Dead Men Walking (True Crime) by Bill Wallace Page B
Authors: Bill Wallace
Tags: nonfiction
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operation was set up and Wright, already questioned twice during door-to-door enquiries, was questioned for a third time.
Nonetheless, three men were arrested in connection with the murders. The first, released without charge, was arrested in Felixstowe at 7.20 a.m. in the morning of 18 December. A day later, however, a supermarket worker, Thomas Stephens, was questioned, but again was released without charge. Finally, on 19 December, Steve Wright was arrested. His car and his clothes provided a substantial amount of incriminating material, including small amounts of his victims’ blood. Two days later, he was charged with all five murders, appearing before magistrates in Ipswich on 22 December and being remanded in custody. On 1 May, he formally entered a plea of not-guilty and a trial date was set for 14 January 2008.
It was an unusual media frenzy for a British court. A special ‘media pen’ was created at the court while Sky News went one better by erecting a shelter on the roof of a nearby building.
The prosecution case opened with pictures of two of the victims that had been deliberately posed and information that DNA linked Steve Wright to three of the victims – two had been washed clear of DNA evidence as they had been immersed in water. There was also fibre evidence that connected him to them. The defence, however, argued that as a frequenter of prostitutes, there was every likelihood that there would be links between him and some of the women. They claimed he had had sex with all of the victims, apart from Tania Nicholls whom he had picked up in his car with the intention of having sex with her but had changed his mind and deposited her back in the red-light area. But, police had him on record as having been stopped one night driving in the red-light district. He had claimed to have been unaware that he was in the red-light district – even though he lived in the middle of it. He claimed he had been unable to sleep and was just driving around.
It took the jury eight hours to find Wright guilty on all five charges of murder on 21 February 2008. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with the trial judge, Justice Gross, saying that because of the element of premeditation and planning, in his case life should mean life.
Josef Fritzl
His lawyer tried to blame it all on the effects of a brutal childhood, and there is no doubt that the kind of upbringing endured by Josef Fritzl would have taken its toll on anyone, but would probably not have turned everyone into a criminal responsible for murder, incest, enslavement, rape and the depriva-tion of his daughter’s liberty for twenty-four years, not to mention the incarceration of the seven children she gave birth to during those years of rape and astonishing brutality.
Fritzl was born in the Austrian town of Amstetten in 1935, three years before the Anschluss , the absorption of Austria into the Third Reich. After his father abandoned the family, his mother brought her son up alone. She was a strict disciplinarian, however, and the young Josef Fritzl often bore the bruises he received in vicious beatings by her. Of course, this brutality was inflicted against the even greater social brutality of the totalitarian and aggressively militaristic Nazi regime which had supplanted the authoritarianism of the previous Austro-Hungarian empire.
After the war, Josef Fritzl was an ordinary man. In fact, he was always an ordinary man – well turned out and the driver of a well-maintained Mercedes. His finances were always well organised and his home and other properties he owned were always in good order.
No one knew very much about him, however, not even the people with whom he worked. If only they had known what was really going on behind that veneer of ordinariness.
The gloss of respectability was smashed wide open in 1967 when, aged thirty-two, he was convicted of rape in Linz and sentenced to a year and a half in prison. He was also suspected of
Nonetheless, three men were arrested in connection with the murders. The first, released without charge, was arrested in Felixstowe at 7.20 a.m. in the morning of 18 December. A day later, however, a supermarket worker, Thomas Stephens, was questioned, but again was released without charge. Finally, on 19 December, Steve Wright was arrested. His car and his clothes provided a substantial amount of incriminating material, including small amounts of his victims’ blood. Two days later, he was charged with all five murders, appearing before magistrates in Ipswich on 22 December and being remanded in custody. On 1 May, he formally entered a plea of not-guilty and a trial date was set for 14 January 2008.
It was an unusual media frenzy for a British court. A special ‘media pen’ was created at the court while Sky News went one better by erecting a shelter on the roof of a nearby building.
The prosecution case opened with pictures of two of the victims that had been deliberately posed and information that DNA linked Steve Wright to three of the victims – two had been washed clear of DNA evidence as they had been immersed in water. There was also fibre evidence that connected him to them. The defence, however, argued that as a frequenter of prostitutes, there was every likelihood that there would be links between him and some of the women. They claimed he had had sex with all of the victims, apart from Tania Nicholls whom he had picked up in his car with the intention of having sex with her but had changed his mind and deposited her back in the red-light area. But, police had him on record as having been stopped one night driving in the red-light district. He had claimed to have been unaware that he was in the red-light district – even though he lived in the middle of it. He claimed he had been unable to sleep and was just driving around.
It took the jury eight hours to find Wright guilty on all five charges of murder on 21 February 2008. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, with the trial judge, Justice Gross, saying that because of the element of premeditation and planning, in his case life should mean life.
Josef Fritzl
His lawyer tried to blame it all on the effects of a brutal childhood, and there is no doubt that the kind of upbringing endured by Josef Fritzl would have taken its toll on anyone, but would probably not have turned everyone into a criminal responsible for murder, incest, enslavement, rape and the depriva-tion of his daughter’s liberty for twenty-four years, not to mention the incarceration of the seven children she gave birth to during those years of rape and astonishing brutality.
Fritzl was born in the Austrian town of Amstetten in 1935, three years before the Anschluss , the absorption of Austria into the Third Reich. After his father abandoned the family, his mother brought her son up alone. She was a strict disciplinarian, however, and the young Josef Fritzl often bore the bruises he received in vicious beatings by her. Of course, this brutality was inflicted against the even greater social brutality of the totalitarian and aggressively militaristic Nazi regime which had supplanted the authoritarianism of the previous Austro-Hungarian empire.
After the war, Josef Fritzl was an ordinary man. In fact, he was always an ordinary man – well turned out and the driver of a well-maintained Mercedes. His finances were always well organised and his home and other properties he owned were always in good order.
No one knew very much about him, however, not even the people with whom he worked. If only they had known what was really going on behind that veneer of ordinariness.
The gloss of respectability was smashed wide open in 1967 when, aged thirty-two, he was convicted of rape in Linz and sentenced to a year and a half in prison. He was also suspected of
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