Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

Susannah Jane Lamplugh (born 3 May 1961) was a British estate agent reported missing on 28 July 1986 (aged 25) in Fulham, London, England, United Kingdom.

John Cannan, a convicted criminal responsible for the murder of Shirley Banks in 1987 and many other rapes, abductions and attempted abductions since his release from a nearby prison three days before Lamplugh's disappearance, is the only suspect in the murder of Lamplugh.

She was officially declared dead, presumed murdered, in 1993.

The last clue to Lamplugh's whereabouts was an appointment to show a house in Shorrolds Road to someone she called Mr Kipper.

The case remains unsolved.

In November 2002, the Crown Prosecution Service concluded that there was insufficient evidence to charge Cannan, but police announced at a press conference their belief that he had murdered Lamplugh.

Cannan claims to know who killed Lamplugh and that the culprit is also responsible for the murder of Shirley Banks, for which Cannan was convicted.

He is known to have appeared uninvited at a house that was for sale in Shorrolds Road in the days before the disappearance, believing that the young female occupant was alone in the house, and acted strangely until the woman's husband appeared, causing Cannan to quickly leave.

DNA evidence has also shown that Lamplugh had previously been in a car that he owned at the time of her disappearance.

Lamplugh was an estate agent working for an agency called Sturgis at 654 Fulham Road, London, who was reported missing after an appointment to show a house in Shorrolds Road, Fulham to a man calling himself Mr. Kipper.

Her office diary recorded the details of the appointment as: "12.45 Mr. Kipper – 37 Shorrolds O/S" (the "O/S" annotation signifies "outside the property").

Three witnesses saw Lamplugh outside 37 Shorrolds Road between 12:45 and 1:00 p.m. A man walking home past the house saw Lamplugh at the gateway of the property at 12:50 p.m., and she seemed to be waiting for someone.

Ten minutes later, the owner of the house next door heard someone leaving number 37 and saw Lamplugh and a man leaving the house and looking back up at it.

This sighting was later the basis of an artist's impression of the unidentified male.

The sighting of the pair standing outside the house was corroborated by another man who was walking past the property at around the same time.

He noticed that the man was holding a bottle of champagne with ribbons around it.

This sighting was later the basis of an identikit picture made of the man.

Witnesses reported that they then saw the pair entering a car.

The neighbour thought that the pair had been arguing before entering the car.

The witnesses described the man as a white male between 25 and 30, with a dark complexion and with dark hair swept back.

He was immaculately dressed in a dark charcoal suit, and was described as a "public schoolboy type".

He may have had a broken nose.

A man said that he had seen a "couple arguing" between 2:00 and 2:30 p.m. in the area.

There was then a sighting of Lamplugh driving her car erratically away from Shorrolds Road, arguing with the man in the car, causing the witness to swerve to avoid a collision.

Lamplugh's white Ford Fiesta car (registration B396 GAN) was sighted poorly parked outside a garage opposite 123 Stevenage Road, about 1 mi away, by several witnesses at various points in the afternoon.

However, Lamplugh's close friend Barbara Whitfield saw Lamplugh driving north up the Fulham Palace Road in her car with a man at around 2:45 p.m., and she insisted that she had no doubt that it was Lamplugh.

She waved to Lamplugh as she cycled south down the road but Lamplugh was talking to her passenger and did not see her.

As Whitfield was the only witness that day who actually knew Lamplugh, her sighting was afforded significant weight.

A woman living at 139 Stevenage Road also reported possibly seeing Lamplugh with a smartly dressed man wearing a suit by the spot where her car was seen parked.

By 3:30 p.m., Lamplugh's colleagues at the estate agency were becoming concerned that she had not returned.

At 4:30, they travelled to 37 Shorrolds Road to see if she was there, but she was not.

At 5:30, they called the police to report her missing.

At 10:00 p.m., a police officer found Lamplugh's car parked in the same spot at which it had been sighted that afternoon, which was by another house for sale.

The vehicle appeared to have been parked in haste, as the driver's door was open, the handbrake was not enabled and the car key was missing.

It was parked poorly and was partly overlapping a garage.

Lamplugh's purse was found in the car, but neither her own keys nor the keys to 37 Shorrolds Road were found.

The driver's seat was pushed back to a position from which Lamplugh would not have been able to drive the car, indicating that someone else had driven the car.

Police suggested that a black, left-hand-drive BMW vehicle may have been involved following an eyewitness account of a car of that description seen parked in Shorrolds Road.

The man remembered seeing it because many cars in the road had been double parked, causing him some difficulty driving through the road.

Another witness corroborated this account and said that he had seen the dark-coloured BMW parked almost outside 37 Shorrolds Road.