Number 5 The unsolved disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh
(lam ploo) is one of the United Kingdom’s most well known missing person cases.
Despite the publicity, her family has never got answers as to what happened to their loved
one after she left the estate agents office where she worked in July 1986.
Suzy was an attractive young woman from a middle-class background, 25-years-old at the
time of her disappearance.
Her employers had placed her at the desk closest to the window so that she was, in her own
words, on display for any man to see.
It’s quite likely this attracted the attention of the mystery person who would change her
life forever.
On 28th July, 1986, she left her desk at 12.40, taking with her her keys and purse, but leaving
her handbag behind.
It was clear she didn’t intend to be gone for very long.
In her diary, she had a meeting scheduled with a Mr Kipper, who presumably had told
her he was interested in one of the properties that agency was looking after.
Ten minutes after she left the office, she was seen outside an empty property in Fulham,
a house that had only been on the market for a week.
A housing boom was just beginning in London at the time, but even then this would have
been a very quick turn around.
At about 1pm, an unknown man arrived but, for some reason, he and Suzy were seen walking
away from the property a few minutes later.
It was the last confirmed sighting of Suzy.
Suzy’s manager had figured she had probably gone home for lunch but, when she didn’t
return that afternoon, he grew concerned and contacted Suzy’s parents.
They hadn’t seen her since she left for work that morning.
Suzy was reported missing later that evening and a media frenzy ensued.
The fact Suzy had gone missing in broad daylight terrified the public, who could easily imagine
something like this happening to them.
The company car she had used to drive to the property was found abandoned near a river
at 10pm the same day she went missing, but there was no evidence that could point to
what had happened to her.
Suzy’s parents took their dogs to search the area, but they couldn’t find her scent.
Despite the public fascination with the case, there was very little progress.
Eventually, a lorry driver came forward to police to say they had seen a man throwing
a suitcase into a nearby canal two days after Suzy disappeared.
The man was identified as John Cannan, who was handed three life sentences for taking
the life of another young woman a few years after Suzy vanished.
He is currently police’s prime suspect, but they have never been able to get enough
evidence to charge him with the crime.
Suzy’s family are not convinced, however, and believe the serial killer known as the
Suffolk Strangler may have been involved.
Number 4
The disappearance of Annie McCarrick in 1993 is an unsolved mystery with two strange sightings
that could lead investigators to what happened to the 27-year-old just before she vanished.
Both stories involved an unidentified man approaching Annie shortly before she disappeared,
and finding the mystery man will likely lead investigators to Annie.
Annie was an American woman who had moved to Ireland in January 1993.
She lived in an apartment with two friends.
The day of her disappearance was like any other.
It was March 26th, shortly after her 27th birthday.
She spent the morning walking in the Wicklow Mountains, which was something she enjoyed
doing in her free time.
CCTV later placed her at an ATM machine and she spent a while shopping before returning
to her apartment at 3pm.
Annie didn’t stay there long.
She left her shopping on the kitchen table and left again.
The last confirmed sighting of Annie was on a bus heading towards nearby Enniskerry (eh
nuh skeh ree).
What happened after that remains a mystery.
Annie’s friends realised she was missing the following day when she failed to show
up for a dinner they had arranged.
She also didn’t show up for work.
By Monday, her friends were concerned enough to contact police and Annie’s parents back
in America.
For much of the investigation, police believed there was a later sighting of Annie at around
9pm that day.
A bouncer at a pub saw Annie while at work.
He was working the door for the Johnny Fox pub, which was hosting an Irish music and
dancing show.
Annie hadn’t realised there was a cover charge to get in and didn’t appear to have
the money, but a male friend who was with her paid instead.
He was wearing a wax jacket and paid for Annie’s drinks for the two hours they were there.
Nobody saw Annie or the man leave the pub, which was 6km away from Enniskerry, meaning
it was unlikely Annie would have tried to walk home given it was a dark and wet night.
The man she was with has never been identified.
However, it recently emerged the sighting in Glencullen may have been a case of mistaken
identity, and the focus on the man in the jacket could have derailed investigations.
Instead, there has been a focus on another sighting that was reported not long after
Annie went missing.
A woman working in a cafe in Enniskerry told police she had seen Annie in the cafe on the
day of her disappearance.
A man approached Annie and offered to buy her a slice of cake.
Despite going to police at the time, she never gave a formal statement and has since passed
away, though told her story to her daughter.
Another witness has also come forward with a similar story.
Given the gap between when Annie was seen on the bus and the possible sighting at the
pub, it’s possible both sightings were accurate and the mystery man was the same in both cases.
There have been a number of possibilities put forward, including known serial killers
who were active in the area at the time and an IRA henchman who may have told Annie about
IRA activities and taken her life to keep her quiet.
Number 3
Sage Smith was a charismatic and energetic young woman who went missing in mysterious
circumstances in November 2012.
What exactly happened on November 20th is unclear, as those closest to her are believed
to have lied or withheld information from police, and her family believe poor handling
by the police has only hindered the missing person investigation.
Sage was 19-years-old at the time she went missing.
She was born male, but came out as transgender years earlier and had been living as a woman
ever since.
Her family mostly embraced her new identity, and Sage had been making a good life for herself
after ageing out of foster care.
She worked at a salon and was training to be a hairdresser.
She also shared an apartment in Charlottesville, Virginia, with two other young women, Shakira
Washington and Aubrey Carson.
Sage had had a number of relationships with men.
Often times they were uncertain of their own sexual identity and wanted to keep their relationship
with Sage a secret for that or other reasons.
This was the case with Erik McFadden, Sage’s boyfriend at the time of her disappearance
and the last person known to have seen her.
He was already in a relationship with another woman, and was paying Sage to keep their relationship
a secret.
On the night Sage was last seen, they had agreed to meet up at the Amtrak station.
She left her apartment at 5:40pm, waking up one of her flatmates as she left.
McFadden arrived at the meeting spot about 30 minutes later and began texting Sage, asking
where she was.
After several texts that went unanswered, Sage finally called him at 6:30pm.
What was said on the call is unknown, but she was seen by her step sister, who was waiting
across the street in down town Charlottesville.
Her stepsister heard Sage say she would be “there” in five minutes.
Sage was reported missing the following day.
Her flatmate, Aubrey, had been concerned when she, hadn’t returned home the following
morning and, after a call with Sage’s grandmother, agreed to report her missing if she hadn’t
shown up by 10pm.
Police were slow to act, and Sage’s family took things into their own hands.
The gained access to Sage’s phone account and discovered her last phone call had been
to McFadden, who they didn’t know at the time.
They then discovered McFadden was also missing.
McFadden would show up in New York.
He spoke to police, but only through emails to his girlfriend.
He said he’d left Charlottesville for unrelated reasons, but refused to come back.
At first he claimed he hadn’t seen Sage the night she disappeared, and that she had
stood him up.
He eventually confessed they had met, and had been walking together when they were approached
by a group of people.
McFadden claimed Sage had enemies, and he thought something bad was about to happen,
so he simply walked away and apparently kept walking.
His location changed over the years as he travelled along the west coast.
At first, police naturally thought he was involved in Sage’s disappearances, and thorough
searches of his apartment and the landfill where his rubbish had been taken were conducted,
but there were no signs of Sage.
They later determined he had not been involved, but still believed he was an important witness
and asked for him to return to Virginia.
By this time, he had already stopped contact with his girlfriend and he hasn’t been heard
from since 2013.
Who the people Sage and McFadden had met remain unknown.
It’s possible the incident was connected to a fight that had taken place a few days
earlier, but all the people who might be able to answer that question have vanished.
Number 2
The unexplained mystery surrounding the disappearance of Trudie Adams is, on the face of it, a rather
simple unsolved missing person case.
But delving deeper reveals a web of corruption, an ignored witness and a possible connection
with illegal substances.
Trudie was last seen just after midnight on the morning of 25th June, 1978.
She had been at a party at the Newport Surf Life Saving Club in New South Wales.
It was an idyllic community of pristine beaches and a town where everyone knew everyone.
She didn’t know that more than a dozen young women had been assaulted while travelling
alone in the area in recent months.
At the party she had an argument with Steven Norris, her ex-boyfriend who she had broken
up with not long after.
She left the party, and Steven saw her catch a ride in a light-coloured 1977 Holden panel
van.
Concerned about her safety, Steven went to Trudie’s house.
She had told her mother to wait for her, but when Steven arrived, her mother hadn’t seen
her since she left for the party.
Trudie’s parents and Steven contacted police, and soon the disappearance became the biggest
missing person case in the state.
Steven was initially under suspicion, especially after it emerged the description of the vehicle
he had seen Trudie get into changed.
He allegedly first claimed the car was a green Kombi van before switching to the Holden panel
van.
But police eventually ruled him out.
It was also considered possible Trudie may have been groomed to be a mule for illegal
substances, as she was planning a trip to Bali and its known organised crime surrounding
the narcotics industry was a problem in the area.
But this too was later ruled out.
Extensive searches of a nearby National Park were conducted.
The bushland would become an even greater focus when women came forward with information
about two men who had abducted them at gunpoint and taken them to the park.
Police considered it likely Trudie had been taken by the same men and her body was in
the park somewhere, but no trace of her has ever been found.
The case went cold, despite numerous campaigns for information.
In 2008, the case took another twist.
A high ranking police official named Mark Standen was arrested for corruption.
He was jailed for conspiring to import a large quantity of illegal substances.
He had also been good friends with a known criminal named Neville Tween, one of the main
suspects in not only Trudie’s case but the cases of the other women who had been attacked
around the same time.
Tween had always denied any involvement in the case, but the information about Standen
led many to question whether a cover up had taken place.
Then, in 2011, another strange twist came to light.
A woman named Carolyn Drake came forward to say she had been the one to pick up Trudie
from the club that night.
She had known Trudie from school, and lectured her on how unsafe it was to hitchhike.
She then dropped Trude off at her house.
Drake said she had never realised how important the information was.
Naturally, there was plenty of doubt cast about her claims, given how much this changed
the nature of the case.
Now, it wasn’t about Trudie disappearing on a lonely road, but instead taken from outside
her front door.
It also meant searches for the car Steven described had been a waste of time.
It seemed unlikely Drake would have simply not known this was important.
Police have doubted her claims were true, but it doesn’t appear they have been debunked.
Whether hitch-hiking or on her doorstep, it’s clear Trudie crossed paths with someone sinister
that night, and her case remains unsolved.
Number 1
Northern California in the 1960s and 70s was a pretty dangerous time and place to be a
young woman.
Countless young women vanished, some never to be seen again and the bodies of others
being found after they had met dark fates.
Robin Ann Graham would eventually become one of the former, disappearing into the night
in 1970.
Robin was 18-years-old at the time of her disappearance in November 1970.
She was on the way home from a party.
Earlier in the night she had left her car at the Pier One Imports store where she worked
and was picked up by her boyfriend.
After the party, she was dropped back off at her car.
She had only been driving for a few minutes when she stalled near the Santa Monica Boulevard
off ramp.
She managed to get to the side of the road but couldn’t get started again.
Not long after, she was approached by two officers in uniform in a patrol car, who offered
her a lift.
Robin refused and was pointed to a nearby call box where she phoned home for a ride.
She was seen by the same officers two more times.
The first time she told them a family member was on their way.
The final time, at around 2am, they saw her talking to a man in a white turtle neck sweater
and bell bottom jeans.
A light blue, hard top corvette was parked nearby.
They assumed he was the family member she had called so didn’t disturb them again.
When Robin’s family actually arrived half an hour later, they found her car locked with
no sign of Robin or any note indicating where she had gone.
Whoever the man in the corvette was, he didn’t bring her home and he and Robin have never
been seen.
The disappearance was linked to many other cases in the area at around the same time.
There was definitely one or more people targetting women with car problems, as well as men who
flagged down women pretending they needed help only to attack.
But the one case with the biggest similarities to Robin’s occurred just hours before she
vanished.
A woman came forward after reading about Robin’s case in the news.
She told police she had stalled on the same free way earlier that night.
She was approached by a man in a light blue corvette who offered her a lift.
She refused.
He told her he was an off-duty police officer and could be trusted, but she still refused.
It would seem strange for Robin to have accepted a ride from a man claiming the same thing,
given she had previously refused a ride from uniformed officers, but the two situations
are eerily similar.
The other woman later identified the man who approached her as Bruce Davis, a member of
the Manson Family and one of the many people suspected of being the Zodiac Killer.
To this day, no trace of Robin has ever been found, though those who knew her still hope
to find answers.