CPS rules against charging suspect in Lamplugh case

One of the country's most enduring unsolved murder cases, the mysterious disappearance of the estate agent Suzy Lamplugh in 1986, looks set to be closed because the Crown Prosecution Service ruled there was insufficient evidence to charge the prime suspect.

The Metropolitan Police are reluctant to drop the case after an exhaustive new investigation and are considering making further inquiries before they admit defeat. But a police source said Scotland Yard is planning to announce in the next few weeks that the case is formally closed.

The 47-year-old suspect, who has been jailed for life for murder, has been questioned several times in prison. He is not being named for legal reasons. Ms Lamplugh, 25, disappeared at lunchtime on 28 July 1986, after meeting a man calling himself Mr Kipper to show him a property near her office in Fulham, south-west London. She was declared dead in 1994, but her body has never been found.

The case was first closed in October 1987, although the file remained open. The investigation was reopened in 2000 when a new witness came forward claiming to have seen Ms Lamplugh alive shortly after her abduction. The witness reported seeing her being driven in her Ford Fiesta moments after she had been taken from a house.

The unlocked white car was discovered abandoned about a mile away in Stevenage Road, Fulham, with the handbrake off. It contained Ms Lamplugh's purse.

In May last year, search teams scoured dense woodland and dug in the Quantock Hills near Taunton, Somerset, in response to information about the possible burial site of Ms Lamplugh, near where a woman was found battered to death in 1988. The search was called off after about a week.

Police have also previously searched countryside close to the former Norton Army barracks in Worcestershire.

Several potential new witnesses have contacted the police. The witnesses are understood to have been shown a 15-year-old video clip of a suspect leaving a lonely hearts advert with a dating agency. The witnesses have been asked whether they recognise the man in the video, who claims to be a successful businessman.

As part of the inquiry, detectives DNA-tested the remains of more than 800 unidentified bodies discovered since 1986 in an attempt to discover whether one of them was Ms Lamplugh.

The Metropolitan Police's Serious Crime Group submitted a file to the CPS in June this year containing evidence against the prime suspect. He is alleged to have boasted about killing Ms Lamplugh.

The police file is understood to contain a wealth of circumstantial evidence against the suspect but nothing that directly linked him to the murder and abduction. The murder inquiry team were said by a source to be "disappointed, but not entirely surprised" at the CPS's decision. In a statement, Ms Lamplugh's parents Diana, 66, and Paul, 71, said: "The police will be studying the [CPS] advice in detail and will discuss with the family both the advice and the action to be taken. We are satisfied that the police have been doing excellent work and are continuing to do so."

Officially the CPS only offers "advice" on whether a charge should be brought, leaving the final decision to the police. But in practice the police must heed the advice because the CPS will abandon any trial where they consider there is insufficient evidence to obtain a conviction.