How the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh inspired two sisters to start a charity

From a cramped home in the suburb of East Sheen in London, sisters Mary Asprey and Janet Newman set out to make history in 1986. 

The siblings had been shaken by the disappearance of estate agent Suzy Lamplugh, whose family lived nearby. The 25-year-old vanished in July 1986 after she arranged to meet a client called ‘Mr Kipper’ to show him around a house for sale in Fulham.

Mary and Janet had seen how Suzy’s parents, Paul and Diana, were left to navigate the confusion of their daughter’s disappearance alone. Police could provide updates, but there was no direct support during their ordeal. 

Desperate to help, Mary and Janet mobilised volunteers to launch a helpline from their shared East Sheen home. They wanted to offer comfort to people concerned about the Lamplugh case, whether they were directly involved or not. 

Soon, it became clear that there was a huge demand for their services. Up and down the UK, hundreds of families had lost a loved one in mysterious circumstances and were struggling to cope.

In 1992, Mary and Janet took the massive risk to re-mortgage their house and use the funds to start the charity. Volunteers were bolstered by staff members who comforted devastated parents, passed on messages from missing teenagers and campaigned for greater support for families of missing people. The sisters’ success was cemented in its first year by an office visit from Diana, Princess of Wales in October.

‘Mary and Janet were amazing advocates,’ Jo Youle OBE, CEO of Missing People, tells Metro from the charity’s office in East Sheen. ‘They knew the Lamplugh family and they all lived in Sheen, which is how the charity ended up being based here. Mary and Janet realised there was no support for Suzy’s parents and wanted to do something about it.

‘They started in a bedroom, then re-mortaged their house, then persuaded Waitrose [the Missing People office is located above the supermarket] to donate them office space. They put everything, all their soul into this charity.’

The sisters were said to be ‘yin and yang’ with Janet more reflective and skilled at taking calls, and Mary the more outgoing of the pair. She appealed directly to police and policy makers to try and attract more support.

The impact of their work became clear in 1994, when the charity was inundated with calls during the 25 Cromwell Street murder investigation. People with missing family members had read about the Fred and Rose West killing spree and rang up to check if their loved one was one of the victims. Mary and Janet’s team worked with Gloucestershire Police during the investigation and, together, they called on other forces across Britain to have better procedures for recording and logging missing people. 

At one point, a name on the charity’s database matched up with a comment made by Fred West, which led to the identification of Juanita Mott, 18, as one of his victims.

Mary and Janet often gave a profile to the cause and to missing people who would not otherwise have been heard of. But their charity also dealt with reuniting families after schisms or lost contact. Although when someone did not want to be found, this decision was – and still is – respected.

In 1999, Mary Asprey told Nottingham Evening Post: ‘We respect the right of people to go missing. That is very important because sometimes people don’t want to be found. If we find missing people and they don’t want to be put in touch with their families, then we honour that.’

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When the charity’s helpline first launched, Mary and Janet had three staff members under their wings. By 1999, they had a team of 29 staff and 60 volunteers answering phones and searching for thousands of missing people. The charity’s ethos became ‘we are a lifeline when someone disappears.’ 

In 2004, Janet stressed how difficult the Christmas period seemed to be for relatives of missing people. She told the Dorset Echo: ‘If someone is ill, they will nurse them. If someone dies, they can grieve. When someone goes missing there is absolutely nothing, your life is on hold. The longer it goes on the worse it gets.

‘Christmas is a time when you sit back and reflect. It is very hard because you are not going out to buy those Christmas presents you would have bought the missing person. And obviously when you sit down for that Christmas lunch there is always that empty space.

‘But sadly it doesn’t matter what time of the year it is – you will never forget the person that’s missing.’

In 2007 the charity relaunched as ‘Missing People’ and was swiftly thrust into the spotlight when three-year-old Madeleine McCann vanished in Portugal on May 3 the same year. Kate McCann is now an ambassador for Missing People and has worked alongside the charity on major campaigns.

Over the years, Missing People campaigns have teamed up with Royal Mail to empower postal staff to look for missing people locally; worked with Deliveroo  to attach posters to the side of delivery bikes and launched ‘urgent appeal’ app notifications with the Trainline app.

Meanwhile, charity patrons include the Duchess of Gloucester, actor Stephen Fry and TV’s Lorraine Kelly. Jo says Mary and Janet were ‘experts’ at networking and could find patrons in the most unlikely of places.

‘There is a picture up there of Trevor McDonald,’ Jo says as she points toward a photo on her office wall. In it, the newsreader poses alongside the sisters at a Missing People event. 

Jo continues: ‘The way they got Trevor as patron is a classic. He was standing down at Mortlake Green [popular walking area in south-west London] when they spotted him from far away. So they went charging over and told him all about the charity. He’s supported us ever since. 

‘That’s Mary and Janet, they had a sense of determination but also a sense of impatience which I think is really important. They didn’t want to sit and wait for things to change around them, they wanted to make that change happen.’

In 1996, Mary and Janet were honoured for their services to charity with OBEs. In 1998 both were celebrated with the ‘UK Women of Europe Award’ and in the same year given the European Women of Achievement Humanitarianism Award.

They stepped down from official roles at Missing People in 2004 yet continued to attend events and encourage people to support the charity’s great work. 

Jo, who was a member of pop band Scarlet before she entered the charity sector, became CEO of Missing People in 2012. Her appointment came after years working first as a Samaritan and later a call-handler for Missing People. Jo still remembers hearing from Mary and Janet shortly after her CEO role was announced.

‘I was walking through Waterloo Station when my phone rang,’ Jo recalls. ‘It was Janet, but they essentially spoke as one person. She went [Jo momentarily swaps her native Hull accent for a posh Southern accent] “Hello! Jo! We are so glad it is you.

‘I’d come up through the services background and I think that was important to them. When the charity started out, Mary and Janet would be taking calls day and night from their house. Even in the later years, they’d turn up to the office, work a day, go to the hairdressers, then head off to evening events to network. They were so dedicated to the charity – it was their everything.’

Sadly, Janet died in 2016 and Mary died aged 80 in 2021. Until the end, they were dedicated to caring for the most vulnerable members of society and their legacy lives on, Jo explains. 

‘Their ethos is still here,’ the CEO says. ‘They needed a lot of determination to raise the profile of missing people and raise the funds to support those affected. But they did it and didn’t give up along the way. That tenacity, we still have that across the Missing People team.

‘Mary and Janet had this amazing mission to be a lifeline for people, and that mission stays the same.’

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing Kirsten.Robertson@metro.co.uk 

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