So now 2 more women have been found in Levington, and it seems increasingly likely that they are the 2 missing prostitutes, Paula Clenell and Annette Nicholls – although the police aren’t confirming this until they’ve been officially identified. The feeling in and about town, particularly at night is very strange at the moment. There definitely seems to be less people about town in the evenings now and it’ll be interesting to know how busy Ipswich is (or more likely isn’t) on Friday and Saturday night. Driving past the Nacton turn-off yesterday on the way to work makes it all seem a lot closer to home and it’s weird watching the evenings news and then hearing police and news helicopters flying by overhead. I just hope that Ipswich isn’t forever tainted by these events in the way that Soham seems to have been following the murders there.My hope is that the story has now become so big that the killer will be scared off although, that said, if prostitutes are still going out then he still has opportunities. Or maybe the punters will be scared off and make the whole thing a pointless exercise anyway.
Update: Ok, so first the police arrested Tom Stephens, a supermarket employee from a small town called Trimley, not far from Ipswich. The mass media found his myspace page and subsequently his pictures where plastered all over the prime time news programmes and newspapers. It turns out that this is most likely not the murderer, because the following day the police arrested another guy, Stephen Wright, for the murder of all 5 girls. He has since been charged and the hearing is due on 1st May 2007. There’s a pretty good write-up of the whole thing on wikipedia. Another interesting part to the whole investigation is that there is a possiblity that these crimes could be linked to a series of other similar crimes that have occurred over the last 15 years in East Anglia.
Update 2: The trial date has been set for January 2008. I imagine that there will be a fair bit of news coverage surrounding this. Ipswich has largely returned to normal now, and the events of last year are rarely brought up in conversation now. It’s hard to tell what people’s feelings are outside of Ipswich, but I *think* the town has pretty much escaped being tainted by this event.
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i hope Ipswich escapes the taint associated with other places but I fear it will not. Unkindly one poster on the jack the ripper casebook site has dubbed the killer the ‘suffolkator’ or the ‘tractor ripper’, now they’ve arrested a couple of men perhaps it will begin to subside. I found your blog by accident, I got my doctorate this year (in the history of crime) what is your subject?
hey drew. thanks for the comment. i hope so too – hopefully ipswich is big enough to escape being tainted – people know about ipswich for other reasons, like the football team. Here’s hoping! Your doctorate sounds really interesting – the events must be extra-interesting for you. I’m studying blogs 🙂 I’m looking primarily at the motivations for blogging. Meeting people in this way seems to be one of the top reasons!