A police force in England is under scrutiny for letting the US military handle the case of a woman strangled by an American fighter pilot in his Cambridge apartment.
Cambridgeshire police acknowledged that in December 2023, they allowed the US Air Force to take investigative primacy, even though the crime occurred off-duty and on British soil.
The victim, Sarah Steele, 42, said the US military falsely claimed she did not want to be contacted by local police.
The force said it acted on that information.
Capt Jacob Wulfson, an F-35 pilot stationed at RAF Lakenheath, was convicted in a court martial in April 2026 of strangling Steele on their first in-person meeting after matching on Tinder.
He was acquitted of sexual penetration without consent. In a UK court, that charge could have been classified as rape.
The all-male jury of fellow air force officers sentenced Wulfson to six months in a correctional facility.
Timeline of the Assault
Steele, an academic, began chatting with Wulfson on Tinder in September 2023. They met at his flat on 1 December 2023.
Within 48 hours, a friend took her to a sexual assault clinic and then to military police on a nearby US base.
Steele said she was sleep-deprived and in shock, and believed the meeting with the Office of Special Investigations (OSI) was preliminary.
Instead, she was formally interviewed.
Hours later, OSI arrested Wulfson and notified Cambridgeshire police they would handle the case. Steele said it felt like “the train left the station.”
In February 2024, during a welfare check after a disturbance, Steele told Cambridgeshire police she wanted the matter to remain with the US Air Force, but she felt resigned because the investigation was already underway.
She feared Wulfson might flee the UK if the case was dropped, citing the case of Anne Sacoolas, a US official who left the UK after killing a motorcyclist.
Demands for Reform
Steele is calling for UK police to formally record decisions to hand over cases to the US and to seek victims’ views first.
Labour MP Jess Phillips said no UK victim should be handed to the US military unless they explicitly want that.
Conservative MP Nick Timothy, whose constituency includes RAF Lakenheath, has written to the justice secretary demanding answers.
“This case should have been fully investigated by the English police and prosecuted in our courts,” Timothy wrote.
The UK government has pledged to look into the case, which the prime minister’s spokesperson called “deeply distressing.”
