Levington, England: British Police hunting a serial killer who is killing women at a rate unprecedented in British history pleaded on Wednesday with prostitutes to stay off the streets.
Five naked bodies have been found near the eastern English port town of Ipswich in the last 11 days, striking fear into the community in an area where serious crime is relatively rare.
Detectives have identified three of the dead women as prostitutes and police said they feared the other two bodies may be sex workers from Ipswich who had been reported missing. Paula Clennell, 24, has not been seen since Saturday and Annette Nicholls, 29, has been missing for at least a week.
Police urged prostitutes to keep off the streets. “I'm not sure what starker warning there can be,” Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull told BBC radio.
"Three of their peers have been murdered, now tragically possibly another two. It's not safe. They need to stay off the streets." A police spokeswoman said no arrests had been made. The discovery of so many victims in so few days has terrified residents of the provincial town and raised fears that another ‘Ripper’ targeting prostitutes is on the loose.
The most notorious such killer was the 19th-century murderer known as ‘Jack the Ripper’, blamed for the deaths of five prostitutes in east London in 1888 but never found.
The most prolific was Peter Sutcliffe, called the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’, who murdered 13 women, mainly prostitutes, in northern England from 1975 to 1980 before he was caught. The two latest bodies were discovered in Levington east of Ipswich, close to where the naked body of another victim, Anneli Alderton, 24, was found in woodland on Sunday.
‘Skillful killer’
Clennell's father Brian spoke of his shock at hearing that his daughter was a prostitute who may now be dead. "I didn't know she was doing that, I haven't seen her for years," he told BBC radio. "She was a lovely child, as a teenager she had her ups and downs." Clennell herself spoke to a television crew last week as the murder hunt began.
Mike Berry, a criminal psychologist, said the Ipswich killer was an "exceptionally cold-blooded" and "skilful" operator. "The killer may be confident he will not be caught," he wrote in the Daily Mirror. "He will be fascinated by the coverage of the case ... he will be thinking 'the game is on'."
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