No, you don't want me.

[00:56:40] Okay. Sorry. Mistake.

[00:56:41] Kyle Risi: But also living, we obviously lived there around about 2011 on that street at the top and it was lovely. We overlooked this beautiful church.

[00:56:48] Adam Cox: Yeah. I don't remember there ever being Ladies of the night. No. I do remember Lizzie, the Scottish junkie who would ask for change and we found

[00:56:55] Kyle Risi: shoo me guys, can you spare any change?

[00:56:58] That's, we found her sleeping in our [00:57:00] yard.

[00:57:00] Adam Cox: We did. And don't remember, there was a time when you stepped outside the car and you stepped into a human poo.

[00:57:04] Kyle Risi: yeah.

[00:57:05] Adam Cox: Beautiful street.

[00:57:06] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And we just got the car. It was the first time I was driving a brand new car to work and I came outside and I saw these guys actually, they were rolling back here or something on the front of our bonnet around the side.

[00:57:17] And then obviously one of 'em had sha down. On the ground and I stepped in it and then it got into our brand new car. And when you step on human poo, you know it's human poo.

[00:57:27] Adam Cox: It's not a dog.

[00:57:28] Kyle Risi: Like it's so distinctive. But then [00:57:30] there is another story.

[00:57:31] Adam Cox: What about, I've got two stories

[00:57:33] Kyle Risi: on

[00:57:33] Adam Cox: What about the guy when we looked out our kitchen window and he had collapsed and you had to go and poke them

[00:57:38] Kyle Risi: Yeah, he was shooting up heroin and and then he fell into this trance essentially. But was he standing up?

[00:57:44] Adam Cox: No, he was sitting,

[00:57:44] Kyle Risi: slumped. yeah, he was slumped over on the bench and I had to go over and poke him.

[00:57:48] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[00:57:48] Kyle Risi: And it remind me of for friends, when they see a fat, ugly, naked guy and they think he's dead, he's not moving.

[00:57:54] So they create a stick with like loads of chopsticks from Yeah. All the takeaway and they poke him.

[00:57:58] Adam Cox: But you went and poked him with a [00:58:00] branch or something?

[00:58:00] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And I think the ambulance had come in the end.

[00:58:02] Adam Cox: They did. Yeah.

[00:58:03] Yeah. Then we had that guy that asked us to call for the police and it turned out he said, oh, don't worry about it.

[00:58:08] 'cause he had mental health issues. Remember that time?

[00:58:10] Kyle Risi: Oh, the, our neighbor.

[00:58:11] Adam Cox: Yeah. And then he walked into one of the neighbors Naked With a ketchup bottle.

[00:58:14] Kyle Risi: Ketchup bottle. And they left.

[00:58:15] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[00:58:16] Kyle Risi: It was crazy. And he would just have these political arguments with himself outside of our house.

[00:58:20] all hours of the day. In fact, we just got so many stories that we have to tell. But remember he sent us a little note, gosh, in our postbox.

[00:58:29] Adam Cox: yeah.

[00:58:29] Kyle Risi: [00:58:30] And honor. He wrote, there is a girl I like, I'd like to talk to you about it.

[00:58:33] Adam Cox: I forgot about that.

[00:58:35] Kyle Risi: Oh God. And we were like, okay, it's time. We have to call the cops.

[00:58:39] But the thing is though, he was harmless, he was clearly someone who was having mental health issues and he had stopped taking his medication. Which happens all the time. You think, do you know what I'm feeling great. I'm operating well. I think it's time that I came off the medication. And then you do, and then you just relapse.

[00:58:53] And before you know it, you don't know what's happening.

[00:58:54] Adam Cox: was sad 'cause he would disappeared for a while and we're like, what happened? And he did come back. And he was way more mellow.

[00:58:59] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But [00:59:00] the last story,

[00:59:00] Adam Cox: which is I think the one I'm about to say or go on, then you say it.

[00:59:03] Kyle Risi: Okay. So we had, we lived in this beautiful apartment.

[00:59:07] We owned the entire middle floor and. In our kitchen, big massive bay windows. You would look out and you would look over this beautiful church where everyone

[00:59:15] Adam Cox: would shoot up heroine.

[00:59:16] Kyle Risi: apart from that, beautiful, everyone would shoot up a heroin, brilliant. I love living there.

[00:59:19] And we saw this lovely couple Saturday afternoon sitting on each other's lap. I like, oh, young love. Hey young, love a picnic, having a little picnic. And then the next thing, she sits in his lap and like [00:59:30] they're cuddling and kissing. And then the next thing you just see her kind of bouncing

[00:59:34] Adam Cox: gyrating,

[00:59:34] Kyle Risi: just gyrating bouncing up and down.

[00:59:36] And they're clearly doing it. And she's looking around to see if anyone's watching. And we obviously have a full on clear view of everything is happening and we are just, we don't care, Each of their own. But we thought, let's have fun with them. And I think, did we not open up the window and we're like, Hey.

[00:59:51] There's kids that live here.

[00:59:53] Adam Cox: I think you said kids can see you.

[00:59:54] Kyle Risi: Kids can see you.

[00:59:56] Adam Cox: And she looked absolutely mortified.

[00:59:58] Kyle Risi: Mortified, yeah.

[00:59:59] Adam Cox: And she [01:00:00] did her best to discreetly get off him and put up her niggers.

[01:00:03] Kyle Risi: Yeah. And at the bottom of this road, Steve Wright

[01:00:06] Adam Cox: might have been 20 years earlier, but you can see the road. Did it really change?

[01:00:09] Kyle Risi: Did it really, and apparently it did massively change, but in comparison, you can just now imagine what it was like back in the seventies or early eighties.

[01:00:17] Adam Cox: Yeah. It was considered classy when we were there.

[01:00:19] Kyle Risi: So I love going there, like going back there to see where we used to live.

[01:00:22] Adam Cox: Oh yeah.

[01:00:23] Kyle Risi: So beautiful place.

[01:00:24] Adam Cox: A magical time. But back to the point of the story. Steve Wright situated himself conveniently within [01:00:30] the red light district. And the public gig didn't really last long. Neva did the marriage. Diane would later tell the press that Wright had been controlling, violent, and once attacked her with a knife.

[01:00:40] Kyle Risi: Okay.

[01:00:40] Adam Cox: And another time he slammed her head into the wall over the way that she folded the bedsheets. Fuck

[01:00:45] Kyle Risi: me.

[01:00:46] Adam Cox: Bedsheets.

[01:00:47] Kyle Risi: Bedsheets. Yeah. bedsheets are notoriously difficult to get wrong.

[01:00:49] Adam Cox: that's why she got her comeuppance.

[01:00:51] Kyle Risi: That's awful, Adam. But you have to know how to, actually, I am not defending it and I would never hit your head against a wall.

[01:00:59] Adam Cox: But the way I [01:01:00] fold bedsheets.

[01:01:00] Kyle Risi: But the way you fold bedsheets is not right. you have to do it the way that I do it, and you have to stack them properly. And there is a way, and I've shown you multiple times how to fold a fitted sheet. And you just crumple it up and stick it in the cupboard.

[01:01:13] Adam Cox: perhaps, Diane did the same thing.

[01:01:14] Kyle Risi: No, that's awful.

[01:01:16] Adam Cox: So while he was out spending their joint bank account on sex workers, she was expected to stay behind and keep the pub running. So it didn't last long. By the time Diane was out, the picture Wright had moved on again.

[01:01:28] This time he was in South [01:01:30] London, he became a landlord of another pub, the white horse in Chisel Hearst. Same story, different setting.

[01:01:35] He meets a young barmaid named Sarah. They have a daughter together, but the relationship falls apart before their daughter's first birthday.

[01:01:42] Kyle Risi: Okay,

[01:01:42] Adam Cox: Wright, he spirals again.

[01:01:44] He's into drinking. He's gambling. His debts are mounting up. Eventually he gets kicked out of the pub too. In the mid nineties, Wright had officially hit rock bottom. He tried to end his life in 1994, with carbon monoxide poisoning inside his own car. And another [01:02:00] attempt followed in the year 2000.

[01:02:01] This time on, from an overdose or an attempted overdose. After he came back from a 10 week trip to Thailand, he'd just been declared bankrupt. So this guy, he is, he has got some problems.

[01:02:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah,

[01:02:13] Adam Cox: he did try to bounce back in 2001, he picked up a bartending job at the Brook Hotel in Felix Stowe. Mm-hmm. But didn't last, he got caught stealing 80 pounds from the till and was convicted

[01:02:24] that one bad decision earned him a hundred hours of community service and something far more [01:02:30] significant.

[01:02:30] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:02:31] Adam Cox: A DNA swab.

[01:02:32] Kyle Risi: Oh.

[01:02:32] Adam Cox: And that routine procedure would mean he would then go on the list.

[01:02:36] Kyle Risi: Good. Thank God for petty theft.

[01:02:38] Adam Cox: Exactly.

[01:02:39] Kyle Risi: And so that is, because that's the DNA, the main piece of DNA, that really triangulated him.

[01:02:45] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:02:45] Kyle Risi: And then of course from there, they managed to then find the carpet fibers and the other DNA match swap. So yeah, that's great. I have a big problem with, authorities overextending their reach, but at the same time, all those cameras and [01:03:00] bins and all that DNA out there,

[01:03:02] Adam Cox: it solved the case.

[01:03:03]

[01:03:03] Kyle Risi: Really quickly ending in an oppressive way.

[01:03:05] Adam Cox: And so after this petty theft incident, Wright seemed to calm down a bit. He met a woman named Pamela Wright, no relation. They moved in together, in Ipswich, right in the heart of the Red Light District.

[01:03:16] on the surface, it seemed like their life or his life had finally settled.

[01:03:20] It was quiet, it was stable. But underneath all the real Steve Wright is still in there.

[01:03:24] Kyle Risi: Yeah. It's still bubbling away.

[01:03:25] Adam Cox: Pamela herself had no complaints. She described him as quiet, respectful. Her [01:03:30] biggest issue though is that was

[01:03:31] Kyle Risi: the sex.

[01:03:32] Adam Cox: actually, apparently their sex life does deteriorate.

[01:03:34] Kyle Risi: Ah.

[01:03:35] Adam Cox: And one reporter,

[01:03:36] Kyle Risi: that's what I said,

[01:03:36] I'm so good at this.

[01:03:37] Adam Cox: And so is that one of the reasons he would often go out, but he's got this history of sex a anyway,

[01:03:42] Kyle Risi: addic sex addiction anyway.

[01:03:43] Adam Cox: Yeah. But His girlfriend at the time. Pamela said her biggest issue with Wright was that, she'd become a bit of a golf widow.

[01:03:50] Apparently. Wright,

[01:03:50] Kyle Risi: what's that? A golf widow.

[01:03:52] Adam Cox: Yeah. Wright enjoyed his time at the golf club where he spent, most of his time.

[01:03:56] Kyle Risi: Oh, she's lost the husband to the golf course.

[01:03:58] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:03:58] Kyle Risi: very clever.

[01:03:59] Adam Cox: He's [01:04:00] described as a quiet, was drawn, socially awkward. A guy who kept to himself. He washed his car obsessively.

[01:04:06] He went to the bookies. He had a pint alone. He's the most boring man in the world. That's what his golf buddies would call him.

[01:04:11] Kyle Risi: Really?

[01:04:12] Adam Cox: Which is a hell of a title considering golf itself is pretty dull. And you've got people that like golf.

[01:04:18] Kyle Risi: Yeah. But in

[01:04:18] Adam Cox: co calling you boring,

[01:04:19] Kyle Risi: but in comparison to us, we're the cool golf kids, Steve?

[01:04:23] No. So actually he, it does sound like from your description that his life has majorly taken [01:04:30] a turn, right? Mm-hmm. He is, he's boring now. but again. Bubbling underneath, he's probably up to, no, he's finding a release elsewhere.

[01:04:39] Adam Cox: Yeah. And this is where things just. sort of get more contradictory in terms of this kind of, this guy who hasn't got his life together, obsessed with sex, and then this really quiet, boring man. Mm-hmm. If you talk to some of the sex workers of Ipswich before the murders, they described Wright not as a threat.

[01:04:56] They referred to him as the Mon Man

[01:04:57] Kyle Risi: Uhhuh.

[01:04:58] Adam Cox: Um,he was a regular, [01:05:00] someone familiar, a guy who paid in cash, wasn't aggressive,

[01:05:02] someone would even say they felt safe around him.

[01:05:05] Kyle Risi: Really. Ah, that makes it even more haunting.

[01:05:07] Adam Cox: A sex worker known as Kira later came forward. She described a final encounter though, with Wright, which felt very different.

[01:05:13] Right. She said that something had changed. he pinned me down. And he never used to do that. And it scared her because it wasn't like him. He became nasty. So in hindsight, something happened or whatever. The mask had slipped, he'd changed. Particularly in the way that he treated these women.

[01:05:28] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:05:28] Adam Cox: And it's believed Bright. Took a [01:05:30] bit of a break from visiting sex workers when he first moved in with his partner, Pamela. But he would soon resume that he claimed that he made this decision as their sex life had apparently become non-existent.

[01:05:40] so he'd go out in his blue Ford Moneo and in fact get this on December the first 2006. So just one day before the first body was found?

[01:05:49] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:05:49] Adam Cox: Steve Wright was actually stopped by the police. They cocked him driving slowly through the red light district at 2:00 AM suspicious but not illegal. And he told them it

[01:05:59] Kyle Risi: is [01:06:00] illegal.

[01:06:00] Adam Cox: he could be driving through it.

[01:06:01] Kyle Risi: Oh right,but you're not looking

[01:06:03] Adam Cox: to

[01:06:03] Kyle Risi: solicit.

[01:06:04] Adam Cox: Yeah. And he told them, and this must be like the oldest line in the book, that he just couldn't sleep and so he went out for a nice relaxing drive at 2:00 AM Like one does in the red light district.

[01:06:14] Kyle Risi: Yeah. what if he lives in the area?

[01:06:16] Adam Cox: True.

[01:06:17] Kyle Risi: Then we'd be like, oh, we're just taking a little drive. Yeah. Like in the Red Light District, yeah, I lived just there.

[01:06:21] Adam Cox: yeah,

[01:06:21] Kyle Risi: that's, let me tell you some stories.

[01:06:23] Adam Cox: And that's probably how he got away with it. But since driving around with sleepy eyes isn't technically a crime mm-hmm.

[01:06:29] They had to let him go. and [01:06:30] they couldn't have known that just a few hours later, the man that they just stopped was about to dump a body in the river.

[01:06:35] Kyle Risi: Right.

[01:06:36] Adam Cox: And 19 days later, Wright's luck finally ran out. So it didn't really take a huge amount of time to track him down and get him.

[01:06:42] On December the 19th, the police arrest him, on suspicion of all five murders. Mm-hmm. And from there he completely clams. During interviews, he gives classic no comments or, yeah, he doesn't really respond to the questions. He pleads not guilty. When formally charged in court on December the 22nd, the press [01:07:00] immediately dubbed him as the Suffolk Strangler and his front page news every day on every newspaper.

[01:07:05] Even the authorities had to step in and they called out the British press to maybe dial it back a bit because in the interests of not destroying this whole fair trial.

[01:07:14] Kyle Risi: yeah. Because it can be so damaging, right?

[01:07:17] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:07:17] Kyle Risi: But at the same time, like they've got such damning evidence, really fair trial.

[01:07:22] You think, do you really wanna make allowances for that it is almost, in my opinion, and I probably shouldn't be saying this, but just let them run with it [01:07:30] and let them take to the cleaners.

[01:07:31] Mm-hmm. Because he should be held accountable, not just in the courts, but also in society as well. That's heinous crimes.

[01:07:38] Adam Cox: So the trial of Steve Wright began on January the 16th, 2008 at its which Crown Court?

[01:07:43] Kyle Risi: So two years later.

[01:07:44] Adam Cox: Yeah. It took over six weeks of grim testimonies from families, forensic experts, and police. Steve's father was understandably stunned. His first reaction when the news broke was, no way Steve's a killer.

[01:07:56] He's soft, he's daft. he wouldn't know how to kill five people [01:08:00] and then scatter them around Suffolk. But that didn't last. 'cause over time his father admitted the more he thought about it, the odd behaviors, his failed relationships, the disappearances, perhaps his relationship with his mom and how he treated women in the past.

[01:08:13] Kyle Risi: I see.

[01:08:14] Adam Cox: It started to make sense.

[01:08:15] Kyle Risi: Sure. Yeah. But also he was like, there's no way Steve did this. There's no way that he would know how to kill five people and dump their body.

[01:08:21] Adam Cox: I guess you'd learn on the job.

[01:08:23] Kyle Risi: It's very much a learn on the job thing.

[01:08:24] Adam Cox: Like you said, this case feels like a slam dunk with all the CCTV footage, DNA, [01:08:30] the forensic fibers, et cetera.

[01:08:31] Kyle Risi: all objective evidence.

[01:08:32] Adam Cox: Yeah. But Wright's defense team did their best to present all of this as a series of unlucky coincidences.

[01:08:38] Kyle Risi: Bullshit what? DNA and carpet fibers.

[01:08:41] That's not an unlucky coincidence. Idiots.

[01:08:44] Adam Cox: they say that, he had been with the victims, but only as a paying client. of course his DNA and fibers were there.

[01:08:49] So yes, I can see that. But come on, that is a lot. What stacked up against him,

[01:08:54] Kyle Risi: but his car was spotted on the night that they were murdered in those areas.

[01:08:58] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:08:58] Kyle Risi: So I get it. [01:09:00] I get how their DNA could be in their cars because that's sometimes your only place that you can go to earn the monies, but to be spotted on the night in the vicinity, I'm sorry, I don't buy that.

[01:09:11] Adam Cox: And his past behavior, it sack up against him.

[01:09:13] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:09:14] Adam Cox: And so when Wright finally took the S hand, his responses were just pretty uninspired. He would say it would appear so if you say so, yes. So he is not admitting guilt for any of this.

[01:09:24] Kyle Risi: And Is this a jury trial?

[01:09:25] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:09:26] Kyle Risi: So that's not ever going to look great in front of a [01:09:30] jury for you to be so dismissive and have that kind of attitude.

[01:09:33] Adam Cox: Yeah,

[01:09:33] Kyle Risi: no.

[01:09:34] Adam Cox: And when asked about Tanya Nichol, the victim seen climbing into the Ford one day. Oh, he admitted it might have been his car, but he said he changed his mind and dropped her off because she had acne. So a real gentleman?

[01:09:46] Kyle Risi: Yeah, gross.

[01:09:48] Adam Cox: So despite some of the circumstantial nature of the evidence, the jury didn't really take long though.

[01:09:53] Eight hours. In fact, that's all it took for them to come back with the,

[01:09:56] Kyle Risi: quite long

[01:09:56] Adam Cox: unanimous verdict,

[01:09:57] Kyle Risi: in my opinion.

[01:09:57] Adam Cox: I guess they have to make it look like they are doing some [01:10:00] work out, like stretch out their full day of a

[01:10:02] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Guys, if we come back with a verdict soon, we don't get lunch and they're serving salmon.

[01:10:07] Adam Cox: I came here for the salmon.

[01:10:08] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:10:09] Adam Cox: he's found guilty on all five accounts. there's no emotion from Wright. Nothing. He just stares straight ahead and didn't say a word. On February the 22nd, 2008, the judge hands down a whole life sentence. So no possibility of parole, which is And he sums up perfectly drugs And prostitution meant the victims were at risk.

[01:10:28] Yes. But neither drugs nor [01:10:30] prostitution killed them. You did?

[01:10:32] Kyle Risi: Wow. Yes. What a wonderful thing to say from the judge. Say that again. Say it again. Adam.

[01:10:40] Adam Cox: Drugs and prostitution meant the victims were at risk.

[01:10:42] Kyle Risi: Yes.

[01:10:43] Adam Cox: But neither drugs nor prostitution killed them. You did.

[01:10:46] Kyle Risi: And do you know what, that's a brilliant thing to say, but also like we as a society need to learn that as well.

[01:10:51] Like when these women turn up dead and we sit there and we go, do you know what? They had it coming? 'cause we see that all the time. No, it's this [01:11:00] motherfucker who's killed them. Yeah. Not the drugs or the prostitution.

[01:11:03] Adam Cox: Exactly.

[01:11:03] Kyle Risi: God.

[01:11:04] Adam Cox: Exactly. So some families are relieved. Others felt justice hadn't really truly been served.

[01:11:10] They felt like the death penalty was the only way that they could get justice. Mm-hmm. But we don't have that in the uk. And while Steve had maintained his innocence ever since his appeals have all failed. In one bizarre letter to a local paper, he described the verdict as like a knife through the heart.

[01:11:25] And he says he doesn't have a violent bone in his body. I think his previous girlfriends would [01:11:30] say that's not true.

[01:11:30] Kyle Risi: Especially Diane Cole on the bedsheets.

[01:11:32] Adam Cox: Yes. But let's be honest, his path says otherwise. Whilst Wright never gave an explanation, experts, police and psychologists agree, it was likely a storm of deep-rooted anger towards his mother, a lifetime of broken relationships.

[01:11:46] He was obsessed with sex and a disturbing obsession with control. He didn't just kill, he hunted. He picked victims who are vulnerable, invisible to most of society, and he used them to exert dominance and power.

[01:11:59] And one thing I [01:12:00] think people can't shake off is the fact that Steve Wright started killing quite late for a serial killer at 48, which is unusual.

[01:12:09] Kyle Risi: Is it? Is that really true?

[01:12:11] Adam Cox: Most serial offenders begin much earlier, often around 35. So I think we've passed it.

[01:12:16] Thankfully.

[01:12:17] Kyle Risi: We're safe.

[01:12:17] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:12:18] So the fact that he starts at 48 and the typical age of 35 suggests a possibility, did his crime stretch back?

[01:12:25] further than that?

[01:12:26] Kyle Risi: Oh. And do we know

[01:12:29] Adam Cox: He's been [01:12:30] linked to numerous murders, which ultimately, despite some similar patterns mm-hmm. Or some proximity to these deaths. But

[01:12:35] Kyle Risi: remember, his early murders were very different to his later three murders.

[01:12:39] Adam Cox: That's true. But yeah, a number of names have been, or, I guess cold cases mm-hmm. Have been reopened and looked at and was at him.

[01:12:47] But eventually there's a lot that it just doesn't add up as much as he could have been lot definitive. Yeah. He could have been in the vicinity, this, that and the other. They can't pin it on him.

[01:12:55] Kyle Risi: And he's in jail right now anyway. So the only thing that solds, if you go in [01:13:00] hunting a, you're touch O'Neal in the haystack and all it is doing is providing, which is important.

[01:13:06] I'm not just mismatch, but provides closure to the victims of these unsolved cases. True. But is there any value in doing it when there's other cases that need to be looked at? It's tricky.

[01:13:17] Adam Cox: Well, there is the murder of Victoria Hall On June the third, 2024, Wright is formally charged with the 1999 murder of 17-year-old Victoria Hall, a [01:13:30] schoolgirl who disappeared walking home from a nightclub in Felixstowe in Suffolk.

[01:13:35] Her body was found five days later in a ditch, but no one has ever been formally charged until now.

[01:13:41] Kyle Risi: So his murders go back all the way to 1999. , Seven years prior.

[01:13:45] Adam Cox: Yeah. This all followed, a cold case review launched in 2019 after police received new information and they charged Wright, not just with Victoria's murder, but with an attempt at kidnapping in a separate incident as well.

[01:13:57] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:13:58] Adam Cox: So his trial for this is [01:14:00] gonna begin in February, 2026. What? Yeah, which is around about the time this episode goes out.

[01:14:06] Kyle Risi: You sneaky little bastard.

[01:14:07] Adam Cox: So as of now, he hasn't entered a plea for the, a plea deal or anything like that. So he could be found guilty of this murder.

[01:14:13] Kyle Risi: would he, why would they enter him into a plea deal?

[01:14:15] he's in life prison anyway. There's no motivation to catch him for this because he's already in prison for this. So I don't think there would be a plea deal.

[01:14:24] Adam Cox: could he somehow get better treatment, a better prison or something if he admits maybe that's an [01:14:30] option if he did plead guilty.

[01:14:31] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:14:32] Adam Cox: but yeah, this is the only case at the moment that people are confident that it's him.

[01:14:36] Kyle Risi: Okay. But there are others, right?

[01:14:38] Adam Cox: There are other cases, yeah. Take Jeanette Kempton for example. In 1989, she vanished from Brixton right near where Wright was living at the time. Uhhuh, her body turned up miles away in rural Suffolk.

[01:14:50] Kyle Risi: A home basically

[01:14:51] Adam Cox: from

[01:14:51] Kyle Risi: where he was from

[01:14:52] Adam Cox: in 2019. A former officer publicly named him as a potential suspect, but the case remains unsolved. Then there's Vicki [01:15:00] Glass, a young woman who went missing in Middlesborough in 2000. Her body was found in the brook of the North York. Moores and Wright hasn't been charged, but he hasn't been ruled out of this.

[01:15:10] Kyle Risi: Sure, okay.

[01:15:11] Adam Cox: there's another woman, Amanda Duncan, who vanished in Ipswich in 1993. She was last seen talking to a man in a car on Portman Road, which is where Wright was known to pick up sex workers at the time. Again, he's linked to her disappearance, so not been proven, but

[01:15:26] It is possible that he's involved in some of these cases.

[01:15:29] Kyle Risi: Wow, [01:15:30] okay. And, the core cases happening in February, that is just investigating the Hall Lady

[01:15:37] Adam Cox: Victoria Hall. Yeah.

[01:15:38] Kyle Risi: Okay. Interesting.

[01:15:39] Adam Cox: And it's hard not to wonder just how many victims there really are. So maybe the 2006 killings weren't the beginning. Maybe they were the end of a much longer spree. And if that's true, then we're still only scratching the surface of what Steve Wright may have actually done.

[01:15:55] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:15:55] Adam Cox: As of now, Steve Wright is 67 years old serving a full life [01:16:00] sentence in prison, soon will find out if he's the murderer behind Victoria Hall.

[01:16:04] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:16:04] Adam Cox: And that is the story of the Suffolk Strangler, Steve Wright and the poor woman who fell victim to him.

[01:16:10] Kyle Risi: Yeah, Adam, that's horrifying.

[01:16:12] Like I do remember the story when it obviously broke in 2006, but I just didn't realize. Yeah, the degree in which he was murdering these women,yeah. That's sad,

[01:16:23] Adam Cox: bad man.

[01:16:24] Kyle Risi: So that's liketwo strangler that we've done. But it's crazy. There's similarities between what happened in [01:16:30] the Hillside Strangler case and with Steve Wright. A lot of similarities, but also a lot of similarities in the way that the police investigated.

[01:16:38] Mm-hmm. Or treated a lot of these cases. And for a time, because they were sex workers, they were not treated as seriously. But you know what, that last line that you said from the judge that was, that's great.

[01:16:50] I'm gonna use that from now on.

[01:16:51] Adam Cox: Yeah, exactly. I think justice, as best as it can be, has been served. Right. Kyle, before we wrap up, do you fancy doing [01:17:00] some member shout outs?

[01:17:01] Kyle Risi: Member shout outs? Yes. let's give that a crack, shall we?

[01:17:04] Adam Cox: as you all know by now, HR has been hard at work assigning the ideal job roles to all of our certified Greeks and big top tier members.

[01:17:12] Kyle Risi: They only have just the one problem because while we know what your job title is, Sue has obviously gone ahead and lost your actual job description. So we dunno what the job entails.

[01:17:24] Adam Cox: Yeah. So when you hear your name, take note of your job title.

[01:17:27] Kyle Risi: Mm-hmm.

[01:17:28] Adam Cox: And using the link in the show notes, [01:17:30] submit your official job description to hr.

[01:17:32] Kyle Risi: Yes. And make sure you like, listen to your job title. Don't make or invent a new job title we have a mandated list of roles that we need to fill.

[01:17:40] Adam Cox: Yeah. And you get told what to do.

[01:17:42] Kyle Risi: Yeah.

[01:17:42] Adam Cox: Get in line.

[01:17:43] Kyle Risi: Yeah. Alright. This week we'd like to give a very big welcome to Rebecca MacIntyre. She is our Circus Breeze Misdirection analyst.

[01:17:52] Adam Cox: Okay. I thought I said feis and I feel like that'd be weird.

[01:17:54] Kyle Risi: Feb.

[01:17:54] Adam Cox: We've got our own fe son. Tabitha g she is our carousel horse compliance referee.

[01:17:59] Kyle Risi: [01:18:00] Mm-hmm. We've got Becca Cadwell, certified overseer of clown car evaluation drills.

[01:18:07] Adam Cox: Yeah. we need to get those clown outta the car. Quick,

[01:18:09] Kyle Risi: quick. There's a fire,

[01:18:10] Adam Cox: Yeah.

[01:18:10] Then we have Lauren, Adam Seitz. I hope I'm saying that right.

[01:18:14] Kyle Risi: Let me try it. Adam Schitz.

[01:18:16] Adam Cox: I'm not sure that's it. She is our senior coordinator of unnecessary, dramatic entrances.

[01:18:22] Kyle Risi: Yes. we've got Oliver Hepworth. He is now our new human cannibal.

[01:18:28] Greaser,

[01:18:28] Adam Cox: yes.

[01:18:29] Kyle Risi: Was something [01:18:30] different last week.

[01:18:31] Adam Cox: And then Miss jp, our grand custodian of the Sacred Circus Key Chain Box.

[01:18:35] Kyle Risi: The crotch dangler.

[01:18:37] Adam Cox: Yes.

[01:18:38] Kyle Risi: and this week's best job description that we've received is from Callum. It's from Callum Hargreaves, our Director of Animal Relations and unauthorized negotiations.

[01:18:49] Adam at the Compendium Circus.

[01:18:51] Adam Cox: So what does Callum say then?

[01:18:52] Kyle Risi: you've got it right in front of you. Okay. Callum says he basically oversees the payroll of the beast, including any freelance [01:19:00] wildlife that wanders into the circus,

[01:19:02] Adam Cox: He also goes on to say it's a tough job because he carries out quarterly appraisals with the big cats and you'd be amazed how many of them think that he reports into them.

[01:19:11] So these meetings often turn into them, appraising him, Mostly revolving around their disappointment around the lack of clowns there to eat, not enough food.

[01:19:21] Kyle Risi: This is clearly a chat GBT job,

[01:19:23] Adam Cox: I

[01:19:23] Kyle Risi: I think so clearly.

[01:19:24] He says that since whipping is part of the circus experience, it's also his job to ensure beast [01:19:30] contracts are tight enough to prevent tribunals. Last time this happened, we agreed to surrender all clowns under forefoot to the bears as food, which was a massive blow to the lions and to our car capacity numbers.

[01:19:43] Adam Cox: Yeah. Although that does make, Becca's role a bit easier because she can get them out quicker.

[01:19:47] Kyle Risi: She does. And he says that this can't happen again.

[01:19:50] Adam Cox: Yes. Overall, he's on track. And the instant logs and now categorize into three folders, deaths, mutilations, and ongoing.

[01:19:57] That's troubling.

[01:19:58] but it's not my job to look after that.

[01:19:59] Kyle Risi: [01:20:00] No, we wish you luck, Callum.

[01:20:01] Adam Cox: Mm-hmm.

[01:20:02] Kyle Risi: Guys, these are really brilliant. Keep them coming. If you have not received your job description, and you are a certified freak or a big top tier member, you can just send us a DM and we will let you know exactly what your job description is so you can get on and submit yours.

[01:20:17] Adam Cox: Shall we run the outro for the week?

[01:20:19] Kyle Risi: Yes. Let's do that. ,

[01:20:20] Adam Cox: And that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium and assembly of fascinating things.

[01:20:26] Kyle Risi: If today's episode has sparked your curiosity, then do us a [01:20:30] favor and please follow us on your favorite podcasting app. It really,does make a world of difference and really does help other people find the show.

[01:20:37] Adam Cox: For our dedicated freaks out there. Don't forget, next week's episode is already waiting for you on our Patreon. Completely free to access

[01:20:44] Kyle Risi: And if you want even more. Then Remember, join our certified freak tier and unlock our entire archive and delve into exclusive content and get sneak peeks of what's coming next.

[01:20:53] We would really love you guys to be part of our growing community.

[01:20:56] Adam Cox: We drop new episodes every Tuesday, so until then, [01:21:00] remember, someone might seem ordinary until they're not evil, often hides in plain sight.

[01:21:06] Kyle Risi: Ooh, poignant.

[01:21:07] See you next time.

[01:21:08] Adam Cox: See you. [01:21:30]