A man once called the modern-day Jack the Ripper has admitted to the murder of another teenage girl before he went on a killing spree that terrorised Ipswich.

Steve Wright, already serving a whole-life prison sentence for murdering five women in 2006, pleaded guilty on Monday to the kidnap and murder of 17-year-old Victoria Hall in 1999. He is due to be sentenced on Friday.

Wright’s admission brings to an end a 26-year mystery and confirms that he killed years before becoming one of Britain’s most notorious serial murderers.

The 67-year-old had been due to stand trial at the Old Bailey but changed his plea at the last moment, also admitting the attempted kidnap of a 22-year-old woman the night before Hall disappeared.

The confession established that Wright murdered seven years before the Ipswich killings that left five women dead and a town gripped by fear.

Ipswich, like many English county towns, was considered safe until late 2006, when women began disappearing from its streets.

Between October and December that year, the bodies of five sex workers were discovered in and around Suffolk. The victims were later identified as Tania Nicol, Gemma Adams, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls.

The killings prompted panic. Streets emptied early. Police patrols increased. Women spoke of fear, scrutinising every man they passed.

Wright, a forklift driver living in Ipswich’s red-light district, was arrested in December 2006 and charged with all five murders. In February 2008, a jury unanimously convicted him and he was handed a whole-life sentence.

DNA evidence, taken years earlier after an unrelated offence, proved decisive. Prosecutors told jurors the odds of the DNA belonging to anyone else were “one in a billion”.

Until now, the murder of Victoria Hall remained unresolved.

The teenager, who had been studying for her A-levels, vanished on 19 September 1999 after a night out with friends in Trimley St Mary, near Felixstowe. Her body was found five days later in a ditch in Creeting St Peter, around 25 miles away.

In 2001, another man was charged with her murder but later acquitted, leaving the case open for more than two decades.

Wright’s guilty plea confirms he was responsible. At the time of Hall’s murder, he was working in and around Felixstowe and had links to the area.

How police were able to charge Wright so many years later, and what evidence prompted the prosecution, has not yet been made public.

‘Cruel man who hated women’

Wright never admitted to the Ipswich murders, despite being convicted. His latest plea therefore marks a rare admission of guilt.

Before his death in 2021, Wright’s father suggested his son had been emotionally damaged by his mother leaving when he was young. Criminologists have dismissed that explanation.

Colleen Moore of Anglia Ruskin University told the BBC in 2016: “Steve Wright was not a fool. He was a cruel man who hated women and did what he did because he wanted to.”

Wright has been held at HMP Long Lartin since his conviction. Friday’s sentencing will add another murder to his crimes, reinforcing his status as one of Britain’s most dreaded killers.

For the Hall family, his admission offers belated answers. For Ipswich, it reopens memories of a period when a town lived in fear of a man before he was caught.