GOLF FANATIC, BIG DEBTS, IN DENIAL ABOUT HIS OFFENDING!

Seems clear this serial killer who grew up with an abusive father was pretty good at keeping just how evil he is all to himself but had a nasty angry streak, debts and no personality...
If the psychiatrists can get him to engage it will interesting to hear what they make of him but there are echoes of Shipman here, I think, profoundly disturbed at the loss of his mom...and terrified of his disciplinarian father.
Viv x
From Times Online
February 21, 2008
Profile: Steve Wright, taciturn golfer with deadly secret
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Steve Wright: those who were close to him have no clue as to what drove the former publican to kill to not show enlarge option -->
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Sean O'Neill, Crime Editor of The Times
The handful of people who regarded Steve Wright as a friend thought of him as quiet, a little awkward in company – taciturn except when the conversation turned to golf about which he was almost obsessive.
He seemed devoted to Pamela Goodman, his latest partner, and was a bit unlucky when it came to finding and holding down a decent job.
Only after he was arrested did they start to find other words and unearth memories of incidents that didn't seem quite right. The social awkwardness became stand-offishness, the quiet demeanour seemed secretive, and the devotion to Ms Goodman now appeared domineering.
As they started to deny that they had ever been friends, indeed only really knew him to say "hello" to, they recalled incidents when Wright had been suddenly rude or inexplicably aggressive.
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Related Links
Text: letter from Steve Wright to his father
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But no-one had him marked down as the serial killer who had carried out the most intensive killing spree in British criminal history – murdering five street prostitutes over six weeks and dumping their bodies in streams and on wasteland around the outskirts of Ipswich.
All of their bodies were found in the first ten days of December 2006, a frightening period when short, wintry days and long, dark nights heightened the sense of insecurity in the Suffolk town.
For the psychiatrists who will now assess him in prison, Wright will prove a fascinating subject.
In his early months in prison, it will be their job to prepare a detailed assessment of his mental condition, literacy and family background before planning how and where he will spend his sentence.
But it will be left to him to decide when he wants to “engage” with the psychiatrists.
To date, there has been little to suggest Wright is prepared to reveal his motives. At trial he mounted a stubborn defence, despite the presence of evidence linking him directly to all five murders.
Letters from prison to Ms Goodman revealed his state of denial. "Please believe me when I say I'm not capable of those crimes," he wrote in January last year.
He professed his dedication to Ms Goodman, yet he betrayed her repeatedly – dropping her off at the call centre where she worked before cruising the red light area of Ipswich for sex and victims.
An examination of Wright’s life reveals a contempt for women that may stem from a lengthy separation from his mother, a dislike of his stepmother, two brief marriages and years of paying strangers for sex.
Wright was born on April 24, 1958, in Erpingham, Norfolk and grew up with parents who were on a collision course for separation. His mother, Patricia, married his father, Conrad, when she was aged just 16 and pregnant.
She lived in the shadow of a husband who worked as a police officer in the RAF, then at Felixstowe docks and showed a ruthless disciplinarian streak in both his professional and family lives.
His mother walked out on the marriage and her children abruptly when Wright was just eight. His father remarried a short time later but Wright never warmed to his stepmother, Valerie.
In interviews since his arrest, Patricia has claimed that the son she left was the "apple of her eye" and never showed any inclination towards violence when she was around.
“Steve was shy, especially in a crowd, but he was such a love when he was a kid,” she said. “I never saw any violence there. He definitely didn’t have it in him when he was a little boy.
“Steve was withdrawn. He was afraid of his dad if I wasn’t there. He would actually hold his breath and pass out if he thought his dad was going to smack him."
Patricia claims she was prevented legally from taking her four children with her and they grew up subject to their father's strict rules.
She was fleetingly reunited with Wright when she visited Britain over Christmas 1992. But as she left to fly home, he made it clear in a foul-mouthed tirade that he did not want to see her again.
Wright left school at 16 with no qualifications and took a job at a hotel in Aldeburgh, Suffolk, where he received “silver service” training.
A friend suggested they join the Merchant Navy together and the pair went to Sea School in Gravesend with a view to joining at 17.
His first job was as a dishwasher in the kitchen of a ferry operating out of the port of Felixstowe.
In 1978 he married for the first time to Angela O’Donovan in Milford Haven, West Wales in 1978 and she bore him a son. Wright also has a daughter.
Wright and his first wife divorced and she has since remarried. Speaking of her ex-husband’s notoriety shortly after his arrest, she said the news of his crimes had "come as a complete bolt out of the blue."
In 1987, Wright married again to Diane Cassell in a ceremony in Braintree, Essex. He met his second wife while working on the QE2 where one of his fellow crew members was Suzy Lamplugh, who was murdered while working as an estate agent in 1986.
Police are understood to have reviewed the Lamplugh murder file but ruled out Wright as a suspect.
Steve Adler, a former steward on the QE2, said in an interview: “Steve wasn’t really one of the lads and was on the periphery - but he liked the girls. He would sniff around all the girls and particularly the beauticians.”
Mr Adler claimed Wright visited prostitutes when they landed at Pattaya in Thailand.
He married Diane only because the brewery they wanted to work for demanded that couples were married if they were going to acquire the tenancy of a pub.
They took over the Ferry Boat Inn in Norwich but separated after less than a year of running the pub when he left her for another woman.
The pub was in the centre of Norwich’s red light district and a regular haunt of prostitutes. Natalie Pearman, 16, a prostitute who frequented the pub was murdered in 1992 and her body was found dumped in woodland. The murders of Kellie Pratt and Michelle Bettles, who also worked the streets of Norwich, are also unsolved.
The second Mrs Wright now lives in Hartlepool, and is known as Diane Cole. She said: “I couldn’t believe it when I first saw his name on the telly. Our marriage wasn’t good and I was glad when it ended.”
In the 1990s, beset with money problems, Wright went to live in Thailand. He is said to have married there but returned apparently in worse financial straits.
His experiences overseas made paying for sex with women a lifetime habit that probably contributed to his financial problems and two attempted suicides.
His half-brother, Keith, said: “He tried to do himself in a couple of times. In about 1995 or 1996 they found him in a car down some alleyway. He’d attached a hose to his exhaust.
“In about 2000, after coming back from Thailand, he took an overdose of pills. We went to pick him up from a bedsit in Ipswich.
“I think everything got to him. He went to Thailand and got with some girl who ended up scamming him for everything he had. He got himself into a lot of debt, I suppose he couldn’t find a way out. Everything got to him.”
Wright declared himself bankrupt with debts of £30,000, on his father’s advice, and tried to set his life right. He found work in a variety of short-lived jobs - as a labourer, fork lift truck driver and barman.
Money problems persisted – he was sacked for stealing £40 from a bar where he worked – and he continued to pay prostitutes for sex.
The street girls who continued to work in Ipswich during the dangerous nights of winter 2006 said Wright was a regular punter, cruising the streets in his Ford Mondeo while his partner worked the nightshift at a call centre. They knew him as Mondeo Man.
One prostitute, who gave her name as Lou, regarded Wright as “an average, normal punter” with whom she had sex two or three times a month.
“He didn’t strike me as weird,” she said. “I can usually tell if someone is trustworthy and he always seemed all right with me and never gave any reason to believe I was in danger.
“You would often see him driving round looking for girls, even if he had picked you the night before."
Another girl described him as a “wham-bam-thank-you mam” punter who she never saw as a threat.
Wright was adept at keeping his nocturnal habits secret from his partner, Pam, his workmates and his fellow golfers.
He had been a member of Seckford Golf Club, Woodbridge, for five years, played off a handicap of 19 and would happily fill his day playing 36 holes of golf.
He joined the Brook Hotel Regulars Golf and Notbale Delinquents Society, set up by customers at the bar where he worked.
The Seckford club’s professional Simon Jay, 30, said: “We always knew Steve Wright as a quiet chap who was very unassuming. I used to say, ‘Morning Steve’ when he came in and that was it. He always played in black. His golfing gear was black trousers and a black jumper or roll neck.”
It is understood his membership was due to be suspended at about the time of his arrest because of failure to pay his monthly £47.50 subscription.
The other regular fixture in his life was enjoying a few pints at Uncle Tom's Cabin, a popular Ipswich pub.
Sheila Davis, the landlady, and her partner Eddie Roberts befriended the couple about four years ago and invited them to a holiday in Ireland.
Ms Davis said: “He was a very, very quiet man, hard to talk to, bordering on stand-offish. He was off-hand once when he just shoved me out of the way when I was sitting on a chair.
“It surprised me. I was talking to Pam and I had annoyed him but I didn’t know why. I couldn’t believe he would do a thing like that. It was a silly thing but it stuck in my head.”
“If you could speak to him about golf he would answer you. But you couldn’t talk to him one on one. There was an awkwardness about him. He never cracked a joke. He never contributed to any conversation.”
She added: “Pam and I would talk a lot, and according to her he would say how he hated tarty women.
“I was shocked when he was arrested but subsequently less so as I started to look back. Pamela had no idea he was sleeping with prostitutes.”
Ms Davis said she had received a letter from Wright. “It said ‘You must know in your heart I am not capable of doing this’ ... but I don’t know.
“He is a nice looking man, not slimey, nothing like that. But, as a personality - there is none. He had no personality."