TheBoySaunders.com

It’s probably fair to say that my first priority after returning from travelling was to get the hell out of Ipswich. That’s not to say that the town is a bad place to live - it’s just dull; middle-class and safe.

Safe, that is, until the recent discovery of the bodies of five prostitutes in the space of ten days. One of them, the first, I discovered yesterday, is vaguely, distantly related to me and lived in the same suburb on the outskirts of the town before her descent into heroin-inspired poverty, prostitution and murder.

Don’t get me wrong - I never met the girl and wasn’t even aware I had relatives in Kesgrave before yesterday. It just brings it all home a little bit. Ipswich is the last town you would associate with a serial killer. And now, ingrained on the psyche of a nation for the best part of a lifetime, it will be.

And I’m sure I’m not the only one. It’s all just too surreal. Like every other Ipswich-er (did I just make that term up?) I sit on the edge of my seat, stunned and horrified by every new turn and twist. They show footage of rural areas I know well from dog-walking, cordoned off with police tape, naked bodies covered with white tarpaulins. Policemen, used to dealing with petty vandalism and drunks, look visibly shocked as they reel off the names of the dead.

The Red-top national media, salaciously, have already dubbed the killer ‘Ripper’, like Jack and Peter. They talk about bodies being found on the city limits (Ipswich is a town, no matter what the council offices like to think). The Red Light District is ‘thronged with street walkers’. (In actual fact the number of prostitutes in Ipswich has been estimated at 35-40, meaning that the murdered has already wiped out at least 1/8th of them).

What’s going on here? I feel like I’ve stepped into a Frank Miller graphic novel. This isn’t Ipswich, surely.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 13th, 2006 at 7:02 am and is filed under Stuff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.