Serial killer fears in eastern England
December 11, 2006 - 5:14PM
British police believe they may be hunting for a serial killer after the discovery of a third prostitute's body less than 10km from where the bodies of two other sex workers were found.
The latest find was made in bushland on Sunday at Nacton, near Ipswich in East Anglia, a region of eastern England. Police have not named the victim.
The woman, believed to be aged in her 20s, was found less than 10km from the sites where two other prostitutes were found dead last week.
Detectives have already linked those two crimes, saying the deaths of Tania Nicol, 19, and Gemma Adams, 25, bear "striking similarities".
Police divers found Nichol's body near Copdock Mill, outside Ipswich, on Friday, less than a week after the body of Adams was found 3km away, in the same stream. Both were naked.
The two women worked together and went missing from the red-light area of Ipswich.
Adams vanished on 15 November and Nicol on October 30.
Detective Superintendent Andy Henwood said police were treating the two deaths as "linked investigations" and that there were "obvious similarities" between the disappearances and subsequent deaths.
He told the BBC it was "very rare" to have a linked murder investigation and they were now reliant on information from the public to help move the inquiry forward.
"We still need to hear from people who saw Tania and Gemma on the evening they disappeared, or saw suspicious activity" in the areas where the women's bodies were found, he said.
Post-mortem examinations have been carried out on the bodies of the first two victims, but police say more tests are needed.
Detective Chief Inspector John Quinton said there was no evidence either woman had been sexually assaulted and there were no obvious signs of injury.
Suffolk detectives were liaising with colleagues in Norfolk where police had investigated the murders of three prostitutes in recent years and the disappearance of a fourth, Quinton said.
Police have also appealed for the clients of Nicol and Adams to come forward.