How Many More Has He Killed?

{mosimage}Women were yesterday warned not to walk alone after dark as the hunt for a Ripper-style serial killer took another sinister turn. Three prostitutes have been found murdered in recent days and yesterday it emerged that two more women in the same area have been reported missing.

All five were touting for business in Ipswich, where police are increasingly certain a crazed killer is preying on prostitutes.

And with the Christmas party season in full swing, police warned that any woman walking the streets at night could be in danger.

Jacqui Cheer, Assistant Chief Constable of Suffolk, said: “My message to you is simple – stay off the streets. If you are out alone at night you are putting yourself in danger.”

The naked bodies of Tania Nicol, 19, Gemma Adams{mosimage}, 25, and an unnamed 24-year-old woman have all been found in ‘strikingly similar’ circumstances on the outskirts of Ipswich in the last nine days.

Another prostitute, 29-year-old Annette Nicholls, was reported missing yesterday by relatives who have had no contact from her since December 3. She is understood to have been working the streets of Ipswich when she was last seen alive.

A fifth vice girl, Paula Clennell, 24, has not been seen since Saturday night, when she too set off for the town’s red-light district. A friend has told police she spoke to her on Sunday evening but Miss Clennell has not been in touch with police.

Yesterday detectives were trying to contact clients and acquaintances of the dead women, including a mysterious churchgoer known to local prostitutes as ‘Uncle’.

One 25-year-old vice girl, named only as Debbie, said the oddball, who claimed to be a devout Christian, did not want sex but often drove prostitutes around the streets of Ipswich to buy drugs. “He says he believes in God and likes to give the girls a Christian talk,” she said.

“I think he is a bit of a weirdo and gets a bit of a kick from it. Whoever is doing this will be on some twisted mission to clear up the streets.”

This has echoes of Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe, who murdered 13 women and left another seven for dead between 1975 and 1980, claimed he heard the voice of God telling him to kill prostitutes.

Police are also anxious to speak to a man known to both Miss Nicol and Miss Adams, who is said to have been cheated out of thousands by Miss Adams.

Prostitutes have told police that she had fallen out with the man, one of her regular clients, after persuading him to take out a £6,000 loan and hand it over to her. The man is also thought to have paid for sex with Miss Nicol.

Police are also looking closely at the case of schoolgirl Vicky Hall, whose death in September 1999 has several similarities with the latest murders.

Like the three prostitutes, Vicky, 17, was found naked and with no immediately obvious cause of death, though a post mortem examination found she had been suffocated.

And like Miss Nicol and Miss Adams she was found in water – in her case a ditch – and she had not been sexually assaulted.

Vicky was abducted as she walked home to Trimley St Mary, Suffolk, after a night out. Her body was found 25 miles away near Stowmarket five days later.

Businessman Adrian Bradshaw, now 32, was charged with her murder, but he was cleared after a two-week trial in 2001.

Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull, who is leading the murder inquiry, described the discovery of the third body over the weekend at Nacton, Suffolk, as a “deeply disturbing development”.

“While we can’t formally link the discovery of the body at Nacton with the two murders, the facts speak for themselves,” he said. “Clearly there are significant similarities in the finding of this latest woman.”

Last night Miss Clennell’s father Brian, an engineer, told the Daily Mail of his anguish after turning on the TV news to discover not only that his daughter was working as a prostitute but that she was also missing.

Mr Clennell, 57, said: “To think that she might be the victim of a Ripper doesn’t even bear thinking about. I’m just hoping and praying she turns up somewhere, alive and well.

“Paula fell in with the wrong crowd at the wrong age. She got caught up in drink and drugs and I presume that was what led to prostitution. I never knew until I turned on the news and saw her picture.”

Yesterday businessman Graeme Kalbraier, 52, who runs a call centre in Ipswich, put up a £25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the killer.