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Bradford Criminology Student Stephen Griffiths Is Charged With Murdering Three Women From the City's Red-Light District

Griffiths, 40, was arrested after a caretaker reviewing CCTV at his building saw images of one of the missing women. Remains found in the river Aire were hers.

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Illustration of a police officer behind tape on a cobbled street of stone terraces in a northern English mill town. Not an actual scene from the case.

Three women who worked in Bradford's red-light district had vanished over 11 months. On May 27, 2010, prosecutors charged Stephen Griffiths, a 40-year-old criminology doctoral student, with murdering all three.

"I have decided that there is sufficient evidence to charge Stephen Griffiths with their murders, and that it is in the public interest to do so," said Peter Mann, head of the Crown Prosecution Service complex casework unit in West Yorkshire. Susan Rushworth, 43, was last seen in Bradford on June 22, 2009, and Shelley Armitage, 31, was last seen in the city center on April 26, 2010. Suzanne Blamires, 36, disappeared on May 21. Griffiths was arrested on May 24 after a caretaker at the converted mill where he had lived for 13 years saw images of Blamires while reviewing the building's CCTV footage. The next day, a member of the public found body parts in the river Aire at Shipley, and some were identified as Blamires's remains.

Griffiths had studied for six years at Bradford University toward a doctorate in criminology, with a thesis on 19th-century murders. He was due at Bradford magistrates' court the following morning. Police continued to search derelict buildings near his flat and the river for the other two women.

The Guardian reported on May 27 that some of the remains had been identified as Blamires's, while its timeline that day dated the confirmation to May 28.

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