Deborah Alison Wood

Deborah Alison Wood vanished after going on a night out at a pub in Leeds on 4 January 1996.

She was later found on 14 January 1996 smouldering on an embankment near Burley Park railway station in Leeds after having been dumped there and set on fire with petrol.

It was thought that she had been kept in cold storage for up to ten days before she was dumped on the embankment. The police said that the cold storage could have been in indoors or in the open.

She had been out to Big Lil's Pub in Leeds city centre on 4 January 1996 with her father and some friends. Her father had left her at the pub in the afternoon and never saw her again. She was thought to have left at 5pm and was not seen again. Her body was found ten days later.

She had lived in Holbeck, Leeds

In 2002 the police said that they had looked into the possibility that she had been murdered by a convicted murderer who was convicted for killing a 16-year old girl. They said that the murderer had kidnapped the 16-year-old girl and killed her and then stored her body in a freezer before dumping it in a secluded wood near Otley in Yorkshire. However, the convicted killer denied that he had put the girl’s body in a freezer, saying that he had hidden it beneath some pallets first in his garden and then put it in a compartment in his settee. However, the police noted that the convicted murderer had been a keen poacher and animal breeder and was known to have kept thousands of frozen chicks in storage for feed, although they said that they didn't find any freezer at his home when they searched it.

It was heard that the convicted murderer had said that the murder of the 16-year old girl was an isolated incident and that he had just snapped when he had bumped into her whilst he was out walking his dog when she was coming home from some Christmas shopping. However, the police said that they were not only linking him to the murder of Deborah Wood, but also to a number of rapes around the area and said that they thought that he might have been a serial rapist for some years.

The police said that they were also connecting the convicted murderer to the murder of Yvonne Fitt who was killed in 1992 and found near to where the 16-year old girls’ body was found.

They also said that they were looking into possible connections with the convicted murderer and the murder of Lindsay Rimer who was murdered in 1994, Deborah Wood who was murdered in Leeds in 1996 and Rebecca Hall who was murdered in 2001 in Bradford.

The convicted murderer was a van driver and he was known to drive to Glasgow and even use the same brothel there that several prostitutes who were murdered in other unsolved cases had used. The unsolved cases from Glasgow were Diane McInally, Karen McGregor, Leona McGovern, Marjorie Roberts, Tracey Wilde and Alison Wallace.

It was noted that Deborah Wood lived about two miles away from where the convicted murderer had lived.