POLICE investigating the disappearance of Claudia Lawrence say they are on the island trying to connect the pieces of her life together and do not believe her to be in Cyprus.
Sources close to the investigation believe 35-year-old chef Lawrence had a number of holiday romances when she was here. Police say they are trying to track down 10 men who may have got to know her during her holidays. Claudia had been to Cyprus five times in recent years.
Detective Superintendent Ray Galloway of North Yorkshire police confirmed to the Sunday Mail that he was heading up the team. Lawrence is believed to have been in touch with some of the locals.
The Detective Superintendent also admitted that there was no reason to believe the missing woman had arrived in Cyprus, as her passport was found in her house.
“I don’t think she seems to be the type of person who would travel on another passport, she is just a normal woman.
“But as she has been missing for so long and missed key events in her family, we have to cover all options and try and establish a picture of what happened to her, as she appears to have vanished.”
When shown Claudia’s picture, many local bar owners and taxi drivers in Coral Bay said they recognised her as a holidaymaker, but hadn’t seen her in the vicinity for at least six months.
A barman at one Coral Bay pub said he thought he remembered Lawrence coming into the bar with a male friend, but he couldn’t describe him or say exactly when the visit could have been. But he did state that it was more than six months ago.
A team of four British police officers spent yesterday following up leads related to Lawrence, who has been missing from her UK home for six months. The officers will spend a week here working alongside their Cypriot counterparts, after it was revealed on Friday that the missing woman had regular contact with the island.
Police officers from Cyprus are now working alongside their British colleagues, who are staying at the Coral Beach Hotel and resort in Paphos.
Cypriot police constable Panayiotis Pelopida, who is working on the case said, “There appears to be no evidence after the last sighting of Claudia. It’s as if she is a ghost.”
He added, “We are helping the British police as much as we can and we are talking to people here who she had befriended.”
One such person is believed to be 35-year-old Steve Sammons but attempts by the paper to find him proved fruitless.
A local Peyia councillor said, “I don’t remember his name being on the electoral roll.”
It’s now known that Lawrence had made a number of good friends in Cyprus, believed to be in the Peyia area. She is thought to have frequented the Coral Bay area.
Galloway stressed that nothing is known about Lawrence’s movements after leaving work at the University of York on March 18, 2009.
“Most of us leave a footprint – but she didn’t. We are using this trip to Cyprus as a means of tracing witnesses, not to search for a suspect.
“We need to get a complete picture of her personal life, which appears to have been complicated,” he said.
Lawrence had been planning a trip to Cyprus and had received a text from a man on the island at 21.12GMT the night she disappeared.
“We know she received a text, but there is no way of knowing if she opened the message as we are not in possession of her phone,” said Galloway.
Constable Pelopida was quick to point out that some sections of the Cyprus media were wrongly reporting that police were questioning a Cypriot man.
“I can categorically you that no Cypriots are wanted in connection with this case,” he said.
Galloway confirmed, “Claudia’s friends were almost all British people living and working on the island.”
He concluded, “This is a very difficult case as there was no evidence left at the crime scene and no signs of life. It’s by far the most likely scenario that she has come to harm.”
