British detectives were targeting a handful of regular "kerb crawlers" on Wednesday in their hunt for the serial killer who has murdered five young women in Suffolk.
Senior officers are hoping the speed with which the individual has killed his victims means he has made mistakes and left vital clues.
"We are building up an intelligence picture and have a number of interesting subjects," said Detective Chief Superintendent Stewart Gull of Suffolk police. "Clearly some of them [the clients] want to remain anonymous, but if they have been in Ipswich [Suffolk] in the red-light district they need to come forward before we come knocking on their door."
As of Wednesday night, more than 4,000 members of the public had phoned a hotline with information for the murder investigation.
Detectives have begun tracing and interviewing men who regularly used the 30 or so sex workers in the red light district. One of them, an American known as Gary, told reporters on Wednesday he had spoken extensively to detectives but insisted he was "not at all" implicated in the murders. He said he knew the missing prostitute Paula Clennell.
Police believe that the killer may have kept all or some of the women's clothes, perhaps as a trophy of his killings.
However, they appeared optimistic they were closing in on the killer.
"We have a number of promising leads," Gull said.
Officers are trying to find out what happened between the last sightings of the five young women and the discovery of their bodies by analyzing CCTV footage, speaking to other prostitutes and drug workers who knew them. Detectives are known to be interested in talking to a "chubby-faced man with spectacles" driving a blue BMW, who was seen by a group of prostitutes talking to one of the victims, Anneli Alderton, 24, in the red light area three days before her body was found.
The sighting is a new one. Until Wednesday police believed Anneli was last seen last Sunday. The Guardian has also passed on details of the possible sighting of one of the victims, Annette Nicholls, 29, by a former sex worker who said on Wednesday that Nicholls had called at her house last Thursday or Friday, shouting through the letter box. This was two or three days after Nicholls was last thought to have been seen alive.
Police suspect she is one of the two bodies discovered near the village of Levington on Tuesday.
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