Metropolitan Police officers investigating the disappearance of young estate Suzy Lamplugh in west London say they remain “haunted” by the case, 40 years after she vanished.
Lamplugh, 25, left her Fulham office at about 12:30 BST on 28 July 1986 to meet a client and she she never returned.
Her diary noted an appointment with a man listed only as “Mr Kipper” on Shorrolds Road. Her white Ford Fiesta was later found abandoned nearby. She was declared “presumed dead” in 1993.
As the the police investigation is due to be mothballed next year, cold case detectives say they continue to be troubled by the fact her body has not been found.
Det Ch Insp Teresa Foster said it is believed Lamplugh may have been targeted by a stalker, having been placed in the office window because her employers thought she was attractive and would draw in customers.
Foster said: “I’m more inclined to believe that stalking side, that someone has seen her, a predator of some type, and then lured her into a false meeting.”
The theory chimes with the cause taken up by Lamplugh’s parents, who set up the Suzy Lamplugh Trust after she vanished. The charity campaigns on personal safety and runs the National Stalking Helpline.
Foster said it was the fact Lamplugh has never been found that continues to trouble officers. “It haunts myself as the senior investigating officer, and I think that comes down to the fact that Suzy’s never been found,” she said. Her wish, she added, is still to “bring Suzy home”.
The investigation triggered one of the UK’s biggest missing persons operations. It is also the only Met case still run on the 1980s card index system, kept in case a handwritten detail was ever overlooked.
The inquiry will move to an “inactive phase” in a year’s time. New information will still be followed up, but the team will no longer work the case actively.
The prime suspect, John Cannan, died in prison in November 2024, while serving a sentence for the 1987 murder of Bristol newlywed Shirley Banks.
A file went to prosecutors in 2002, but there was never enough to charge him and no forensic evidence has linked him to Lamplugh.
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A smudged fingerprint on the rear-view mirror has also never been matched.
Foster believes advances in AI or forensics could one day crack the case, or that someone may finally come forward. She pointed to two recent Met convictions that turned on relatives passing on information decades later.
Janice Nix was convicted in June of the 1978 manslaughter of her five-year-old stepdaughter Andrea Bernard.
In the same month, brothers Michael and Anthony Stewart were jailed for the 1984 murder of civil servant Anthony Littler.
Lamplugh’s parents set up the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, which campaigns on personal safety.
To mark the anniversary, the family has released previously unseen photographs.
Her siblings Lizzie, Tamsin and Richard said she was “a truly beautiful person inside and out”, adding they were “incredibly proud” of the trust’s work.
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Related internet linksSuzy Lamplugh Trust