‘I couldn’t have killed Suzy Lamplugh, I was at lunch with mum’

A lifer suspected of killing estate agent Suzy Lamplugh has insisted he couldn’t have been responsible as he was having lunch with his mother. John Cannan is already serving life for rape and murder of another victim but police believe he also played a part in the disappearance of the 25-year-old. But in a letter written to the Mirror[1] from his cell at a top security jail, Cannan has insisted he did not kill Suzy Lamplugh.

And he says police are prejudiced against him. Estate agent Suzy went missing in 1986 after going to show someone named “Mr Kipper” around a house in Fulham, West London. She is believed to have been killed however her body has never been found.

Cannan, now 69, has been publicly named by police as their chief suspect. However in his letter, sent to the Mirror through his solicitor, he says detectives working on the case had pointed the finger at him to “divert public attention away from themselves”. He was writing just weeks after the Parole Board ruled that after 34 years in jail he was too dangerous for release.

And he said he wants to make a number of “points” in light of “recent publicity” about his parole.

Suzy Lamplugh, who disappeared at the age of 25 in 1986 (Image: Handout/PA Wire)

He begins by insisting: “I was not involved in the disappearance of London estate agent, Suzy Lamplugh. I have an alibi.” He says that on July 28, 1986, the day Suzy vanished, he was in Birmingham “treating my mother to a spot of lunch”. His mother Sheila suffered from dementia and it is unclear if she is still alive.

However Cannan says he told police about the alibi in a recorded interview, which had been carried out over a three-day period in 2000 at Hammersmith police station. He writes: “So why do they insist upon blaming me?” He added: “I think it’s to divert public attention away from themselves. I have been deeply suspicious of them.”

John Cannan, the chief suspect in the disappearance of estate agent Suzy Lamplugh in 1986 (Image: Avon and Somerset Police/PA Wire)

He says police have been of “unfair and unjust” in their behaviour towards him.

He writes: “They have generated such huge prejudice against me that it has caused me to lose faith in the world. The evil in prejudice lies… in the very nature of prejudice itself. It’s a horrible and divisive thing.

I know, I’m living under it.” Cannan continued that the “moral gods of our society” should “take note” of a biblical passage which reads: “There are those who are clean in their own eyes but are not washed of their filth.” Signing the handwritten letter J CANNAN, he concluded: “In my view, the greatest evil of all is the evil done in the name of freedom and the public good.” Car salesman Cannan was handed a whole-life tariff in 1989, later reduced to a 35-year minimum, for murdering Shirley Banks, 29, in Bristol in October 1987.

She was abducted and held at his flat before Cannan killed her by hitting her head with a rock. Her naked body was dumped at Dead Women’s Ditch in the Quantock Hills in Somerset.

Shirley Banks was killed by Cannan

Cannan was also convicted of the attempted kidnap of Julia Holman the night before he abducted Shirley, and the rape of a woman in Reading a year earlier. Six weeks before killing Shirley, Cannan had joined a dating agency and filmed a video for prospective partners.

Suzy went missing after going to meet “Mr Kipper”, according to her diary, to show him around a house in Shorrolds Road, Fulham. She was officially declared dead, presumed murdered, in 1993, with detectives publicly named Cannan as the prime suspect in 2002 after it emerged he was nicknamed “Kipper” by people at a bail hostel where he lived at the time Suzy disappeared. However there was insufficient evidence to prosecute.

Earlier this year, it was revealed that Scotland Yard detectives had launched a forensic review of the case. Cannan, who is being held at HMP Full Sutton, East Yorkshire, has never admitted his crimes. His solicitor, Dean Kingham,said: “Mr Cannan has long been linked to the disappearance of Ms Lamplugh by police.

There is a distinct lack of evidence. to put before a court.” Det Chief Insp Teresa Foster sent a new appeal for information. She said: “Whether you saw something that you thought was unconnected at the time, or felt under pressure to protect someone you knew – it is not too late.

The passage of time has not weakened our determination to seek justice.”

References

1. ^ letter written to the Mirror (www.mirror.co.uk)