Tanya Nicholls was cycling home along the West End Road about midnight three weeks ago when a voice called “hello” to her out of the darkness.
She turned to see her cousin Annette Nicholls, her hands dug deep in her pockets and shoulders hunched against the cold, standing by the kerbside waiting for what working girls call “business”.
They chatted a bit about cousins, aunts and uncles, and then Miss Nicholls, 37, told her younger cousin what was on her mind.
Two working girls, Gemma Adams and Tania Nicol, were already missing from the Ipswich red-light area. Was her cousin not mad to be out here? Was the craving for heroin really greater than the instinct to stay alive? “She didn’t want to stop working,” said Miss Nicholls. “She just told me she was OK. The only other thing she said was, ‘Don’t tell anyone that you saw me here’.
“I just wish that I had picked her up and dragged her home. It is awful to think what has happened to her. I hate to think that she is gone.”
One of two bodies found yesterday evening in the Suffolk countryside, near the village of Levington, is believed to be that of Ms Nicholls, 29.
The other is assumed to be that of Paula Clennell, 24, a prostitute who went missing only two days ago.
A few hours earlier, police confirmed that a body discovered on Sunday night near Nacton village was that of Anneli Alderton, 24, another Ipswich prostitute. She had been strangled and her body dumped in a copse close to the entrance to Amberfield, an independent girls’ school.
Like Ms Nicholls, Ms Clennell and Ms Alderton stayed out on the streets after everyone told them that it was not safe to be there.
An ITV News crew found Ms Clennell working the streets last week and asked her if she wasn’t worried about her safety. She was wary, she admitted, about getting into cars with men, but she would probably still do it. “I need the money,” she said.
Ms Clennell was a teenager when she moved to East Anglia ten years ago from Berwick-upon-Tweed, Northumberland, after her parents, Brian and Isabella, separated.
Her distraught father said last night: “This bastard has to be caught. No one is safe. I have been sitting in my house crying for Paula all day. My mind has been in overdrive thinking about this brute. What sort of person does this? This person must be walking around the streets like one of us but he is not — he isn’t human.”
Mr Clennell, 47, had not seen his daughter for several years and had not spoken to her in more than a year. He added: “Someone out there must know who he is. Somebody’s husband is coming home in the middle of the night and they must be suspicious.
“I am going to go down to Ipswich to the streets and find this man. Somebody knows and something has to be done before they kill again. He must be a man who is domineering and likes to have power over these women.
“He may see them as evil because of what they do but he is the evil one. My Paula is not evil. She was a sweet and gentle girl and she would not stand a chance against this brute.”
He first heard that his daughter was missing on a news bulletin, he said. “It has only been in the last few days that I have discovered about the life (she) was living. Paula was a great kid growing up. She is a very kind and loving person and would do anything for anybody.
“There was no indication as a child that she would be driven to the life she has been leading. I can only assume that she was driven to it out of pure desperation.”
In common with the other victims, it was her addiction to drugs that kept Ms Clennell out on the streets even after the murders began. She is survived by a sister, Alice, who is settled with children and living a normal life.
All of the serial killer’s victims knew each other, and may well have known their murderer.
Ipswich’s street prostitutes number no more than 40 and almost all are local girls whose lives have been destroyed by addiction to heroin or crack, or both.
They turn tricks on a handful of roads between Ipswich Town’s football ground and London Road, a network of roads lined with car showrooms, builder’s yards and garages. These are busy places by day but almost deserted at night except for the prostitutes and their punters.
The women keep an eye out for one another and exchange information about weird or violent clients, but when they decide to get into a man’s car they are always on their own.
Ms Nicol, Ms Adams, Ms Nicholls, Ms Clennell and Ms Alderton all disappeared from these streets. Three of them were taken after two of their friends disappeared and Suffolk police deployed extra officers to try to protect the prostitutes and hunt the man stalking them.
Ms Nicol, 19, was last seen on London Road on October 30. She lived with her mother and 16-year-old brother on a housing estate in Ipswich. Neighbours remembered her as a happy, chatty child. It appears that no one knew that she was working as a prostitute.
She was a bit of a loner who was befriended by the older women. She also got to know Ms Adams, who came from a middle-class home and grew up playing piano, riding ponies and attending Brownies.
Ms Adams, whose parents live in Kesgrave, Ipswich, was last sighted outside the BMW garage in West End Road in the early hours of November 15. She was said yesterday to have been making yet one more effort to rid herself of the heroin addiction that had destroyed her life. A local outreach worker said: “We’d got her on a course and we really thought she was in with a chance. But someone else got to her first.”
Her body was the first to be found, in a brook at Hintlesham on December 2. Ms Nicol’s body was discovered two miles away in the same fast-flowing waterway on December 8.
Ms Alderton, 24, the mother of a five-year-old boy, was relatively new on the Ipswich scene. She lived most of the time in Colchester, Essex, but for a year or so had been making the short journey to Ipswich to sell sex and earn money to buy crack.
She was known to the other prostitutes as “Crackhead Annie” because of her all-consuming need for crack cocaine. She had served a three-year prison sentence for street robbery and, according to some of the other prostitutes, had returned to the streets after a spell away.
The last confirmed sighting of her was at Colchester railway station on Sunday, December 3, returning after a visit to her family in Harwich. But there is talk among the few reckless souls who still haunt the red-light streets that she was seen during the week getting into a blue BMW.
Police are almost certain that she was dead and her naked body dumped in woodland in Nacton by December 7. A motorist has come forward to tell them that he saw what he thought was a mannequin lying among the trees as he drove by that day.
A friend of Ms Alderton’s mother, Maire, said last night: “She was completely despairing because she didn’t know how to help her daughter. She always did her best and just wanted to help get Anneli back on the straight and narrow.
“I believe Anneli had spent some time in drugs rehabilitation, but I assume it didn’t work because she wouldn’t have become a prostitute otherwise. She is honestly the last person I would expect to be doing that sort of work. She was a lovely girl.”
Annette Nicholls’s family have been feeling the pain of losing her to drugs for years. Last night that was overtaken by the horror of knowing she had been murdered.
She was a mother of a young son, Farron, 8, and had trained as a beautician. Her cousin said: “She used to be such an absolutely outstanding person with the most lovely personality. She was stunningly beautiful inside and out. I was so proud of her when she passed her course.
“She used to go round to friends to do their make-up and give them treatments. But then almost overnight she got into heroin and it changed her. It was a bit like flicking a light switch.
“She used to be such a together person. She was a brilliant mother, her house was immaculate and she would always make sure her car was insured and taxed. The next thing she was driving around with no insurance and I heard she was using drugs. We basically just lost her. I found out that she had become a prostitute a couple of years ago. Of course I was worried because I knew how dangerous it was.”
The prostitutes all knew how dangerous it was. The Rev Andrew Dotchin, who tried to help some of them, said that it was often a battle of survival. He said: “Often they get into it through a boyfriend who tells them he loves them, then pimps them and then buys them drugs. Almost all have drug problems, some have children, they are outside the benefit system because they cannot say what they do and their lives become a struggle to survive.
“You hear some people in the community saying that they got what they deserved, but those voices are shouted down. “There is a real sense in the community that no one deserves to die this way. People recognise that sex working is not something that people tend to do out of choice, they feel they have no choice.
“These are local girls, they are part of our town and there is a feeling that we’ve got to look after them.”
Web tributes
TANIA NICOL
I am Tania's grandmother. Me and my other children are very upset by the news of her death. She was a very beautiful woman and had everything to live for. I hope the police find this evil killer as soon as possible, and I hope who ever did this evil crime rots in hell.
M Nicol, Brighton
Tania was my beautiful niece, she was loved by all our family. I just can’t understand why some evil person would want to hurt her and her friend. I hope the police catch whoever did this soon.
Alhusain A Nicol, Brighton
Tania, we were grew up together at Gusford in the same class for 6 years... I'll always remember the countless laughs we had ...
Callum, Ipswich
I knew Tania when we were younger, and we had some good times. I remember making up dances with her and one memory that will always stay was .. . setting up a tent in her back garden one summer to stay in overnight. She was a beautiful girl, very smiley and wouldn't hurt anyone.
Sarah, Ipswich
GEMMA ADAMS
Gemma was truly a special and beautiful person inside and out. She will be missed by everyone who knew her. She brought a lot of joy and happiness to my life which I will never forget, ever. My love goes out to her family in this time of pain and heartache. xx
Laura, Ipswich
Gemma. You were such a good friend at school ... The last time I saw you a few weeks ago you were alive and well, now I won't see you again. To the family — All my thoughts are with you x
Leanne, Ipswich
I taught Gemma at high school. She was a very normal, very ordinary girl with lots of friends — who was a very special daughter to her family. We can now only pray that justice will be done. This has been shocking news for all of us: but let us not forget that it is also a very personal, very private and tragic loss for her family. My heartfelt condolences to them all.
J, Ipswich
Gemma, the most truly beautiful person I have ever met. You’re safe from harm now goodnight and God bless, sleep tight sweet xx
Samantha, Ipswich
Gemma, you'll be sadly missed. I worked with you for so long.
Tracy R, Ipswich
ANNELI ALDERTON
This is such sad news. You had a bright soul and always made us laugh at school. I hope you are with peace, no-one deserves this tragedy. May you find peace.
Samantha, Ipswich
Source: Ipswich Evening Star website
