The murder of one sex worker rarely makes headlines. Two within days, and in the same part of the country, will begin to attract the attention of the press, but it is only when the magic words "serial killer" can be used that the story is likely to make the front page. Those conditions were fulfilled at the weekend when police announced the discovery of the body of a third woman in woodland in Suffolk. Yesterday two more women were reported missing.

Like the earlier victims, the dead woman was naked and there was no obvious cause of death, nothing resembling the mutilations carried out by the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, who slaughtered at least 13 women (some prostitutes, others non-prostitutes) in the 1970s. But it is an inflexible rule of popular journalism that men who kill sex workers are "Rippers" and their victims "vice girls", as yesterday's headlines confirmed.

"Ripper cops find body of 3rd vice girl," declared the Sun, describing the earlier victims as "blonde Gemma" and "brunette Tanya" {sic}. (Not long before, detectives had announced a double murder inquiry into the deaths of Tania Nicol, 19, and Gemma Adams, 25, whose bodies were dumped in a stream.) The Daily Mirror led with "Ripper: Body No 3 is found", while the Daily Express devoted an inside page to the hunt for the "Ipswich Ripper".

The Times reported that detectives were looking at unsolved murders of "prostitutes and other young women" in East Anglia, an innocent-sounding phrase which has a horrible resonance for anyone acquainted with the history of such inquiries. During the disastrous Yorkshire Ripper investigation, a senior West Yorkshire detective notoriously made a direct appeal to the killer, pointing out that he was now killing "innocent girls" and therefore "in urgent need of medical attention".

Deep-seated prejudices are at work. The press can never quite decide whether murdered sex workers are tragic victims, like any woman targeted by a serial killer, or have chosen a lifestyle that means they are partly responsible for their deaths. It is a mindset which actively gets in the way of tracking down the killer, and one simple point needs to be shouted from the rooftops: most men who kill sex workers do it not because they hate prostitutes, but because they loathe women full stop.