Cold Blooded Evil. Neil Root

       PROLOGUE

      In early December 2006 most people were winding down, mentally preparing for the relaxed limbo-land that the average British Christmas brings. The decorations were coming down from the attic and being dusted off, the Christmas lights checked, cards written and sent, and office parties planned. It was the usual drill in the run-up to the festive period, a time to relax and catch up with friends and family.

      The town of Ipswich in Suffolk was no different from anywhere else. The town itself and the sleepy villages surrounding it had no idea that their pleasant repose was about to be shattered. There was no sense that this Christmas would be different to any other. But the events of the following weeks would unfold at a ferocious pace and the people of the area would never see life in the same way again. Sinister events of this magnitude can only cast a shadow on the psyche of a community.

      The media storm that blew up would gather pace until it was a terrifying whirlwind – local, then national and finally international coverage. From brief mentions to headlines, and then to blanket coverage. There was to be no escape for the people of Ipswich and no release for the British nation as a whole, as every day brought new revelations, suspicions and finally arrests.

      George Orwell once wrote that the reason we like to read about murder is because it feels so removed from us. We can sit in our cosy living rooms, letting family life continue. It only happens to other people. Unless we are directly connected to a homicide victim, we can indulge our morbid curiosity and ‘safe’ fear with little emotional investment. Perhaps we feel a slight shiver as we draw the curtains, thankful that we are comfortable in our homes, tucked up in warm beds. We feel sympathy and compassion, but the lack of any real impingement on our daily lives allows us to sleep well. Especially if the murder victim seems to have lived in a very different world from our own.

      But it was not like that for the families of five young women in Ipswich and the surrounding area that winter. The women in question may have worked as prostitutes and lived a life most of us know only from newspapers, books and films. They may have had different experiences. But no one should judge them. They too were human beings with feelings and aspirations that were probably very little different from our own.

      The shockwaves will go through that part of Suffolk for years, with Ipswich and the villages around it forever changed, if not scarred by these terrible crimes. The evil of these actions is hard to understand and explain. On one hand these are extreme and thankfully rare events, yet on the other hand we may be reminded of the writer Hannah Arendt’s famous quotation about ‘the banality of evil’. Horrors might be difficult to comprehend but try to understand them we must. This is the story of the Ipswich stranglings.

       CHAPTER ONE

       THE DAWNING OF DISBELIEF

      SATURDAY, 2 DECEMBER 2006

      THORPES HILL, HINTLESHAM, SUFFOLK

      11:50am

      The Suffolk landscape in winter can be very beautiful, the falling leaves gently rustled by the wind a reminder of time passing and the inevitability of the life cycle. The bare branches of centuries-old trees stand in haunting silhouette against the white sky. This is the real English countryside, where the rustic majesty of the fields is richly veined by meandering brooks and streams. In such a tranquil setting it is easy to forget about the essential violence of nature.

      The small village of Hintlesham is to be found about 7 miles (11.3km) to the west of the town of Ipswich. Although clustered around a main road, this is a quaint and simple place where little changes, and when it does, much comment is aroused. On an ideal summer’s day, parts of it can be chocolate-box perfect. Not the obvious place for a macabre discovery.

      Trevor Saunders was doing his regular round of inspection that morning around the Thorpes Hill area. Employed by Hintlesham Fisheries, he knows every metre of his stretch. Mr Saunders would later say:

      ‘I was doing my normal patrol along Burstall Brook to check on any blockages when I noticed two round, smooth surfaces sticking out of the water, which I later found was the woman’s bottom. Initially I thought it was a dummy. I went into the brook to make sure and, on further investigation, found it was a body. It was face down, under water. I had to move a little bit of debris to make sure it was a body. Then I phoned the police.’

      The tranquillity of the scene was soon shattered as the police closed off the crime scene and surrounding area and conducted the usual thorough forensic examinations and photographs before the body was taken away.

      The next day Suffolk Police made a statement confirming the identity of the body. She was Gemma Adams and she had lived at Blenheim Road, Ipswich, just on the outskirts of the town centre itself. She had been reported missing by her partner over two weeks earlier on Wednesday 15 November, when she failed to return home in the early hours of the morning. Gemma had worked as a prostitute, primarily to fund a serious drug habit. On the night of her disappearance she had gone to work on the streets of Ipswich’s red light district.

      A police spokeswoman confirmed that the death was being treated as ‘suspicious’ and that the post-mortem had not established any definite cause of death.

      Appeals for information started immediately. The police knew very well that the first 48 hours after the discovery of a crime are crucial – any witness statements, crime scene evidence and possible leads would be fresh. As Gemma’s body had been stripped before being left in the water, the police knew how urgent it was to find her clothing and other effects. Developments would soon be forthcoming on this front, but few strong leads to the possible offender.

      It was a shocking day. Suffolk does not have a high crime rate, despite having had some high-profile cases over the years. These were exceptions, not the norm. In a 2004 Suffolk Police survey, 45 per cent of Suffolk residents questioned felt safe where they lived and only 17 per cent were worried about violent crime (Source: Suffolk First, June, 2004). Compared with similar surveys carried out in other parts of the country, these figures are good.

      But murder can occur at any time and in any place. Human nature does not take geography into account when entering dark recesses of the mind. General trends can be followed, with urban, more deprived areas more likely to experience violent crime. Although murders can almost always be profiled geographically, the mind of a killer is as random as any mind, especially if there is a sexual motive.

      The finding of Gemma Adams made the front page of the Ipswich Evening Star. While shocking and saddening to the community, it could have been an isolated prostitute murder, a phenomenon we will discuss later. But there was no getting away from the callousness shown in the way Gemma Adams was dumped. The lack of respect and compassion, the