1986 disappearance of woman in London
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. 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 with Lamplugh still missing, and is considered the world's biggest-ever missing person's inquiry.
John Cannan (1954–2024), a convicted criminal responsible for the murder of Shirley Banks in 1987 and many other rapes, abductions and attempted abductions since his release from prison three days before Lamplugh's disappearance, was the only suspect in the murder of Lamplugh. 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 claimed to know who killed Lamplugh and that the culprit was also responsible for the murder of Banks. He was known to have appeared uninvited at a house that was for sale in Shorrolds Road in the days before Lamplugh's 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 Cannan owned at the time of her disappearance.
Disappearance.
Suzy 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 identikit 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 another 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. 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 (registration B396 GAN) was sighted poorly parked outside a garage opposite 123 Stevenage Road, about away, by several witnesses at various points in the afternoon. However, her close friend Barbara Whitfield insisted she had seen Lamplugh driving north up the Fulham Palace Road in her car with a man at around 2:45 p.m. Whitfield 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 key was missing. The car 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. Witnesses also said that they had seen two white Ford Fiestas parked in Shorrolds Road that day. 
A witness emerged some time later with another significant sighting. The witness had offered information after the disappearance, but his account was dismissed at that time because he had described a blond-haired woman, and the police incorrectly assumed that Lamplugh had brown hair when she vanished. The witness was jogging when he saw a car speeding south down Stevenage Road (the same road in which Lamplugh's car was later found abandoned) as he emerged from Bishop's Park into the road at the exit by Fulham F.C.'s Craven Cottage stadium. The car, which he noticed was a dark-coloured left-hand-drive BMW, suddenly stopped further down the road and a woman who matched Lamplugh's appearance was seen struggling with a man inside the car and sounding the horn in an apparent attempt to attract attention. In his description of the incident, the witness stated: 
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Initial investigations.
Missing-person inquiry.
Lamplugh's boyfriend, a 27-year-old stockbroker, and her male flatmate were both questioned by police, but both had solid alibis with corroborating witnesses. Lamplugh's two-bedroom flat in Putney was searched, but nothing notable or suspicious was found. It was soon suggested in the press that if Mr. Kipper's first name was Dan, the combined would be an anagram of "kidnapper". Lamplugh's office manager revealed that a bunch of red roses had been delivered to the office by a mystery man just days before she had disappeared.
Police released a photo of Lamplugh with dark brown hair, but she had tinted her hair blond on the Friday before she vanished. The initial investigation was conducted without computers, using an old-fashioned card-index system in which all leads were filed on approximately 26,000 cards. Because Lamplugh was only considered a missing person, known criminals in the area were not considered as suspects. 
Six months after Lamplugh's disappearance, a man informed police that he had discovered that a BMW that had been left abandoned in a road for some months was registered to a Belgian man known sometimes as Mr. Kiper, and detectives believed that this information was significant. However, the car's owner was located in Belgium and had a confirmed alibi for the day of Lamplugh's disappearance, and his BMW had been in a garage in Belgium on that day. He was swiftly eliminated as a suspect.
One year after Lamplugh's disappearance, detectives noted that the artist's impression of Mr. Kipper strongly resembled John Cannan, a convicted rapist (and later abductor and murderer) who had been residing in a nearby prison hostel outside HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs around the time of Lamplugh's disappearance. In 1980, he had raped and beaten his girlfriend when she tried to leave him, and he raped a shopkeeper at knifepoint in 1981. Cannan had been on day release from the prison in the months preceding Lamplugh's disappearance and held a job in the area as a porter. He was public school-educated and was known for his ability to attract women. In the weeks before Lamplugh disappeared, Cannan had told inmates and workmates that he was frequenting wine bars in Fulham and had met a new "uptown" girlfriend named Susu. Lamplugh had visited some of the wine bars, including one located opposite from her office. Cannan also frequented a pub in Putney that Lamplugh visited on 25 July 1986, the same day on which Cannan was released from prison, three days before Lamplugh's disappearance. Cannan confirmed in 2021 that he had visited the bars and pubs. He often delivered roses to women as a romantic ploy and had told people that he was interested in buying a property in the area.
In June 1987, Lamplugh's mother Diana said that she believed that her daughter was dead.
Shirley Banks and Cannan links investigated.
In October 1987, 15 months after Lamplugh's disappearance, John Cannan abducted and murdered 29-year-old Shirley Banks from Bristol. He attempted to rape two women in a shop three weeks later after driving to the shop in his black BMW. He had also tried to abduct a woman the night before he had abducted Banks and had been visiting wine bars in Bristol to search for victims. He had held Banks hostage in his flat for 18 hours before killing her and dumping her at a site in the Quantock Hills known as Dead Woman's Ditch. Inside his dark BMW was found an imitation handgun, handcuffs and the tax disc for Banks' car. Soon after Cannan was arrested, Banks' Mini car was found hidden in his garage, with a new, false number plate affixed reading "SLP 386S". 
Detectives later noted that the letters SLP could stand for Suzy Lamplugh and the number 86 for 1986, the year in which she vanished. The media began to note the likeness between Cannan and the photofit in the Lamplugh case, and speculated about a link between the Banks and Lamplugh cases. It was also known that Cannan had joined a dating agency in Bristol weeks before he had murdered Banks, providing a false name of John Peterson, and had presented himself in a recorded video as a successful, smartly dressed businessman. The video remains publicly available.
Metropolitan Police detectives travelled to Bristol to interview Cannan about the Lamplugh disappearance. When he was asked by detectives if he understood the significance of the number plate, he replied that it could be seen as a reference to Suzy Lamplugh, whom the detectives had not yet mentioned. However, Cannan claimed that he had chosen the letters for the plate at random. He claimed that he had bought the car from a "Bristol businessman" who was responsible for "the murders of Shirley Banks, Suzy Lamplugh and another girl" and that the man was in a great deal of trouble. Cannan was known for masquerading as a Bristol businessman. When asked if the man was himself, Cannan provided an affirmative response but immediately recanted and ended the interview because he was overcome with emotion.
Cannan was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Banks and for several other rapes, abductions and attempted abductions. He was also convicted of the rape of a woman in Reading on the train line between London and Bristol, six weeks after his release from Wormwood Scrubs prison. The sentencing judge told Cannan "you should never again be at liberty outside of prison walls." Further interviews were conducted with Cannan regarding Lamplugh's disappearance in 1988, 1989 and 1990. However, he was not placed on an identity parade.
In 1990, a woman named Gilly Paige, with whom Cannan had been in a relationship after Lamplugh's disappearance, informed police that Cannan had spoken about the Lamplugh case and told her that Lamplugh was buried at Norton Barracks. Another former girlfriend of Cannan, Daphne Sargent, also believed Cannan to be responsible, saying: "As soon as I heard about