The Evil Within - A Top Murder Squad Detective Reveals The Chilling True Stories of The World's Most Notorious Killers (56 page)

Following the discovery, a massive search was launched to find Hardy, who had been missing for several days; it was suspected that he had absconded. However, a CCTV camera caught him on 1 January trying to obtain a prescription for his diabetic medication at a London hospital. He had shaved off his beard in an attempt to alter his appearance, but police now knew he was still in the immediate area. After his details were circulated on television, a member of the public came forward to say they had seen Hardy with a young woman named Kelly Anne Nicol, 24, shortly after the Christmas holidays. Family members and police were concerned for her safety, fearing that she might have become a victim. However, their fears were alleviated when she contacted her parents to let them know she was safe. Even though she had contact with Hardy, who repeatedly tried to persuade her back to his apartment, she did not allow herself to be influenced by him, and this had surely saved her life.

On 2 January, a member of the public contacted the police
after spotting Hardy at Great Ormond Street Hospital for children in central London. Police surrounded the area and he was promptly arrested.

Police had by now been able to identify the two victims whose remains had been discovered at his home and in the rubbish bin as Elizabeth Selina Valad, 29, and Brigitte McLennan, 34. Both were prostitutes and dependent on drugs. It was Elizabeth Valad’s torso that had been found at Hardy’s flat and her legs that had been discovered by the vagrant in the rubbish bin. It was difficult for investigators to identify her initially because her hands and head were never found. However, they were able to obtain a positive identification on her by processing the serial numbers found on her breast implants. McLennan was identified by conventional DNA techniques.

Hardy was interviewed by the police and made no comment to all questions put to him about the actual murders. He did, however, tell police that he had never intended to kill anyone and that the women had died as a result of the use of ‘excessive force in the course of otherwise consensual but extreme sexual activity’.

However, when he appeared in court he pleaded guilty to three charges of murder, in fact making an admission in court to the murder of Sally White who, according to medical experts, had died of natural causes. The prosecution suggested that Hardy had lured all the women to his apartment with the offer of money. He had then engaged in extreme sex with the women before strangling them, and had dismembered the bodies with a hacksaw in the bath. It was suggested by the prosecution that the motive for the murders was that he had decided to kill these women in order to photograph them in various positions, which he had arranged when they were dead. Hardy had been in the process of preparing White to be photographed when police found her naked body.

Hardy was sentenced to three life sentences for the murders. Before passing sentence the judge, Mr Justice Keith, said: ‘Only
you know for sure how your victims met their deaths but the unspeakable indignities to which you subjected the bodies of your last two victims in order to satisfy your depraved and perverted needs are in no doubt.’

Hardy is also suspected of committing other undetected murders. In February 2000, boys fishing in Regent’s Canal at Camden retrieved a bag from the murky water, which was found to contain body parts from a human female.

Police carried out a search of the area and, during a sweep of the canal, found approximately six further bags containing various body parts wrapped in bin liners. Bricks had been used to weight down the bags. Despite these finds, not all of the woman’s body was recovered.

The woman was later identified as Paula Fields, 31, of Liverpool, who had lived in the Highbury Grove area for a couple of years before her death. She was a mother of two who worked as a prostitute to support her drug habit. Paula had last been seen getting into a red car on 13 December. The police believed that a hacksaw had probably been used to dismember her body.

On 17 December 2000, the dismembered body of prostitute Zoe Parker, aged 24, was found floating in the River Thames. To date, these crimes are still unsolved, but Anthony Hardy remains the prime suspect. Hardy was later sent to Rampton mental hospital for assessment between April and July 2003, and it was subsequently decided that he was sufficiently sane to be held within the general prison population rather than at a secure mental institution. Hardy is currently deemed a category-A prisoner and is held at Wakefield prison, where he claims to have found God and rediscovered Catholicism and has also become a vegan. He does not expect ever to be released from prison, following a 2010 ruling by a High Court judge. Mr Justice Keith, sitting in London, said: ‘This is one of those exceptionally rare cases in which life should mean life.’

The naked body of prostitute Gemma Adams, aged 25, was discovered in a stream at Thorpes Hill, near Hintlesham, Suffolk, at 11.50am on Saturday, 2 December 2006. Gemma disappeared after leaving home on Wednesday, 15 November, to go to work. She was reported missing by her boyfriend, and a member of the public discovered her body. A post-mortem was carried out, but the cause of death could not be confirmed and further tests were carried out. Police later confirmed that Gemma had not been sexually assaulted.

A second body – that of another prostitute, Tania Nichol, 19 – was found on Friday, 8 December, near Copdock Mill, by police divers. Tania had disappeared on 30 October. She left to go to work in the Ipswich red-light district about 10.30pm and was not seen again. Tania was reported missing on Wednesday, 1 November, by her mother after she hadn’t seen her for two days. Her naked body was discovered in the same stream as Gemma Adams’s. Gemma and Tania had known each other and frequently worked the same ‘patch’. Their bodies were found about two miles apart.

On Sunday, 10 December another naked body was discovered by a passing motorist in woods near Nacton, close to Ipswich. On Tuesday, 12 December, Suffolk police confirmed that the body was that of Anneli Alderton, aged 24, from Colchester, Essex, also a known prostitute. She had been strangled and was three months pregnant at the time of her death.

On that same day, police confirmed that at 3.05pm, following a call from a member of the public, a fourth body had been discovered along Old Felixstowe Road. The body was that of a naked woman, roughly 6yd from the roadside. About 40 minutes later, at 3.48pm, the police helicopter spotted a further body only a few hundred yards from the first. Suffolk police said that although they had no evidence to support their belief, they strongly believed these bodies to be connected to the first, making a total of five victims. The two new victims were later identified
as two women previously reported missing: Annette Nicholls, aged 29, and Paula Clennell, aged 24, again both prostitutes.

On Thursday, 14 December, police confirmed the identity of the fourth victim as Paula Clennell. Paula had been reported missing, and had last been seen at about at 12.20am on Sunday, 10 December, on Handford Road near its junction with Burlington Road in Ipswich, Suffolk.

The police now had a total of five victims, all prostitutes, and all had apparently been strangled while under the influence of drugs and stripped naked before being dumped by the killer. The police were in no doubt that all the victims had been killed by the same hand. There was one unusual feature in the case of Anneli Alderton and Annette Nicholls – their bodies had been laid out in the shape of a crucifix, with their arms outstretched and their hair combed out behind their heads.

More than 500 officers were involved in the enquiry and a team of five investigating officers, one for each of the dead women, assessed and evaluated the evidence on the killings. Sifting this evidence proved to be fraught with difficulties, though. The victims were all known prostitutes and may have been with several men each night, and may also have been driven away from the district to other places to have sex; therefore there could be DNA from a number of different men found on their bodies and at the places where they were dumped. The police also believed that the victims were not killed where their bodies were found; as the locations were so close to each other they were looked on as deposition sites.

Police officers were also trying to establish whether the murders of the five women in Suffolk were linked to the murders or disappearances of other women and teenage girls, including six in East Anglia over the past 15 years.

These victims included:

• Diane McInally, aged 23, from Glasgow. She vanished in October 1991. The prostitute and drug addict’s naked body
  was found dumped near bushes in a wood behind the Burrell Collection in Pollok Park, Glasgow. She died from compression to the neck.
  
• Natalie Pearman, aged 16, from Norwich, Norfolk. She disappeared in November 1992. Her body was found at Ringland, Norfolk, near Norwich. She had been strangled and was found partially clothed.
  
• Karen McGregor, aged 26, of Glasgow, Scotland, was found in the bushes of a car park in Glasgow in 1993. She had been badly beaten, sexually assaulted and strangled.
  
• Johanna Young, aged 14, from Watton, Norfolk. She was reported missing on 23 December 1992. She was found in a nearby frozen pond, half-naked, on 26 December.
  
• Mandy Duncan, aged 26, from Woodbridge, Suffolk. She disappeared in 1993 in Ipswich. Her body has never been found.
  
• Victoria Hall, aged 17, from Trimley St Mary, Suffolk. She vanished on 19 September 1999. Her body was found five days later 25 miles away in a river. A local businessman was later tried and acquitted of her murder.
  
• Kellie Pratt, aged 29, from Norwich. She disappeared in 2000 in Norwich. Her body has never been found.
  
• Michelle Bettles, aged 22, from Norwich. She was reported missing on 28 March 2002. She was found dead three days later near Dereham in woodland. Her body was found fully clothed.
  

Police in Suffolk acted quickly and arrested Tom Stephens, a former part-time Special Police Constable, at 7.20am on Monday, 18 December 2006. Stephens was a supermarket worker at Tesco in Martlesham. Police arrested him at his home at Jubilee Close, Trimley St Martin, near Felixstowe; the village is close to the A14 road between Ipswich and Felixstowe. The police stated that Stephens had been questioned earlier in the investigation, and that items had been removed from his house at that time. They had
taken his mobile phone and laptop computer. It was believed that Stephens knew all five of the dead girls.

However, following lengthy questioning, he was released without charge on police bail for further enquiries to be carried out. Due to the public outcry over the murders, Stephens was forced to go into hiding, despite not having been charged. His bail was later cancelled and he was exonerated from any involvement in the murders, although police would later suggest that the man they finally arrested who was charged and later convicted may have had an accomplice.

At 5am on Tuesday, 19 December 2006, a second man, Steve Wright, aged 48, a forklift truck driver from London Road, Ipswich, was arrested on suspicion of murder. His house and car were subjected to intense forensic examinations. He underwent a lengthy interrogation, which consisted of ten separate interviews during which he chose not to answer any questions. However, following the results of the forensic examinations, which gave the police sufficient evidence to connect Wright to the murders, he was formally charged with the five murders.

The trial of Steve Wright started at Ipswich Crown Court on Monday, 14 January 2008, before Mr Justice Goss. Wright entered a plea of not guilty to all five murders. The prosecution was represented by Mr Peter Wright QC who, in his opening speech, outlined the case to the jury, which was told that the backbone of the prosecution case revolved around DNA evidence linking Wright to three of the five victims. DNA from Wright was found on the breast of Anneli Alderton, as were other fibres that matched fibres found at his home, inside his gardening gloves and on his clothes. Wright’s DNA was also found on the victim Annette Nicholls along with matching fibres from his car, and her blood was found on a reflective jacket he sometimes wore.

Wright’s DNA was also found on the body of Paula Clennell, along with matching fibres from his sofa, his lumber jacket, tracksuit and trousers. Her blood was also found on the same reflective jacket.

The jury was told that no DNA was found on either Gemma Adams or Tania Nichol but the prosecution would suggest that this was due to the fact that the bodies had been immersed in water for several weeks before being found, thereby destroying any DNA evidence that might have been present. However, fibres from Wright’s car were found embedded in the hair of Gemma Adams and Tania Nicol, suggesting a ‘forceful or sustained contact’ with the carpet of the car. No other DNA relating to any other person was found on any of the victims.

In addition to the DNA evidence, the police enquiry had shown that Wright regularly cruised the red-light district of Ipswich, picking up prostitutes. On the night Tania Nichol disappeared, Wright’s Ford Mondeo was captured on a police camera heading out of town towards the location where her body was later found. A car matching Wright’s was also seen in the same area on the nights Gemma Adams and Anneli Alderton disappeared.

Steve Wright was represented by Timothy Langdale QC who, in his opening speech, told the jury that Wright would be denying the murders and had regularly picked up prostitutes, some of these being the victims, thereby suggesting that the DNA evidence was transferred through these meetings and not as a result of him murdering the women. Furthermore, he would state that he had also had sex with one of the other victims where there was no DNA evidence against him.

The majority of the prosecution evidence was unchallenged by the defence team representing Wright. After the prosecution closed its case, Wright took the witness stand. He told the court that he started to pick prostitutes up in the red-light district in the third week of October 2006. He stated that he could have been with all five women on the nights they vanished. He told Ipswich Crown Court that he had had sex with four of the women and was intending to have sex with the fifth, Nichol, before changing his mind after she had got into his car and he had seen her face was covered in acne. This had put him off so he told her to get
out. He denied the murders, stating that he had been the victim of a series of coincidences. He said he recalled having sex in his car with Adams either late on 14 November or early on 15 November. Wright said he could not remember when he had picked up Nichol but it might have been on 8 December 2006, when she was last seen alive. Her blood was found on a reflective jacket belonging to him. But he could not account for this; he had not injured her during sex. Blood from Clennell, whom he also admitted picking up around the time of her disappearance, was also found on the same reflective jacket. He could not explain how this had got there, but said she had told him that she had ‘bit her tongue’ while lying down on a sofa in his home. Wright said that he had used the jacket as a blanket on the floor of his bedroom where he had taken the women, after spending time in his car.