Scots brother hopes Suzy Lamplugh’s suspected killer left clue in his book

The brother of an estate agent who vanished 40 years ago has claimed that the key to her mystery disappearance could be in a book written by a murder suspect. Suzy Lamplugh was officially declared dead, presumed murdered, seven years after she vanished without a trace on July 28, 1986.

Ever since, her close family have wanted to disperse her ashes in a spot near and dear to their hearts, the Mirror reports. The man who is commonly assumed to have killed Suzy, John Cannan, passed away earlier this month at the age of 70.

After refusing to admit his guilt or assist in providing the Lamplugh family with any closure, he was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of another woman one year after Suzy vanished. Suzy’s brother Richard Lamplugh, who lives in Aberdeen, now feels that Cannan’s passing eliminates practically all possibility of closure for him and his sisters, Lizzie and Tamsin.

However, the family has a glimmer of hope that Cannan wrote something incriminating in a book while he was incarcerated. Richard, who himself has two daughters, said: “I gather that he was writing books in prison, so maybe someone could read them and have a look at it.

“But it won’t be me… There’s a lingering hope that maybe he left a hidden message or a note that would give a clue about what happened to Suze.”

An appointment in Suzy’s diary to show a “Mr Kipper” around a home in Fulham, southwest London, served as the final hint as to her whereabouts. The 25-year-old Suzy was not seen again, but her car was discovered close to the Shorrolds Road property with her keys in the ignition.

Within days of Suzy’s disappearance, her family, especially her distraught parents – solicitor Paul and fitness club manager Diana, who are no longer alive – instinctively knew that she had died.

Richard, who was in his late twenties at the time, said: “The thing that makes me sad….I felt I was quite close to Suze, and the one thing I do miss is that it would have been lovely to know what her family was like. She’d be a lovely mum. She was quite a mother duck, gentle. She had that warm nature.”

According to Richard, 64, a school technician who lives in Aberdeen with his wife Christine, he and his sisters have grudgingly accepted that they probably won’t be able to scatter their sibling’s ashes. But Diana’s “something good” was the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, a charity founded in her daughter’s honour to raise awareness of personal safety, for which she and Paul were both awarded OBEs in 1992. Even now, it is still a powerful campaigning force.

In 1986, clairvoyants from all over the world approached the family, claiming they could tell them where Suzy was, according to the Daily Mail. It wasn’t until October 1987 that Cannan, a former public schoolboy from Bristol, was taken into custody in connection with the murder of Shirley Banks, a factory manager and newlywed – like Suzy, she was an attractive blonde in her twenties. He was found guilty and given a life sentence. Despite being linked to Suzy’s murder, he was never charged.

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