Killer still pulling strings from his prison deathbed
Brother of missing estate agent urges terminally ill prime suspect to end years of ‘toying with detectiv
OVER the years the links between John Cannan, the suave, smooth public school educated killer, and missing estate agent Suzy Lamplugh have grown stronger.
And, to an extent, the flames have been fanned by the Sutton Coldfield monster himself, claims an author who has exchanged hundreds of letters with the prisoner.
Cannan, serving life for the rape and murder of Bristol newlywed Shirley Banks in 1987, is nearing the end of life. The 68-year-old is receiving palliative care at Full Sutton Prison.
Suzy, aged 25, simply vanished in 1986 after travelling to Fulham to show a prospective purchaser, known only as Mr Kipper, a property. She was officially declared dead eight years later.
Her family have begged the dapper killer not to take his secrets to the grave.
Brother Richard said: “I would like Cannan, if he does know, to tell us what happened to Suze. After all these years, I would like him to finally let us know what happened. It would mean a lot to the family.”
That appeal will bring a smile to the face of Cannan, says Christopher Berry-Dee, a crime writer whose body of work includes Ladykiller, which placed the deathbed prisoner in the frame for Suzy’s disappearance.
Cannan has relished toying with detectives, says the 74-year-old.
He has orchestrated fruitless searches for Suzy’s body. Former girlfried Gilly Paige told police Cannan had suggested Suzy was buried at Norton Barracks, Worcestershire.
A fellow prisoner claimed Cannan had buried the body at his mother’s former home in Sutton Coldfield.
In the background, Cannan pulled the strings.
He has teased those who accused him of responsibility for the woman’s abduction.
He has ensured he remains prime suspect in the unsolved case, while publicly lambasting his accusers.
He sent a solicitor’s letter when, in 2002, detectives publicly voiced their belief he killed Suzy.
From behind bars, Cannan sent a letter of complaint to the Sutton News following Gilly Paige’s claims.
He wrote: “May I please assure you, that whilst it is perfectly true that I did give ice-skater Gilly Paige a lift from Bristol to Birmingham, where both our families live, I did NOT at any time say that I had raped and killed Miss Lamplugh.”
In 2019, he spoke to the Sunday Mirror in a phone call from his cell ahead of an earlier parole bid.
He said: “I had no involvement in the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh. I am concerned the police will use Suzy’s disappearance to undermine my parole prospects. My concern is that smearing me has become the rule, not the exception.”
Yet the dark shadow of the terrible crime now looms long over Cannan as his life slips away.
An artist’s impression of the mysterious Mr Kipper bears an uncanny resemblance to the murderer. He was allegedly known as Kipper by some prison inmates BEFORE the Lamplugh case.
There were even rumours he and Suzy had dated: police tossed around a theory Suzy was planning to break off the brief relationship when she vanished.
There is hope for Suzy’s family, the Mirror reports. DNA found in an abandoned car belonging to the victim could be the killer’s, a former detective has revealed.
Jim Dickie said a tiny sample was
taken from a smudged fingerprint on the rear-view mirror of the white Ford Fiesta that the estate agent drove to meet Mr Kipper on July 28.
Forensic scientists were unable to extract a profile from it in 2000 when Mr Dickie was leading the investigationm, but he is hopeful it could be done now.
It is another vehicle, a Mini Clubman belonging to murdered Shirley Banks, that provides the most telling evidence, Mr Berry-Dee insisted.
The vehicle – resprayed blue and with false reg plates – was found at Cannan’s Bristol flat block.
It is a fourwheeled sneer at detectives, in keeping with the twisted narcissist’s modus operandi. The registration plate – SLP 386S – is a coded confession.
SLP, he said, stands for Suzy. The number “3”, insisted Mr Berry-Dee, is a reference to the number of victims: he’s convinced Cannan also murdered South Coast insurance clerk Sandra Court in 1986. Finally, “86” was the year of Suzy’s death.
“There is no other explanation for that number plate,” Mr Berry-Dee told me. “He is a dangerous player and the trouble is, there is truth entwined with packs of lies and noone bothers unpicking it.”
Cannan remains something of a criminal conundrum.
He was undoubtedly a lady’s man, with a string of attractive girlfriends. He came from a privileged middleclass background. He oozed charisma and charm.
There was intellect, too. He also purported to be God-fearing: the thick dossier of letters sent to Mr Berry-Dee are littered with references from the King James Bible.
Cannan possessed all the ingredients to become a suited, successful city worker, but inner demons and an incendiary temper turned him into a killer.
Mr Berry-Dee believes murderous desires had their foundation in a sense of inadequecy. Cannan longed to enjoy the success of his father, who ran a car dealership, but lacked the business acumen.
He was given a job in the family business, but felt washing cars and making cuppas was beneath him. The sense of failure spawned a brooding violence towards rejection, particularly rejection by women.
Mr Berry-Dee said: “His father was rather dominant. He ran behind his mother’s skirt. He built up animosity to his father, he built things up. The reality was that he could not achieve what he wanted to achieve. He gets in this fairytale that he is like his father. It’s all crap.
“Being a person without much of a soul, he becomes very bitter when rejected. The girls he went out with were initially drawn to him, then realised he was a charlatan and dumped him. That built up deep resentment. One told me he just switched into a terrifying beast.”
Year by year, the inner demons pushed Cannan to carry out ever more heinous crimes. Chronolgically, his record is a jigsaw slowly portraying the making of a monster.
As a child, he was treated for anxiety. As an adult, he attempted to keep the insecurities at bay through booze.
He first attacked a woman in 1968, indecently assaulting her in an Erdington telephone box. He was placed on probation but went on to join the Merchant Navy aged 17, later leaving and becoming a car salesman.
By the early 1980s, Cannon had succumbed totally to his blood-lust. In 1981, he robbed a petrol station and a clothes shop at knifepoint and brutally raped a store assistant after threatening to stab her baby. Can
nan received an eight-year sentence. He was on day release from Wormwood Scrubs in 1986 when Suzy went missing.
In 1987, he abducted and murdered newly-wed Shirley Banks. The 30-year-old had been on an evening shopping trip to Bristol when she vanished. Her naked body was later found at Dead Women’s Ditch in the Quantock Hills.
He was given three life sentences with a recommendation never to be released for the murder of Shirley, the attempted kidnapping of another woman on the previous night and the rape of a third woman in Reading.
Since then, Suzy’s family have ridden on a terrible tidal wave of hope, with each search of countryside and buildings proving fruitless.
A 2018 search of the former home of Cannon’s mother attracted media attention. The killer knew it would, said Mr Berry-Dee. “He is lapping it up,” the author said at the time. “It is about ‘I am in control’,’ It makes him feel important. He knew they wouldn’t find anything. It’s the absolute stupidity of it. My gut feeling is that he engineered it. I believe that, because he’s such a control freak, he is revelling in the glory – ‘I have the power’, ‘I am in control’.
“There is a strong link between narcissm and pyschopathy. He has two faces. He is a serial killer with a mask of normality, but his mind is a black hole.”
Ex-Met Detective Superintendent Jim Dickie also called on Cannan to “cleanse his soul”. He said: “The indications are that his time is limited. He has not got much quality of life. There is clearly not going to be any judicial process in the future whatever information he gives up before departing this world. This is an opportunity for Cannan to cleanse his soul and, above all, give solace to the Lamplugh family. It is a chance for him to give them closure and bury Suzy with dignity at a time and place of their choosing.”
He added: “By telling the truth there would be no sanction for Cannan on this earth now. But it could cleanse his conscience and allow him to make his peace with God. It can’t be easy to live with what he has done.”
A spokesman for the Ministry of Justice said they were unable to comment on Cannan’s health.
After all these years, I would like him to finally let us know what happened. It would mean a lot to the family. Brother Richard