A lawyer for the man accused of being the Suffolk Strangler said yesterday that his client admitted having had sex with four of the prostitutes and had picked up the fifth in his car.

In a rare legal move, Steve Wright’s lawyer said that his client would not be challenging the scientific evidence linking him with the five women.

Timothy Langdale, QC, said that during the time of the murders, in the months before Christmas 2006, Mr Wright had “availed himself of the services of prostitutes in the red-light district of Ipswich” and had sex with them in his car or at his home. He said that this explained why police had found fibres connecting his client to all the women.

As the defence lawyer made his opening statement, Mr Wright, dressed in a dark single-breasted suit, white shirt and striped tie, occasionally took notes while listening from behind a glass screen. He denies all the charges.

Mr Langdale told the jurors that although it was “comparatively rare” for a jury to be addressed by the defence before the evidence was heard he wanted to help them with “the main issues”. He said that he would not be challenging the evidence of witnesses during cross-examination, nor was it likely that he would be suggesting that they were lying or deliberately misleading the court.

“In particular, you will not be hearing that sort of suggestion being made in regard to the scientific evidence in this case, for example, with regard to the DNA and fibres. It is not the case that the defence suggests that the scientific findings are wrong. For example, it is not suggested by the defence that Steve Wright’s DNA was not on any particular body where scientists say, ‘I found it’. It is not suggested that fibres which feature in this case were not found where the scientists say they were.”

Mr Langdale said that his client had sex with prostitutes in Ipswich’s red-light area during October, November and December 2006. “Among those he encountered were these five young women,” he added. “His case is that he had full sexual intercourse with four of them either in the car or at his home address.”

He said that his client had also picked up Tania Nicol, the first girl to disappear, with a view to having sex with her but had changed his mind and driven her back to the red-light district. “It’s not, therefore, the case that the defence are suggesting some sort of freak coincidence in relation to these findings, that they happened by chance,” he said. “The defence challenge the assertion that these findings demonstrate he was responsible for these deaths.”

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