The building at the centre of the Stephen Griffiths murder investigation was the scene of the gruesome killing of a prostitute more than a decade ago.

Drug addict Caroline Creevy, 25, was murdered at a flat in the same block where Griffiths lived and was arrested by armed police less than two weeks ago.

Kenneth Valentine murdered Caroline at his flat at Soho Mills – now known as Holmfield Court – in October 1996 after she refused his sexual advances.

Valentine battered her around the head and strangled her.

He undressed her and was seen on security cameras leaving the flats with a holdall containing her clothes. Having dumped them, he returned to dispose of her body.

He was seen on the security cameras, just before 4am, leaving the building with a rolled up rug from his living room – which contained Caroline’s body.

He hid it in a storm drain close to the flat – part of the search area in the 2010 murder investigation.

Police frogmen found the body wedged under concrete.

Valentine, then 43, was found guilty of murder after a trial in March 1998 and was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 22 years to serve.

When police arrested him at his flat, following the discovery of Caroline’s body, he was found to have imprisoned a second prostitute there, who was feared to become his next victim.

At the time, neighbours described Valentine as a loner who was immersed in a secret life of sex and drugs.

He would charge prostitutes £5 to use his flat for sex with punters and provided the working women with drugs.

After the murder the working girls moved from the Soho Mills area to pick up clients in the side streets off Thornton Road, the area where the current three victims also worked.

One current resident at Holmfield Court said: “We know of the previous murder here. It’s horrible.”

The resident said it was “eerie” to think that the block of flats was now linked to another murder investigation in the light of what happened all those years ago.