Robert Tolhurst represented Steve Wright before the Central Criminal Court together with Kieran Vaughan KC of 2 Bedford Row, instructed by Sam Lamsdale of Lister Brady Criminal Defence Solicitors in Worcester.
This uniquely complex and high-profile case involved the attempted kidnap of Emily Doherty, aged 22, and the kidnap and murder of Victoria Hall, aged 17 on consecutive nights in September 1999. Both women were unknown to the defendant, and both were walking home in the early hours of the morning after attending the same night club in Felixstowe, Suffolk. The offences in relation to each of the victims were never linked during the original investigation.
The original investigation had resulted in multiple arrests and the unsuccessful prosecution of another individual in 2001 for the murder of Victoria Hall.
Steve Wright never entered the original investigation despite having lived and worked for many years in Felixstowe, having links to key locations in the case and having left the country within weeks of Ms Hall’s murder returning to Felixstowe in early 2000.
The investigation was reopened in 2019 following the identification of further suspects.
The TIE strategy employed in the investigation evolved over the twenty-five years since the murder of Victoria Hall and led to the identification of over 400 subjects of interest requiring evaluation and elimination.
Following advances in DNA technology and a cold case review following Mr Wright’s convictions in 2008 of the murders of five women in Ipswich, Suffolk in 2006, for which he was then serving life sentences with whole life orders, the attention of the team investigating the murder of 17-year-old Victoria Hall turned towards him.
The Crown’s case relied heavily upon the interpretation of complex DNA Y-STR evidence in addition to expert facial imagery evidence and comparison of evidence between the 2006 murders with the evidence recovered in relation to the murder of Victoria Hall including the forensic analysis of the six deposition sites, pathology, entomology and victim demographics. The prosecution also relied upon a complex bad character application based upon the fact and circumstances of the defendant’s five previous convictions for murder as evidence of his propensity to commit murder and his use of strikingly similar forms of violence towards vulnerable women.
Having never previously linked the attempted kidnap of Emily Doherty the night before the abduction and murder of Victoria Hall, the police latterly connected the attempt at abducting Ms Doherty to Steve Wright by the victim’s historic description of her attacker and their vehicle, which the police identified following a reappraisal of a historic VODS (Vehicle Online Descriptive Search) relying on a partial registration plate. The circumstances of this offence and those in relation to the kidnap and murder of Victoria Hall gave rise to substantial issues of cross admissibility.
The defence required the instruction of expert witnesses in multiple diverse disciplines, the formulation of multiple applications to adduce non-defendant bad character, and the comprehensive review of thousands of items of unused material relating to the original investigation, the failed prosecution in 2001, the TIE strategies employed throughout the investigation over the twenty-five years between the offences and Mr Wright being charged in 2024 and the evidence, trial documents and unused material relating to the investigation of the five murders in 2006.
Given that these offences pre-dated the defendant’s convictions in 2008, that he was already serving five life sentences with full life orders, and the need to apply the law as it was in 1999, the court received detailed legal submissions as to the correct approach to sentencing on the facts of this unique case.
Mr Wright was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 40 years in respect of the murder of Victoria Hall, 12 years concurrent in respect of the kidnap of Victoria Hall and 9 years concurrent in respect of the attempted kidnap of Emily Doherty. These sentences followed his guilty pleas entered on the day of trial.