The House For Sale Rapist & Killer | World's Most Evil Killers | Forensic Files

NARRATOR: On the 8th of October 1987, 29-year-old Shirley Banks went to a shopping
center in Bristol, England to buy a new dress. She would never be seen alive again.
For weeks on end, it seemed that Shirley Banks had disappeared off the face of the Earth.
NARRATOR: But Shirley hadn't vanished. She'd been abducted and murdered by a 33-year-old convicted
rapist named John Cannan. He had his mind set on abducting a woman and assaulting her and getting what he wanted from her.
And nothing was going to stand in his way. NARRATOR: Detectives investigating Shirley's
disappearance were merely scratching the surface of Cannan's twisted past-- a sexual predator hidden beneath a veneer of respectability.
WOMAN: What do you look for in a partner, what attraction? Well, I think apart from the physical side,
I think somebody who's pleasant, who's natural, who's relaxed. Of all the murderers I've investigated,
Cannan sticks out. He's a psychopath-- simple, psychopath. NARRATOR: John Canaan was about to be
unmasked as one of the "World's Most Evil Killers." [theme music] John Cannan is something of an enigma.
After being arrested for the murder of Shirley Banks in December 1987, he was charged with a number of offenses,
ranging from rape to GBH. He's never spoken of his crimes, but Cannan is suspected of killing others.
In 2002, he was named as the prime suspect in one of the most infamous unexplained disappearances
in British history. Suzy Lamplugh disappeared in July 1986 and was never heard of again, and her body
has never been found. So the family have had no real closure. I read all the material that the review team had regarding John
Cannan's offending profile. And the more I read into it and the more I learned about the Lamplugh case, it
became clearer and clearer to me that the one and only suspect was John Cannan. NARRATOR: Many of Cannan's crimes
were only discovered after his arrest for an attempted robbery in October 1987. TV producer Nick Scheierman was working on the BBC "Crime
Watch" program at the time and forensically followed Cannan's demise. There's no doubt that this case had a particularly
strong effect on me. This was something that has happened in my area. I've lived in Bristol for years and years and years.
I passed that house where he lived on a regular basis. And it's very difficult to forget
those things because the crimes were so appalling, really. If you rape someone, it's never gonna go away for that person,
and it's not gonna go away for those nearest and dearest to them. So Cannan has effectively put life sentences
on a whole number of individuals, not just his immediate victims. NARRATOR: Although convicted of offenses against six women,
including the murder of Shirley Banks, experts feel John Cannan still has a lot to answer for.
I believe Cannan's committed many, many more sexual offenses than he's ever been convicted of or that he's even suspected of.
NARRATOR: The killer's story begins in Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire. John David Guise Cannan was born on the 20th of February 1954.
The middle of three children, he was raised by a strict disciplinarian. He didn't get on with his father.
There had been lots of arguments and so on, and he very much orientated himself towards his mother.
He had a very close relationship with his mother. NARRATOR: Coming from an affluent background,
Cannan attended a private school where he claimed he was sexually assaulted by a teacher.
And by the time he was a teenager, Cannan himself was about to commit a similar offense.
He commits his first sex crime at the age of 14. He assaults a woman in a phone box,
and he gets a year's probation. This is a very young age to be offending. And very often, people who engage in sexual assault type
behaviors, the first time that they're caught by the police is not the first time that they've engaged
in this kind of behavior. So it would suggest that he'd been doing this kind of thing before then as well.
NARRATOR: After a short stint in the Merchant Navy, he went to work with his father in a car showroom.
By 1980, 26-year-old Cannan was married with a daughter, but that didn't stop him from becoming
a self proclaimed lothario. Cannan really does like to make out that he's some kind of Romeo figure,
that he's somebody who women fall over themselves for. So he will quote figures of having
had over 100 one night stands. He likes to be this kind of character. Fundamentally, he's got a very strong
narcissistic streak to him. He was a flirt. On one particular occasion, he was walking past an off license.
And he saw a beautiful girl in there, and he went and bought some flowers. And then went in and said, I'm having
a rather nice party tonight. I'd like to buy a couple of bottles of wine. And he gave her these flowers, and she was swept off her feet.
There could be no denying he is extremely attractive to many women. But he is also absolutely dangerous to them.
NARRATOR: By December 1980, Cannan had separated from his wife and was living with a new girlfriend.
But after growing jealous of her relationship with her ex-husband, he flew into a rage.
He launched an astonishingly vicious attack, strangling her, raping her, and subjecting
her to a series of disgraceful, humiliating sexual attacks. It's too painful almost to talk about.
He sodomized her. it's-- it's a disgraceful, disgraceful attack. And she has to go to hospital.
She's-- she's got internal injuries. I mean, she's suffered at the hands of a man whom
she's invited into her house. She didn't make a complaint at that time because she was too terrified that he'd come back.
NARRATOR: Just three months after attacking his partner, John Cannan was ready to take his sexual crimes
to a new level. In March 1981, he had his sights set on the owner of a ladies' clothing shop
in his hometown of Sutton Coldfield. He walked into the knitwear shop with a knife
and held up the woman who was then behind the counter. And the lady has got a 17-month-old child with her,
and she happens to be pregnant. Before he could lock the door of the shop, in walks the woman's mother.
So there are three generations of a family all within this same shop, and Cannan is threatening.
He has a knife. He's a scary looking individual. He can be incredibly overpowering
and incredibly domineering. And he makes it very clear what he wants from this woman.
And the grandmother pleads with him not to do this. Don't do this in front of my grandchild.
And she says, my daughter's pregnant. Please don't do this. He subjects the woman to hideous sexual attacks,
even though the baby is still there and is bawling his head off. In the midst of this, the husband phones the shop.
And John Cannan panics and cuts the telephone line. NARRATOR: Worried for his wife's safety,
the pregnant woman's husband arrived at the shop and tried to force his way through the locked door.
But Cannan escaped out the back. Heavily traumatized, the victim is still able to give police a clear picture
of the man who attacked her. And it doesn't take very long for there to be a perfectly
good photo fit constructed by the police of Canaan, who is described as between 25 and 30,
having dark eyes and eyebrows that meet above his nose. NARRATOR: Within a week, police had found Cannan,
despite an attempt to disguise himself by shaving between his distinctive eyebrows.
After lengthy interviews about the case, denying it and denying it, he did eventually admit his guilt about that incident.
And equally bizarrely, if not typically, he told the officers what a good job they'd done.
I mean, he really was both pompous and patronizing, and had this veneer of arrogance about him.
NARRATOR: After serving five years of an eight year sentence for his crimes, John Cannan was released.
But he was far from rehabilitated. In October 1986, he was in Redding with another victim
in his sights. He attacks a woman who is sitting in a car, reading a book quite late at night.
And he came up to her, opened the window, and asked for directions to a particular street.
Do you know the way to Balfour Drive? She was about to say, no. Then, he said, oh, have you got an A to Z?
And as she turned to look in the car for an A to Z, suddenly he was in there. NARRATOR: Armed with a knife, Cannan put on a balaclava,
drove the woman to a remote spot, and raped her. He then wiped down the surfaces inside the car
before calmly driving her back to where he had abducted her. Even more chillingly, as he abandons her,
he says to her with a slight smirk, take care and be good. But if you can't be good, be careful.
NARRATOR: But Cannan hadn't been as thorough as he'd hoped. Forensic tests gave investigators a glimmer
of hope in finding the rapist. The semen stains on the victim's clothing could only match Cannan to 1 in 2,000
chance, which is clearly insufficient to bring before a jury. So unfortunately, they didn't have the forensics.
They didn't have the ID. They had to release him. That rape, to some extent, gave Cannan the feeling
that he was impregnable, that he was always capable of getting away with it. Every time they do it, it escalates.
And in the end, they don't want to get caught because if they let the victims go,
the victims become witnesses. And they give evidence, and then, of course, they get convicted and they get sent to prison.
If you murder them and you get away with it, you're scot free. NARRATOR: Feeling untouchable, John Cannan
was ready to strike again. On the 8th of October, 29-year-old newlywed Shirley Banks drove her orange Mini into Bristol town center
and headed to a department store. On that evening, she had plans to go shopping and possibly
some drinks with her friends. In particular, she wanted to go to the Broadway Shopping Center
in the center of Bristol. And she had her eye on a particular blue and white dress, which when she bought it, it was
placed in a large Topshop bag-- larger than normal for a dress of that size. NARRATOR: Shirley left the shop at around 7:30 PM,
but she never arrived to meet her friends for a drink, nor did she return home. Her husband came home that night.
Knew she was gonna be late, so didn't think anything of it. Then, went to the local pub, asked if they'd seen her,
and they hadn't. I think he eventually fell asleep. The following morning, he phoned her work
and was astonished to hear that she had phoned in that morning sick. Well, he knew that was wrong.
Something was up. NARRATOR: Unfortunately, Richard's instincts were correct. Shirley Banks had been abducted by John Cannan.
Shirley, I think, was forced into making that phone call. And this is pure supposition.
And I think probably, Shirley was in fear of her life. Probably went along with what he wanted initially,
but obviously came to a point where she knew this was going to end badly. This would have been absolutely terrifying
for Shirley because on a minute to minute basis, she's assessing the situation. She's figuring out what it is that she
needs to do to keep herself safe, to keep herself alive. So absolutely horrifying situation to be in.
From Cannan's perspective, on the other hand, he is loving this because he is 100%
in control of what is going on. He has got a victim here who is perhaps pleading with him,
perhaps begging for her life, complying with-- with all of his instructions. So he's feeling quite good right now.
NARRATOR: On the 9th of October 1987, Richard Banks reported his wife as missing.
The police were confronted with the fact that there was a missing woman-- a woman who would almost certainly
either be at home or at work, and is now clearly missing. She had an orange Mini Clubman, a very distinctive car.
No sign of that, either. Has she been abducted? NARRATOR: Shirley had seemingly vanished into thin air.
As the police exhausted all avenues, four days after her disappearance, a nationwide appeal was put out.
Where was Shirley Banks? The police, you know, were getting nowhere, quite frankly.
And so they came to "Crime Watch." Initially, we did an instant desk on it, just really telling the basic story
in a very short space of time. That didn't really produce very much, either. As things gathered pace, they realized
that they had a major investigation on their hands. And then, they threw really everything into it.
I mean, they even got the RAF to take infrared photographs of Lee Woods nearby, in case there was a body there.
They did dives. They did all sorts of things. But Shirley was nowhere to be found.
One of the big issues for them, as the case progressed, was that they didn't have a body.
NARRATOR: As the hunt for Shirley continued, John Cannan headed far away from the center
of the investigation. 70 miles north of Bristol, he was hunting for another victim.
Three weeks on from Shirley Banks going missing, no sign of her at all, John Cannan
moves his focus of attention away from Bristol to Leamington Spa, close to Sutton Coldfield,
an area he knows particularly well. There's a shop called Ginger. John Cannan enters the shop, and this is an eerie reflection
of what happened in 1981. Six years later, John Cannan is similarly intent on rape.
And you can see certain patterns and certain things recurring. And at Leamington Spa, he once again
went into a ladies dress shop and held a woman at knifepoint. NARRATOR: Wearing a motorcycle helmet to hide his identity,
Cannan's actions seem to echo the horrific attack of his past. I think Cannan was convinced that once he had made his way
into that shop and had threatened the women inside it, that he was going to be able to-- to rape and sexually
assault one or both of them. But one of the women, when she went to lock the door as Cannan
had instructed her to do, used that as an opportunity to actually flee the shop.
Cannan, unsuccessful in his attempts, dashes for the door to make good his escape.
But John Cannan should have run a lot faster than he did because two or three guys walking down the street
heard this girl scream. They saw Cannan running away, and they chased him. And after a cat and mouse chase around Leamington Spa,
the police pounced, and they got him. NARRATOR: John Cannan was finally behind bars,
but detectives had no idea they'd arrested the man who was responsible for the disappearance of Shirley Banks
just three weeks earlier. Warwickshire police had thought they had in custody an armed robber.
When they arrest him, they found the car keys, which was a BMW parked near the Ginger shop.
What they had no idea was what was inside that car. It was an absolute treasure trove of evidence,
involving handcuffs and rope and an imitation gun. But most importantly, it had a tax
disk from Shirley Banks' car. Now, why is he holding onto this, because it's a piece of incredibly
incriminating evidence. I don't think he ever thought he was going to get caught,
so he wasn't really thinking about the implications of it. He'd kept this tax disk as a memento,
as something to remember this crime by. NARRATOR: Also in the car was a large Topshop bag,
similar to the one Shirley had been given when she bought her new dress on that fateful night.
Aware that Shirley Banks was currently missing, Warwickshire police contacted their colleagues in Bristol.
Finally, investigators had a breakthrough in the case. Avon and Somerset police drove up
to Leamington Spa the evening of the next day, and they drove him back to Bristol that same night.
Cannan spent the whole time talking. Most people now just say, no comment. But he insisted on talking endlessly
in the back seat of the car, kind of justifying himself and explaining what kind of a man he was.
NARRATOR: Police had also found another major piece of the puzzle at Cannan's Bristol home--
Shirley Banks' distinctive car. The orange Mini Clubman is found in the lock up garages beneath Foye House, where Cannan is living.
It's been painted blue-- hand painted, it's not been sprayed. And he's changed the number plate.
As soon as John Cannan is questioned, he denies any connection with Shirley Banks whatsoever.
Claims he'd never met her at all. He came up with this wonderful, creative account
of how he had bought this car in good faith at an auction. So he makes up this narrative.
I bought it at a car auction. But he didn't actually know where Bristol Car Auction was.
He had to actually ask one of the police officers this. So it's starting to fall apart at this point in time.
His level of arrogance is still incredibly high, and he thinks he's gonna get away with stuff.
But the police are noticing all of these little holes in his story. NARRATOR: John Cannan's web of lies
was unraveling at rapid speed. Detectives were certain he was responsible for the disappearance of Shirley Banks,
but they were desperate for some concrete evidence. They had just 36 hours before they'd have to release him.
The clock was ticking. As detectives continued to search Cannan's Bristol home, they discovered an eerie video for a dating agency,
filmed just six weeks earlier. WOMAN: What do you look for in a partner? What attracts you?
I think apart from the physical side, um-- again, I think somebody who's pleasant, who's natural,
who's relaxed. He presents as a very suave, a very charming, flashing his eyes at this woman who's interviewing him.
You know, I'm looking for somebody who's intelligent as me. And well, you know, I've got a beautiful flat.
And it's all bull. And it's so oily and slimy. And you look at his facial expressions, and you can see--
when you know what to look for-- shallowness. Yes, I have a dislike of inflated egos.
People who are-- they look at me at great type. I don't like that. I just like-- just normal, average people.
When you look at that video, you look at his eyes. And you think, God, there's something
strange about this man. And-- and he is sort of riveting, in an appalling way. And you could see that he could be charming to women.
But at the same time, there's something really deadly about those eyes. It is genuinely terrifying because you
know that this man is capable and has already been capable of the most profound violence
towards women. I'm in a sedimentary period, where financially and career wise I've achieved what I've wanted to achieve.
I'm just now looking for the next thing to achieve. That is ultimately John Cannan, ultimately.
He purports to be what he's not. He calls himself a successful businessman who's
got businesses in Bristol. He's looking for a profile of a young lady. And he waxes lyrical.
And the arrogance of the man is just unbelievable. NARRATOR: Detectives needed more time to find evidence.
They charge Cannan with the assault and attempted robbery in Leamington Spa. This brought them another 72 hours to question him
about Shirley Banks. Investigators had another avenue to explore-- a nearby attack on the 7th of October 1987, just 24 hours
before Shirley's disappearance. A woman called Julia Holman was having a drink with friends
and then went off to her car. It was about 6:30. And in October, it was dark, but this was
towards the center of Bristol. As she got into the car, Cannan approached her with a gun and threatened her.
Now, Julia Holman reacted spectacularly swiftly. In fact, her reactions almost certainly saved her life.
Instead of being paralyzed with fear, her reaction was to strike out with her arm and with her leg,
slam the car door, screaming as she did, and then speed off as fast as she could.
NARRATOR: Cannan was an immediate suspect. On the 5th of November, an ID parade was arranged.
Julia Holman would once again come face to face with her attacker. Cannan is put in a row.
He's number three in the identity parade. Julia Holman identifies him instantly.
It's number three. That immediately really helped to nail that he was the man responsible for the attack
on Julia Holman the day before. So the evidence was building up. NARRATOR: Charging Cannan with the attempted
abduction of Julia bought detectives more time. But by the 10th of November, they were out of options.
They decided they had enough evidence to charge John Cannan with the kidnap of Shirley Banks,
but not her murder. However, their luck was about to change. He had this sort of monk's chest
with all sorts of papers in his flat. And forensics obviously, back in those days, were quite slow.
But finally, they discovered a fingerprint. NARRATOR: It was possible that this unknown fingerprint
could belong to Shirley Banks. But they didn't have her prints on record to cross-check it.
Fortunately, the forensic team had an ace up their sleeve. The fingerprint officers were able to examine Shirley Banks'
house and produce a composite set of fingermarks from items that she would touch in the normal course of life.
So common items, things like long playing record covers, cassettes, and actually build up a set of composites
from those frequently handled items. Which would then be compared against the mark,
the image that was recovered from Cannan's address. It proved that connection. It proved that she'd actually been in the house at the time.
NARRATOR: There was now no doubt that Shirley Banks had been inside John Cannan's home.
Worried that the wily 33-year-old would try and wriggle his way out of the accusation,
detectives knew they had to be one step ahead. So cleverly, they take John Cannan to the scene
and say to him, you know, has Shirley Banks ever been in your flat? Answer, no. Well, this is some of the things we found in your flat.
Are they yours? Yes. Showed him the document. Is this yours? Yes. Did this document ever leave your flat?
Answer, no. How do you explain Shirley Banks' thumbprint is on it? It was a clever series of events to make
him admit everything before they played the trump card. NARRATOR: On the 23rd of December 1987,
John Cannan was charged with the murder of Shirley Banks. But investigators hadn't found her body,
and Cannan was still denying everything. There are cases where somebody's been convicted
of a murder with no body. And there are some very good instances of that over the years.
But it makes it difficult for the investigators. You know, you can have all the evidence in the world.
But if you haven't got the cause of death, you can't say it's murder with any certainty.
NARRATOR: On the 3rd of April 1988, a woman foraging in the eerily and aptly named Dead Woman's Ditch in Somerset
made a grisly discovery. Six months after she disappeared, the body of Shirley Banks had finally been found.
Her body was naked, decomposed as you'd imagine. And alongside it, they found elements of her jewelry
and also fibers and parts of the blue and white dress that she had bought from Topshop.
In Shirley's case, she was battered about the head. Could have been something like a baseball bat
or a heavy boulder or a rock or something like that. You know, trauma to the head, which causes severe bleeding,
and that would have been cause of death. NARRATOR: With confirmation that Shirley had indeed
been murdered, investigators continue to build their case against John Cannan. So the forensic evidence is mounting up.
All the bits are falling into place. All the other police forces where the other serial sex
offenses have taken place, notify even in Somerset, and they follow up. NARRATOR: Further investigations led to charges
being filed against Cannan, ranging from assault and GBH to theft and murder. Detectives in Redding also reopened an unsolved rape case
from 1986. DNA had come on in leaps and bounds in just a couple of years. We'd had advances in procedures
to extract and recover DNA, so it was far more discriminating. And so they went back, and they got forensics
to re-analyze the semen stains they picked up from the lady's clothing. When they'd done the original match two years before,
they said there was a 1 in 2,000 chance of it being Cannan's semen. Now, it was 1 in 260 million chance.
So with great pleasure, police were now able to charge John Cannan for the first time
with the Redding rape. [quiet music] NARRATOR: At his trial at Exeter Crown Court in April 1989,
John Cannan was charged with 16 different offenses, including the 1987 murder of Shirley Banks,
the Redding rape in 1986, and even the assault on his ex-partner in 1980, who felt brave enough to come
forward almost a decade later. It was very unusual for a judge to accept more than one
previous allegation charge. And a number of charges were tried at the same time,
by the same jury in this particular case, and the judge allowed it. NARRATOR: On the 28th of April 1989,
John Cannan faced the jury's verdict. After having sat there in court that day, I believe he thought he would get away with it.
Even though the weight of the evidence in that trial was clearly going in one direction.
But he thought he would still get away with it. John Cannan looked stunned by the first verdict.
Once the first verdict of guilty, which was the sex attack on his ex-girlfriend,
he knew that the rest, like dominoes, would just fall in the same direction. NARRATOR: John Cannan was found guilty
and told he would spend life behind bars. The judge, Mr. Justice Drake, described him
as vile and evil, violent, and horrible beneath his veneer of charm. In a very telling statement, he also said, this man
should never be put at liberty. He made it quite clear that he intended that this man should
have a life means life tariff. NARRATOR: Safely locked away in prison, John Cannan was no longer a threat to women.
But his story was far from over. Since his incarceration, he's been linked to a number of unsolved cases.
But his unwillingness to cooperate with police inquiries has led to many investigations reaching a dead end.
I have no doubt that there are other victims of Cannan, whether those are women he's killed,
whether they're women he's raped and sexually assaulted. I don't believe that he will ever
reveal details of them that would lead to a conviction. I think he's gonna sprinkle a few details here and there.
He's gonna drop a few hints because he quite enjoys toying with people in that way.
NARRATOR: Possible links have been explored between Cannan and the unsolved murder of 27-year-old Sandra Court
in Bournemouth in May 1986. And he remains the prime suspect for one of Britain's most infamous cold cases,
the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh. Suzy was last seen on the morning of the 28th of July 1986.
She turned up for work-- it was a Monday morning-- in Sturgis Estate Agents in Fulham Road.
And in her diary, she had an appointment with a Mr. Kipper for later that morning.
She subsequently left the estate agents, got into the company car, and drove to view a house in Shorrald Road and another one
near Bishop's Park in Fulham. And she never returned. And she's never been seen or heard of since.
NARRATOR: From the day that 25-year-old Suzy went missing, her brother Richard has experienced
a whole range of emotions. As a-- someone who's missing, you don't want to look at it and sort of think, oh, she's dead.
Or oh, she's, you know. You always want to think positively and feel positive. And so you-- you want to always keep
your hopes up that she might just walk through the door. And that's what I felt. I didn't feel like it
was time to grieve or anything. It wasn't time to miss her. I just wanted a happy outcome.
You get to the stage where, you know, after maybe two months, you sort of think oh, maybe she's not coming.
You know, maybe that is it. So I felt, myself, I was trying to keep my hopes up all the time, which is quite exhausting in a way.
But I think it's a way of sort of coping with it. NARRATOR: By 1999, when Jim Dickie took
over the investigation, the Suzy Lamplugh case had gone unsolved for 13 years. The original investigation petered
out after a number of years. Everything that could be followed up, that was obvious,
had been followed up. It wasn't put away, as we say in police parlance. I.e. it's filed away and, you know, is left to gather dust.
That wasn't done. It was still an open inquiry, but just no one was actually working on it.
NARRATOR: Jim believes that John Cannan attacked Suzy just after he'd been freed from serving five years in prison
for the rape of the pregnant mother in her knitwear shop. He was released from prison on the 26th of July.
Suzy went missing on the 28th of July. And we have witnesses that put Cannan staring into the estate agents window on the Sunday the 27th.
We have a cab driver witness, who dropped John Cannan in Fulham Broadway on the 28th.
Two witnesses compiled an E-FIT with a police officer. And that picture, if you looked at it today
and it was published in all the media, you would say, looking at a photograph of John
Cannan, that was John Cannan. NARRATOR: During the investigation into the disappearance of Shirley Banks,
who Cannan murdered in 1987, her Mini was discovered at his home. It had been repainted, and the registration
number had been changed. It was this alteration that piqued many people's interests.
SLP386S-- there is a theory. Suzy Lamplugh, third victim of '86. That's one school of thought.
Another school of thought, it could be a map reference for the deposition of a body
on an Ordnance Survey map. Now, whether that is right or not, I don't know. But it's pretty close to where Shirley Banks' body was
recovered, which is near Dead Woman's Ditch in the Quantocks, in Somerset. NARRATOR: In December 2000, officers from Jim Dickie's team
had the opportunity to interview John Cannan in prison. Throughout the interrogation, the 46-year-old killer
maintained his composure. He was quite quick witted. I'll give him that. Because when we interviewed him, what he does-- and we knew
this because we researched it-- that he would try and turn the interview on its head,
so that he's asking you questions as opposed to us asking him. And we were prepared for that.
We knew that. We knew he was going to do that. And what did he do? He did exactly that.
But if you look at his body language on the video, it says it all. Some questions, he did not have an answer for,
and he was very, very uncomfortable. And as far as I'm concerned, it's very simple.
If something looks like a duck, waddles like a duck, and quacks like a duck, I think we can say it's a [muted] duck.
You often find him saying these cryptic things to people, these things that are supposed to get people going,
what? And that is because he enjoys being in control. He likes to be the one who's pulling the strings.
It's not a crime. I've done many things wrong in my life, things that-- believe me--
I am genuinely sorry for. One or two things I haven't been caught for. [music playing]
NARRATOR: John Cannan has always denied any involvement in the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh.
Without a body and with no forensic evidence, the Crown Prosecution Service decided there was not
enough evidence to prosecute. But in November 2002, the Metropolitan Police announced they weren't looking for anyone else in connection
with the case. There are people who know things. If they came forward, we would only need a small amount
of fresh evidence now to bring what we believe would be a credible prosecution. I was there at the press conference.
And yes, it was unprecedented for them to do this. But there was the only course of action
that they could take that does seem like he's got away with it. He obviously hasn't been prosecuted for my sister's
murder, but it all seems the roads, as they say, all seem to lead to him. NARRATOR: In 2018, police excavated the garden
at Cannan's mother's former home. They'd received information that Cannan laid a new patio
in the months following Suzy's disappearance and hoped to have finally found her.
Nothing was uncovered. In my view, John Cannan will take the secrets of Suzy Lamplugh's death to his grave.
I cannot see him opening up and admitting that he had anything to do with it, or showing any remorse
about what happened at all. I have nothing but contempt for this man. I would love to bury Suze where we wanted, as a family,
to bury her, rather than where he has buried her. NARRATOR: Although Cannan was sentenced to life in prison,
he is due for parole in the near future-- after serving 35 years behind bars. You just hope and pray that they don't let this man out,
because I think it would be a horrific situation if they were to let him out. Because really, you know, this is a man who should
not be at large in society. He sees himself as of superior intelligence, intellect,
and the rest of us are just plebs. We might be plebs in his eyes, but he's an arrogant serial sex
offender. And if he's ever released from prison, God knows what he will do. NARRATOR: For now, John Cannan remains
behind bars, a convicted rapist and murderer who ruined so many lives. The pain he inflicted, not just on Shirley Banks
but on her family, should never be forgotten. I have four kids of my own. I cannot think what it's like to have to bury your-- your child,
and to do it under those circumstances. And to have lived through a period when her body hadn't been found, as well, is just
utterly, utterly appalling. I think in all of this, we shouldn't forget the broad range of victims of Cannan
because it's not just those individuals who were victims. All sorts of members of their families were victims, too.
They were all victims of John Cannan. NARRATOR: Cannan is a violent sexual predator.
He's displayed no remorse for any of his crimes, from raping a pregnant woman in front of her own mother
and child to killing a newlywed for nothing more than his own self gratification.
Hiding behind the veneer of a suave businessman, John Cannan thought he was Gods gift to women.
But in fact, he was the devil in disguise, and undoubtedly one of the "World's Most Evil Killers."
[theme music]

Season 7, Episode 2

John Cannan is a sexual predator who murdered a young woman just days after his release from prison. He’s currently suspected to have committed many more crimes in the United Kingdom and preyed upon real estate agents in particular.

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Brief Summary

Shirley Banks was abducted and murdered by John Cannan, a convicted rapist, whose violent history is examined in this episode.

Key points

The Disappearance of Shirley Banks. On October 8, 1987, Shirley Banks vanished after going shopping, leading to a frantic search.
John Cannan: The Psychopath Unmasked. Detectives uncover the dark past of John Cannan, a convicted rapist and murderer.
A Chilling Encounter. Cannan's attack on a pregnant woman in a clothing shop highlights his violent nature.
The Hunt for Shirley. As police search for Shirley, Cannan continues his spree, evading capture.
Julia Holman Identifies Her Attacker. Julia Holman instantly identifies John Cannan in an identity parade, solidifying the case against him.
Fingerprint Evidence Links Cannan. Forensics discover a fingerprint that could belong to Shirley Banks, strengthening the case against Cannan.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Cannan sticks out. He's a psychopath-- simple, psychopath.

A detective's stark assessment of John Cannan.

1:10WatchJan 12, 2023

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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