A new documentary explores the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh, which remains to be one of the largest missing persons cases in the UK even after 35 years since she went missing.

Britain's leading criminologist Emilia Fox and Professor David Wilson investigate famous unsolved murder cases including Suzy Lamplugh's disappearance in Channel 4's new documentary, "In the Footsteps of Killers." Though the re-opening of the cold cases for the documentary has been criticised by many viewers as "disrespectful," the programme has reignited the public's interest in the Suzy Lamplugh case.

Lamplugh, a 25-year-old real estate agent, went missing after a meeting with a client on July 28, 1986. She was declared dead in 1994, but her killer was never caught, nor was her body found, reports Daily Star.

On the day of her disappearance, Lamplugh left her office, Sturgis and Sons, to show a man listed only as "Mr. Kipper" around a house for her 12:45pm appointment with him in Fulham, southwest London. Around 10 minutes later, she was seen waiting outside an empty property, 37 Shorrald's Road, which had only been on the market for one week. A man, presumed to be "Kipper," joined her five minutes later, but they walked away from the house just after a few minutes.

That was the last confirmed sighting of Lamplugh, whose disappearance was reported to the police later that day by her manager. Her car was found on the day itself about a mile away outside another property listed for sale. The handbrake was off and the car key was missing, while her purse was found in a storage pocket in one of the car's doors.

Police failed to find any crucial lead in the case, as no details of the client mentioned as "Mr. Kipper" in Lamplugh's office diary were found. The angle that "Kipper" could've been her pronunciation of the Dutch name "Kuiper" was also investigated, but police could not identify anyone of that name in connection with her. She was declared dead, presumably murdered, in 1994, eight years after the incident.

A prime suspect emerged in the case in November 2002, after it was noted that convicted rapist and murderer John Cannan was released from a prison hostel only days before the crime. It was also claimed that his nickname in prison was "Kipper."

Scotland Yard held a press conference naming the purported serial killer as the person they believed to have murdered Lamplugh, but failed to produce any evidence linking him to the disappearance. A fellow prisoner who knew Cannan told police the following month that he had buried Lamplugh under the patio of his mother's house in Sutton Coldfield, in the West Midlands, which was searched that year as well as 16 years later in 2018, but nothing related to the case was found.

A previous girlfriend of Cannan had told police in 2001 that he had suggested Lamplugh's body was buried at Norton Barracks, a former military base in Worcestershire, but this search also proved unsuccessful.

In August 2019, the SIT received information that a man resembling Cannan was seen dumping a suitcase in the Grand Union Canal around the time of Lamplugh's disappearance, but this section of the canal was already searched in September 2014 for an unrelated inquiry.

Cannan, a former car salesman who was convicted in July 1988 of murder and multiple sexual offences, abductions and attempted abductions, will complete his three life sentences next year and will be eligible for release. A relative of the 67-year-old previously told The Daily Mail that he would only confess to Lamplugh's murder after the death of his own mother Sheila as he doesn't want to cause the dementia-suffering nonagenarian more upset.

Meanwhile, Lamplugh's mother Diana lost her life to a stroke in 2011 at the age of 75, and her father Paul passed away in 2018 at the age of 87, without ever finding out what happened to their daughter.

Crime scene tape
A representational image of a crime scene. (Pixabay)