Family’s search for closure, 30 years on
Paul Lamplugh’s daughter vanished 30 years ago today. But, he tells Victoria Lambert, he has found some peace
Never was a toast to absent friends more poignant. A few days ago, surrounded by close family and old friends, 85-year-old Paul Lamplugh raised a glass to his daughter Suzy, and said “just a few words” to mark the 30 years she has now been missing.
“My daughter wanted us all to live life to the full,” he says – a quiet, thoughtful man, seated in his favourite chair, in the warm orange-painted sitting room at the heart of the Lamplugh family home in East Sheen.
The walls are covered with pictures of Suzy – from Girl Guide to pretty teenager. But there are also scores of photographs of Suzy’s siblings: Richard, now 56, Tamsin, 53, and Lizzie, 46; of Paul’s seven grandchildren, and of Diana, his much-loved wife, who died in 2011.
The occasion may have been private, but Paul knows many of us will spare a thought today for Suzy, the 25-year-old estate agent who disappeared, believed murdered, on July 28 1986. In the weeks, months and years that have followed, the photograph of Suzy used by all the media – confident smile and sparkling eyes, beneath a slanted Diana fringe – became as familiar as images of the late Princess of Wales.
Her case is one of the country’s most enduring mysteries – no trace of Suzy has been found and no one has been tried for her murder. More than that, perhaps, it marked a loss of public innocence. A moment of collective realisation that, if a young woman could disappear in the middle of a working day, our society was not as safe as we believed.
Not that any one could have imagined Suzy was in danger when she left her office in southwest London for an appointment, according to a handwritten note in her diary, to show a house to a Mr Kipper at 12.45pm in fashionable Fulham. Yet by mid-afternoon, when Suzy hadn’t returned, worried colleagues called Diana to see if she knew where she might be. Her white Ford Fiesta was found abandoned nearby that night – the driver’s door unlocked, the handbrake off and her purse in the glove compartment, but her keys missing.
Paul, a former solicitor, recalls the day carefully: “I was at work at the Law Society when I took a call from Diana. She said she thought it was serious and asked me to come home. At some point we phoned the police – and the whole thing started. It was all over the press. And suddenly it was terribly serious. The house was full of police from then on, every day, chaotic, and so many media outside, a friend had to manage them for us. It felt overheated. Diana said she felt on fire.’’
From the start, the investigation was hampered by lack of evidence: “There was no plan because the police didn’t know where to look. Diana and I coped by clinging together.”
But even while the huge operation was underway and hundreds of potential suspects were interviewed – for a while it was believed the man might have been Dutch, his name Kuiper – the family began turning their terrible loss into something positive: The Suzy Lamplugh Trust, the personal safety charity.
“Suzy was a confident young woman,” says Paul. “She had worked on the QE2 as a hairdresser, travelling the world, and she knew how to manage herself. The problem was she hadn’t been taught how to keep herself safe.” They vowed to change that for others.
By Christmas, Paul was working for the trust full-time which helped him feel both relief – and that they were honouring the essence of his daughter. “I recall my wife having a conversation with Suzy in the kitchen, chiding her for doing too much. And she replied: ‘Come on, Mum. Life is for living. You’ve got to get on with it.’
“And Suzy lived like that. But she
We could imagine her saying: ‘Come on Mum and Dad. You have done enough’
didn’t know about getting on with it safely. And that became the basis of the trust – the idea of teaching safety, not just for women but everyone.” The trust – its motto, Live Life Safely – also provides advice and support for those, like Suzy, who regularly work alone and meet strangers.
“Diana and I believed that people should get on and live a full life – not hide away – but do so safely. And to do that you need to be taught how to manage aggression from others and in yourself so that you can control your reactions. We wanted to teach personal safety as a life skill, for life.”
Once the charity was fully operational, 14 people filled the house, with every bedroom turned into a work space. “We were running on adrenalin. Diana was the speaker and front person, I ran the office. This sort of thing can drive husband and wife apart, but not us.”
In 1994, Suzy was officially declared dead, but her case wasn’t closed, and a thorough review was carried out in 1998 and then 2000. In 2002, Scotland Yard held a press conference to announce that they believed a serial rapist and killer, John Cannan, had killed Suzy. They did not have enough evidence to prosecute Cannan, but he was already in prison serving life. (Since then, police have investigated various locations where information suggested Suzy’s body may have been hidden, most recently in 2010.)
Paul won’t say if he thinks Cannan is to blame. “It was a good lead,’’ he says. “It may be right – I don’t know. The fact is, she is never going to come back – and that is the way it is.”
More importantly, for the Lamplughs, this was a time to draw publicly their own line in the sand. “We had realised much earlier she couldn’t be alive any longer; that she couldn’t have managed as a captive very long. But Scotland Yard’s statement brought our situation to an end. We both felt we still wanted to know what had happened and this didn’t mean forgetting her. But not every day would be spent searching and worrying. And we could imagine her saying: ‘Come on, Mum and Dad. You have done enough – it’s time you got on with your lives.
“We had already realised around the time the investigation was scaled down that we couldn’t carry on our search for ever. We were beginning to get concerned about how this was distracting from our relationships with our other children. I’ve seen people in our situation who have gone on and on – not bringing it to a close.
“And it was a form of closure that we could create for our selves. And I was glad we got there before Diana had her stroke in 2003, so I wasn’t left on my own feeling guilty.”
Paul has found a silver lining in the timing of Diana’s stroke: “I realised later that she had begun to suffer from Alzheimer’s. But the stroke wiped out all memory, so in that way she suffered less.”
Then just 67, Diana was placed in a care home, and although she couldn’t recognise him, Paul visited his wife every day for the next eight years until she died. He also took a step back from the charity, too.
Is there part of him that still craves answers?
“I’d like to get it sorted, but I don’t think every day ‘what can I do?’. It doesn’t keep me up, and I think it is important it shouldn’t for the sake of the other children, and my own sake.
“And I can take comfort from knowing that if Suzy hadn’t disappeared, we wouldn’t have the trust. And I am very proud of that.” The family home is still full of memories. “I always thought she’d do something interesting. She was always keen to get on with life. So there are moments when a thought can catch you. When you think, I wish Suzy was around for this. And I sometimes feel it is a bit unfair, but there is no point in being eaten up by it.
“When Tamsin got married, we put an enormous amount into the wedding. We were sort of compensating for it not being Suzy, I suppose. She will always be a missed presence in our lives.”