St Andrew's Church, Roker

St Andrew's Church, Roker is the place where Felicity Wanless's body was abandoned beneath its lychgate in the early hours of Sunday 25 February. The brief arrival of a black cab, the body's discovery by a dog walker, and the police response make the church a sharply defined crime scene in the investigation into the Phantom's murders. The evidence establishes the church as a dumping site, not as the place where Felicity was abducted or killed.

Setting and role

The account places the church beside Park Avenue in Roker, with the lychgate directly alongside the kerb. That positioning allowed the black cab to pull up, leave its passenger's body beneath the gate, and drive away again in no more than a couple of minutes. The location's significance is grounded in this short, exposed transfer: the church is not described as a hidden interior, but as a recognisable landmark at the edge of the road.

The scene also belongs to a wider pattern of killings and disappearances across Sunderland. Detectives were comparing the victims' journeys and the circumstances in which they vanished, including gaps in CCTV coverage and the possibility that they had been taken in a vehicle without a public disturbance. The church's role is distinct within that pattern: it is where Felicity's body was left, not evidence of where the earlier stages of her ordeal occurred.

Felicity Wanless's body is left at the lychgate

Before the body was brought to the church, Felicity had been thoroughly cleaned and dressed in a freshly laundered tunic. Her hair was still damp. The narrative records the black cab's arrival and departure in the early hours, with the vehicle leaving lighter by one body; beneath the lychgate, Felicity's eyes stared vacantly at her surroundings. Those details make the disposal both controlled and starkly visible: the care taken to clean and dress her contrasts with the abandonment of her body beside the road.

Several hours later, an early-morning dog walker approached the gate with his elderly black Labrador. The dog snuffled inside, then began to whine and paw at what it had found. The discovery brings the church from the killer's chosen drop-off point into the public and investigative record, through an ordinary walk interrupted by the sight of a body.

Investigation and the Roker setting

By eight o'clock, most of the team had gathered in a meeting room for an update. Eve Strong had already visited the body-dump site and spoken with the man whose dog found Felicity, as well as the crime-scene officers and Felix Carver. She reported that Felicity appeared to have been throttled, unlike the first two victims, who had probably been suffocated with plastic bags, and Louise Usher, who had been killed by a blow from a blunt instrument. The location therefore anchors the discovery and forensic response, while the differences in the victims' apparent causes of death remain part of the team's developing inquiry.

Roker also appears in the investigation's attention to travel and suspicious vehicles. CCTV showed Jill Richards walking towards Roker Avenue after leaving a supermarket, then reappearing at a bus stop outside the Salvation Army; across the road, a car showroom's camera recorded her checking the timetable and flagging down a car shaped like a black cab. Eve noted that this contradicted the police warning to hail only white cars displaying a taxi sign. The evidence does not place Jill at St Andrew's Church, but it connects the surrounding Roker area to the detectives' concern that a vehicle masquerading as a taxi could provide an opportunity to abduct women.