UK serial murders: 2nd suspect held

Ipswich, (England): Police investigating the killings of five prostitutes in eastern England say they have arrested a second suspect, and they are continuing to interrogate another man arrested a day earlier.

The 48-year-old man was arrested at five in the morning on Tuesday at his home near Ipswich, said Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull, who is leading the investigation into the murders that have gripped Britain and left the normally quiet town on edge in the run-up to Christmas.

The naked bodies of Tania Nicol, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell, Gemma Adams and Annette Nicholls were found dumped in rural areas near Ipswich, 110 kilometers (70 miles) northeast of London, earlier this month. Police impounded a blue Ford Mondeo car for forensic tests.

The vehicle was removed from outside a house in Ipswich where the second suspect was arrested.

Members of the public reported police activity early in the morning in the red light area of Ipswich. But police would not confirm whether any arrests had been made there.

On Monday police arrested a 37-year-old man and he was still being questioned Tuesday.

The man was arrested at his home in Trimley, near Felixstowe, Suffolk, on suspicion of murdering all five victims, Gull told a news conference Monday.

Police have not confirmed the identity of either suspect and neither man has been charged. He was identified by media reports as local supermarket worker Tom Stephens, although this was not confirmed by police.

Stephens told the Sunday Mirror over the weekend he was a "sad and lonely" person who had befriended all five victims.

He said he believed he was a suspect, but strenuously denied the killings.

The man was arrested in connection with the murder of the women whose naked bodies were found over a period of 11 days.

Stephens was also apparently a regular user of an Internet blog site, on which he is photographed in bizarre poses.

The pictures appeared on Stephens' MySpace page and featured him posing with a can of custard powder, in front of a wall of stars and wearing a yellow shirt and Union Jack tie. His page has since been taken down.

He gives his nickname as "The Bishop," lists his interests as "keeping fit," says he enjoys most types of music -- "especially from the 80s" -- and says his hero is the cartoon character Hong Kong Phooey.

In the Sunday Mirror interview, Stephens claimed: "On paper I should be attractive, but there is something about me women do not like."

Asked if there was anything he could do to help police, he said: "I've got to. It's not possible for me to do enough.

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"If I got out of this car now and through my own initiative caught the man now, that wouldn't be enough. It wouldn't bring them back." On Sunday members of a 500-strong police task force hunting the suspected serial killer canvassed motorists and pedestrians passing through a red-light district to try to trace the final steps of the five murdered women.

Gull said Sunday that 340 specialist investigators from forces across Britain had joined 160 officers on the task force. Police had received more than 10,000 calls, he said.

Suffolk Strangler

The case evokes that of the 19th-century prostitute killer Jack the Ripper, who was never found, and Peter Sutcliffe, known as the Yorkshire Ripper, who killed 13 women, mainly prostitutes, in northern England between 1975 and 1980.

The investigation began on December 2 when 25-year-old Adams' body was found in a stream. Police discovered 19-year-old Nicol's body in the same stream on December 8.

Alderton, 24, who was three months pregnant, was strangled and Clennell, 24, was killed by "compression to the neck," police said. Nicholls, 29, was the fifth victim.

The killer has been dubbed the Suffolk Strangler, although the precise way all the women died has yet to be established.

Sex workers were urged to stay off the streets but some ignored warnings and still working, many to feed drug addictions. The five dead women were all drug users, media said.

Prostitution is legal in Britain but advertising sexual services, streetwalking, brothels and curb crawling -- driving slowly through a neighborhood to ask women for sex -- are all against the law.

The case has sparked calls for better protection for prostitutes, or the legalization of brothels so women do not have to solicit for sex on the street.

Forensic officers at the scene in Levington, England, as investigations take place where two bodies were found on Wednesday.

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