Welcome To Ipswich

It's kinda gloomy around here lately, and it's not just the freezing weather.

Last weekend, one clubber was stabbed, a second shot and stabbed (fatally) and three others shot at the Zest nightclub in Ipswich, twenty minutes up the road from where we are. Zest has now been closed by the police, but it's always had a bit of a dodgy reputation and usually rises from the ashes in a new guise when it gets shut down. The site is close to Ipswich train station which has a line running from London Liverpool Street and up through Norfolk - it's always been assumed that trouble congregates there because of how easy it is to disappear away from the town quickly.

When we were away in mid November, the news broke that there were two Ipswich prostitutes missing. We speculated at the time, that as it was mentioned that they were friends, that maybe they'd run off together - it was a better scenario than we touched on, that they were dead. On December 2, one of them, Gemma Adams, 25, was found naked and murdered in a stream in Hintlesham. The other girl, Tania Nicol, 19, was found on December 8th, also naked and found in water, this time a pond in Copdock Mill. Then, something unexpected; on Sunday a third body was recovered. No-one had been reported missing, so the police took some time identifying her as Anneli Alderton, 24. Anneli was found strangled and dumped in woodland, 20 feet from a well used road at Nacton. Whilst Anneli was still unidentified, two other working girls, Paula Clennell, 24 and Annette Nicholls, 29 were reported missing. Today, two more bodies were found. They had been dumped close to each other in woodland just a five minute drive from where we live. It appears that the two missing girls may have been found.

Paula Clennell, had been interviewed by ITN news about the how the deaths of Tania and Gemma had affected trade in the red light district of Ipswich just a few days before she went missing, and said she would still walk the streets as she was desperate for money. That decision has potentially cost her life.

The killer, dubbed the Ipswich Ripper, the Suffolk Ripper, the River Ripper and other names by the press, has been speculated to be a local boy by some but with the bodies all being found by the A14, a major road that heads from Felixstowe through to the heart of England, it's possible it could be anyone. It's a scary time for many, when we should all be looking forward to spending time with our families.