Claudia Lawrence’s dad says it’s ‘difficult’ to believe missing chef is alive

The dad of missing chef Claudia Lawrence has said it is getting “more difficult” to believe she is alive after nearly 10 years without her.

On Monday it will be decade since Claudia vanished after failing to turn up for work at the University of York.

Peter Lawrence said the decade since his daughter disappeared had been “horrible” and not knowing is the “worst part about it”.

She was last seen on March 18th, 2009, and police fear she has been murdered, although no body has ever been found.

Mr Lawrence has said in the past that he believes his daughter, who was 35 when she vanished, is still alive.

But speaking from his home in York, he said he was now less certain: “It’s getting more difficult to believe that as time goes on. It’s very difficult now.

“It just keeps going on and on, of course, because of not knowing what happened and it is the not knowing which has always been the worst part about it.

“I’ve always said that and, until such time as we know what happened, that will just go on unfortunately.”

Mr Lawrence reported his “shy” daughter missing on March 20 2009 after her friend Suzy Cooper told him she could not contact his “avid texter” daughter.

He said: “Within five minutes two police officers were round at the house and within a few hours on that Friday afternoon there were hundreds of officers.”

Recalling how he felt when he realised something had happened to her, he said: “Obviously it was a shock, it’s more than worrying.”

Mr Lawrence went to his daughter’s home on Heworth Road in York to see if he could find her but found nothing “untoward”.

“I went across expecting, I think, to find her lying on the floor in the house but there was absolutely no sign. The house was just as though she had walked out to work,” he said.

“And there was no indication of anything untoward happening in that house.”

Mr Lawrence, 72, said: “As days went on it seemed quite clear that it wasn’t just a case of her coming back in a few days time.”

Mr Lawrence told how he’d found comfort singing with the Missing People Choir, who made it to the final of Britain’s Got Talent in 2017.

He said: “We just meet to be together and sing new songs. A lot of people in the street say ‘Oh, we know how you feel’ but of course they don’t.

“But the other people in the choir do.”

Nine people have been arrested or quizzed under caution about Claudia’s disappearance.

But despite files on four men being sent to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) nobody has ever been charged.

Mr Lawrence has spent years campaigning for the introduction of what has become known as Claudia’s Law.

The new law due to come into force this July, will allow families of people who have been missing for more than 90 days, to deal with their affairs.

The tearful dad said of the last 10 years: “Sometimes it seems an eternity and other times it just seems as though it wasn’t very long ago at all.

“I can’t understand that at all, but that’s how the feelings go.”

Read More

Top news stories from Mirror Online

Source: Read Full Article