GUILTY UK - Victoria 'Vicky' Hall, 17, Trimley St Mary, Suffolk, 18 Sep 1999 *arrest 2023* *trial 2026*

[Dotta]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2018427117965316340

 

[Rookie D]

Besides
SW seems to have lighter coloured eyes and hair.
He doesn't look like a man from e-fit (in Melanie's case) to me.

JMO

His eye colour matches the e-fit.

And his would have lightened as he got older.


I do concede though that the e-fit does look younger than a 38 year old.

Although IMO, that e-fit could be a man aged anywhere 22-38.

The man seen with Melanie was significantly tanned, which perhaps would have made the man look younger than he actually was.

It's also difficult to accurately determine the age of a suspect through just an e-fit.

Note that Wright is tanned in some of his photos.

I still think that there's enough similarity between the e-fit and Wright himself.

 

[Dotta]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2018498038663151699

 

[hr100]

Certain cases stay with you and this one did with me.

We are the same age and every time I see that photo her with her hair up she looks like so many of my friends back then.

So glad there is now some closure even if came too late for her mother.

 

[RichardKimble]

It was Robert Black's modus operandi, wasn't it, to commit a murder in one part of the country and drive the body in his van to another part of the country to dispose of it. If Steve Wright had a van then we probably shouldn't just be thinking about murders in East Anglia.

Black moved around the country because of his job.

 

[rvlvr]

https://twitter.com/x/status/2018498038663151699

The case against Adrian Bradshaw was pathetic, it’s insane to me that it made it to court. He spent almost a year of his life in prison awaiting trial. Thank goodness the jury had the sense to return a not guilty verdict.

Some interesting info in this article I’d not seen before. The woman who Wright attempted to attack the night prior to Victoria’s murder gave police a partial registration number, which apparently matched around 12,000 people. That’s quite a chunky number of potential suspects but it could’ve been narrowed down geographically, especially when - according to the Mail - Wright was living only half a mile from Victoria!

One retired detective, Chris Cushnahan, dismissed criticism of the investigation in 2009 … 'There was no reason to see him. At the time there were thousands of lines of inquiry. There was no evidence to suggest we should have followed it up.'

Absolute nonsense and more evidence police in this country would rather cover their own backsides, than admit they screwed up then do the actual work.

 

[Rookie D]

The case against Adrian Bradshaw was pathetic, it’s insane to me that it made it to court. He spent almost a year of his life in prison awaiting trial. Thank goodness the jury had the sense to return a not guilty verdict.

Some interesting info in this article I’d not seen before. The woman who Wright attempted to attack the night prior to Victoria’s murder gave police a partial registration number, which apparently matched around 12,000 people. That’s quite a chunky number of potential suspects but it could’ve been narrowed down geographically, especially when - according to the Mail - Wright was living only half a mile from Victoria!



Absolute nonsense and more evidence police in this country would rather cover their own backsides, than admit they screwed up then do the actual work.

I agree

First and foremost, the biggest reason for a cold case remaining cold, is due to the lack of "evidence."

But the 2nd biggest reason, is that the police officers assigned to a particular case at any given time, can often make critical mistakes, in part due to incompetence in their working practices.

It is likely that and and every investigation will have it's degree of mistakes, because the police are human after all, but it's when there is no accountability or admitting wrongdoing when the integrity of the police comes into question, and should be rightly challenged for its subjective failings.

Some senior officers are full of ego and bravado and that doesn't help get cases solved. If I was leading a team I would ensure that the egos were left at the door and every one of my subordinates had accountability for their actions if mistakes were made.

There are no doubt scores and scores of cold cases that should have been solved had it of been for the investigative team taking ownership for their own failings to discover the truth.

 

[Rikissa]

An article from 2 February, with one of the detectives working the Ipswich murders:

https://www.itv.com/news/anglia/2026-02-02/always-likely-steve-wright-had-more-victims-says-detective-on-2006-case

 

[Rookie D]

Give it a few weeks, and Wright will suddenly retract his "guilty" plea, and say he coerced by the police and authorities to confess to a crime he didn't commit.

It all seems far too easy, and psychopathic serial killers like Wright don't tend to give up their secrets so willingly.

I think this story is set to take another dramatic turn at some point.

I may be wrong, but watch this space.

 

[TheRockingRev]

If this is the closure that is needed, then it's about time.

But there should be reviews into the police at the time. It's now emerging that a Emily Doherty had reported that she had been nearly abducted the night before - but where the hell has this piece of information been all this time?! It was only reported last year when the police said Wright was going to court.

I live in Felixstowe, I was living there at the time - but there was never anything about someone being attacked the night before - had the police released this information, had they had more of a presence in the town that weekend then people, like Victoria, may have been more cautious about what they did in the evening.

We need to know more about this near abduction because it sounds like he obviously got very close to her - which means potentially she saw him. If not his exact features, then certainly his build and height. If the police had this info then they could've made the links to Wright earlier, which in turn could've saved the lives of 5 women.

Mistakes can be made, but the investigation seems like it was flawed from its early days.

 

[TheRockingRev]

I've just seen that apparently Emily Doherty gave the police a partial registration number the night before. If the police had acted a little more quickly then things would've been very different.

 

[RC80]

Give it a few weeks, and Wright will suddenly retract his "guilty" plea, and say he coerced by the police and authorities to confess to a crime he didn't commit.

It all seems far too easy, and psychopathic serial killers like Wright don't tend to give up their secrets so willingly.

I think this story is set to take another dramatic turn at some point.

I may be wrong, but watch this space.

It does seem odd to confess to a murder when he never admitted to anything previously. I don't know how all these processes work though it was interesting watching the recent '24 Hours In Police Custody' on Carson Grimes, where they were talking about if he went to court then he could lose his place in a 'cushy' jail and be thrown back in the prison system. Could this be the case with Wright? He certainly looks like he is living well and there is no chance he is ever being released. Perhaps he just don't want the hassle of going to court each day and is happy with the routine and any privileges he currently has?

 

[Yellowbelly]

The case against Adrian Bradshaw was pathetic, it’s insane to me that it made it to court. He spent almost a year of his life in prison awaiting trial. Thank goodness the jury had the sense to return a not guilty verdict.

Some interesting info in this article I’d not seen before. The woman who Wright attempted to attack the night prior to Victoria’s murder gave police a partial registration number, which apparently matched around 12,000 people. That’s quite a chunky number of potential suspects but it could’ve been narrowed down geographically, especially when - according to the Mail - Wright was living only half a mile from Victoria!



Absolute nonsense and more evidence police in this country would rather cover their own backsides, than admit they screwed up then do the actual work.

I spotted that gem as well. Suffolk Police did have computers in 1999. It wasn't like the Yorkshire Ripper enquiry where they had to wade through rooms full of paperwork. There might well have been 12,000 vehicles with that partial registration, but they must also have had a description of the vehicle, which would have narrowed it down, and how many would have been registered to addresses within half a mile of the abduction site! It really is basic level detective work.

 

[RichardKimble]

What did Wright actually confess to? Apart from pleading guilty?

 

[tes1984]

What did Wright actually confess to? Apart from pleading guilty?

I doubt he's confessed to any of the gruesome details. He admitted one charge of murder and two of kidnapping.

I don't think his guilty plea was made with anyone other than himself in mind. Once he heard they could use similar fact evidence in the trial, he knew he'd be found guilty.

A guilty plea has saved the authorities a lot of time and money. SW knows he's never getting parole, but perhaps he's hoping that his cooperation will get him a move to an OAP wing in prison, or something like that. He's in his late 60s now and looks like an unhealthy specimen to say the least.

 

[tes1984]

Give it a few weeks, and Wright will suddenly retract his "guilty" plea, and say he coerced by the police and authorities to confess to a crime he didn't commit.

It all seems far too easy, and psychopathic serial killers like Wright don't tend to give up their secrets so willingly.

I think this story is set to take another dramatic turn at some point.

I may be wrong, but watch this space.

I don't think he's had to give up any secrets. Quite the opposite really, as he's avoided weeks of being discussed in court.

He might retract his plea, but it's probably in his best interests not to now. He's an old man now and may not want to draw any more attention to himself. Even in a vulnerable prisoner unit, he's at risk of attack from younger prisoners.

 

[rvlvr]

If Vicky is found on 19 September, then presumably the 7 October footage is SW revisiting the scene. He could be looking for something, or leaving something there.

The 18 October footage might well be a police surveillance team. If they set up CCTV on 19 September, then once they realised someone had been caught on CCTV on 7 October wouldn't they have staked out the site?

It’s a strange one isn’t it. When police released the CCTV footage in 2019 the BBC reported that “pictures show a van driver looking around the area in Creeting St Peter the month after Victoria’s body was found and a group with torches going into the field at night.”

Surely police would’ve known if that was them, the group with the torches? My hunch was that it was teens mucking around, going there out of some morbid curiosity perhaps?

The van in the footage has always seemed quite distinctive to me, there looks to be some sort of stripe going up the side and I can make out the letter W? In 2021 the Mail reported that “a member of the public with extensive knowledge of the case contacted Crimewatch after seeing the CCTV on the BBC. He said the van was identical to the one owned by Wright back then and the man closely resembled his profile, age and height.”

Does this CCTV image damn the Suffolk strangler?

A blurred CCTV image of a man standing next to a white van near where her body was found was released by the 'cold case' team.

www.dailymail.co.uk

If the footage did indeed help to move the case forward then it’s pretty terrible in my view that it wasn’t released sooner. Perhaps the current crop of detectives who cracked this case just needed to wait until the old guard had ‘moved on’ before doing so, but still.