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LONDON - Police hunting the killer of prostitutes in Ipswich said on Thursday they were checking reports a man was seen driving off with one of the victims a few days before her body was found.
Detectives said they were aware that a witness believed she was among the last to see Anneli Alderton getting into a blue BMW late last week. Her naked body was found on Sunday.
"We've received ... a lot of interesting information and that's just one aspect that clearly we're looking into," Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull told BBC radio.
The sighting was made by another prostitute, one of the few still working the streets in Ipswich's red-light district after the deaths of five women.
"A blue BMW went into the car park and Anneli went up to it and got in and it drove out," said the woman, named simply as Lou. "I think that was the last time she was seen.
"The driver was chubby, with glasses and dark hair," she told the Daily Telegraph.
Police have linked the murders of Alderton, Gemma Adams, 25, and Tania Nicol, 19. The bodies of two more women were discovered near Ipswich on Tuesday.
Police believe the women were missing prostitutes Paula Clennell, 24, and Annette Nicholls, 29. Results of a post-mortem examination on one of these two victims may be released later.
Gull said clothing had been found in different locations across Ipswich. "We will now take our time to analyse that and see if it is of any relevance," he told BBC News.
"Clearly we are still looking for confirmed sightings of where the girls were and what they were actually wearing."
The mother of a prostitute killed 14 years ago said her daughter could have been the serial killer's first victim.
Lin Pearman, whose 16-year-old daughter Natalie was murdered in 1992, told the Daily Mail there could be a link to the latest spate of killings.
"The police have contacted me. I believe there may have been things done to the bodies of the women that could link them to what happened to Natalie," she said. The teenager was killed in Norwich, 50 miles north of Ipswich, the newspaper said.
The Guardian said on Thursday the killer had left rings and necklaces on the naked bodies of his victims.
On the ground, reinforcements have been drafted in to help the small Suffolk police force in its largest inquiry.
With most prostitutes now staying off the streets, fears are rising that the killer may look elsewhere, experts said.
"What may be an issue is that when he starts running out of prostitutes, he will see any woman who's out on the street at night on their own as a prostitute and target them," Dr Ian Stephen, a forensic psychiatrist, who has worked on serial killer cases, told the Independent.
- REUTERS
Murder mystery may be linked to 1992 murder
Police are believed to be investigating a possible link between the Ipswich murders and the murder of prostitute Natalie Pearman who was strangled in 1992.
Pearman, 16, whose body was found in woodland at Ringland Hills, Norfolk, had been abducted while working on the streets of Norwich, 80km north of Ipswich.
Forensic tests showed she had had sex with three men on the night she died. Two of the men were identified and cleared of involvement in her death. The third, police believe, was her killer.
Pearman's mother, Lin, said she had been contacted by police and told that there were similarities between the condition of her daughter's body and that of one of the recent victims.
"For 14 years I've been waiting for that phonecall," she said.
"But, at the moment my heart goes out to the parents who have gone through what I have gone through.
"I believe there may have been things done to the bodies of the women that could link them to what happened to Natalie."
Four other unsolved cases may be of interest to the police. Mandy Duncan, 26, a prostitute from Ipswich, went missing in 1993. Her body has never been found. The body of Vicky Hall, 17, a sixth-form student, was found in a ditch near Stowmarket in 1999. She had been asphyxiated.
The body of Kellie Pratt, 29, who disappeared from the red-light district of Norwich in 2000, has never been found. Michelle Bettles, 22, who disappeared from the same area in 2002, was found strangled.
- INDEPENDENT
