Stephen Griffiths's victims worked the streets of Bradford's red light district a short distance from his flat.

Suzanne Blamires, Shelley Armitage and Susan Rushworth were familiar figures in the network of run-down streets off Sunbridge Road, a two-minute walk from the city centre.

Parts of Miss Blamires's body were discovered in May in the River Aire at Shipley, about five miles north of Griffiths's Thornton Road flat.

In the days which followed, more of Miss Blamires was found in the water along with a small part of Miss Armitage's body.

No trace of Miss Rushworth has yet been found.

Miss Blamires was 36-years-old. Her mother Nicky Blamires, 55, said her daughter went to college and had been training to be a nurse.

But Mrs Blamires said: "Unfortunately my daughter went down the wrong path and she did not have the life she was meant to have.

"She was a much-loved daughter, sister and niece and what has happened to her will haunt me to the day I die.

"Suzanne was a bright, articulate girl who went to college and was training to be a nurse."

She added: "Even though she ended up on the wrong path, she tried to protect her family and kept herself to herself so people knew very little about her.

"She always knew she could come home and that the door was always open.

"We also saw her all the time and were always there for her.

"At the end of the day, nobody deserves this. All these girls were human beings and people's daughters."

At her daughter's funeral, Ms Blamires read a poem which included the lines: "We thought we understood heartache. It has landed on our door before. But the pain and loss at losing you, Suzanne, will live with us forever more."

Miss Blamires lived on Barkston Walk, in the Allerton area of Bradford.

She had only gone missing four days before her body parts were found.

Ms Armitage, 31, lived a short distance away and it is understood the two women knew each other.

She was described as a "much-loved daughter and sister" and a "bubbly, lovely" person.

Friends spoke of her "big smile" and her "big heart".

The horror of her death and the cruel fact that only part of her body has been recovered was emphasised at her funeral in August when her brother Carl carried a 2ft 6in coffin into the church carrying her remains.

Ms Armitage 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.

Most people who worked in that area said they remembered her because of her engaging personality.

Everyone who knew Ms Armitage said she only got involved in prostitution because of her drug addiction and was always talking about leaving, about becoming a model.

Jan Harrison, who works in a nearby market, said: "She was pleasant. She was just a normal girl."

Emile, a volunteer who worked with prostitutes in the area, said: "She was bubbly, lovely, a really nice person.

"She would always say hi, always doing something, always got friends."

Another friend said she had planned to travel the world as a teenager and "could have been a beautiful model".

Miss Rushworth was the first of the three sex workers to disappear.

She 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 mother Christine Thompson said: "She was my best friend and like a sister to me."

She told reporters she did not know how she would cope after hearing about her daughter's death, saying the news had extinguished the "glimmer of hope" that she would be found alive.

Mrs Thompson said she had tried to help her daughter beat heroin and had paid £3,000 for rehab for her.

Her 23-year-old son James appealed for information about his mother's disappearance about a year ago.

"We are all very worried about her," he said.

"We're a close family and we're not coping well with her disappearance.

"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."

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

  • See Wednesday's T&A for full, in-depth coverage