I was raped by Suzy Lamplugh's 'killer' when I was just nine

A distraught mother-of-two says she was kidnapped, raped and almost choked to death by Suzy Lamplugh's suspected 'killer' when she was aged just nine, before bravely escaping his clutches more than 40 years ago.

Melanie Gregory, 53, today believes she was John Cannan's youngest victim - and had he succeeded in carrying out his evil intentions could have been his first murder victim as well. 

Convicted killer Cannan was named in 2002 as the prime suspect in the murder of Ms Lamplugh, who disappeared in 1986.

However, the sex predator was never charged in connection with the death of the 25-year-old estate agent due to a lack of evidence.

The case of Ms Lamplugh, whose body was never found, remains one of Britain's most notorious unsolved crimes. 

Three years after she vanished, Cannan was jailed for a minimum of 35 years for the rape and murder of Bristol newlywed Shirley Banks, with police suspecting he had been responsible for other crimes.

Cannan died last Thursday aged 70 at top security HMP Full Sutton, taking with him the final secrets of his crimes.

His death has prompted Ms Gregory to speak out about her horrific experience, in which the 'sadistic monster' grabbed her off the street, bundled her into an abandoned launderette and 'gleefully fulfilled every sick sexual fantasy' before attempting to choke her multiple times.

She was just nine-years-old when Cannan approached her as she walked home from the convenience shop where her mother worked in Erdington, near Birmigham, West Midlands.

The predator began speaking to her and pretended he knew her brother. Seconds later, she says, he grabbed her around the neck and silenced her screams with his hand.

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Cannan dragged her into a nearby launderette, where a mattress had been laid out upstairs, alongside an array of sinister items, including a whip and ropes, which he used during his attack on her. 

Speaking to The Sun, she said: 'It was like all his Christmases had come at once, he was beside himself with excitement and I was a terrified, frozen little child that had no concept of what was happening to me or why.

'The thought of his hands still terrifies me because they were a weapon of torture for me in every aspect.'

She added: “I hope he suffocated or died a slow, painful death like all of his victims did and I would have if he had his way.'

Ms Gregory, who now lives in Brisbane, Australia, revealed that she still suffers trauma, nightmares and flashbacks more than four decades on and describes Cannan as 'pure evil'. 

She recalled that Cannan twice tried to choke her until she fell unconscious but she came round each time.

It was while trying to move her to a different location that Ms Gregory had the opportunity to escape Cannan and run home, before banging on the front door and being let into the house by her brother.

Decades would pass before Ms Gregory would open up about what had happened to her that day.

In April 2021 she reported her experience to the police after reading that Cannan was being considered for parole, but more than a year later her claims were dropped due to a lack of evidence.   

Estate agent Ms Lampugh vanished on July 28, 1986, aged 25 after going to show a man around a house in Fulham.

Her white Ford Fiesta was later found outside a property for sale about a mile-and-a-half away.

The doors were unlocked, the handbrake was off and her purse was found in a side door pocket.

The case remains one of Britain's most notorious unsolved crimes and her body has never been found.

The only clue to her disappearance was an appointment she put in her work diary suggesting she was showing the property to a 'Mr Kipper', who has never been traced.

Three days before she vanished Cannan had been released from a hostel at Wormwood Scrubs prison, where he had been serving a six-year sentence for rape.

It later emerged that in prison he was known by other inmates as Kipper because of his habit of taking frequent naps.

Former car salesman Cannan also had access to a BMW car of the type thought to have been driven by 'Mr Kipper' and resembled a photofit of a man seen with Miss Lamplugh outside the Fulham flat on the day she disappeared.

Cannan had always maintained his innocence and insisted in a letter last December that he did not kill Ms Lamplugh. 

Cannan's sinister crimes stretched back years to when he was barely a teenager himself. 

Despite a comfortable middle-class upbringing as the son of a successful car salesroom-owner in Sutton Coldfield who sent him to private school, Cannan was considered a complete failure.

Aged 14, he indecently assaulted a woman in a phone box and was placed on probation. He left school early and joined the Merchant Navy before working for his father.

During the late 1970s, a string of rapes occurred in homes for sale with estate agents in the West Midlands, where Cannan was living at the time. He married in 1978 but abandoned his wife and their daughter in 1980.

Back in September 1987, when he was asked by the dating agency what he was looking for in a woman, Cannon replied: 'Well, I think apart from the physical side, again I think someone who's pleasant, who's natural, who's relaxed. Somebody who's calm.' Physically, he said, 'somebody like [actress] Stephanie Beacham'.

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A month after recording that video, he killed 29-year-old textile factory manager Shirley Banks. After a failed attempt to abduct businesswoman Julia Holman using a fake gun from a Bristol car park on October 7, the following day he abducted newly-wed Shirley from a shopping centre car park in the same city.

He is thought to have kept her overnight at his rented flat before killing her and dumping her body in a stream in a remote area known as Dead Woman's Ditch in Somerset's Quantock Hills.

While police were still searching for Shirley — and her distinctive orange Mini — Cannan was arrested for another knife-point assault in late October. 

Police found a tax disc for Shirley's car in the glove compartment of his car, then they found her Mini in the garage at his block of flats. He had repainted it blue and added false plates marked SLP 386S.

Criminologist Berry-Dee says that while Cannan told him the number plate was chosen at random in one of his letters from prison, he believes it's a 'strange subliminal reference' to Suzy Lamplugh with the 386 possibly suggesting 'third victim of 1986'.

Cannan had also been linked to the murder of Sandra Court — a 26-year-old insurance clerk, from Bournemouth, Dorset, who went missing after a night out in May that year, and whose body was found, strangled and dumped, in a stream.

He was ultimately found guilty of Shirley's murder, the attempted abduction the night before and the abduction and rape of a woman in Reading, at Exeter Crown Court in 1989. 

Among the evidence that convicted him was a fingerprint, belonging to Shirley, left on a document in his flat.

Last October the Parole Board decided he was too dangerous to release after Cannan continued to insist his innocence and refused to engage in any programmes to address the risk of reoffending. 

A risk assessment when Cannan was imprisoned revealed, 'He had held a view that violence was acceptable and he had been preoccupied with sex, believing he had the right to have sex as and when he wanted to.'

The Metropolitan Police confirmed earlier this month that the investigation into the disappearance and murder of Suzy Lamplugh is still ongoing.