Felicity Wanless murdered and her body dumped

Felicity Wanless’s murder and the disposal of her body expose the lethal logic of the captivity in the loft: once Jill Richards takes her place, Felicity is no longer considered useful to her captor. Her death is followed by the removal of personal tokens and a carefully arranged journey to a church gate in Roker. The discovery turns a private act of violence into an investigative fact, while confirming that the killer’s pattern extends beyond murder to the keeping of trophies.

Circumstances and replacement

Felicity had been out with friends and left the pub before they did; she never made it home. By the time Jill is held alongside her in the loft, the captor treats the arrival of a new captive as the end of Felicity’s place in the cage. He removes Felicity from it and makes Jill watch, presenting the killing as an established rule of captivity rather than an isolated decision. Jill understands the practical danger in that rule: the person who has been replaced may be killed, and the person taking her place may in turn be replaced later.

The wider investigation is already tracing the ordinary journeys on which the women disappeared. Becky Allsopp had returned from Newcastle Central Station through Sunderland and was last followed after leaving the Metro at the Stadium of Light, beyond the reach of CCTV. Louise Usher sometimes walked home from the gym, sometimes took a bus, and only occasionally used a taxi. Investigators believe the women were taken into a vehicle, but have no reports of shouting or screeching tyres. These different routes leave the team looking for a method that could work without attracting attention.

Jill’s disappearance sharpens that question. CCTV shows her leaving a supermarket, walking past McDonald’s towards Roker Avenue, then reappearing at a bus stop outside the Salvation Army. She checks the timetable before flagging down a car that looks like a black cab, although it has no sign on its roof. Eve Strong recognizes the significance because police have already warned people to hail white cars and only those displaying a taxi sign. The footage does not establish every detail of Felicity’s abduction, but it gives the investigation a concrete example of how a vehicle could approach a woman in the course of an ordinary journey.

Killing and the taking of trophies

In the loft, the captor tells Felicity that she has been replaced and turns his attention to her. Jill pleads with him to stop, but he orders her to watch. Felicity is killed by strangulation. The scene makes the replacement system more than a threat: Jill witnesses what the captor does when a captive is no longer needed, and is left to reckon with the possibility that her own survival depends on avoiding his displeasure.

After the killing, he removes the tunic from Felicity’s body and uses a cut-throat razor to take the skin bearing a small penguin tattoo from her hip. He places it in a container of clear liquid, describing it as a token to remember her by and considering that he might frame it. He also cuts off the tip of her left little finger and places it in the same container. These acts reveal that the killing serves not only to eliminate a captive but also to supply objects for a collection. The penguin tattoo, an individual mark on Felicity’s body, becomes something the killer claims and preserves; the severed fingertip follows a pattern already familiar to the investigators.

Jill remains in the loft with Felicity’s body after the captor leaves. She compares Felicity’s short time in captivity with Louise Usher’s longer survival and tries to judge how long she might endure. Her calculations are narrow and immediate: she knows people will be looking for her, but cannot know whether the search will reach her before the next replacement. The aftermath of Felicity’s murder therefore continues inside the captivity, shaping Jill’s understanding of both the danger and the strategy she believes she must use to stay alive.

Disposal and discovery

In the very early hours of Sunday 25 February, a black cab stops beside the lychgate of Saint Andrew’s Church, Roker, on Park Avenue. Within minutes it drives away, leaving Felicity’s body beneath the gate. She has been cleaned, dressed in a freshly laundered tunic, and brought there by car. The brief stop contrasts with the extended violence in the loft: the body is left in a public place, but the person who carried it there is gone before the discovery.

Several hours later, an early-morning dog walker’s elderly Labrador enters the gate, then whines and paws at what it has found. The dog’s actions bring Felicity’s body to human attention and set the next phase of the investigation in motion. The church gate becomes both the end point of the killer’s disposal journey and the place from which the authorities can confirm that Felicity has been murdered.

At the team briefing, Eve reports that the initial indication is strangulation. She distinguishes Felicity’s death from the earlier cases: the first two women were thought to have been suffocated, probably with a plastic bag over the head, while Louise Usher died from a blow with a blunt instrument. Bill Nicol suggests that Felicity’s killing may have been more personal; Eve treats that as a possibility rather than a conclusion and calls for more information about the people Felicity encountered in the weeks before her abduction. Paul Forrester asks whether the killer took trophies. Eve confirms that the tip of the left little finger and the penguin tattoo are missing. The details connect the scene at the church to the pattern of trophy-taking while leaving the motive for the differing methods of killing unresolved.

Investigation and public response

Felicity’s case unfolds amid wider anxieties about missing women and missing girls. A newspaper article discussing the Briggs twins speculates about whether the same man was involved, whether a grooming gang was responsible, or whether the girls had run away. Its description of them as “little tearaways” and its unflattering presentation of their home trouble Eve because the coverage circulates judgments about the missing rather than simply asking for help. Gina Cross learns that the paper had contacted the press office for an investigation update, but had not told police it had noticed a possible pattern.

The difference in public attention is made explicit when Gary Baxter speaks with Linda Briggs. Linda observes that photographs and news coverage make a difference when missing people are pretty and have money, and argues that her working-class daughters have received less attention. Gary says the volume of reported sightings from around the country is itself difficult for police to manage. Linda’s complaint does not establish why any individual report is made or followed up, but it places the investigation within an unequal landscape of visibility, in which families must also fight to have their missing relatives treated as urgent.

That effort takes a material form in a box of T-shirts funded by neighbours and the twins’ friends. Each shirt carries a photograph of the smiling girls from their Instagram page and the missing-person hotline number. Iris says one will also be sent to Warren Wilson, hoping that a photograph of him wearing it will bring the twins the prominence given to the Phantom and his victims. Linda gives shirts to Gary to distribute. Against the killer’s private conversion of Felicity’s tattoo and fingertip into keepsakes, the shirts make the missing girls’ faces public and repeat a request for information. Felicity’s body has been found, but the search for the other missing women and girls continues.