32 Years After Likely Murder, Cops Dig Up Concrete Floor

Search for Suzy Lamplugh takes police to former home of suspect's mom
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 30, 2018 9:25 AM CDT
32 Years After Likely Murder, Cops Dig Up Concrete Floor
This undated photo shows Suzy Lamplugh.   (Suzy Lamplugh Trust)

UK police are digging up a property previously owned by the mother of a convicted killer in the hope of solving a 32-year-old cold case. Real estate agent Suzy Lamplugh, then 25, vanished on July 28, 1986, after leaving her London offices to meet an unknown "Mr. Kipper" at a property in Fulham and was presumed dead in 1994. On Tuesday, Met Police confirmed officers were searching a property formerly owned by murder suspect John Cannan's mother. Later imprisoned for 35 years for the rape and murder of a Bristol woman, Cannan had finished serving a six-year sentence for rape just three days before Lamplugh vanished and was known to be in Fulham at the time, report the Guardian and BBC. Though he's denied involvement, Cannan also went by Kipper while in prison, per ITV News.

While a "Mr. Kipper" has never been traced, witnesses do recall seeing Lamplugh arguing with a man at her appointment. Her car was later found 1.5 miles away with its doors open and Lamplugh's purse inside, per the BBC. The owner of the property now being examined in Birmingham, who purchased it from Cannan's mother in 1992, says it was also searched "on and off" from the end of 2003 to spring 2004. This time, authorities are actually digging—removing the concrete floor of a dismantled garage behind the semi-detached home, reports the BBC, which adds the sad note that both of Lamplugh's parents are now deceased. Her mother died in 2011 following two strokes and an Alzheimer's diagnosis, per Sky News, while her father reportedly died in June after a battle with Parkinson's disease. (A husband is charged in a cold case murder in Wisconsin.)

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