Susannah Jane Lamplugh is an English missing person last seen on 28 July 1986. A 25-year-old estate agent, she left her office in Fulham, West London, to meet a client referred to in her work diary as "Mr Kipper." She was last seen later that day near the property she was scheduled to show. Despite extensive police investigations and public appeals, no trace of her has ever been found. Lamplugh was declared legally dead in 1993, presumed murdered.
John Cannan (1954–2024), a convicted murderer and sex offender, was identified by police as the prime suspect in the Lamplugh disappearance in 2002. Cannan had been released from prison three days prior to the disappearance and was later convicted of the 1987 murder of Shirley Banks, as well as multiple rapes and attempted abductions. Cannan claimed to know the identity of Lamplugh's killer, alleging the same individual was responsible for Banks's murder. He was also reported to have visited a property for sale on Shorrolds Road shortly before Lamplugh's disappearance, where he behaved suspiciously. Forensic evidence later indicated Lamplugh had been in a car owned by Cannan at the time she went missing, although this evidence was not considered sufficient for prosecution.
The Crown Prosecution Service concluded there was insufficient evidence to charge Cannan, although police took the highly unusual step of publicly stating they believed he had killed Lamplugh.
Disappearance
Suzy Jane Lamplugh was an estate agent working for an agency called Sturgis at 654 Fulham Road, West London. She 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 observed Lamplugh outside 37 Shorrolds Road between 12:45 and 1:00 pm. One witness walking home past the property saw Lamplugh at the gateway of the property at 12:50 pm, appearing to be waiting for someone. Ten minutes later, another witness, who owned the house next door, heard someone leaving 37 Shorrolds Road 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 man.
The latter sighting was corroborated by a third witness who was walking past the property at around the same time, noticing that the man was holding a bottle of champagne adorned with ribbons. This sighting was later the basis of another identikit picture drawn of the man. Other 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 man was described as a white male aged 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.
One witness said that he had seen a "couple arguing" between 2:00 and 2:30 pm in the area. Another sighting saw Lamplugh driving erratically 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 1 mile (1.6 km) away, by several witnesses at various points in the afternoon. However, Barbara Whitfield, a close friend of Lamplugh's, insisted that she had seen her driving with a man north up the Fulham Palace Road at around 2:45 pm. 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 by the spot where her car was seen parked.
By 3:30 pm, 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 discover she wasn't there. At 5:30, they called police to report her missing. At 10:00 pm, a police officer found Lamplugh's car parked in the same spot at which it had been sighted that afternoon, next to another house for sale. The vehicle appeared to have been parked in haste, as the driver's door was unlocked, 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 vehicle.
Police suggested that a black, left-hand-drive BMW may have been involved following an eyewitness account of a car of that description seen parked in Shorrolds Road. One of the witnesses remembered seeing it because many cars in the road had been double parked, causing him some difficulty driving through. 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 at the road that day.
A witness emerged sometime 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 Bishops 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:
I came out of the park to be met by a BMW which tore across the road and came to a halt with somebody with their hand on the hooter, pressing it for a very long time. As I stood there I saw a blonde young lady. She looked as though she was laughing, or she could have been screaming. What worried me was how could she drive with what was going on? But it never occurred to me that it was a left-hand drive car.
A sighting was also reported witnessing a woman matching Lamplugh's appearance on the adjacent Langthorne Street.
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. Her 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 red roses had been delivered to the office by a mystery man in the 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 index card 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 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 the 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 vanished, detectives noted that the artist's impression of Mr. Kipper strongly resembled John Cannan, a convicted rapist who had been residing in a nearby prison hostel outside Wormwood Scrubs Prison around the time of the disappearance. In 1980, he had raped and beaten his girlfriend when she tried to leave him, and had raped a shopkeeper at knifepoint in 1981.
Cannan had been on day release from 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 these wine bars, including one located opposite from her office. Cannan also frequented a pub in Putney that Lamplugh visited on 25 July, the same day on which Cannan was released from prison, three days before her disappearance. Cannan confirmed in 2021 that he had visited these establishments. 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 stated that she believed that her daughter was dead.
Shirley Banks and Cannan links investigated
In October 1987, fifteen months after Lamplugh's disappearance, Cannan abducted and murdered 29-year-old Shirley Banks from Bristol. Cannan had also attempted to abduct a woman the night before he had abducted Banks and had been visiting wine bars in Bristol to search for victims. He held Banks captive in his flat for eighteen hours before killing her and dumping her at a site in the Quantock Hills known as Dead Woman's Ditch. He attempted to rape two women in a shop three weeks later after driving to the shop in his black right-hand drive BMW. Inside his car was found an imitation handgun, handcuffs and the tax disc for Banks's car. Soon after Cannan was arrested, Banks's 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 signify Lamplugh's name and the number 86 for 1986, the year in which she vanished. Journalists 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 the false name of "John Peterson," and had presented himself in a recorded video as a successful, smartly dressed businessman. The video remains publicly available.
Detectives from the Metropolitan Police travelled to Bristol to interview Cannan about the Lamplugh disappearance. When asked if he understood the significance of the number plate, he replied that it could be seen as a reference to Lamplugh, whom the detectives had not yet mentioned. However, Cannan claimed that he had chosen the letters for the plate at random. He further claimed that he had purchased 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: "[Y]ou 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 he had spoken about the Lamplugh case and told her that Lamplugh was buried at Norton Barracks near Worcester. Another former girlfriend, Daphne Sargent, also believed Cannan to be responsible, saying: "As soon as I heard about Suzy, I knew it was John. It had all the hallmarks— right down to the champagne."
Cold case
In the years after Lamplugh's disappearance, police tested the DNA of 800 unidentified bodies and skeletal remains that matched her description. Lamplugh was officially declared dead at her parents' behest, exactly seven years after her 1986 disappearance, on 27 July 1993. She was presumed to have been murdered.