THE brutal deaths of two Glasgow prostitutes might have been carried

out by a serial killer who is stalking vice girls across Britain.

Startling similarities exist between the murders of Karen McGregor and

Diane McInally and two other recent unsolved killings of prostitutes in

Norwich and Stroud in Gloucestershire.

There is also a belief that the killer might have claimed a fifth

victim because police in Ipswich are currently searching for a woman,

also a known prostitute, who went missing from a red light area nearly

three weeks ago.

Detectives involved in investigating the four prostitutes' deaths have

already liaised with their colleagues in the respective police forces to

share information.

It is understood that police have not ruled out the possibility that

at least three of the murders, including one in Glasgow, could have been

the work of one killer.

A senior police officer in Strathclyde confirmed yesterday that

members of the murder squad team at Dursley, Gloucestershire, had

travelled to Glasgow two weeks ago to obtain information surrounding the

deaths of the two prostitutes.

He said: ''Officers from Gloucestershire CID have recently been

liaising with detectives in Glasgow surrounding the killings of Karen

McGregor and Diane McInally and the murder in Stroud.''

Police in Glasgow have already computer-linked the murder of

26-year-old Karen McGregor, whose naked body was found dumped in bushes

at car park seven at the Scottish Exhibition Centre on April 19, this

year, and Diane McInally, whose body was found in October 1991.

Striking similarities exist between their deaths. Both women were

prostitutes and had drug problems. They also worked in the known vice

triangle around Anderston bus station in Glasgow.

Their battered bodies were also discovered in lonely spots,

23-year-old Diane was found in a wood behind the Burrell Gallery in

Pollok Park, Glasgow, by a man walking his dog.

But it is the more recent Glasgow death, that of mother-of-two Karen

McGregor, which fits the pattern of the killings south of the Border.

She was strangled and her clothing removed.

The body of prostitute Natalie Pearman, 16, discovered on Friday,

November 20, last year, at an isolated beauty spot outside Norwich, was

also only partly clothed. She had also been strangled.

The circumstances surrounding the death of Carol Clark, 32, who went

missing from Bristol on Saturday, March 27, only to be found dumped

outside the city at Sharpness Docks, are identical. She had been

strangled and left partly dressed.