Suffolk strangler Steve Wright dramatically confessed to murder for the first time today admitting that he killed a 17-year-old girl over 25 years ago.
The 67-year-old serial killer unexpectedly pleaded guilty to killing Victoria Hall in 1999 on the first day of his highly anticipated trial at the Old Bailey.
Seven years before he stalked Ipswich’s red-light district murdering five sex workers in 2006, Wright snatched the A-level student off the street in Felixstowe as she walked home from a nightclub on September 19, 1999.
In front of a hushed courtroom, Wright also pleaded guilty to the attempted kidnap of Emily Doherty, aged 22, just 24 hours earlier in the same area.
It is the first time that one of Britain’s most notorious killers has admitted responsibility for any of his crimes and Wright showed no emotion as he pleaded guilty to the murder.
He refused to stand for the judge as the court hearing started, but staggered to his feet to utter the pleas during the brief nine-minute appearance.
In the hushed courtroom, there was a gasp from onlookers who wept as Wright said he was guilty of Victoria’s murder. He is due to be sentenced on Friday.
He is currently serving a whole life sentence at Long Lartin Prison in Worcestershire for five murders.
In a six-week frenzy, the former QE2 steward went on the rampage in Ipswich’s red-light district murdering Gemma Adams, 25, Tania Nicol, 19, Anneli Alderton, 24, Paula Clennell, 24 and Annette Nicholls, 29 before he was captured by police just before Christmas 2006.
Despite overwhelming forensic evidence linking him to the bodies of the sex workers found in near identical positions dumped in a stream and woodland, Wright denied any responsibility.
But today for the first time Wright confessed that he killed Miss Hall before dumping her body in the same stream as two of his later victims.
The shock confession on the first day of a month-long trial will inevitably raise questions about how many more victims Wright claimed in the intervening years.
Ever since he was sentenced to a whole life tariff for the five murders in 2008, there have been questions about other unsolved murders, with Wright previously being linked to high-profile cases including the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh with whom he had previously worked on the QE2.
Wright was on a long list of potential suspects for Victoria’s murder after his car was found to be a partial number plate match with a vehicle used in the attempted abduction of Miss Doherty the day earlier.
But he was never arrested or interviewed because bungling officers spent £2million prosecuting the wrong man.
Local businessman Adrian Bradshaw was at the same nightclub as Victoria before she vanished on her way home in the early hours of September 19, 1999.
Her parents had expected her to take a taxi home, but she ran out of money.
Instead, Victoria and her best friend Gemma Algar stopped to buy chips before walking the two miles from Bandbox nightclub to their homes in Trimley St Mary.
The pair went their separate ways around 2.30am, just 300 yards from Victoria’s home.
As she walked away, Gemma heard a scream, but she thought someone was messing around.
Other residents also heard ‘horrifying screams’, the sound of a ‘throaty exhaust’ and a car screeching away.
At 8.20am, Victoria’s parents raised the alarm when they discovered she was not in her bedroom.
Five days later, her body was found by a dogwalker in a ditch 25 miles away in Creeting St Peter.
Like two of Wright’s later victims, the teenager was found naked in a stream.
In another similarity, a post-mortem examination revealed that she had been asphyxiated, but not sexually assaulted.
But detectives focused their inquiries on Mr Bradshaw after locals pointed out that his Porsche had a noisy exhaust.
The 27-year-old, who owned a local newspaper, had been at the same nightclub before taking a taxi home with friends, being dropped off at 2.30am near a roundabout where Victoria was last seen.
He was arrested in May 2000 and charged months later after forensic scientists found ten grains of mud on the accelerator pedal of his 1982 Porsche 944, which Britain’s top soil expert Professor Kenneth Pye claimed was of ‘remarkable’ similarity to the soil in the ditch.
But jurors took just 90 minutes to acquit him after a geologist revealed the sample could have come from anywhere in East Anglia.
In 2019 cold case officers took a fresh look at the investigation, releasing a CCTV clip of a man standing close to the spot where Victoria’s body was dumped.
Detectives had set up a secret camera at the scene hoping that the killer might return.
Grainy CCTV showed a man in a white van return to the scene three weeks after her death.
The unidentified figure got out of a van before walking around and driving off at 12.34pm on October 7, 1999.
At the time Suffolk Police was unable to identify the person, but following a Crimewatch appeal a member of the public came forward to report that Wright owned a similar vehicle and the man closely resembled his profile, age and height.
In July 2021 Wright was arrested in prison and interviewed by officers.
He was charged in 2024 after new forensic techniques revealed a link to the serial killer for the first time.
At the time of Victoria’s murder, Wright was not on the police database and his DNA was only added two years later when he was convicted of stealing from a bar.
Today he pleaded guilty to the kidnap and murder of Victoria Hall ‘by force or fraud taking or carrying away Victoria Hall against her will’.
He also admitted the attempted kidnap of Ms Doherty on September 18, 1999 acting ‘unlawfully and by force or fraud attempted to take or carry her away against her will’.
