Crime File: Mystery of missing Suzy struck terror
AS the police search for missing estate agent Suzy Lamplugh returned to the Midlands for the first time in almost a decade, it again highlighted the murder mystery that has dogged detectives for more than two decades. Crime Files looks back at the case.
THE disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh was the murder mystery that struck a terrifying chord with the nation.
An attractive middle-class victim goes missing while at work; a sinister cunning abductor who lured her to a phoney appointment; and a puzzle of how a young career woman could simply vanish from a London street in daylight and never be seen again.
Estate agent Miss Lamplugh, 25, had left her office in Fulham, west London, at lunchtime on July 28, 1986, to meet a client called “Mr Kipper” and show him around a house nearby.
She was never seen again.
After she disappeared, her white Ford Fiesta was found about a mile-and-a-half away outside another for-sale property, her purse was left in the pocket of the door.
Neighbours helped draw up a photofit of a male suspect who was seen at the house with Miss Lamplugh and others came forward to say they had seen her arguing with a man outside the property.
From the outset there were few leads.
Her office diary recorded the essential details of the appointment: “12.45 Mr. Kipper – 37 Shorrolds Road O/S”, with the ‘O/S’ annotation meaning outside the property.
It was thought for some time after her disappearance that “Kipper” was her pronunciation of the Dutch name “Kuiper”, but nobody of this name could be linked to her.
Miss Lamplugh was officially declared dead in 1994.
In the 24 years since she disappeared her family’s hopes of finding her have always been frustrated.
Last week, the Metropolitan Police’s elite homicide command unit yesterday began searching a field three miles from the site of the former Norton Army Barracks, Worcs, which had been searched in December 2000 and February 2001.
Officers also searched woodland near Dead Woman’s Ditch, near the Somerset village of Over Stowey, in the Quantock Hills.
The area was significant, because it was the place where murdered newlywed Shirley Banks was found bludgeoned to death.
The link; John Cannan, a charming womaniser capable of turning into a vicious abductor.
At the time he was named prime suspect in the disappearance of Miss Lamplugh a was behind bars for murdering newlywed Shirley Banks, 29, a sales manager from Bristol.
