Guilty of killing five prostitutes

A married British man was found guilty yesterday of murdering five women in a 2006 killing spree that led to one of Britain's biggest manhunts.

Forklift truck driver Steve Wright, 49, picked up and asphyxiated the women, all drug addicts aged under 30 who worked as prostitutes in the town of Ipswich, northeast of London.

Mr Wright, who had sex with four of the five women, left two of the bodies in a cruciform position with arms outstretched.

He will be sentenced today. Mr Wright denied the allegations even though his DNA was found on three of the victims and bloodstains from two of them were found on his jacket at his home.

The naked corpses of Gemma Adams, Tania Nicol, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls were discovered scattered around Ipswich over a ten-day period in late 2006, causing panic in the town and the surrounding area.

The murders by the "Suffolk Strangler" were compared with those of the 19th century serial killer "Jack the Ripper" who targeted prostitutes in the east end of London.

Mr Wright undertook his campaign of violence while his 63-year-old partner of eight years, Pamela, was working night shifts. She was unaware he was meeting prostitutes.

Pamela Wright did not give evidence at the trial or make a statement to police but her movements proved pivotal in building the case against Mr Wright.

When she took two weeks off the night shift, the killing spree - which lasted six and a half weeks - was interrupted.

The murders led to calls for action to help prostitutes. Paying for sex in Britain is not a crime, but soliciting for sex and running brothels is illegal.

Britain has a history of killers targeting prostitutes.

Jack the Ripper was blamed for the deaths of five women in 1888 but never found. Peter Sutcliffe, called the "Yorkshire Ripper", murdered 13 women, most of them prostitutes, in northern England between 1975 and 1980.