Steve Wright (serial killer)

Steve Wright
Born	Steven Gerald James Wright (1958-04-24) 24 April 1958 (age 58) Erpingham, Norfolk
Other names	Suffolk Strangler, Ipswich Ripper
Criminal penalty	Life imprisonment, with recommendation of a whole life tariff
Conviction(s)	5 counts of murder
Killings
Victims	5
Span of killings	30 October 2006–9 December 2006
Country	England
Date apprehended	19 December 2006

Steven Gerald James Wright (born 24 April 1958) is an English serial killer, also known as the Suffolk Strangler and the Ipswich Ripper. He is serving life imprisonment for the murder of five women who worked as sex workers in Ipswich, Suffolk. The killings took place during the final months of 2006, and Wright was found guilty in February 2008.

Steve Wright was born in the Norfolk village of Erpingham, the second of four children of military policeman Conrad and veterinary nurse Patricia. He has an older brother, David, and two younger sisters, Jeanette and Tina. While Wright's father was on military service, the family had lived in both Malta and Singapore. Wright's mother left in 1964 when he was 6; his father divorced his mother in 1977; both remarried. Wright and his siblings lived with their father, who fathered a son, Keith, and daughter, Natalie, with his second wife, Valerie.

He left school in 1974, and soon afterwards joined the Merchant Navy, becoming a chef on ferries sailing from Felixstowe, Suffolk. In 1978, in Milford Haven, at the age of twenty, he married Angela O'Donovan. They had a son, Michael. The couple separated in 1987, and later divorced. Wright became a steward on the QE2, a lorry driver, a barman and, just prior to his arrest, a forklift truck driver. Former sex-worker Lindi St Clair said she was attacked by Steve Wright in the 1980s. His second marriage was to 32-year-old Diane Cassell at Braintree register office in August 1987. They split in July 1988 while he was a pub landlord in Norwich.