U.K. Serial Killer Gets Life, No Parole

A man convicted of murdering five British prostitutes has been sentenced to the maximum of life in prison, with no chance of release, ever.

Forty-nine-year-old Steve Wright showed no emotion as a judge pronounced sentence Friday in the eastern English city of Ipswich.

He had acknowledged using prostitutes and admitted he knew the women who were killed, but denied he killed them.

Based on blood, fibers and other forensic evidence, prosecutors said he did and a jury agreed.

The judge said it was a "targeted campaign of murder" and told Wright, quote, "It is right you should spend your whole life in prison.

"This was a targeted campaign of murder … You killed them, stripped them and left them," said the judge, "why you did it may never be known."

Jurors took less than eight hours on Thursday to convict him of murdering the five women. Tania Nicol,19, Gemma Adams, 25, Anneli Alderton, 24, Paula Clennell,24, and Annette Nicholls, 29 were all found dead in the county of Suffolk.

Some of his victim's family members said the sentence was too light, and called for the reinstatement of the death penalty in England.

In a statement after the verdict was announced, Miss Nicol's family said that while justice had been done, "we are afraid that while five young lives have been cruelly ended, the person responsible will be kept warm, nourished and protected... These crimes deserve the ultimate punishment and that can only mean one thing."

The naked bodies of the five young women were found in streams and woods around Ipswich over a ten-day period in 2006. All had been choked or strangled.

Wright had admitted visiting prostitutes and knowing the dead women but denied killing them. But prosecutors said blood, fibers and other forensic evidence linked him to the crimes.

The prosecution said Wright "systematically selected and murdered" all five women over a six-and-a-half-week period, reports the BBC.

Suffolk police began an inquiry after Nicol, 19, vanished in late October 2006.

The killings terrified the town, and stories about the deaths were splashed across British newspapers and television screens for weeks. They also prompted a manhunt involving more than 500 police officers from more than 30 forces.

He left two of the bodies in a cruciform position with arms outstretched, reports the London Globe and Mail.

Prosecution spokesman Robert Sadd said "we will probably never know why" Wright killed the women.

Wright, labeled the "Suffolk Strangler" by the media, had undertaken his campaign of violence while his partner Pamela - who was unaware of his trysts with prostitutes - was working night shifts, reports the Globe and Mail.

Five other women have been killed or vanished in East Anglia in the past 16 years, although detectives have never publicly linked Wright to any of the killings, reports the U.K. Times.