DETECTIVES fear they have uncovered the secret lair of a serial killer who may have murdered up to five women.
Halliwell is currently jailed for life for admitting to one murder.[PA]Forensic officers are scouring remote woodland in Wiltshire following the discovery of a cache of women’s clothing. It included boots worn by a victim of taxi driver Christopher Halliwell, who killed Sian O’Callaghan, 22, after picking her up in his cab outside a Swindon nightclub in 2011.
Although her body was found more than 10 miles away in Oxfordshire, detectives now believe she was murdered in a secluded spot called Hilldrop Lane on the Marlborough Downs in Wiltshire.
Last month police found Miss O’Callaghan’s brown boots and a shotgun barrel in an 8ft deep pond near the woodland.
A cardigan was later found by the water’s edge and a search of the surrounding woods uncovered 60 items of women’s clothing buried under two inches of soil.
Officers have always feared that 50-year-old Halliwell had killed more victims and suspect he may have picked them up in his taxi before driving them to the isolated area at gunpoint.
The nightmare scenario is that this lonely place might be linked to the murder of five innocent women or more. A buried cache of clothing is unlikely to be fly-tipping.
In 2012 he was jailed for life after pleading guilty to Miss O’Callaghan’s murder. Halliwell also admitted killing Becky Godden-Edwards, who disappeared in 2003 aged 20. Despite leading police to her shallow grave in Gloucestershire, he escaped prosecution on a technicality because they had failed to caution him beforehand.
As specialist officers continue to scour Hilldrop Lane, results are expected from forensic tests carried out on the clothing to see whether DNA samples, typically from strands of hair, point to more victims.
A CID source told the Sunday Express: “We are being methodical and careful. We don’t want to make any mistakes and the major thrust is to find some link to Becky so we can re-interview Halliwell under caution.
“The nightmare scenario is that this lonely place might be linked to the murder of five innocent women or more. A buried cache of clothing is unlikely to be fly-tipping.
“There may be an innocent explanation, but everything hinges on the work of the forensic scientists. The discovery of Sian’s boots, together with a shotgun barrel, in the pond nearby is undeniably sinister.” Detectives are believed to have the DNA of four other women, or close family matches to them, ready to compare with any samples found.
Police appeal poster,left, that Halliwell posted in his cab, and right, Linda Razzell: still missing [PH / PH]In addition to Miss Godden-Edwards, other possibilities include Sally Ann John, 24, who vanished in 1995.
Mother-of-four Linda Razzell, 41, vanished in 2002 and although her husband Glyn was convicted of her murder, he still protests his innocence. A Vietnamese woman, Thi Hai Nguyen, 20, went missing in Swindon in 2005.
Halliwell, who picked up Miss O’Callaghan when she left a Swindon nightclub, was the father of one of her friends. In the days after her disappearance, he told a colleague: “Who knows what or who you find buried out there, there could be loads of people over the years.”
Our source explained: “There is the chilling thought that Sian was not the first and Halliwell may have been roughly working to some dreadful blueprint from previous incidents. Sian was picked up in the early hours of the morning outside a club in Swindon on March 19, 2011.
“Sian, of course, did the right thing and got into a cab to take her home, a cab driven by the father of one of her friends at that.
“Halliwell has then driven her out of Swindon in his green Toyota Avensis and away from her home. This was obviously under duress, probably under threat from a shotgun.” The source said the cabbie would have driven along the A346 to Marlborough and along the A4 into the Savernake Forest, adding: “We know from her mobile phone records that Sian was in the Savernake half an hour after she was picked up by Halliwell.
“What we now know is Halliwell must have then taken her out of the forest, across the A4, on to a narrow lane that winds down to join the road from Marlborough to Ramsbury.
“He probably took a left turn on to the Aldbourne road and then right on to Hilldrop Lane at the next junction. She may have died at Hilldrop but she was buried miles away at Uffington, on the other side of Swindon in the Vale of the White Horse.
“Hilldrop Lane is not an obvious spot, not even to a cabbie, and it’s fair to surmise Halliwell had been there before.
“If it turns out the items of clothing found at Hilldrop belong to more than one missing woman it would go towards confirming the rather chilling theory that he may have had a routine.”
Firearms experts are examining the gun barrel found in the pond, which looks to have had the stock crudely removed. Halliwell may have done this to make it easier to wield and threaten victims in the close confines of a car.
The source said: “It could be that he has murdered other vulnerable young women like Becky Godden-Edwards and the mistake that caught him out was choosing to make a victim of someone he knew.”
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