MADDIE COPS JOIN SEARCH FOR SUZY LAMPLUGH

POLICE digging for the body of murdered estate agent Suzy Lamplugh in the former garden of the prime suspect’s mother spent six months searching there 15 years ago.

Miss Lamplugh, 25, disappeared in 1986 after showing a ‘Mr Kipper’ around a house in Fulham, west London.

Cops believe convicted killer John Cannan is responsible for one of Britain’s most infamous unsolved murders.

Cannan, who has been interviewed three times in jail, is currently serving 35 years for the murder of Shirley Banks in 1987 – but Suzy’s missing body means he has never faced trial.

Officers, including experts who helped in the search for Madeleine McCann in Portugal, are using specialist equipment to scan and dig up concrete at his mother Sheila’s former home in Sutton Coldfield – but the Met will not say what prompted the new excavation work.

The development came 15 years after police first named Cannan as their ‘only suspect’ and a prisoner serving with Cannan then told police he heard Suzy was buried under the patio the suspect laid there while wearing a blood-spattered coat.

In 1992 the suburban property was sold to Phillip Carey, 52, who revealed officers were searching his garden from November 2003 to the spring of 2004 – but only concentrated on an area by the back door.

Cold case detectives returned a few months ago asking for access again and the search now centres on the garage at the rear of the garden amid claims Suzy’s body may have been dumped in a car-inspection pit and filled with concrete.

Horrendous

Mr Carey, who works in marketing, said: “The police were looking at a corrugated iron shed at the back of the garden.

“They’ve pulled it down and I think they’re going to start digging it up.

“If nothing is found, then we go on as normal. But if it goes the other way and they find her remains, then at least someone has got a final end to this horrendous story.”