'You can't help thinking, if they had taken me seriously Vicky could have survived'

THE ONLY surviving victim of Suffolk Strangler Steve Wright says if police had taken her story seriously then the other women he went on to murder may still be alive today.

- BY PAUL JEEVES

The serial killer tried to kidnap Emily Doherty in Felixstowe, Suffolk, in 1999 but she escaped after he chased her relentlessly for 40 minutes in the night.

Wright went on to murder five women in the Ipswich area in 2006 and this week pleaded guilty to murdering 17-year-old Victoria Hall, also in 1999, as well as trying to abduct Emily.

Emily has now revealed her “real-life horror story” of how she had to repeatedly flee from him as he pursued her home from a nightclub.

But she says when she dialled 999 police treated her like “a silly little girl”, and failed to follow up properly even after Victoria Hall’s body was found.

Emily told Sky News: “It’s devastating what happened to everyone else.

“You can’t help thinking, if they had taken me seriously, Vicky could have survived. But if they had found him sooner the five other women would still be here.”

Emily, then 22, was walking home from the Bandbox nightclub with a friend, before they separated 200 yards from Emily’s home.

She said: “There was this car going backwards and forwards past me, loitering. It parked, and I thought the driver was having a wee. He was standing by the car.

“He saw me and I saw him. The car door was open, and the engine was running. I ran and jumped over a wall and knocked on a door and said ‘let me in’. No one answered.”