Gone: The Disappearance of Claudia Lawrence and Her Father's Desperate Search for the Truth by Root Neil

Author:Root, Neil [Root, Neil]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mainstream Publishing
Published: 2013-03-14T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TWELVE

A PERSON OF INTEREST QUESTIONED

FOR A LIFELONG BELIEVER, RELIGIOUS faith is very powerful, and a person’s whole life and moral system is informed by their belief. Both Claudia’s parents Peter and Joan are religious people, and they have both stated that their faith was a solace to both of them throughout the long months of deep ambiguous loss they felt for their younger daughter. Their trust in the innate goodness of humanity had been tested, especially by some of the negative actions of strangers, but their faith remained intact.

For Peter, a regular worshipper at York Minster, there was also the added dimension of the spiritual support given by the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu. The Archbishop had been praying daily for Claudia’s safe return, and his words to Peter, as a man of God and as a friend, gave him great comfort. Dr Sentamu told Peter that he could ‘feel’ that Claudia was still alive, and this gave Peter a surge of renewed hope in those trying days.

Claudia’s family and friends had always known it was inevitable that the police inquiry would be downscaled at some point if no firm line of investigation led to significant progress, but it was still a psychological blow to them when it finally happened. The resources utilised in Claudia’s inquiry had been immense and generous, and although the police had assured the family that those resources would be forthcoming again if there was a strong break, it was still difficult to hear that their daughter would not have the same attention on a day-to-day basis from then on. The requisite lead could be a tiny needle discovered in the haystack of information still being amassed.

Yet little more than a week after the inquiry began to be scaled down, a new potential development sprang up. A man arrested on suspicion of burglary in York was being questioned in connection with Claudia’s case. A North Yorkshire Police spokeswoman made it clear why the man was being questioned regarding Claudia’s disappearance: ‘Due to the location and circumstances of the burglary, police officers investigating the disappearance of Claudia Lawrence spoke to him in connection with the investigation.’ This must have meant that the burglary offence that he had been arrested for was in the locality of Claudia’s home or work route. It did not involve Claudia’s home itself.

The spokeswoman was also cautious and stipulated that the man was not a formal suspect in the Claudia Lawrence inquiry: ‘He was not a formal suspect but was spoken to in a voluntary capacity, one of many people spoken to during the course of the investigation.’ No formal suspects had been identified during the inquiry, and this was, of course, one of the most frustrating aspects. However, this did not mean that the inquiry had no ‘persons of interest’. There were certainly persons who had not been definitively eliminated from the inquiry, even after being interviewed.

Martin Dales was quick to respond to this development: ‘It is good to hear

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