Detectives investigating the murder of Suzy Lamplugh have made one last plea for information as they prepared to shelve the 40-year-old investigation into her disappearance.
With the prime suspect now dead, the Metropolitan Police said they remain determined to ‘find her resting place and bring her back’.
Scotland Yard detectives expect to spend the next year contacting around 30 potential witnesses, who are still believed to be alive, after they initially called in with tip-offs and leads when estate agent Ms Lamplugh vanished in Fulham, west London, on Monday, July 28, 1986.
The 25-year-old’s body has never been found, and remains the Met’s largest active murder investigation.
Police have now told Ms Lamplugh’s family the case will become ‘inactive’ next year, but are hopeful advances in forensic testing or a key witness breaking their silence will finally solve the mystery.
Detective Chief Inspector Teresa Foster, who leads the Met’s cold case homicide team, said: ‘We’re not going to give up on trying to find where Suzy is. But yes, it is difficult.
‘It is going to take a change in forensics or technology, or a change of allegiance, or someone coming forward with new information. It is going to be very difficult now after 40 years.’
Asked what detectives hope to achieve as the case prepares to be wound down, she said: ‘It’s finding Suzy. For us and for Suzy’s family, it is finding her.
Suzy Lamplugh – pictured in new photographs released by her family today – was 25 was she vanished in Fulham in 1986
Suzy, pictured (right) for the last time alongside her siblings, brother Richard, and sisters Lizzie and Tamsin
The Lamplugh family – (left to right, back row) Richard, Lizzie, Suzy, Tamsin, Paul and Diane (seated)
John Cannan was the prime suspect in the search for Ms Lamplugh’s killer. But he died in prison in 2024
Suzy Lamplugh (second left) with her siblings, (left to right) Richard, Tamsin and Lizzie
‘It’s finding her resting place and bringing her back.’
Ms Lamplugh was working for Sturgis’ estate agents in Fulham when she left the office to show a home to a potential client. The appointment marked in her diary was with a ‘Mr Kipper’.
Witnesses saw Ms Lamplugh standing outside the address in nearby Shorrolds Road, looking as if she was waiting for someone.
Around ten minutes later, a next-door neighbour heard someone leaving the property and saw Ms Lamplugh outside with a dark-haired man in a charcoal-coloured suit.
But by mid-afternoon, office colleagues had become concerned about her whereabouts and contacted police.
Her abandoned white Ford Fiesta was found, badly parked, a mile away from Shorrolds Road, at 10pm.
The vehicle was unlocked, the handbrake was off, and Ms Lamplugh’s purse was left inside the car door.
She was never seen again.
A newly released family photograph of Ms Lamplugh, whose body has never been recovered
Ms Lamplugh worked as an estate agent in Fulham, and lived in nearby Putney
Her disappearance made headlines around the world
The prime suspect in the case, John Cannan, the middle-class son of a successful car salesman, died in prison in 2024 after being jailed for life in 1989 for the abduction and murder of newlywed Shirley Banks from Bristol.
Hi, I’m Alex Matthews, Editor of The Crime Desk.
In 2014, we revealed the bombshell evidence identifying Aaron Kosminski as the fabled Jack the Ripper. Now, we can reveal his astonishing connection to the Freemasons and claims this motivated his killings and protected him from life in prison.
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He had been out on licence from prison when Ms Lamplugh disappeared, having previously been jailed for raping a pregnant woman in front of her own mother and toddler, as well as two robberies.
He was identified as the key suspect in the Lamplugh case in 2002, but always denied involvement. No forensic evidence has ever been found linking him to what happened.
DCI Foster said she and her team remain ‘haunted’ by the fact the case – which unfolded on the doorstep of the case team’s headquarters in Putney – remains unsolved.
She said: ‘It does haunt me because we’ve never found her, she’s never been seen.
‘I think everybody at some stage, who lives in London, can think: That could have been me.’
She said the case was headline news around the world, and remembers hearing about it as a schoolgirl in New Zealand where she grew up.
‘This was a huge story then, and it was just shocking,’ she said.
A young Suzy, pictured alongside her family, including parents Diana and Paul
‘I think for us that are invested in this, it upsets us. We’re very close to the family as well.
‘So yes, it does haunt that we can’t give answers, and we know that we’re up against it 40 years later.’
The Met has recently secured convictions of three historic killers – Janice Nix, who scalded her stepdaughter to death in the bath, and brothers Michael and Anthony Stewart for murdering a civil servant – following disclosures from family members.
And DCI Foster urged those with information about this decades-old case also come forward.
In a direct appeal to anyone for witnesses, she said: ‘We’re not going to stop looking for Suzy.
‘If anybody has that information, you know we’ll take it forward, but we’ll also safeguard them, protect them in any way we can.’
Ms Lamplugh’s parents, Diana and Paul, died in 2011 and 2018 respectively without knowing what happened to their eldest daughter.
Their legacy is the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, a charity they set up in their daughter’s honour which focuses on personal safety, stalking and harassment.
DCI Foster said the surviving family members ‘totally understand’ that the investigation will eventually be deemed inactive.
But she said: ‘It’s not going to be closed.
‘I’ve said to the family that any information comes in from anywhere, we still raise it as an action.’
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