A 17-Year-Old Was Killed in 1999. Now, Authorities Say She Was Victim of Infamous 'Suffolk Strangler' By KC Baker

A British serial killer known as the “Suffolk Strangler,” who was convicted in 2008 of murdering five young women two years prior, has just admitted to killing a sixth victim.

On Monday, Feb. 2, Steve Wright, 67, of Ipswich, appeared in Central Criminal Court in London and pleaded guilty to kidnapping and murdering Victoria Hall, 17, of Trimley St. Mary in September 1999, according to a statement from the Suffolk Constabulary.

He also pleaded guilty to the attempted kidnapping of a 22-year-old woman the night before Hall’s abduction.

He admitted to the crimes just before his trial was due to begin, the BBC reports.

He is already serving a life sentence in prison after being convicted in 2008 of murdering five women in the Ipswich area between October and December of 2006.

The five victims were sex workers who vanished before their naked, brutalized remains were found.

But seven years before Wright murdered these five women, he preyed upon Hall, according to the Suffolk Constabulary.

Hall was last seen on Sept. 18, 1999, when she went to a nightclub in Bent Hill, Felixstowe, with a friend.

Hall and her friend walked home and said goodbye at 2.20 a.m. at the intersection of High Road and Faulkeners Way, just yards away from Hall’s house.

Five days later, a dog walker found Hall’s naked body in a ditch beside a field in Creeting St Peter, 25 miles away from where she was last seen, according to the Suffolk Constabulary. 

For years, police tried to solve Hall’s murder, which left the community shaken.

Fear swept through another small town in southeast England when Tania Nicol, 19, vanished on Oct. 30, 2006, followed by Gemma Adams, 25, who was reported missing on Nov. 15, 2006, the BBC reports.

Adams’s naked body was found in a brook west of Ipswich on Dec. 2, 2006. Shortly after, on Dec. 8, 2006, divers found Nicol’s naked body near Copdock Mill, according to the BBC.

Fears mounted when the body of Anneli Alderton, 24, was found shortly after, posed with her arms outstretched, in a wooded area south of Ipswich.

On Dec. 12, the bodies of Paula Clennell, 24, and Annette Nicholls, 29, were found in nearby Levington.

On Dec. 21, Wright, a forklift driver, was arrested and charged with the murders but said he had nothing to do with them.

During his trial, prosecutors said Wright “systematically selected and murdered” all five women over a six-and-a-half-week timespan, the BBC reports.

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Wright said he had met some of the women for sex but did not kill them.

A DNA sample taken from an earlier, lesser crime matched DNA taken from three of the murder victims, prosecutors said.

On Feb. 21, 2008, he was found guilty of all five murders.

Hall’s case went cold until 2019, when police decided to reopen it. Wright was first arrested as part of the investigation in July 2021. He was rearrested in December 2023 and subsequently charged in May 2024.

He is scheduled to be sentenced for Hall’s murder and for the attempted kidnapping on Friday, Feb. 6.