On the 10th anniversary of chef Claudia Lawrence’s disappearance, her distraught mum says she feels badly let down by officers.
Joan Lawrence, 75, who fears she will die before any answers are found, accuses police of a catalogue of disastrous errors.
The mum said: “I was promised everything was being done to find Claudia, instead one catastrophic mistake was made after another.
“The ultimate consequences are that even now I am woken in the dead of night, haunted by images of what could have happened to her.
“Because I don’t have answers, I wake up, frozen with terror. Was Claudia frightened, is she still frightened?
“I’m so scared that I will go to my grave and not have the answers I so desperately need.”
She is demanding a public apology from retired Det Supt Ray Galloway, the first man in charge of the hunt by North Yorkshire Police. Claudia, 35 at the time, was last seen on the afternoon of March 18, 2009, near her home in the Heworth area of York as she made her way back from work. She phoned her parents that night, but she failed to arrive for her 6am shift the next day at York University.
It is thought she may have been abducted on her two-mile walk to work. She has never been found and despite numerous arrests nobody has been charged with her murder.
Her mum says police errors include the first photo they released of Claudia. It showed her with blonde hair even though she was a brunette at the time. A new picture was not released for four years.
Joan feels the biggest blow to the inquiry was when officers damaged her daughter’s reputation.
The mum said: “Her name was blackened… [they] followed one narrow-minded line of inquiry, allowing the public to see Claudia as some sort of marriage breaker and that her relationship with married men led to her disappearance. It left me utterly broken.
“The person he was talking about wasn’t my daughter, but a stranger.”
Commenting on this aspect of the case, former detective Chris Gregg said: “You should never damage the reputation of your victim because you’re closing people’s minds.”
Eight weeks after Claudia vanished, the missing person case became a murder inquiry, without Joan being told.
She said: “The first I knew was when I put on the news and there it was – police now assumed my daughter had been killed. It’s hard to put into words how heartbreaking that was.”
At his home in Cheshire, Mr Galloway, who now runs a private investigations business, said: “I don’t really want to respond to this, but I will say that Mrs Lawrence has been critical of the police investigation in the past.”
After four years, a review team was brought in to look at the case – and Joan has praised the officers’ work.
Their inquiries resulted in arrests and additional searches. The unit is commanded by Det Supt Dai Malyn, head of the Cleveland and North Yorkshire Major Investigation Team. He said: “This is the purpose of investigative reviews, when a team of fresh eyes and relevant experience are brought in.
“We updated the family at every opportunity… as we still do. We continue to investigate information provided about Claudia’s disappearance and suspected murder.”
Det Supt Malyn added the probe had been made more difficult by the lack of CCTV near Claudia’s home and scarcity of information from her phone.
He said: “Claudia didn’t have a social media profile [or] a smartphone.
“We know also that her mobile phone didn’t leave the area before it left the phone network.
"This… is a reason I don’t believe she fell victim to an attack by a stranger.”
Mr Gregg said all the signs point to Claudia, whose car had been out of action for weeks, leaving her house on March 19 and walking towards work.
He added: “It is a very strong possibility she was abducted on that route.”
To mark the anniversary, Joan will buy purple tulips – Claudia’s favourite flowers – for her mantelpiece.
The mum said: “We have been in a very dark hole for a decade. It’s the worst possible pain.”
She added she will never be able to forgive the first police team’s action that “lost valuable time”.
The second team has vowed to keep hunting. Joan said: “They have been very sympathetic but, sadly, I feel it’s probably too little too late.”
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