Sunday 25 February

Sunday 25 February is the day Felicity Wanless’s body is discovered at St Andrew’s Church, Roker, turning the investigation’s concern over missing women into a new examination of the killer’s methods. The early-morning discovery also gives the team a stark comparison point: Felicity’s apparent strangulation differs from the methods used to kill the earlier victims.

The body at the church

In the very early hours, a black cab stops on Park Avenue in Roker beside the lychgate of St Andrew’s Church, Roker. Within minutes it drives away, leaving behind a young woman. Her hair is damp from a thorough cleaning, and she has been dressed in a freshly laundered tunic before being taken downstairs, driven to the church and abandoned. The brief stop and the preparation of the body suggest deliberate handling, while the vehicle’s departure leaves the location as the first visible sign of what has happened.

Several hours later, an early-morning dog walker’s elderly black Labrador noses its way through the gate, then whines and paws at what it has found. This discovery brings the concealed violence into public view. The dog walker’s routine passage through the church grounds, rather than a planned search, is what brings the body to attention.

The morning briefing

By eight o’clock, most of the team has gathered in a meeting room for an update. Eve Strong has already visited the body-dump site and spoken with the dog walker, the scenes-of-crime officers and Felix Carver. Her report identifies Felicity Wanless as the victim and gives the team an initial account of how she died: she appears to have been throttled.

That finding sharpens the comparison with the earlier murders. Becky Allsopp and Catherine Caslaw were suffocated, probably with plastic bags placed over their heads, while Louise Usher was killed by a blow from a blunt instrument. Bill Nicol suggests that Felicity’s death may have been more personal. At this stage, that remains a possibility raised in the briefing, not a confirmed explanation; what is established is the change in method.

Routes, opportunity and the apparent cab

The team’s broader reconstruction points to women being intercepted during ordinary journeys. Becky Allsopp had returned from a business meeting out of town: she got off at Newcastle Central Station, travelled to Sunderland by Metro, and was last traced after leaving at the Stadium of Light and walking beyond CCTV coverage. Louise Usher had left the gym after work and sometimes walked the mile or so home, sometimes took a bus, and only very occasionally used a taxi. Felicity Wanless had been out with friends, left the pub before them and never made it home.

The investigators assume the women were bundled into a vehicle, although no one reported shouting, screeching tyres or another obvious disturbance. Jill Richards’s CCTV offers a more specific clue. After leaving a supermarket and walking past McDonald’s towards Roker Avenue, she briefly disappears from view, then reappears at a bus stop outside the Salvation Army. A showroom’s camera across the road records her checking the timetable before flagging down a car shaped like a black cab. It has no sign on its roof.

That detail matters because Eve Strong’s team had already warned the public to hail only white cars, and only those displaying a taxi sign on top. The footage therefore points to a possible breach of that safety advice and helps explain how a vehicle could be mistaken for a legitimate cab. On Sunday 25 February, the body at the church and the cab footage together make the vehicle more than a general suspicion: they give the investigation a concrete pattern of opportunity, concealment and risk to pursue.