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Suzy Lamplugh was a 25-year-old woman who worked in Fulham, London as a real estate agent for Sturgis & Sons on 654 Fulham Road in London who suddenly vanished during business hours in broad daylight.
Suzy grew up in south London with her three siblings. Her father, Paul, described her as an outgoing young woman who knew “how to live fully.” She worked as a hair stylist on the QE2 cruise liner before moving on to become an estate agent.
On Monday, July 28, 1986, Suzy left her office at about 12:40 pm for an appointment for a house showing. After two hours, Suzy’s manager became concerned when she still hadn’t returned since he expected her back by that point & she had missed another appointment. He initially considered that maybe she had a family emergency & had been unable to get through to the office to update anyone. The manager called Suzy’s mom Diana, but she hadn’t heard from her daughter & indicated that there had been no family emergency. When they looked at Suzy’s work diary, they saw she had written: “12:45 Mr Kipper – 37 Shorrolds O/S.” The O/S signified “outside the property.” The house in question had been on the market for one week.
Suzy had left her purse behind but did take her key ring that held keys to her car & house & a smaller wallet that held several credit cards & $15.
When there was still no word from Suzy, she was reported missing at about 6:45 pm by her supervisor. During the investigation, police learned that Suzy had been seen by three witnesses outside the property she was showing between 12:45 and 1 pm. A man walking home past the property saw her at 12:50 pm & it appeared as if she was waiting for someone. Ten minutes later, the owner of the house next door heard someone leaving number 37 & saw Suzy & a man leaving the house & looking back up at it. This sighting resulted in an artist’s sketch of the unidentified male. Another man corroborated this sighting when he was walking by at the same time.
The assumed ‘Mr Kipper’ was described as being very well dressed & carrying a bottle of champagne with ribbons around it which was considered odd for a house viewing. The neighbor reported that it appeared that the two were engaged in a heated conversation before they got into Suzy’s company issued white Ford Fiesta. The man was described as a white male between 25 & 30 years old with a dark complexion & dark hair that was swept back. He was wearing a charcoal suit & may have had a broken nose. Another man saw a couple arguing between 2-2:30 pm in the area. They then saw Suzy driving her car away from Shorrolds Road in an erratic fashion, causing the witness to swerve to avoid a collision.
Suzy’s close friend Barbara Whitfield saw her driving north up the Fulham Palace Road in her car with a man at about 2:45 pm. She was firm on the fact that it was Suzy & said she’d waved at her as she biked down the road, but Suzy was talking to the man & didn’t see her. Barbara was the only witness that personally knew Suzy so her statement was given significant weight.
By 3:30 pm, Suzy’s coworkers began to grow concerned when she still hadn’t returned. At 4:30 pm, they drove over to the property at 37 Shorrolds Road to see if she was there, but she wasn’t.
Suzy’s car was found approximately a mile & a half away from the property at 10 pm on Stevenage Road near another house that was for sale. The car was described as poorly parked & partially overlapping a garage outside of 123 Stevenage Road & had been seen by several witnesses at that spot at various points in the afternoon. The car showed no signs of a struggle & no fingerprints were accounted for other than Suzy’s. The driver’s door was unlocked, the handbrake was off & Suzy’s small wallet was found in the glove compartment, but the keys to the car as well as to the property at 37 Shorrolds Road were nowhere to be found. The driver’s side seat was pushed far back to a position that Suzy would have been unable to reach.
Sometime later, a witness came forward with significant information that was dismissed at the time because he described a blond haired woman & the police incorrectly believed that Suzy had brown hair when she vanished. A photo of Suzy with dark brown hair was released, but on the Friday before she vanished, she had her hair dyed blond. He said he was jogging when he saw a car speeding down Stevenage Road. He saw a dark left-hand-drive BMW suddenly stop farther down the road & a woman matching Suzy was seen struggling with a man inside the car & sounded the horn in an apparent attempt to attract attention. He said the woman either appeared to be laughing or screaming & he was puzzled by how she could drive with the chaos in the car, but it hadn’t occurred to him that it was a left-hand drive & she had been the passenger.
Suzy’s boyfriend, a 27-year-old stockbroker, as well as her male flatmate, were both questioned by police but were cleared after having solid alibis. Her two-bedroom flat in Putney was searched but there were no suspicious findings. Suzy’s office manager informed police that she’d received a bunch of red roses that had been delivered to the office by a mystery man only days before she disappeared.
Six months later, a man informed police that they discovered an abandoned BMW that was registered to a Belgium man who sometimes went by Mr Kiper, but the owner was located in Belgium & at the time of Suzy’s disappearance the car had been in a garage in Belgium that day. The owner had an alibi & was quickly eliminated as a suspect.
When Diana learned that her daughter was missing, she said that her initial reaction was frozen shock that gave way to a flood of adrenaline that shot her into overdrive. She & her husband went down to the river where Suzy’s car had been found abandoned & they called out for their daughter & encouraged their dogs to search for Suzy. She recognized that they were likely disturbing the neighborhood & the police made it clear that they were getting in the way.
Two days after Suzy went missing, it was Diana’s 50th birthday on Wednesday, July 30th. The Lamplugh’s home in southwest London was filled with journalists but Diana welcomed the media as a way of helping spread the word & bring attention to her daughter’s case.. The following day, Diana & her husband Paul were interviewed on two different networks & Diana spoke of her fears, “I feel she is shut up somewhere, that she is being held against her will. I feel that because she hasn’t contacted us. She is a very strong, very fit lady.. So she should be able to cope with most situations.”
In the meantime, Diana had received sacks of letters from well-wishers. A week after Suzy disappeared, Diana spoke with BBC TV’s London Plus & said that she was beginning to realize that her daughter might be dead. She said she could face up to that, but not what happened in between. Paul explained that Suzy was easily claustrophobic & at one time, panicked in a cable car; they knew that if she had been shut in somewhere, she would have been terrified. They found it easier to accept that she was dead rather than the idea of continued suffering.
In April of 1989, almost three years after Suzy vanished, a woman contacted authorities to report that she had reason to believe that her former boyfriend, John Cannan, was involved in Suzy’s disappearance. He had been given the nickname “Kipper” during his time at a nearby bail hostel where he lived at the time of her disappearance. The nickname was given because he wore kipper neck ties.
In 1980 Cannan raped & beat his girlfriend when she tried to leave him & also raped a shopkeeper the following year in 1981. Police interviewed Cannan on three separate occasions. At the time of Suzy’s disappearance, he was living in a day-release London prison, coming at the end of a sentence he received for rape & robbery. This meant that during the day, Cannan was a free man as long as he returned to the prison at a set time in the evening. He was described as charming by those who met him & had access to expensive cars that he used to go to trendy wine bars in the area where Suzy’s office was. He gave off the illusion that he was a very rich, successful man & often had roses delivered to women he viewed as romantic interests. He had also told people that he hoped to buy a property in the area.
Before he was convicted, Cannan worked as a successful car salesman & in 1974, he married the future mother of his child. His first child was born in 1980 & this is about the time that Cannan left his wife for a younger woman. This woman said that she’d tried to leave him on multiple occasions, but each time, he would become violent & abusive. The two eventually did part & from here, he moved on to numerous short-lived relationships that were also described as abusive. In 1981, Cannan started his 8 year prison sentence in Fulham for rape.
Before his arrest, Birmingham police were in the process of trying to solve a series of cases where a male suspect went to houses that were up for sale & attacked the female owners when they opened the door. This person became known as the “house for sale rapist” where twenty women had been sexually assaulted in area properties. No one was ever arrested for these crimes.
Because of the sheer volume of tips from the public, it took the police one year to look into John Cannan. Police discovered that sketches that had been made of the man witnesses saw with Suzy on the day of her disappearance, looked very similar to Cannan. Police were also informed by Suzy’s family that they believed she was being stalked before she disappeared. It was theorized that Suzy had a relationship with Cannan & was planning on leaving him. This may have led him to adopt the alias ‘Mr Kipper’ as a way to lure her away. Cannan’s rape sentence had been reduced & he was released from prison on July 25, 1986, three days before Suzy disappeared.
In 1987, one year later, Cannan submitted a video profile for a dating agency. A potential suitor reviewed the video & described him as very funny & attractive, but indicated that he came off as overconfident & aggressive. Within days of his dating profile being approved, a woman named Shirley Banks was reported missing.
Three weeks later, Cannan was arrested again, this time 80 miles from where he lived, for robbing & raping two women in a clothing store. At the time, he was carrying a briefcase that police were able to seize & inside, they found a scrap of paper that turned out to be part of the tax disk from Shirley Banks’ car. This is a small, round sticker that is placed in the window of a vehicle that shows that a tax has been paid. Shirley was a newly married 29-year-old textiles factory manager from Clifton. While she was out shopping on October 8, 1987, she was abducted sometime after 7:40 pm. Her husband became worried when Shirley failed to show up for their planned drinks & when he called her work the next morning, he was told she had called in only 15 minutes earlier & claimed she wasn’t able to make it in because of an upset stomach.
Six months after she disappeared, Shirley’s body was found in a wooded area in Somerset which was eerily known as “Dead Woman’s Ditch.” Her skull had been violently crushed with a rock & she had been sexually assaulted by Cannan. After Cannan had abducted her, he held her in his apartment for eighteen hours & during that time, she was forced to call her workplace & tell them that she was sick & would be unable to come in. From there, he took her to Somerset in his car. In the meantime, he held on to her car, storing it in his garage & had changed the license plate & had the orange car painted blue. He claimed that he had purchased Shirley’s car from a man at an auction. The car was found with the license plate SLP3886; a criminologist, David Wilson believes that this specific plate was not a coincidence & actually had meaning behind it. The SLP could have been for Suzy Lamplugh while the 386 could be symbolic of 3 murders in 1986. Wilson indicates that Cannan is someone who likes to play games in a “catch me if you can” kind of way. The fact that Shirley’s body was found in a location known as “Dead Woman’s Ditch” was also not by accident.
Suzy had visited a pub on July 25, 1986, three days before she disappeared & the same day Cannan was released from prison. While at the pub, the contents of her purse went missing, but were found by the landlord after Suzy left. The landlord called Suzy & they arranged for her to pick up the items on Monday at 6 pm; this was the day she disappeared. Several hours after Suzy vanished, someone called the pub & spoke to the landlord. They identified themselves as Sarah & said she had a message for Suzy & she left her number. Then a man called the pub & said he was a policeman; he asked if they had Suzy’s diary & checkbook. Police later confirmed that no one from the police had made this call & they could not find the woman who claimed to be Sarah. The landlord said he gave the paper that he’d written Sarah’s number on to police, but the paper was later lost. The first call came through before Suzy’s disappearance had been known or released to the public & it theorized that Suzy had been told to make the call while she was being held captive somewhere. The man that identified himself as a policeman may have been Cannan. It’s possible that he had been the person who’d taken the contents of her purse in the pub.
In 1989, Cannan was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Shirley Banks & would be eligible for parole in 2023. His first parole hearing was in September of 2023 & it was determined that he remains a risk & will remain in prison for the safety of the public.
In 1999, an internal report by the Metropolitan Police criticized the handling of the original investigation for Suzy’s case & the failure to further investigate John Cannan. In the early 2000s a new investigation was started with the goal of answering the question if John Cannan was Suzy’s murderer. Investigators learned that several estate agencies in Fulham had been visited by a man referring to himself as Mr Kipper. Detectives believe this was Cannan who was on the search for potential victims to abduct & murder. Police believe that Cannan fit the description of the “house for sale rapist” because these attacks stopped in early 1980 when Cannan began a new relationship with a woman named Sharon Major. Only days before Suzy disappeared, John Cannan appeared uninvited at a house that was for sale on Shorrolds Road. It was his belief that the female occupant was home alone & he began acting very strangely until the woman’s husband appeared & he quickly left.
New reconstructions were created & shown on Crimewatch in 2000, this time showing a correct image of Suzy with blond hair & this resulted in new witnesses coming forward. A man told police that he had seen a man that fit the description of Cannan, looking into the window of Suzy’s estate agency on the day she disappeared. Suzy’s desk was strategically placed near the window since the agency felt that positioning an attractive person by the window would attract customers. Police also released Cannan’s 1987 dating video which caused more witnesses to come forward & confirm that he was the person they had seen in Fulham that day.
Police also found that Suzy had recently told family that she was dating a new man that lived in the Bristol area which is where Cannan had moved only days after her disappearance & where he had family. She’d also told her family that she was feeling fearful of the man. Cannan denied ever being in Fulham but police were able to disprove this since he worked as a porter in the area while on day release from the prison. Police also found that Cannan drove a dark left-hand-drive BMW which is the same type of car a witness had claimed to see Suzy struggling in on the day of her disappearance. Cannan also didn’t have an alibi for the day in question & claimed to not remember what he had been doing despite the fact that he had an impeccable memory for other details at the time.
He was arrested in 2000 in relation to Suzy’s case but he was not charged. Over the five days of interviews, he told detectives that there were only one or two things that he hadn’t been caught for. He was arrested again in 2001 & questioned. There was still insufficient evidence to charge Cannan with the murder.
In 2007, a criminologist who had corresponded with Cannan revealed that during the police reinvestigation between 2000-2002, discovered DNA evidence in a car that had been previously owned by Cannan that proved that Suzy had been inside the car. The criminologist said that Cannan indicated that he had access to a red Ford Sierra at the time that Suzy disappeared. Detectives found the car in a north London scrapyard & DNA evidence showed both Cannan & Suzy’s DNA inside the car. The Crown Prosecution Service felt that it couldn’t be proven that they’d both been inside the car at the same time so charges could not be brought against Cannan. Cannan previously indicated that he drove the car frequently & later changed his story & denied ever using the car. The man who’d lent him the car reported that Cannan had access to the car at the time & very well could have used it on the day that Suzy vanished.
In 2001, a former girlfriend of Cannan came forward to police to tell them about a strange conversation she’d had with him when they were driving around. She said he brought up Suzy’s disappearance out of the blue & abruptly pulled the car over. He gestured toward the Norton barracks which was a former military base & indicated that was where her body was buried. The army left the site in 1979 & houses now stood at the location making it impossible for police to dig. This area was searched but her body wasn’t found.
In 2002, a fellow inmate notified authorities that Suzy’s body was buried under the patio of Cannan’s mother’s house in Sutton Coldfield. In 2018, 32 years after Suzy went missing, an excavation crew was utilized at the former home of Sheila Cannan, John’s mom, but, again, there were no findings of Suzy’s body. She had sold the house to another family in 1992. The house had been investigated in 2003, but the garden had not been dug up at that time.
Weeks after the Parole Board determined that Cannan was too dangerous for release, he wrote a letter to the Mirror, insisting he did not murder Suzy Lamplugh. He started the letter with, “I was not involved in the disappearance of London estate agent Suzy Lamplugh. I have an alibi.” He claimed that on July 28, 1986, the day that Suzy disappeared, he was treating his mother “to a spot of lunch” in Birmingham. He insists that he had told officers about the alibi during a series of recorded interviews in 2000 at the Hammersmith police station. It’s his belief that the police are trying to divert attention away from themselves.
Cannan has denied any involvement in Suzy’s disappearance but many believe he was waiting on his mother’s death to confess because he’s wanting to avoid further damage to her already fragile health. His mother Sheila has suffered from dementia & it’s unclear if she’s still alive. Because there hasn’t been enough evidence, Cannan has never been convicted for Suzy’s disappearance despite being the only known suspect. A March 2023 article indicated that Cannan was receiving end-of-life palliative care & has been in poor health for several years after suffering a stroke that resulted in partial paralysis that required him to be in a wheelchair.
In 2008, Suzy’s father Paul suggested Steve Wright as a potential suspect; he was convicted of murdering five women in & around Suffolk in 2006 & was serving a life sentence when authorities noted the similarities in the crimes he was convicted for & Suzy’s disappearance. Wright had worked with Suzy when she worked as a beautician on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 in 1982 while Wright was working as a steward at the same time. He maintained contact with her up until the time of her disappearance. He also used the nickname “Kipper.” Wright’s ex-wife, Diana Cole, spoke with authorities & alerted them to the fact that Wright was in the area at the time Suzy disappeared.
Within weeks of her disappearance, Suzy’s parents started the Suzy Lamplugh Trust which has the mission of reducing the risk of abuse, aggression & violence with a specific focus on stalking & harassment through education, campaigning & support. It is their goal to create a society where people are safer & feel safer. It exists so that what happened to Suzy doesn’t happen to anyone else.
Suzy’s body has never been found & she was declared legally dead in 1993. According to criminologist David Wilson, a witness did see someone who looked like Cannan with a suitcase that he was struggling to carry, disposing of this suitcase in the Grand Union Canal below a bridge called Gallows Hill. This witness was never interviewed by detectives. There had been a falling out between police & the Lamplugh family because Diana felt that various lines of inquiries were not looked into.
Some wonder if a deathbed confession may come from Cannan one day, but according to David Wison, a person such as John Cannan, who is lacking a conscience, would be unlikely to confess ever. He never admitted to any of the crimes he committed.
Sadly, Suzy’s mom Diana passed away in 2011 at age 75 after suffering a stroke. Her father, Paul passed away in 2018 at age 87 & neither had any closure as to what happened to their daughter. Before Paul’s passing, he expressed that time only made things more difficult, “I miss Suzy more now.. I think the older I get I miss her.”
References:
- Suzy Lamplugh Trust: Suzy’s Story
- Independent: Prime suspect in Suzy Lamplugh case to stay behind bars
- Medium: The unsolved disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh
- Independent: Suzy Lamplugh: Suspect John Cannan denies killing missing estate agent as police search mother’s former home
- Grunge: The mysterious disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh
- Wellington Weekly News: Murderer ‘on deathbed in prison’
- Wikipedia: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh
- YouTube: This Morning – Suzy Lamplugh prime suspect on his deathbed: David Wilson discusses
- Wikipedia: John Cannan
- BBC Suzy Lamplugh: What do we know about the missing estate agent?
