Renowned criminologist Professor David Wilson has issued a stark warning that convicted serial killer Steve Wright is probably responsible for the disappearances of two additional women whose bodies have never been recovered. This chilling assertion follows Wright's recent guilty plea to the 1999 murder of 17-year-old student Victoria Hall from Trimley St Mary in Suffolk.
Sixth Confirmed Victim and a Whole Life Order
On Monday, Wright, now 67 years old, admitted to killing Victoria Hall, marking his sixth officially confirmed victim. The notorious killer is already serving a whole life order, imposed in 2008, for the murders of five women in Ipswich during 2006. Professor Wilson had previously identified Victoria Hall as a potential victim of the so-called Suffolk Strangler in his 2008 book Hunting Evil, a full seventeen years before Wright's confession.
Methodology Linking Wright to Cold Cases
Speaking exclusively to the Daily Mail's The Trial podcast, Professor Wilson detailed the investigative methodology that connected Victoria's disappearance to Steve Wright. He explained that applying this same analytical approach strongly suggests Wright's involvement in the unsolved disappearances of Amanda Duncan, who vanished from Ipswich in 1993, and Kellie Pratt, who disappeared from Norwich in 2000.
"From the get go, I felt what was happening in Ipswich was very criminally sophisticated," Wilson told podcast host Caroline Cheetham. "Wright put the bodies of these young women in water to dispose of any forensic evidence. I felt that whoever had done it, was probably known to police because everything suggested the perpetrator had done this before."
A Pattern of Geographic and Biographical Links
Professor Wilson has meticulously followed Wright's crimes since the initial discovery of victims Tanya Nicol and Gemma Adams in Ipswich, which triggered the original manhunt. He noted the proximity of Ipswich and Norwich, speculating early on whether the same killer was responsible for unsolved murders in both areas.
"In my experience, no serial killer starts killing in their late forties. Serial killers are long in the making," Wilson stated, highlighting that Wright was 48 when arrested in 2006. Wright had a long history of living in Norwich, where he worked as a barman in a pub located in the city's red-light district, and he also maintained connections to Felixstowe.
"There were a number of these biographical details that linked Steve Wright to other cases and one of those was Vicky Hall," Wilson emphasised. "At the time in 2008, I said that I believed Wright was responsible for what happened to Vicky Hall."
The Abduction of Victoria Hall
Wright, a former forklift driver and cruise ship waiter, abducted Victoria Hall from the street in Trimley St Mary as she walked home from a nightclub in Felixstowe during the early hours of September 19, 1999. She was mere yards from her home when taken. Tragically, her body was discovered five days later in a ditch approximately twenty-five miles away.
Road Network Connections and Modus Operandi
Wilson posits that many of Wright's murders can be linked to the road network connecting Ipswich, Norwich, and Felixstowe. In his book, he associated several unsolved cases with these routes and Wright's established modus operandi. The cases of Amanda Duncan and Kellie Pratt are particularly compelling.
"They have never found the bodies of Kellie Pratt or Mandy Duncan. They, for me, are likely to have been victims of Steve Wright," Wilson asserted. "The timeline goes back to the 1990s, we are talking almost two decades prior to what happened in Ipswich. He was a very experienced killer, in my view, by 2006. A consequence of these earlier crimes."
To hear the complete interview with Professor David Wilson, listeners can search for The Trial podcast on their preferred platform.
