Now I’ll never get closure on my sister Suzy Lamplugh’s death

Richard Lamplugh says his family will never know what happened to his estate agent sister now that prime suspect John Cannan has died

At lunchtime on 28 July 1986, a 25-year-old estate agent left her desk for a 12.45pm appointment with a “Mr Kipper” in Fulham and was never seen again.
If you’re over 45, you probably recognise the facts of the Suzy Lamplugh case immediately. The disappearance of an attractive, middle-class young woman shocked the nation and sparked Britain’s biggest-ever missing person’s inquiry.
But detectives were never able to find her body and failed to gather enough evidence to charge their prime suspect, John Cannan.
This week Cannan, 70, has died in prison, along with the hopes of Lamplugh’s family to find out what really happened to her.
“I’m not mourning John Cannan, but I am mourning the loss of him ever giving us closure,” says Richard Lamplugh, 64, Suzy’s brother. “I never wanted to meet the man, although my parents did meet with him. As far as I’m concerned, he was a nasty bit of work and he manipulated people. He knew that information is power and he wanted to hold on to it. I wasn’t going to get down on bended knee and beg him for information.”
Police named John Cannan as the prime suspect in Suzy’s murder in 2002, after it emerged that he was given the nickname “Kipper” in a prison hostel, because he loved fish and slept a lot. He also bore a resemblance to an e-fit of a man with whom Lamplugh was seen talking on the day she went missing.
A former car salesman, Cannan was convicted in 1989 of abducting and murdering textiles factory manager Shirley Banks, 29, in Bristol. He was also found guilty of other offences including the rape of a woman in Reading, Berkshire. Prior to this, he had served an eight-year jail sentence for rape and theft.
He was jailed for life, which was later reduced to a minimum of 35 years. In October 2023, the Parole Board decided not to release Cannan, ruling he was still a risk to the public.
But Cannan has always denied any involvement with Suzy Lampugh’s case. Suzy’s parents Diana and Paul died without ever finding the answers they longed for. Diana died after suffering a stroke and developing Alzheimer’s in 2011, while Paul passed away seven years later.
Now Suzy’s remaining family, her two sisters, Tamsin, 62, and Lizzie, 54, as well as Richard may have to come to terms with never getting an ending to the story.
“We have never been able to properly grieve for Suzy,” says Richard, who was 26 and working at a fish farm in Hertfordshire at the time his sister disappeared. “It’s really sad that my folks weren’t around to even find out where he buried her. We would dearly love to be able to find Suzy’s body and to scatter her ashes where my parents’ ashes are scattered.”
When Suzy disappeared in the middle of the 1980s, Crimewatch, which featured her case, had 14 million viewers a week and Suzy’s mysterious disappearance baffled police and amateur detectives alike.
Lamplugh’s Ford Fiesta was discovered in Stevenage Road – about a mile from the house viewing she was supposedly going to in Shorrolds Road. The car was unlocked, with the handbrake off and her purse in the door – suggesting she hadn’t expected to leave it for long.
Witnesses saw a woman who looked like Suzy arguing with a man close to a black BMW in Shorrolds Road, Fulham. Another described the man in a suit, with dark hair slicked back, carrying a bottle of champagne.
Suzy Lamplugh was officially declared dead, presumed murdered in 1993 despite her body never being found.
In the 38 years since Suzy went missing, there have been numerous searches for her body.
The garden of Cannan’s mother Sheila in Sutton Coldfield, Birmingham, was excavated in 2018 and a garage knocked down, but no remains were found.
Two sites in Worcestershire – a former Army barracks and a field outside the village of Drakes Broughton – and a woodland in the Quantock Hills, Somerset, have also been searched in the hunt for Lamplugh’s body.
In 2020, it emerged that a witness, known only as Dave, reported seeing a man who looked like Cannan dump a trunk into the Grand Union Canal in Brentford, West London at 5am, on the Monday after Suzy disappeared.
In the 2021 documentary The Mystery of Suzy Lamplugh, former detective superintendent Jim Dickie, who led a re-investigation into the case in 1999, reveals ‘Dave’ went to Brentford police station three times to report the sighting, but his statement was never followed up. According to a friend, Dave, who died in 2008, recognised Cannan in the paper and told her there “was a starey-ness about his eyes”.
According to the documentary, police also failed to follow up on a lead from a witness who saw a black BMW shoot out of Stevenage Road at speed, with a blonde passenger leaning on the car horn. The witness said the woman looked like she was laughing “but could have been screaming.”
“We were in an analogue age,” says Dickie. “Everything was on paper. There were old- fashioned card index systems for evidence-gathering. Now we have all sorts of technology, computer systems, number plate recognition, CCTV. I think we could probably have solved the case a lot quicker now.”
The death of Cannan means that Suzy Lamplugh’s case, known to police as Operation Phoebus, is unlikely to ever be solved. But Richard hasn’t given up all hope. “Apparently Cannan was writing a book so he may have left some information for us,” he says. “The police think he did it, so I will accept that. It’s fait accompli.”
Richard says that he takes some comfort from his parents’ legacy – the charity they set up in his sister’s memory. Since 1986, the Suzy Lamplugh Trust has helped companies establish safer working practices for female staff, pushed through anti-stalking and anti-harassment legislation, and campaigned for the licensing of minicabs, as well as running a hotline for victims of stalking.
“We recognise that this is a difficult time for the family of Suzy Lamplugh as they process this news,” says a spokesperson from the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. “We would like to take this opportunity to recognise the work of Suzy’s parents who set up the Trust to enable individuals and organisations to be and feel safer.”
“We are indebted to their persistence, resilience and their focus on ensuring that what happened to Suzy doesn’t happen to others. Our mission remains focused on reducing the risk of violence, aggression and abuse in society.”
Richard says that he thinks of “Suze” all the time, but especially on 3 May – her birthday – and when cases similar to Suzy’s hit the headlines, such as the abduction and murder of Sarah Everard. “I feel very sad for anyone who’s lost their loved ones… but of course you find yourself thinking ‘Well, at least they found the body.’”
“We’ve never been able to properly grieve for Suzy because in the days and weeks afterwards, we kept trying to stay positive and hopeful,” he says. “We wanted to believe she had lost her memory or something like that. Then when months went by and she had missed so many birthdays and Christmas and so on, we had to be realistic. But by that point we were quite far away from what had happened.”
The dad-of-two, who lives in Aberdeenshire with wife Christine, says the loss of his sister has made him worry about his own daughters, aged 21 and 17.
“I wouldn’t say I’m a helicopter parent, but of course I’m aware of the dangers,” he says. “But I’d never want my daughters to feel like they had this hanging over them. My eldest daughter is living in London now and I do worry about her, but I was brought up in a city and I loved it. They have to live their lives. Suzy always said that ‘life is there for the living’ and that’s a motto I want us all to live by.”