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IPSWICH - Dr Nat Carey, a forensic pathologist involved in some of the most notorious British murders of recent years, was yesterday drafted on to the case of the Ipswich serial killer.
Carey, who heads the department of forensic medicine at King's College, London, gave evidence against Ian Huntley and the killers of Victoria Climbie and Julie Ward.
The former police surgeon travelled to East Anglia to examine the bodies of the five prostitutes whose bodies have been found in rural areas around Ipswich.
As well as his investigations into the circumstances surrounding a string of high profile murder cases, he is also a regular consultant on TV dramas such as BBC's Silent Witness.
At the trial of Soham killer Ian Huntley he refuted the murderer's claim that Holly Wells could simply have drowned in Huntley's bath. Huntley's lawyer said Holly fell into the bath, while Jessica Chapman collapsed after he tried to stop her screaming.
But Carey said it was "unlikely at the least" that Holly had drowned when two people were present and that "vigorous struggling" would have been needed to smother Jessica.
"I have come to the conclusion that although it is not possible to give any cause of death, that death must have involved the actions of one or more third parties. In simple terms, 10-year-old girls simply do not die suddenly together."
One of his most high profile investigations was the murder over 20 years ago of British traveller Julie Ward, whose charred remains were found in the Masai Mara game reserve in Kenya. Carey, aided by Julie's father John Ward, proved she had not been attacked by lions as the Kenyan authorities first claimed, but that she had been hacked to death with a machete and then burned.
The pathologist was also called into the Victoria Climbie inquiry, describing the extent of her injuries as the worst case he had ever seen of its kind.
The 8-year-old girl had been sent to England to live with her great aunt, Marie-Therese Kouao, by her parents who hoped for a better life for their daughter. She died from hypothermia, her death in February 2000 triggering one of the biggest inquiries into social services. Kouao, 44, and her boyfriend, Carl Manning, 28, were both jailed for life for Victoria's murder.
- INDEPENDENT
Darkness on the edge of town
On stubbly, grey farmland outside Ipswich, two white tents conceal the bodies of two dead women.
As police gather forensic evidence, people in the town centre are struggling to accept that five locals have been brutally killed on their doorsteps. Many people have discovered that they have some personal connection with the dead prostitutes, be it through school or socialising in town pubs.
"There's a sense that this is someone's child - people don't look at what they're doing, there's a family involved here," said parish priest Andrew Dotchin, who knew one of the victims, Tania Nicol, when she used to hang around outside his church.
At the town hall, the local council yesterday opened a book of remembrance. "Five lights have been extinguished in people's lives," read one message, with another adding: "These women's lives are precious and did not deserve to be taken away."
Elsewhere, floral tributes are clustered around a lamp-post in the red-light district industrial estate around Ipswich Town's Portman Road football ground.
"There's very little condemnation of the girls," Dotchin said. "Those on the edges are not that far away."
Such kinship is a reason why locals are hoping that the police work on the edge of town bears fruit and brings peace of mind to those in the centre.
- AFP
