Women at centre of red light zone murder probe

Suzanne Blamires, Shelley Armitage and Susan Rushworth worked the streets of the same red light district of Bradford before they vanished.

:: Susan Rushworth, 43

The first sex worker to disappear was a grandmother who had been battling heroin addiction.

The 43-year-old was last seen on June 22 last year near to her flat in the Manningham area of Bradford.

Ms Rushworth - known as Sue or Susie - suffered from epilepsy and had been getting help for her heroin addiction when she disappeared.

Her 23-year-old son James appealed for information about his mother's disappearance at the time.

"We are all very worried about her. We're a close family and we're not coping well with her disappearance," said Mr Rushworth.

"She'd been off heroin for five weeks before she went missing and was getting help for her addiction.

"There is no reason that she would have just left. She'd only recently started seeing her grandchildren and was getting to know them."

She also had two other children, Kirsty, 20, and nine-year-old Aaron.

Mario Demski, 42, a worker at Oak Lodge residential home on Oak Villas, said she had visited elderly residents at the home before her disappearance.

:: Shelley Armitage, 31

The second woman to disappear was described as a "much-loved daughter and sister" and a "bubbly, lovely" person.

She disappeared at some point between the late evening of Monday April 26 and the early morning of the next day in Rebecca Street, in Bradford city centre.

Jan Harrison, who works in a market, told how she chatted to Ms Armitage five or six weeks ago.

"She was pleasant," Mrs Harrison said. "Nothing to write home about but she wasn't scruffy, she wasn't dirty. She was just a normal girl."

Emile, a volunteer who worked with prostitutes in the area, said of her: "She was bubbly, lovely, a really nice person. She would always say hi, always doing something, always got friends."

Earlier this month West Yorkshire Police launched a poster appeal to trace her.

:: Suzanne Blamires, 36

Her remains were found on Tuesday afternoon in water just a few yards from where the busy Otley Road dual carriageway crosses the Aire.

She become the third prostitute to go missing after disappearing last Friday.

Her home on Barkston Walk, in the Allerton area of Bradford, was just a few streets from that of Ms Armitage.

The pair - who knew each other - both worked in the red light area of the city.