Claudia disappearance mystery has ‘sorely tested’ father’s faith

THE father of Claudia Lawrence has admitted his Christian faith has been “sorely tested” as he faces up to the fourth anniversary of her disappearance with murder squad detectives no closer to knowing what happened to his daughter.

Relatives and friends of Miss Lawrence are once again facing another poignant landmark 
without the York University 
chef since she was last seen 
walking near her home in 
York.

Her father, Peter Lawrence, admitted he has questioned his Anglican faith following his daughter’s disappearance but without it, he would have found it “very difficult” to continue.

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Mr Lawrence, who worships at York Minster, said: “I think without my faith it would have been very difficult to keep going. I regard prayer as not being something where you drop on your knees and put your hands together, you can pray all the time, you pray wherever you are, you don’t need to be in church.”

The 66-year-old solicitor, who lives in York, was speaking as he helped launch the book Gone, by Neil Root, on the disappearance of his daughter and his search for the truth about what happened to her.

The book has been launched close to the fourth anniversary of the chef’s disappearance, after she was last seen on March 18, 2009, near her home in the Heworth district of York. Miss Lawrence, who was 35 years old when she disappeared, never turned up for work the next morning in York University’s kitchens.

North Yorkshire Police launched its biggest inquiry of recent years although the investigation has been scaled back, and detectives have repeatedly stated they believe Miss Lawrence has been murdered.

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The case has been hampered by Miss Lawrence’s tangled love life, which included relationships with married men who have been unwilling to disclose information to police.

There have been reported sightings as far afield as North and South America, South Africa, Spain and Portugal. The Yorkshire Post revealed in July last year that a private investigator in Amsterdam had claimed he had seen a woman bearing a “striking resemblance” to the missing woman.

The police inquiry has stretched to Cyprus, where Miss Lawrence used to regularly go on holiday, as well as Ireland as officers interviewed former lovers and friends. Detectives travelled to the Mediterranean island in 2009 to formally interview men who she met while on holiday during the previous five years.

Mr Lawrence maintained he believes his daughter, who did not own a computer and did not have a Facebook account, is alive and he hopes the book jogs the conscience of anyone with information as to her disappearance.

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“I hope it will make somebody say something. That is what I have been after for four years,” he said. “Somebody out there does know what happened to Claudia, they are just not saying at the moment. Somebody could be protecting a partner, or a husband or a wife, or a loved one. There may be some misguided reason why they are not saying anything.”

He added: “I cannot understand how anyone who has any sort of conscience can enable my family and other families to go through this.”

He said he had gone through every theory possible as to why she had disappeared, adding: “The only one I am left with is that she was abducted on her way to work.”

Speaking of his experiences over the last four years, he said: “It has been dreadful, both physically and mentally. Physically, there is a hole there, it just eats away. Mentally, it is obviously difficult to cope.”

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Mr Lawrence also spoke of the support he had received from the Christian community at the Minster. He said daily prayers have been said in the private chapel of the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, “without fail” for his daughter since she went missing.