The Invisible Killer: How UK Killer Steven Wright Hid in Plain Sight for 27 Years
My new book examines Britain's Suffolk Strangler—the forklift driver who proved that the most dangerous predators don't look like monsters
I was born in Norwich. I've had drinks in the Ferry Boat Inn on the corner of King Street, a Victorian pub with exposed beams and a clientele that ranged from regulars nursing pints to students stumbling in after last call. It's the kind of place every English town has—unremarkable, familiar, safe.
Except in the late 1980s, the landlord of the Ferry Boat Inn was Steven Wright, (although I never actually met him as far as I can recall). But by the time he left that job, at least one woman—possibly more—was already dead.
I didn't know this then, of course. Nobody did. That's the thing about predators like Wright. They don't announce themselves. They blend in. They serve you beer with a smile. They clock in for their forklift shifts. They live on ordinary streets in ordinary houses and kill with such calculated precision that it takes decades to catch them.
My new book, The Invisible Serial Killer: Steven Wright and the Murders That Spanned Decades, tells the story of how a man spent twenty-seven years hunting vulnerable women across Norfolk and Suffolk before finally being brought to justice. It's a story about delayed justice, forensic breakthroughs, and the families who refused to give up. But it's also a story about proximity—about what it means when murder happens in your hometown, when the killer works in your local pubs and drives past your house and exists so close to your daily life that the distinction between "them" and "us" collapses entirely.
September 1999: The Ghost
Victoria Hall was seventeen years old. Two weeks shy of her eighteenth birthday. She was studying for her A-levels at Orwell High School with plans to attend Roehampton University in Surrey to study sociology. On the night of September 18, 1999, she went to the Bandbox nightclub in Felixstowe with her best friend Gemma Algar. They danced. They laughed. They left around 1:00 AM and stopped for chips at the Bodrum Grill—the ritual of British teenagers everywhere.
They walked the two miles home together, eating their chips and singing. At approximately 2:20 AM, they reached the junction of High Road and Faulkeners Way in Trimley St Mary. Three hundred yards from Victoria's house. Close enough that she could probably see the lights if she looked.
They said goodnight. Gemma turned left. Victoria turned right.
Gemma heard two screams. High-pitched. Sharp enough to cut through the night. But she thought it was just people joking around, the way people do after the pubs close. By the time she realized something was wrong, Victoria was already gone—bundled into Steven Wright's burgundy Ford Granada Scorpio, already being driven twenty-five miles to Creeting St Peter where he would murder her and dump her body in a water-filled ditch.
For twenty-six years, Victoria's case haunted Suffolk Police. They arrested the wrong man in 2000—a businessman named Adrian Bradshaw whose Porsche happened to have soil on the pedals that matched soil from the dump site. He was acquitted in ninety minutes when the prosecution's case collapsed. The real killer was elsewhere, working at the Brook Hotel in Felixstowe as a barman, stealing from the till—a theft that would eventually put his DNA in the national database but not before he'd killed five more women.
Victoria's mother, Lorinda, spent twenty-six years waiting for answers. She died in December 2025, two months before Steven Wright finally admitted what he'd done.
December 2006: The Killing Streets
I remember when the bodies started appearing, and hearing about the fear that settled over Ipswich like fog in December 2006. Five women in six weeks. All sex workers. All found naked in the Suffolk countryside, strangled or asphyxiated, dumped in rural locations like they were disposable commodities rather than human beings with families and friends and dreams that had been crushed by addiction and circumstance.
- Tania Nicol, nineteen years old. Last seen October 30 near the Sainsbury's garage on London Road. Body found December 8, thirty-nine days later.
- Gemma Adams, twenty-five. Boyfriend reported her missing at 2:55 AM on November 15 when she didn't come home. Body found December 2 in Belstead Brook.
- Anneli Alderton, twenty-four and three months pregnant. Found December 10 in woodland near Nacton, strangled. The baby she'd been carrying died with her.
- Paula Clennell, twenty-four. She'd given an interview to Anglia News just days before she disappeared, talking about the murders. The reporter asked if she was scared. "It does make you a bit wary about getting into cars," Paula said. "But I need the money." Five words that sum up the trap: But I need the money. Her body was found December 12 near Levington.
- Annette Nicholls, twenty-nine. Found the same day as Paula, twenty feet away. Both women had been posed in the cruciform position—arms outstretched, legs together, like grotesque angels.
The media descended. Camera crews. Reporters doing live broadcasts from London Road while families waited to learn if their daughters were among the dead. Ipswich—a quiet market town of 140,000 people—became the center of a national nightmare. The tabloids called him the Suffolk Strangler, the Red-Light Ripper. Headlines screamed. Murder sells papers.
And all the while, Steven Wright lived at 79 London Road. Right in the heart of the red-light district. Going to work as a forklift driver. Coming home to his partner Pamela, who worked night shifts at a nursing home and had no idea what her quiet, well-dressed boyfriend did while she was gone.
On December 19, 2006, Suffolk Police arrested Wright. The DNA evidence was overwhelming. Microscopic traces found on three victims. Seven tiny flecks of Paula Clennell's blood in his Ford Mondeo. Fiber evidence linking all five women to his car and home. The £80 theft conviction from 2001 had put his DNA in the national database, and now that database had caught him.
He was convicted in February 2008. Life imprisonment with a whole-life order. He would die in prison.
But Victoria Hall's case remained unsolved. The connection between the 1999 murder and the 2006 killing spree wouldn't be made for another thirteen years.
The Breakthrough: When Technology Catches Up
Cold cases don't stay cold because detectives give up. They stay cold because the technology to solve them doesn't exist yet.
In 2019, Suffolk Police reopened Operation Avon—Victoria Hall's case. New witness information had emerged, but more importantly, forensic science had evolved exponentially since 1999. Y-STR DNA analysis could now detect microscopic fragments of male DNA that earlier methods would have missed entirely. Facial recognition software could identify people in grainy CCTV footage that human eyes couldn't parse.
Dr. Sarah Chen, the forensic scientist assigned to the reinvestigation, examined samples that had been preserved from Victoria's 1999 post-mortem. Using Y-chromosome Short Tandem Repeat profiling, she found male DNA. Degraded, yes—twenty years in storage would do that—but present. Identifiable. Usable.
The profile was entered into the national DNA database.
It matched Steven Wright.
The same DNA found on the Ipswich victims was on Victoria's body. The man already serving a whole-life order for five murders had killed before. Seven years before. And he'd gotten away with it because the technology to catch him didn't exist yet.
Detectives built the case methodically. CCTV footage from a petrol station on September 19, 1999, showing Wright filling up his burgundy Granada at 6:13 AM—just hours after Victoria disappeared. Emily Doherty's testimony about the attempted kidnapping the night before Victoria's murder—the escape that should have led police to Wright's car if anyone had bothered to investigate properly. Vehicle records showing Wright had sold the Granada ten days after the murder. Geographic analysis proving he knew the dump site intimately.
On July 28, 2021, Wright was arrested at HMP Long Lartin on suspicion of Victoria's murder. He said nothing. Released under investigation while forensic scientists continued their work.
In December 2023, he was rearrested. On May 22, 2024, he was formally charged with Victoria Hall's murder and kidnapping, plus the attempted kidnapping of Emily Doherty.
Trial was set for February 2, 2026 at the Old Bailey.
And then, on that first day of trial—after twenty-six years of denials, after eighteen years of maintaining his innocence about the Ipswich murders despite DNA evidence—Steven Wright changed his plea.
Guilty..!
The first admission of guilt in his entire criminal history.
Why Now? The Psychology of Late Confession
Professor Samantha Lundrigan, an expert in serial killers and criminal behavior, wasn't surprised by the timing of Wright's confession.
"He didn't suddenly develop a conscience," she told reporters. "He didn't want to bring peace to Victoria's family. His reasons would have been purely self-serving."
Wright was already serving a whole-life order. Already guaranteed to die in prison. The additional forty-year minimum term for Victoria's murder was essentially symbolic. So why confess?
Control. After eighteen years of being just another prisoner, a trial would put Wright back in the spotlight. Make him the center of attention again. Give him power over the narrative, over the families, over the proceedings.
By pleading guilty at the last minute—on the very first day of trial, after weeks of preparation, after families had braced themselves for weeks of testimony—Wright maximized the drama. The courtroom gasped when he spoke. The media coverage exploded. For a brief moment, Steven Wright was front-page news again.
It was theater. And Wright, who'd spent his life being invisible, being overlooked, being unremarkable, got to be the star one more time.
Or maybe it was simpler. Maybe his lawyers told him the evidence was so overwhelming—the DNA, the CCTV, Emily Doherty's testimony, the vehicle records—that he was going to lose. And when you lose a trial after making families sit through weeks of hearing about what you did, it's worse than just admitting it.
Maybe Wright calculated that a guilty plea would give him some measure of control. Would let him avoid cross-examination. Would spare him the indignity of being picked apart by prosecutors.
Whatever the reason, the word finally came out on February 2, 2026: Guilty.
The Families: Twenty-Six Years of Hell
Graham Hall stood outside the Old Bailey with his son Steven's arm around his shoulders. He was seventy years old. He'd spent more than a third of his life waiting for this moment.
"We have endured twenty-six years of hell which will continue from today onwards and forever," he told reporters. "Steve Wright robbed us of seeing Victoria turn into a woman, of watching her marry, of meeting our grandchildren."
His wife Lorinda should have been there. Should have been standing beside him, finally hearing the word they'd waited twenty-six years to hear. But Lorinda had died in December 2025, seventy years old, two months before Wright's confession.
Mr. Justice Bennathan addressed this directly during sentencing. "Your delaying until almost the day of trial meant that Ms Hall's mother, Lorinda, died in December last year without knowing that her daughter's killer had finally been brought to justice."
The cruelest part. Not just that justice was delayed. But that it arrived too late for the woman who'd needed it most.
The families of the Ipswich five carry their own weight. Jim Duell spoke about his daughter Gemma, who'd dreamed of being a pop star at Chantry High School before drugs took her away into a secret world where fathers couldn't follow. Kerry Nicol talked about Tania, who loved Harry Potter and The Zutons and had been bright and bubbly before heroin made the world softer around the edges and easier to navigate.
Emily Doherty, who escaped Wright the night before he killed Victoria, testified about her fury at how she'd been treated by police. "They treated me like a silly little girl," she said. She'd given them a description. A partial registration number. Details about the burgundy Granada with the distinctive exhaust rattle. And they'd done nothing.
If they'd taken her seriously, Victoria might have been Wright's only victim instead of his first. The five Ipswich women might still be alive.
The Invisible Man: Who Was Steven Wright?
Steven Wright was born in Erpingham, Norfolk, on April 24, 1958. Second of four children. Military policeman for a father. Veterinary nurse for a mother who left when Wright was six years old and didn't return for forty years.
He was unremarkable. Left school at sixteen with no qualifications. Joined the Merchant Navy. Worked as a chef on ferries. Became a steward on the QE2 luxury liner, serving champagne to wealthy passengers while nursing his own darkness below deck. Married twice. Divorced twice. Had children he abandoned. Worked as a pub landlord, a barman, a forklift driver.
The kind of life that doesn't make headlines. The kind of man you wouldn't notice in a crowd.
But beneath the ordinariness, there was something else. Violence toward his second wife Diane. Affairs. Gambling addictions that led to bankruptcy. Suicide attempts—carbon monoxide poisoning, overdoses—that failed. And a pattern of using sex workers that, by his own admission, started in the 1980s and never stopped.
Wright refused to cooperate with psychologists. Refused to participate in rehabilitation programs. For eighteen years, he maintained his innocence about the Ipswich murders despite DNA evidence. For twenty-six years, he stayed silent about Victoria Hall.
What does that say about someone?
Criminologists suggest narcissism. Control. A need to dictate the terms of his own narrative. Even in prison, even convicted, even serving a whole-life order, Wright maintained power by withholding information.
He would never tell investigators about the other victims. Never admit to the Norwich murders that remain unsolved. Never give peace to the families still waiting.
Unfinished Business: How Many More?
Six confirmed murders. Twenty-seven years between the first and last. But criminologists agree: serial killers don't stop and start. They don't go dormant for seven years between victims unless they're in prison or dead.
Wright was neither. He was free. Working. Traveling. Hiring sex workers across England.
The files keep coming. Cold cases from Norwich. From London. From Felixstowe and Middlesbrough and anywhere else Wright's name appears in connection to unsolved murders of vulnerable women.
- Natalie Pearman, sixteen, found strangled near Norwich in 1992. DNA ruled Wright out in 2017.
- Michelle Bettles, twenty-two, found strangled near Norwich in 2002. DNA ruled Wright out in 2022.
- Vicky Glass, twenty-one, found in a stream in North Yorkshire in 2000. Under investigation.
- Jeanette Kempton, thirty-two, found in a ditch near Wangford, Suffolk, in 1989. Under investigation.
- Amanda Duncan, twenty-six, vanished from Portman Road, Ipswich, in 1993. Body never found. Insufficient evidence.
- Kellie Pratt, twenty-eight, disappeared from Norwich in 2000. Body never found. Insufficient evidence.
Suffolk Police issued a statement in February 2026: "Wright is still being investigated in connection with other unsolved murders and disappearances."
Not was investigated. Not might be investigated. Is. Present tense. Active.
Because DNA samples are being retested. Witnesses are being reinterviewed. Geographic patterns are being analyzed. The same forensic techniques that finally linked Wright to Victoria Hall—Y-STR analysis, facial recognition, advanced DNA profiling—are being applied to older cases.
The question isn't whether there are more victims.
The question is how many. And whether, after all this time, their names will finally be added to the list of women Steven Wright murdered.
The Invisible Killer: Steven Wright and the Murders That Spanned Decades is available now on Amazon. It's the story of delayed justice, forensic breakthroughs, and the families who refused to give up. It's about six confirmed victims and the investigations that continue. It's about the geography of murder and what it means when your hometown becomes synonymous with horror.
Six victims confirmed. Investigations ongoing.
The story isn't over.
Blog written by Guy Hadleigh, author of Crimes That Time Forgot, the Macabre True Crimes & Mysteries Series, the Murder and Mayhem Series, the British Killers Series, the Infamous True Crimes and Trials Series - and many more!