How could such a thing happen in an apparently sleepy part of the world?
One clear destructive thread connects the lives of the five young women - none older than 29 - so brutally murdered.
All were users of hard drugs - and all were out on the streets to get money to feed their habit.
I wrote last week about Iain Duncan Smith's Breakdown Britain report about poverty, which attracted much attention for its warning about the damage done to children by high levels of family break-up.
But the report also highlights the grim toll of our drugs epidemic: twenty years ago, one child in 20 took drugs. Now it is one in four. Forty years ago there were nine deaths a year from drug overdoses. Now there are nearly 1,000.
Drugs are a terrible scourge, breaking up families, dividing young people from their parents and driving girls into a squalid underworld where they sell themselves for a fix.
We cannot surrender in the war on drugs. Dealers must be punished severely. Addicts should be offered a tough-love choice between prison and residential rehab, the only treatment that works.
We have a shining example of successful residential rehabilitation at Willowdene Farm near Bridgnorth.
Ministers should wake up to the fact that their obsession with hitting drug treatment targets means that half our rehab beds are lying empty and many face closure.
It is time for a joined-up drugs policy to help keep girls off the streets.
