They’ve just announced on the news that a fifth woman is missing http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/suffolk/6168697.stm
I remember the hysteria around the Yorkshire Ripper in the late 70’s but this seems a whole new level of depravity.
It’s the speed which is so shocking, Sutcliffe was a monster of course but this man is on some sort of spree and lord knows when he’ll be caught,
Did they catch Billy Dods mid-sentence? Tune in next time he replies to find out!
...but Billy Dods is innocent.
William Corder’s ghost?
Bobby Robson’s recovered from his stroke quickly enough.
5 now? bloody hell.
I only read about an hour ago there was a 4th missing.
I remember when the Yorkshire Ripper killed his last few victims and when he was caught. But those killings were over a period of a few years. This is what 5 in 2/3 days?
2 more bodies found now according to Sky News.
There was even a Channel 4 News newsflash in the middle of Deal or no Deal.
Undercover cops will get this ripper
I think they’ve all been strangled.
You know when I saw where the bodies had been found on the map I wondered if there was going to be a pattern(it looked like it might go in a circle.), I wonder where these ones were found.
They were found near Levington, if you read the article that you linked to.
(also, they haven’t released full details of how they died, I’ve only seen one of them confirmed as having been strangled)
Yeah but there’s no map(and I don’t know Ipswich)
re—strangulation, maybe I’ve misheard then.
You’re connected to the internet right now! Surely you can find out if you’re so fascinated by this?
At lunchtime, some of them were suspected poisonings.
Hopefully clicking on this will satisfy your “tracing the steps of a serial killer” needs.
the union of randy men of ipswich will catch him eventually (they have to)
Undercover cops will get this ripper
— DJ Martian (altmartinu...), December 12th, 2006. (djmartian)
dj martian on the case
You know when I saw where the bodies had been found on the map I wondered if there was going to be a pattern
A theory Sky News were peddling too, I notice. 24 hour news channels are loving this—hours and hours of wheeling out real-life CSI dudes to explain, erm, nothing.
Not seen sky since I saw those headlines.
24 hour news channels do that with everything though. They will wheel out anyone.
cheers for the map btw. Just looking at it now.
This is what 5 in 2/3 days?
Just to clarify for the benefit of anyone following this on this thread rather than actually going with the stuff reported as fact, the first victim actually went missing over a month ago. The first body was found ten days ago. It’s still a short timescale, but it’s not quite hacking down a couple of prostitutes a day.
According to what I just saw on Sky News The police are worried more prostitutes are missing and haven’t been reported as so.
Not Sky News are really bored because nothing’s happened since yesterday and they need to stir up some more fear because people might stop watching?
The bastards!
Just to clarify for the benefit of anyone following this on this thread rather than actually going with the stuff reported as fact, the first victim actually went missing over a month ago. The first body was found ten days ago. It’s still a short timescale, but it’s not quite hacking down a couple of prostitutes a day.
Here’s a timeline of the killings.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6171319.stm
and a map too but I forget how to post pics (if someone could post that map that would be great)
on bbc news 24 yesterday, there was a social worker type woman (i think—wasn’t looking at screen) who said that prostitutes who went out should do so in pairs, be careful &c, even though the official advice was to not go out at all—she mentioned that there were factors which meant some women had to go on the streets regardless.
bbc anchorman responded with “yes, i suppose they’ve all got drug habits, haven’t they”
To be fair, that is why most women get into/continue in prostitution.
sorry, should have added “get forced into” as another option there.
So, is the big “all prostitution customers please report to the police” action a big success?
maybe so but it’s a rather insensitive stereotyoe to bring up, no? i mean, factors like homelessness, having to care for children, having to eat may also play a role in “forcing” women on to the streets
xp
The bastards!
What, you DON’T think the 24 hour news channels ever so slightly exploit dramatic situations for ratings?
btw to post pictures you do (img src=“blahblahblah.jpg”) but with pointy brackets rather than round ones.
Lex, yes, there are more factors, but (and I’m trying to back this up somewhere—I heard this at a seminar last year) it’s something like 80% of prostitutes in the UK who have a drug dependency and I’m guessing that it’s those women who need to keep working to support their habit.
I wonder if there’s anyway now that a change in the law to *legalize brothels will come since in theory the women should be safer.
*You can imagine the tabloids(esp Daily Mail) complaints at the very thought.
xpost to lexpretend.
Forcing women onto the streets generally, yes.
But forcing them out onto the streets of Ipswich tonight—is drugs.
I hope some way is found to provide for their ‘needs’,without them having to go out, until this man is caught.
Wishfuk thinking, sadly.
You can imagine the tabloids(esp Daily Mail) complaints at the very thought.
Regardless of the fact that many places already have unofficially tolerated brothels—at the moment enforcement of the law depends entirely on the attitude of the local police.
I dunno, it could be done quietly. The cops must have confiscated drugs they could pass on.
There are plenty of support agencies for drug users and prostitutes up and down the country, why is it wishful thinking to assume that the same can be done (if it isn’t being done already) in Ipswich?
The problem is getting people to access these services when they have (Lex-baiting stereotype approaching) pimps/boyfriends (often the same person) wanting more and more money off them to feed their drug habit too. Getting prostitutes off the streets is a long and complicated process, but things are being done to address it. But it can’t happen, forcibly, overnight, and some people will always be willing to take the risk to carry on. Grimmest T/S ever—possible run in with murderer vs kicking at hands of smack-addicted pimp when you fail to come home with enough money for his drugs, let alone your own.
Lex, yes, there are more factors, but (and I’m trying to back this up somewhere—I heard this at a seminar last year) it’s something like 80% of prostitutes in the UK who have a drug dependency and I’m guessing that it’s those women who need to keep working to support their habit.
again, maybe so, but mentioning it offhand like that in a NEWS programme subtly shifts the blame on to the women—almost like saying it’s their fault if they get murdered, and if they have to go out to fuel their drug habit then that’s their fault too
I don’t think it’s implying that AT ALL, Lex.
lexpretend, “like saying it’s their fault if they get murdered”
why do you think people think like that? nobody I know does.
And those that do, do you think they wouldn’t think that if the BBC didn’t mention it?
Yeah I know the British public can be astonishingly kneejerk at times but I reckon in a ‘TS—prostitutes and drug addicts vs serial killers’ the serial killers are unlikely to come off well.
Grimmest T/S ever—possible run in with murderer vs kicking at hands of smack-addicted pimp when you fail to come home with enough money for his drugs, let alone your own.
Ailsa, you will no doubt have heard of the Glasgow case the other month where a prostitute was attacked by someone she thought was a client, and lost an arm—but was back on the streets working within the week.
(Glasgow, for those of you who didn’t know, has had a prostitute-murdering serial killer on the loose for a few years now; there’s a good chance it was him involved in that case)
Yes, she was found about a mile from my house. She discharged herself from hospital, sold her story to the Daily Record (grinning photos galore of herself and boyfriend who was fully behind her career of choice), then went back to work.
She’s very far from the only one who would do the same.
It was sad to see a BBC reporter interviewing one of the girls last week, asking her if she was worried by the events. She said she was, but that she would continue to work because she needed the money—but that she would be careful about whose car she got into. She was one of the ones subsequently killed a few days after that interview.
The bodies are all turning up very close to the A14 which runs from the Midlands to the port of Felixstowe, so perhaps it’s someone who regularly uses that route for the cross channel ferries—perhaps not a local man, but maybe a Belgian lorry driver?? Though leaving the bodies all so near this road seems to suggest such a link far too obviously, so maybe the killer is playing deliberate games.
In that Record article she says with support she would give up drugs and prostitution. Then the record got an undercover reporter to approach her on the streets and took photos etc. How helpful.
Did she lose the arm when shoved out of the car on the motorway or had she already been attacked and she was just dumped on the road later? I never did see anything mentioned about that.
The details of the Glasgow case upthread. I hardly think the Record are the villains of the peace.
Has anyone linked these girls to the Glasgow ones yet?
With regard to the finer details of the attack, she can’t actually remember because she was fucked out of her head on valium. She wasn’t thrown out on the motorway though, she walked down there to flag down help after somehow getting out of the car in a graveyard about half a mile off the motorway.
maybe a Belgian lorry driver??
Would it make you feel better if it was a foreigner? And a lorry driver? (why specifically a Belgian one?)
(xxpost)
peace = piece. You know what I mean.
The Record had paid her for an earlier article where her and the boyfriend were all “yes, this is dreadful and we love each other very much and this is the thing we need to make Gillian get off the streets”—I think, in as much as I think any intrusion into anyone’s life is justified, that the Record were right to go “well, now she has our money and they aren’t exactly making a go of putting their lives back on track”. What more do you expect them to do?
And a lorry driver? (why specifically a Belgian one?)
Presumably because Belgium is at the far end of the A14
(as far as ro-ro ferry routes go, at any rate. There is an awful lot of container traffic on other shipping routes, but that would be handled by British drivers)
No, of course it wouldn’t make me feel better if it were a foreigner—I meant it to mean that the police have a job-and-a-half on their hands to try and track down the person responsible. They have been hinting so far that they might be looking for a local man—I was just suggesting that it might not be someone local and was wondering to myself what sort of person might regularly travel that particular road if they weren’t local to Ipswich.
The road leads to Felixstowe, which is a busy port—thus I thought perhaps a cross-continent lorry driver might be a possible option. Maybe someone living nowhere near the murder sites, but with cause to travel that was frequently. And I thought of Belgian, because ferries from Felixstowe cross to Zeebrugge.
Thing is, wouldn’t this person* have to go into the centre of Ipswich to pick people up then drive to places off the beaten track to dump the bodies? Might be a tad inconvenient, and make you look a bit obvious, if you’re doing all this in a fuck-off big artic.
* because we don’t know it’s a man, do we?
Peter Sutcliffe was a long distance lorry driver. (I see your point though, Ailsa)
Thing is, wouldn’t this person have to go into the centre of Ipswich to pick people up then drive to places off the beaten track to dump the bodies?
Yes—well, a lot of streetwalking areas aren’t necessarily in the town centre. The main area in Ipswich is near the football ground, apparently.
The person wouldn’t necessarily need to drive through the town centre in their ‘normous pantecnicon though. What if they parked up somewhere, and stalked the red light district on foot for victims? I heard on the news last night that the majority of the sex workers ply their trade in dark deserted alleyways—standing up, fully clothed, get it over with quickly type sex.
Robert Black was a driver as well, wasn’t he? I think in those (and Sutcliffe’s) cases, the murders were carried out places that he stayed overnight, rather than in transit between places.
xpost, fair enough, but how are they transporting the bodies out of the pick-up place and into the arse-end of nowhere?
Guardian reports today that Ipswich prostitutes and sex worker rights groups formally asked the police to provide a “safe space” for them to work; they were not only ignored but forced to disperse themselves when they did work, so they couldn’t work together and vastly increasing the risk to them.
What is strange is that they were asking the authorities if they could work in an industrial part of town, away from residences—they said they’d be safer there. And they were rebuffed! Isn’t that what everyone would want??!
xpost
Good question Ailsa—I have no idea! also : the killer strips the girls, so where is all their clothing? He must be disposing of that somewhere (burning it, I suppose).
Surely (despite having dumped three of the bodies in water) there must be some residual DNA for the police to work with?
Maybe they are being transported in something like a... truck.
The whole thing is mental. Mental that the remaining women aren’t being protected simply because of their profession, mental that there are women in situations where going out to put themselves in the way of being killed is better than staying home and not earning, mental that (as I’ve just heard on the radio) there are still 13 year-old girls walking around Ipswich at night, carol singing.
Is it that people are just so overwhelmed by what’s happening that they can’t process it and are carrying on as normal?
But if the killer’s not local and they’ve come off the ferry in a big lorry, they’re going to have to either run around small country roads in a big lorry or hire/buy a car locally, which must surely give people something to go on. And they either do this run a lot (so port records would be something to go on) or else they are staying locals (so local B & Bs / hotels should be able to help). I’m sure the police are onto this sort of stuff already, but I don’t buy the bloke-off-a-ferry story.
xpost—stiff upper lip, innit? It’s not going to happen to nice 13 year old carol singers, just those nasty prostitutes...
At ease officers, there’s a briefing from DI Martian at 1100.
The police did say that whoever was killing the girls was “storing” them (thought they did not say how long for) before dumping them elsewhere, away from the place where they were murdered. Sticking the bodies in a refrigerated truck and parking it in a busy lorry park might be a good way to transport them.
So far two bodies have been found near to each other, twice. Presumably the killer didn’t murder both girls at the same time, so the bodies must have been transported together to the place where they were dumped.
Lorry drivers mostly don’t stay in B&Bs, they sleep in their cabs don’t they?
I saw a picture of a pink shoe in the paper, which was thought to belong to one of the girls, so they are finding at least bits of clothing. It’s interesting the police are still referring to “a killer or killers”.
Depends where they’re going, how long they are intending to stay, whether they have other stuff to be doing (like murdering prostitutes, for example) while they are there, how long they’ve been travelling for.
Surely someone will spot a big artic winding through the country roads rather than straight to the port? Also, isn’t it equally likely to be a British lorry driver heading Continent-wards, rather than the other way around?
xpost, I’m still intrigued by the murdered girl who said on the news that she would be wary of who she got into a car with. What’s intrinsically trustworthy about whoever she got in the car with? A woman? An accompanied man? Someone she knew? A support worker? A police officer?
It makes me wonder whether the killer is someone already known to the girls. A hitherto trusted client.
There was speculation about that on the radio this morning, too.
I remember the hysteria around the Yorkshire Ripper in the late 70’s but this seems a whole new level of depravity.
I’m interested in what you think makes this more depraved than Sutcliffe’s actions. Sutcliffe killed 13 women and attacked at least 7 others we know about. His MO included such niceties as smashing heads in with a ball-pein hammer and post-mortem mutilation.
What has this latest nutjob done that’s worse?
Acted in a world where everything is over-dramatised and over-analysed* by 24-hour news, and is helpfully acting in a smaller timeframe to keep the attention levels up?
(*yes, I realise the ironing given my contributions to this thread)
Yorkshire Ripper murders were fairly random and spaced out over area and time though, this is (at the moment) concentrated in a small area on a small section of a small community.
Heffer says it’s all drugs fault...his solution?
“You know,” he said, “a few years ago they had a serious drugs problem in China. So they rounded up 6,000 drugs dealers and shot them in the back of the head. Result: they don’t have a drugs problem.”
Er...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2006/12/13/do1301.xml
Yorkshire Ripper murders were fairly random and spaced out over area and time though, this is (at the moment) concentrated in a small area on a small section of a small community.
More concentrated != more depraved.
Many reports since Sutcliffe’s conviction have speculated that the “quiet” periods between his attacks were simply periods when stuff wasn’t reported or was misreported or wasn’t attributed to him at the time.
I’m not justifying what Billy said at all! I worded that last post really badly though. What I was trying to get at was that the obviousness of “oh look! A real proper serial killer!” is evident here, as opposed to random attacks up and down the country over a period of time later linked to one person, and it allows people to feverishly gibber on about it like we’re doing here and like Sky News, BBC News 24 etc, are all doing as well.
It’s a grisly thought that the killer is probably watching all the media coverage too (and probably even getting a kick out of it).
Meanwhile the Daily Mail has managed to find an immigration link...
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=422293&in_page_id=1770
I’m gonna stop looking at the newspapers now...
Heffer advocating murder shocker
which would only encourage girls to go into that line of business, with all the squalor and misery that entails.
yes Heff nothing girls love better than all that squalor and misery. so alluring!
multixposts
Depraved was probably the wrong word to use. As if one person being killed is any less depraved than 5 or 10 or 20, it was the shock of 5 going missing in a space of a few days, which I now know is several weeks, which led me to use the term.
I still find the idea that someone could kill 5 people in a month more shocking than Sutcliffe killing 13 over the space of 5 years. It’s illogical I know, it should be no more or less shocking than any other murder but it just seems worse.
xpost to CJ, what if they’re reading this?
What has this latest nutjob done that’s worse?
We don’t really know, though, do we? The police are telling us very little and I suspect it will remain that way until (if) it all comes out in court. With Sutcliffe’s murders we have the ‘benefit’ of all the evidence they were able to release during and after the trial, as well as the work of various hack investigators who’ve dug up additional juicy titbits and reproduced them in their Real Crime books.
Looks like the local media have a nickname for the killer
That would make a great name for a newspaper actually.
Someone on Digital Spy suggested The Suffolkater, which is much better.
If they’re reading this, I’d like to ask them to kindly stop killing people.
The Suffolk Strangler? so lame, I prefer DS’s.
“Every woman is now asking themselves the same question—what if he runs out of prostitutes and starts attacking other women?” said Jean, who works in a petrol station near the Portman Road red light district.
WTF? Do these people even listen to themselves?
Hopefully the police have reassured her that there are still plenty of prostitutes left.
They’re drafting in extra police resources from other parts of the country. Maybe they could get more prostitutes shipped in as well, just to reassure the petrol-station-lady.
It’s similar to Heffers madness—just get rid of all the drugs! It’s easy!
The Mail is also using “The Suffolk Strangler”. BBC using “Ipswich Ripper”.
Someone on the news has suggested that it’s a result of the over sexualisation of society—presumably just like it was in Whitechapel in the 1880s. Where do they get these people?
In other news “Detectives say they are determined to find the person responsible” followed by a detective saying “we are determined to find the person reposible”—thank god for that—i thought they were just gonna give up.
Following on from Ipswich Town football club’s nickname of “The Tractor Boys,” a suggestion was made in Denmark Street last night to name the assailant: “Tractor Ripper”
The Deere Hunter
David Peace: “ah well, that’s my next four-book deal taken care of”...
Five minutes with no new victims to read about and already we turn to the puns & media cynicism.
[edit] Famous residents
* Brian Cant—Children’s TV Presenter (Notably Camberwick Green and Trumpton)
* Kieron Dyer—Midfielder for Newcastle United (1999-Present) and ex-Ipswich Town player (1996–1999)
* Sir Trevor Nunn CBE—Stage and Film Director. Director of the Royal Shakespeare Company for 18 years (1968–1986)
* Jenny Platt—Actress best known for her role as barmaid Violet Wilson in the long running ITV soap, Coronation Street
[edit] Ipswich serial killer
Brian Cant—Children’s TV Presenter (Notably Camberwick Green and Trumpton)
lots of kids in the north of England thought he didn’t exist having been told by their parents and teachers that there was no such word as can’t.
The best ever Melody Maker headline was for a negative review of a Placebo album: “BRIAN CAN’T”
I’d have thought he was more more notably notable for Playaway than Trumpton/CG.
There is a word “cant” which means hypocrisy, so obviously parents and teachers in the north of England need to go back to school and this time listen instead of picking their noses with the inkwell.
Jesus. The radio news was so depressing earlier. More bodies in Ipswich, and in Ireland there’s a gang going round the northeast of the country stealing cars and hacking people with a machete. They rammed a car last night, killed the driver and tried to hack the passenger’s arm off. And two guys were shot in Dublin yesterday. One was a major drug dealer, the other was some young apprentice plumber doing a nixer in his house.
There were three guys shot just along from my work last week (one dead). News is always depressing. Shit happens, people are bad. It’s just that we have a nice handy package of badness all condensed in one area here focussing us all on “things are bad, people are bad, we’re all off to hell in a handcart”.
We must wake up to what is happening here. Many will take a voyeuristic delight in the horrible tale unfolding from east Suffolk, much as George Orwell described in his magnificent The Decline of the English Murder. But these murders are not simply a real-life Inspector Morse, or a good salacious read in the red-top press before the roast beef next Sunday
But they are obviously that, too.
What exactly is happening here?
Do contempt laws regarding English criminal cases affect Scottish newspapers, or are they country-specific like injunctions?
second arrest really does make it look like a ‘weirdo sweep’.
re. the law: semi-hilarious that the government that wants to get rid of juries can’t see how googlecache is changing everything.
I don’t know about contempt, but wasn’t there a case recently where someone won a libel action against someone who defamed him/her in a chatroom?
I thought that’s all that ever went on in chat rooms.
Do contempt laws regarding English criminal cases affect Scottish newspapers, or are they country-specific like injunctions?
in the case of the paper i work for, yes: it’s a scottish national paper that is sold (in small numbers) in england, so it counts as publishing there, and needs to watch what the fuck it says etc.
i’m intrigued, though, as to what the case might be for—say—the scottish edition of the daily mail, which obviously doesn’t sell in england. hmm.
that said, i think any media lawyer’s advice would be the same: don’t fuckin’ risk it, sonny :)
semi-hilarious that the government that wants to get rid of juries can’t see how googlecache is changing everything
so OTM.
but wasn’t there a case recently where someone won a libel action against someone who defamed him/her in a chatroom
not sure, but i really can’t see how this couldn’t have happened yet. i need to bring myself up to speed with internet law; or, rather, with how the UK’s creaking and antiquated judicial system is being applied to this brave new world.
like we were saying at work the other night: the problem is that many of the existing laws affecting the media are absolutely useless when it comes to policing the internet, and trying to simply impose them would be a dreadful cludge. but, you know, in the middle of a soi-disant “war on terror” i guess we’ve got rather more important legal issues to worry about :/
in the case of the paper i work for, yes: it’s a scottish national paper that is sold (in small numbers) in england, so it counts as publishing there, and needs to watch what the fuck it says etc.
That’ll be why Neil Lennon sued the Daily Record in an English court over the “Thugs & Thieves” thing a couple of years back.
I’ve noticed, actually, that in the past 6 months or so the Record has become a lot more available in England. Most supermarket chains down here seem to stock it now, in fact.
I don’t know about contempt, but wasn’t there a case recently where someone won a libel action against someone who defamed him/her in a chatroom?
tell you what: you and i should try suit and counter-suit over that grammar thread ;)
xpost: you poor sods.
Did a wee search and it seems Lennon went to England because the process is quicker and the damages greater.
OK after googling I found the chatroom libel case. The complainant got a £30,000 out-of-court settlement from one person, and £17,000 in a court decision from another person. Blimey! So if anyone feels the need to let off some steam, please feel free to abuse and libel the crap out of me to your heart’s content, right here, right now. I can take it.
Also while googling I found a recent case where the New York Times blocked its report on the perpetrators of the failed tube bombings to UK readers, for fear of falling foul of contempt laws.
Blimey.
Ailsa, we were just kidding! (at least, I was) :-)
No sense in backtracking now, you accused me of killing two people up there. Lawyers!
xx is really 20, isn’t it?
(if ailsa suddenly calls herself ailsa_xxi and I don’t post here anymore, well, I’m just saying...)
:-)
thanks for the link (and the NYT info). it seems things are as vague as i feared—at least wrt defamation—and there’s still no real precedent. i guess caution should be our watchword, always. from now on i’m going to be NICE TO EVERYBODY :)
... issued a claim for libel after being called a “nazi”, “racist bigot” and “nonce” during a debate in an internet forum on the war in Iraq. Although accusations like these are common on the internet ...
“commmon”? “so devalued as to be meaningless”, i’d argue.
Exactly, it’s like taking some wee cnut to court for claiming to have fucked your mother.
“but Gerry, I’m your Dad!”
“yer a wee cnut!”
“so devalued as to be meaningless”, i’d argue.
that jeremy clarkson’s a total fucking jeremy clarkson.
Yeah, but if going “that car’s a bit gay” is offensive*, then pull down the shutters on ILX now.
* especially to people watching Jeremy Clarkson, who is not exactly your sensitive PC-correctness-gone-mad type of presenter
offensive != potentially leading to litigation
You’re comparing apples and bigoted cuntish albeit occasionally funny tv presenters
In any case, there’s a massive difference in saying something on TV with an audience in the millions, and saying something on an overheated message board with an audience of dozens. That chatroom libel case seems to set a dangerous (and unenforceable) precedent in assuming all forms of “publishing” are essentially equivalent. On the strength of that case, there must be literally hundreds of potential libel awards generated by ILX alone.
Littlejohn in total fucking cunt shockah:
Well, no, I presume the new Fiat Brava (or whatever) isn’t going to sue on grounds of its sexuality being called into question. However, if I said something and someone on ILX said “stop being so gay” I’m hardly going to brandish a lawsuit at them, because calling people gay is what (some) people do. It’s a silly little insult. Same as when people call people Nazis in chatrooms. Same as Stan calling me a murderer up there. Where do you draw the line?
xpost, yeah, that too.
I’m astounded at the backslapping going on in the comments on that Littlejohn thing.
I notice he’s managed to squeeze in a wee dig at his old pal Will Self
Really, if you don’t own a copy already, go out and buy Dead Horse by Cassetteboy for the Jeremy Clarkson track alone (track 48).
bit of history behind that one—http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/1390395.stm
xpost
At last someone who speaks the truth.
- Anon, Norwich
The ONLY man in Fleet Street who tells it how it is
Bravo Sir Richard..name your job in government and we will put you there!
- Donald Dehaviland, Fleet Hampshire
Absolutely spot on Richard as usual. I think the next government should be formed by a party of like minds with Richard as PM. Political and emotional correctness is a modern cancer that has to be stopped for the sake of an ordered society.
- Karl, Lancs, UK
A brutal, but honest appraisal of the situation in Ipswich. Shame more people don’t have the courage to say it.
Also if Gordon Brown didn’t know how all the money was being sourced, the Labour Party is more dysfunctional than I first thought.
- Roy, Middlesbrough
After serving 36 years in the Police Force I cannot not disagree with any of RL’s comments. He is the absolute realist. Well said.
- Robert, Hull, East Yorks.
Well done for saying exactly what everyone was thinking about the Ipswich murders. Very sad but as has been said before: a serial killer’s victims often meet him half-way.
- Tony Garstang, Marlow
Spot on, the truth hurts.
- Chris S, Tallinn Estonia
That chatroom libel case seems to set a dangerous (and unenforceable) precedent in assuming all forms of “publishing” are essentially equivalent. On the strength of that case, there must be literally hundreds of potential libel awards generated by ILX alone.
exactly. even on this minuscule microcosm of ILX, i bet a few spins of the “random” button would unearth a handful of potentially actionable posts.
which is MADNESS.
we should go underground, encrypt everything and electrocute anyone who even attempts to google us :)
xposts: woah, hang on. i need to go read this littlejohn thing.
Yeah, there’s really a Tony Garstang in Marlow.
What does Martin Mere of Irlam have to say on this matter?
OK, one brief comment:
They weren’t going to discover a cure for cancer or embark on missionary work in Darfur.
And this also applies to Richard Littlejohn.
That’s it.
motherFUCK, littlejohn, you really are the people’s shit, aren’t you?
We do not share in the responsibility for either their grubby little existences or their murders. Society isn’t to blame.
i’m surprised you’re not with maggie on the very nature of society, you fucking distended penis.
now come on, you vile shit-for-brains waste of oxygen. fucking sue me :)
How many of those comments are from whatever message board it was that I googled before that was running a competition to see who could get the most ridiculously parodic comment onto the Daily Mail messageboards without anyone spotting they were taking the piss?
(this doesn’t excuse Littlejohn for being a cock of the highest order, obviously)
now, don’t encourage him with that “cock of the highest order” stuff...
I wish my uncle (who led a city’s vice squad) were alive to kick the living shit out of Littlejohn for that asking-for-it bullshit. Death is an occupational hazard of LIFE.
Women who go on the game in small towns and cities are often trapped in the cycle by their own trepidations, and are intimidated away from the help they need because they’ve been involved with illegal activity and think they will get ‘in trouble’ from authority or from physical or psychological abuse at the hands of pimps and johns. Drug use is not even the half of it; it is perhaps more realistic to point to a whole cohort that keeps these women in one place and uses them like man-sized Kleenex, and that includes people like LJ who seem to believe that if they’re dirty girls that’s all they’re good for.
Most supermarket chains down here seem to stock it now, in fact.
You live fairly close to Scotland though, don’t you FP? I bet you can’t get it in Somerset.
I bet you can!
(spotted last weekend)
You can deffo get it in London, at even the shitiest out-of-way newsagents.
you can get it in london, but then you can get lots of foreign papers in london. do they get censored if they include details of eg the london bomber trial?
Not *that* close to Scotland—it’s as far from here to Carlisle as it is to London.
I thought you were up in the north east, FP. My mistake. Gosh, do they really have it everywhere now then? Aren’t we a lucky nation, eh?
(x-post yo L!)
In theory those papers would be barred a la Spycatcher but in practice, not really.
Well I’m kind of in the north-east—the nearest big city is Hull.
“do they get censored if they include details of eg the london bomber trial?”
They usually just don’t distribute that edition, or if the sale is big enough to warrant it they do a special run. There’s no censorship — you can publish what you like, but you might end up facing a judge for it.
xpost
Well, yeh, sometimes the govt will take out an injuction to prevent publication of state secrets etc. But almost every time they forget about Scotland’s different legal system, and we get to publish it all. Then the next day all the Londons publish it because it’s “in the public domain already”.
Can I just say I would prefer to buy a car that was at least a little bit gay? Why would that be a bad thing?
You’d keep getting read-ended
rear-ended, even
comedy is all about timing :(
rofl!
Second man arrested now named by locals (though not confirmed by police) as a worker at Felixstowe Docks called Steven Wright.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/suffolk/6192085.stm
His best friend has just been on the BBC 10 o’clock news telling everyone how Wright is a very nice quiet chap.
GUILTY!
HAHAHAH. the fact i knew that was coming as i scrolled down only made it better. the fact it’s such a craptacular eighties cheesy pic makes it borderline godlike.
these two loners double-teamed the prostitutes? or the police are lame?
yea someone linked that. fucking disgusting.
So is this Steven Wright on mysapce?
they didn’t publish my comment
oh whoopsie, sorry
there are *some* comments that don’t make me wish for all-out nuclear war there.
oh it’s worth the collateral damage surely?
Front page of The Sun has a picture of the latest suspect choking his wife.
ROFL
hahahaha. this country.
“DNA at 3 Sites”
shock news!!!!
oh fucking rofl lol !!
It seems (allegedly, according to unnamed sources etc etc laywers gtf nothing to see here) the first two victims were dumped in water and there was no DNA evidence linking the 2nd suspect to them but the next 3 victims were dumped on land and there was.
Maybe that’s why two men are in custody?
Is he strangling her because Noel is dating her? (top corner, left)
is that the noodle vague guy?
I wonder how they got that picture. Would you give a picture (especially one like that) of a friend/relative/neighbour/collegue to the papers before you’re sure he’s guilty?
oh wait. givesell, right? :-/
It’s his ex wife (or one of them, he’s on his 3rd marriage, she was his 2nd wife), so she might not give a shit about him. His Dad was spilling his guts too as they haven’t spoken for years.
At least she survived :-)
xxxpost
oops, I look a bit like a murder suspect roffle.
they let you use the internet?
the woman he’s “strangling” looks like one of our senior editors. it’s a small and not particularly amusing or coincidental world.
That was the first draft of the Sherman brothers’ song for Disney.
Wot’s with the Jack-Nicholson-as-the-Joker mouth?
you tell us
I’m only allowed one internet post.
Police said the first man arrested Tom Stephens, 37, has been released on police bail pending further inquiries.
“There have been significant ongoing inquiries and interviews during the period that these men have been in custody.
”As a result of these inquiries, the 37-year-old man from Trimley was this evening released on police bail pending further inquiries. Police will not name this man at this stage.
“The second man, Stephen Wright, from Ipswich, has been charged with the murder of all five women.”
I wonder if Myspace will reinstate his page now?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/suffolk/6202691.stm
Before the hearing Mr Wright’s solicitor, Paul Osler, said: “Of course, anybody accused of these sorts of offences is going to experience trauma, but he is bearing up well.”
Phew. At least he is doing well.
(WTF?)
Presumption of innocence?
Presumption of innocence = we shouldn’t even know his name until he’s been formally charged. And after that, nothing, not how he’s feeling, not why he did it, according to a woman who lives next door, nothing until the trial.
I guess I’m oldfashioned, but these are the kind of journalistic ethics I miss these days.
His solicitor was likely responding directly to a question such as “How is Mr Accused feeling?”
All these mentions of Steve Wright are doing my head in, I keep expecting the Mr Angry and Gervais the Hairdresser to be taken into custody.
“Police believe he was most likely to strike in the afternoon...”
According to Wikipedia he had a character called Mr Perv.
“like you become your job” all over again:
huh? (did I do that?)
it’s a bit like a lostpedia entry.
Cool! I want a wiki entry of my own!
you should start one.
Like anybody’s going to be able to resist vandalising this.
deep
Cool! I want a wiki entry of my own!
Strangle a few Wii characters and you’ll be FAMOUS!
The information on the “official” roffle-free version of that Wikipedia article is pretty problematic, I reckon. Dickheads.
In response to the investigation, executive vice president of the Owner-Operator Independent Drivers Association, Todd Spencer, said “Truckers are just absolutely outraged that various media sources or the FBI would draw the conclusion that truckers are over-represented in the ranks of serial killers”.[52]