Steve Wright 'fit to plead' over murder of teenager

Steve Wright is fit to enter a plea having been charged with kidnapping and murdering 17-year-old Victoria Hall in Suffolk in 1999, a court has been told.

The teenager disappeared on her way home from a nightclub in Felixstowe and was last seen near her home in Trimley St Mary on 19 September that year.

Her body was found 25 miles (40km) away by a dog walker in a water-filled ditch in Creeting St Peter, near Stowmarket, five days later.

Wright, 66, previously of London Road, Ipswich, would return to Ipswich Crown Court on 2 December, a brief hearing on Tuesday was told.

The defendant is also accused of the attempted kidnap of a 22-year-old woman on 18 September 1999.

Victoria had been on a night out with a friend at the Bandbox nightclub in Felixstowe on the evening of 18 September 1999.

The girls left the venue at about 01:00 BST the following morning and parted ways at about 02:20 - the last time Victoria was seen alive.

Her parents, Lorinda and Graham Hall, awoke in the morning to discover their daughter had not returned home and a missing persons inquiry was launched.

Victoria's body was discovered in Creeting St Peter on 24 September that year.