A WOMAN whose husband vanished after the biggest heist in British history has made an emotional appeal to the public in Cyprus to help trace him.
It is thought that Sean Lupton fled to the occupied areas four years ago with cash from the infamous £53 million 2006 raid on a Securitas depot in the south of England.
Lupton was arrested in November 2006 on suspicion of conspiracy to commit robbery in connection with the heist, but police granted bail while the investigation continued.
Therese Lupton has not seen her husband since he disappeared a month later in December 2006 and has now made her own personal appeal for help from people on both sides of the island.
The Securitas depot robbery was the largest cash robbery in British history, when several men abducted and threatened the family of the manager, tied up fourteen staff members and stole £53,116,760 in bank notes.
In an interview with the Sunday Mail she said: “I just want to know if anyone out there has seen him. I myself and my two children aged 18 and 21 are living a nightmare without any closure since 2006 we have had no contact from him or anyone who may have been connected to him.”
Officers travelled to northern Cyprus two years ago on the trail of Lupton after several sightings of him were reported near Kyrenia. According to statements taken at the time Lupton was spotted in nightclubs and casinos “splashing his money around.”
British newspapers quoted a taxi driver in the north saying he was paid to smuggle Lupton in with two Turkish Cypriot brothers who were also being sought over the raid.
British detectives established that Lupton’s mobile phone had been used many times in northern Cyprus – and that the same phone was used to call numbers in Cyprus within an hour of the robbery.
“I cannot understand why he has not been arrested if he is still alive. All we want is the truth is he alive or dead we have seen no photos of sightings of him in northern Cyprus. I’m hoping your readers will just help end this misery for us and give us some kind of closure,” she added.
The couple were married in 1984, and she says his disappearance has turned her life upside down and that the entire family are still struggling to come to terms with their ordeal.
In late 2008 reports suggested that Lupton had been spirited from Cyprus to Israel by private charter yacht or plane using false paperwork, through underworld connections.
Since then there have been no sightings or reports of Lupton.
In earlier interviews Therese Lupton spoke extensively of her relationship with her fugitive husband. The Lupton’s first met at a part at his home town of Herne Bay in 1983 and within six months they were engaged, within another six married.
“I liked him because he was down-to-earth and worked hard. He seemed a good man,” she said. He neither drank nor smoked, preferring to concentrate on boxing and keeping fit.
“He was an ordinary guy with an easy, open way about him which people liked. He was popular. “He may have nicked some bricks off building sites now and again but so did a lot of people in his trade.”
In 1994 Lupton was convicted of a robbery at a petrol station and served 15 months. His wife considered divorces then but dismissed the idea for the sake of their children.
She said after that as far as she was aware Lupton went straight but she worried sometimes about the company he was keeping one of whom was later convicted in the Securitas heist.
On the night of the robbery, February 21, 2006, she said Lupton seemed his usual self and she knew nothing about the robbery until it was on television the next day.
“He didn’t act out of the ordinary. But then he never let his emotions show. He was always detached, particularly since his spell in prison and he went off to work that morning as normal,” she said. A week 16 gang members were arrested.
“When he saw it on the news, Sean said something like, ‘Bloody hell, that can’t be true.’ But that was all,” she added. Police came for Lupton months later, in November, and he was freed on bail the same day. Three weeks later he went missing.
“I called him later that day, about 6pm, to see if he was coming home for tea. He said he had to see a friend and then he said he was going to see Mr X,” said Therese Lupton. “He said he wouldn’t be back for tea but that he wouldn’t be late. They were his last words to me.”
A week later police found his van at Dover.
