A serial killer already serving a whole-life prison sentence for the murders of five women has been further sentenced to 40 years for the killing of Victoria Hall, 17, and the attempted kidnap of Emily Doherty, 22, in 1999.
Steve Wright took Hall’s life for reasons few will ever understand, Mr Justice Bennathan told him as he passed sentence at the Old Bailey on Friday.
“Victoria Hall was a typical bright, lively teenager. Her father described her as having been a happy, loving child. She spent hours on the phone to her best friend, she was studying for her A-levels, she had a part-time job and loved to go out dancing,” he said.
“For reasons only you know, and most people will never start to comprehend, you snatched Victoria away and you crushed her young life.”
Wright had been due to go on trial at the Old Bailey for her murder and the attempt to kidnap Doherty, but changed his plea at the last minute this week. It is the sixth murder for which he has been convicted – but the first to which he has admitted.
On Friday, the prosecutor Jocelyn Ledward KC outlined the facts of the case as Wright appeared for sentencing. She said Wright had been “on the prowl” in Felixstowe, Suffolk, on the weekend of 18 and 19 September 1999 in his burgundy Ford Granada Scorpio.
“Almost undoubtedly sexually motivated, he was a predator stalking for his prey: looking for a young woman to kidnap,” she said.
In the early hours of 18 September, Doherty had become separated from her friends. Ledward said Wright made a mistake and allowed her to see him from several yards away.
Her “instincts” alerted her to the danger and she escaped unharmed by running, hiding and frantically knocking on the door of a couple, who by “great good fortune” answered and “probably saved her life”.
Doherty’s description of her attacker’s car later led police to identify 56 vehicles, with Wright’s among them.
Wright struck again the next night. “He did not allow Victoria Hall, aged 17, to escape his predatory clutches,” Ledward said. “Having separated from her best friend, Gemma Algar, only 300 metres from her front door, she never made it home and seemingly vanished; the only clue to what happened to her, a scream in the night on the small housing estate where she lived in the village of Trimley St Mary – not 2 miles from where the defendant made his attempt on Emily Doherty.
“But Victoria had not simply vanished into thin air. The defendant had abducted and, within a very short time, murdered her – as well as sexually violating her in some way.”
He then “callously discarded her body, stripped naked of everything except for her jewellery”, in a farm ditch 25 miles away, “as if she were no more important than a disposable commodity”, the court was told.
Before or after, Wright headed to a petrol station and, the following day, returned to his work at the Felixstowe docks “as if nothing had happened”, the prosecutor said. Ledward said the way Hall was left caused “untold” distress to her family, including for her mother who died before Wright was brought to justice.
The night Hall was murdered, she and Algar had walked most of the roughly 2 miles back to their homes from the Bandbox nightclub in Felixstowe, singing and sharing a bag of chips as they went. At about 2.20am, they parted, with Victoria saying: “I’ll ring you when I get up tomorrow.” Algar replied: “You’ll hear me saying ‘ouch’ as I walk home.”
Algar later heard “two female high-pitched screams” as Victoria was snatched by Wright and bundled into his car.
In 2001, Wright was charged with a series of thefts, which he admitted, and his conviction led to his DNA being added to the national database, eventually leading to his identification as a suspect.
Five years after Victoria’s murder, on 30 October 2006, Tania Nicol, 19, vanished from Ipswich’s red light area, followed by Gemma Adams, 25, around two weeks later. In December, the body of Anneli Alderton, 24, was found in woods at Nacton, and sex workers were urged to stay off the streets. But the bodies of Paula Clennell, 24, and Annette Nicholls, 29, were later discovered.
Wright was eventually sentenced for those five murders in 2008. He was arrested over Hall’s death in 2021, two years after Suffolk constabulary announced it was a live inquiry again.
