UK killings: Police study clothing

British police were examining items of clothing on Thursday for possible links to the murders of five women, as the mother of a prostitute killed 14 years ago said she could have been the serial killer's first victim.

A massive manhunt is underway across the eastern English port town of Ipswich after the discovery of five naked bodies.

Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull said police would on Thursday reveal the results of a post-mortem examination on one of the victims and hopefully her identity. A second body was still being examined. Police said they feared the two most recent corpses, discovered on Tuesday, may be of prostitutes who had been reported missing.

Paula Clennell, 24, has not been seen since Saturday and Annette Nicholls, 29, has been missing for at least a week.

Detectives have confirmed that three of the dead women were sex workers. Gull said clothing had been found in different locations across Ipswich. "We will now take our time to analyze 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."

One woman still working the streets in Ipswich's red-light district was quoted in several newspapers as saying she saw the killer's third victim, Anneli Alderton, being driven off last Thursday in a blue BMW.

"A blue BMW went into the car park and Anneli went up to it and got in and it drove out," the woman, named simply as Lou, was quoted in the Daily Telegraph as saying. "The driver was chubby, with glasses and dark hair." A police spokesman was not immediately available to comment.

In a further twist, 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 (80 km) north of Ipswich, the newspaper said.

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 maybe 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 as a possible victim," Dr Ian Stephen, a consultant forensic psychiatrist, who has worked on past serial killer cases, told the Independent.

The inquiry was launched after the body of Gemma Adams, 25, was found in a stream near Ipswich on December 2. Police found 19-year-old Tania Nicol's body in the same stream on December 8. On Sunday the body of Alderton, 24, was found in woodland. The last two victims were discovered in Levington, east of Ipswich.

(Courtesy Reuters)