2nd Arrest In U.K. Slayings

Police investigating the killings of five prostitutes in eastern England said they arrested a second suspect Tuesday, and they continued to interrogate another man arrested a day earlier.

A 48-year-old man was arrested early in the morning in Ipswich, where all the victims worked, said Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull. Police have not confirmed the identity of either suspect.

Neither man has been charged.

The second suspect was arrested at his home very near the red-light district of Ipswich, Sky News reported.

Police blocked off part of London Road in Ipswich, while colleagues searched a home believed to be that of the second suspect. A dark blue Ford car was seen being loaded on a transporter by officers.

The naked bodies of Tania Nicol, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell, Gemma Adams and Annette Nicholls were found dumped in rural areas of eastern England, around Ipswich, 70 miles northeast of London, in a 10-day period beginning Dec. 2.

The suspect arrested Monday in Trimley St. Martin, 8 miles southeast of Ipswich, has been identified in news reports as Tom Stephens, 37.

Stephens was quoted in the Sunday Mirror newspaper as saying he knew all five women, and that he had been interviewed four times under caution — meaning that he was regarded as a potential suspect — by police investigating the slayings.

"From the police profiling it does look like me — white male between 25 and 40, knows the area, works strange hours. The bodies have got close to my house," Stephens was quoted as saying.

"If new information, coincidental information, crops up, I could get arrested," Stephens was quoted as saying.

"I don't have alibis for some of the times (of the killings)," Stephens told the Mirror. "Actually I'm not entirely sure I have tight alibis for any of the times. But I'm not worried about being charged. I'm innocent."

Stephens also gave a background which he requested not be aired, but the network decided after news of his arrest to make public.

In the interview, Stephens talks openly about knowing the women, some of whom he talked about as missing.

He says he developed relationships with the women by giving them rides — sometimes to buy drugs — after paying them for sex. He said he had known the women for various lengths of time, from 18 months to just a couple months.

Stephens says in the interview that after a couple of the women were reported missing, he then met Anneli Alderton and urged her to talk to the police if she knew anything about the case.

"I've only every spoken to her since both Tania and Gemma both went missing, partly to say, 'if you know anything, please talk to the police, and if you won't talk to the police, talk to me and I'll talk to the police,'" he says.

Under U.K. law, police can hold a suspect for 96 hours without filing criminal charges, and when that time is up they must either release the indivudual, or request an extended detention through the court system.

Trimley is eight miles southeast of Ipswich, where police say all five victims were known to work as prostitutes.

Three of the women were found near the main road and the rail line between Ipswich and Felixstowe; the other two were discovered near the same road in areas south and southwest of Ipswich.

Monday, police announced that coroner's inquests into the deaths of Tania Nicol, Anneli Alderton, Paula Clennell and Annette Nicholls had been postponed.

Clennell, 24, died of compression to her neck, and Alderton, 24, was strangled, a senior pathologist determined. Post-mortem examinations of the bodies of Nicol, 19, and Nicholls, reached no conclusion on the cause of death.

An inquest into the death of Gemma Adams, 25, was opened and adjourned last week. The pathologist reached no conclusion about the cause of her death.

The investigation had strained the resources of England's smallest police forces, and 340 specialist investigators were brought in from across Britain to join 160 Suffolk officers working on the case.

By Sunday morning, police had received more than 10,000 calls from the public offering information, Gull said.

Ipswich had taken on a tense air since the discovery of the first body, with many women taking extra precautions when going out at night and arming themselves with rape alarms.

Though some prostitutes in the city's red-light district continued to walk the streets at night — along with a greatly increased police presence — most of the sex workers were staying out of the area.

Police and local social service organizations were helping to keep the prostitutes off the streets by offering those addicted to heroine free doses of methadone and providing vouchers for food and other basic needs.

The deaths of the prostitutes from Ipswich has kindled a national debate on how much protection, or prosecution, sex workers should be given in the U.K. Some politicians — from the more liberal side of the spectrum — have called for the legalization of brothels, to allow prostitutes to work in safer conditions.

Police were expected to question Stephens about the death of at least one other young woman from the area, a 16-year-old who disappeared in the late 1990s while walking home. The case has remained unsolved.