FEW would have shed tears after the death of cancer-stricken serial rapist and murderer John Cannan.
The monster, from Sutton Coldfield, West Mids, who passed away aged 70 last week while serving three life sentences in HM Prison Full Sutton, was the prime suspect in the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh.
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Nearly four decades ago, the estate agent, 25, vanished without a trace after meeting a mysterious ‘Mr Kipper’ – believed to be twisted Cannan, who was known by that nickname.
A suspected serial killer, he was found guilty of knifepoint rapes, gunpoint kidnapping attempts and robberies. He also abducted and fatally strangled Shirley Banks, 29, and was allegedly killed Sandra Court, 27.
Now further insight into Cannan’s bone-chillingly callous crimes have emerged after mum-of-two Melanie Gregory, 53, came forward to reveal she was his youngest victim.
In an exclusive interview with The Sun, she tells us he bundled her into an abandoned launderette, where he “gleefully fulfilled every sick sexual fantasy” between nearly choking her to death multiple times.
Melanie, who was just nine years old, managed to trick Cannan so she could escape before he could kill her in 1981 – a year that would have made her his first murder victim.
Speaking through tears, she tells us: “The true horror of what I went through is unimaginable, I’m one of the only people alive who knows the truth of what he was like.
“He had his full reign with me. There was no time limit in his mind. He wasn’t rushed and he got to fulfil every sick sexual fantasy he had gleefully.
“It was like all his Christmases had come at once, he was beside himself with excitement and I was a terrified, frozen little child that had no concept of what was happening to me or why.
“He was a sadistic monster. At a number of points, I was waiting to die, I was begging for death, I wanted death to take me so it would end and I was convinced he would kill me.
“Now he’s dead I feel cheated, upset and full of rage because it never ends for me even in death. He still haunts me. I suffer nightmares, triggers, flashbacks and PTSD to this day.
“I hope he suffocated or died a slow, painful death like all of his victims did and I would have if he had his way.
“I hope he suffered, even if it was just a little per cent of what put me through.”
Snatched from street
Four decades on from the horror sex attack, Melanie lives in Brisbane, Australia, but the scars of what happened remain.
She’s unable to say her attacker’s name, only referring to him as ‘JC’. Some days she’s unable to walk because of a neurological disorder, all caused by trauma.
Cannan struck in February 1981 when Melanie was walking home from the convenience store where her mother worked, in Erdington, near Birmingham, West Mids.
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He approached the nine-year-old claiming to be a friend of her brother Dave and “adamantly insisted” her sibling was 14 years old, blonde and blue-eyed.
Melanie immediately knew something was wrong because in reality, he was five years older than that, aged 19, six-foot-tall, bearded and a rocker.
Seconds later and just 13 doors away from her home, Cannan put his arm around her neck and silenced her screams with his hand.
He lifted her off her feet and dragged her into an abandoned launderette called Old Stone’s on Goosemoor Lane.
She recalls: “The place was derelict and there was rubble everywhere. There was a mattress laid out in a room upstairs. Everything had been planned out.
“He suddenly had a bag that wasn’t there when he approached me. Inside were various items, a black whip, black ropes, and other things that he used on me.
“The thought of his hands still terrifies me because they were a weapon of torture for me in every aspect. They were around my throat, sexually assaulting me or suffocating me.”
John Cannan’s sick crimes
TWISTED John Cannan received three life sentences for his harrowing crimes.
The monster, who died last week at 70, carried out knifepoint rapes, attempted a gunpoint abduction, strangled at least one woman to death and subjected others including brave Melanie to horrific attacks.
- At the age of 14, Cannan was put on probation after he indecently assaulted a woman in a phone box, in Erdington, in 1968.
- Cannan was suspected of being responsible for some of 20 brutal assaults and sex attacks on estate agents in the West Midlands from the late Seventies until 1980. The mystery figure behind the assaults was dubbed the ‘House for Sale Rapist’. Cannan was in the frame due to similar-type crimes, being in the area, and the attacks stopping shortly after he started a new relationship after leaving his wife.
- In February 1981, Cannan threatened two female petrol station workers with a knife and robbed the store.
- Around that time, he kidnapped and raped Melanie Gregory – who now bravely speaks out in an exclusive interview with The Sun.
- The following month, in March 1981, Cannan raped a knitwear shop assistant. He tied up her mother and made her watch his sickening attack. The victim’s 17-month-old child was in the backroom.
- Sandra Court, 27, was Cannan’s first suspected murder victim. In May 1986, she vanished after being dropped off near her home following a night out in Bournemouth. Sandra’s body was found in a ditch. Cannan denied involvement but was linked due to being in the area at the time of her death.
- Suzy Lamplugh’s disppearance and suspected killing is also believed to have been the work of Cannan. In July 1986, she vanished after meeting a ‘Mr Kipper’ – Cannan’s nickname in prison – in Fulham, London. The 25-year-old’s body has never been found. Cannan was the prime suspect.
- In October 1986, Cannan raped a woman at knifepoint in Reading, Berks. He attacked her after pulling his car over to ask for directions.
- Shirley Banks, 29, from Bristol, was kidnapped near a shopping centre and held at Cannan’s flat overnight before he strangled her to death and dumped her body in October 1987. Before killing the newly wed, he made her call in sick to work.
- Businesswoman Julia Holman fought off Cannan when he tried to abduct her at gunpoint in 1987.
‘Evil, pure evil’
Some of Melanie’s extremely vivid and traumatic memories from the attack are too graphic to publish.
Throughout the onslaught, she was choked out multiple times and recalls the anger in Cannan’s eyes when she regained consciousness.
“He was evil, pure evil,” Melanie tells us. “He saw the terror in my eyes and enjoyed it. He enjoyed that the most.
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Consumed with terror and in utter agony, Melanie has no idea how long the sex attack continued for and was deceived into destroying vital evidence.
She recalls: “I thought he was being kind, saying, ‘Let’s clean you up.
“I think at one point he thought he had killed me and when I came around he felt sorry for himself, like ‘S***, I’ve got to get her out of here and get rid of her’.
“Then he changed from being a monster to grooming me into believing he was sorry, that it was my fault because I’d made him angry and if I stopped crying and didn’t make a fuss I could go home.”
‘Jekyll & Hyde’
Melanie recalls trying to stifle her tears and calm down as Cannan led her out of the launderette into an alley that led back on to the street but she couldn’t hold back her emotions.
“I didn’t want to run, I didn’t want to trigger or panic him so I played along and he walked very close behind me,” she said.
He gave me a look like he was going to kill me. He knew I’d tricked him. He pegged out his fag and ran for his life
Melanie Gregory
“I was freaking out thinking he was lying and was going to take me back in there. I lost it. He went back to evil, like Jekyll and Hyde, and took his hands out of his pockets.
“‘Please don’t take me back,’ I said. He claimed he wouldn’t hurt me but he grabbed me and put me in a chokehold. I think I fell unconscious again because afterward, I felt hazy, very foggy and confused.”
Once they had reached the main street Goosemoor Lane, Cannan tried to lead her to a pub carpark claiming it was a “shortcut” to get home. Melanie believes he had parked there and wanted to use it to take her to a second location to take her life.
She says: “I played along with him because I knew I was in danger.
“He changed the plan to us going to the park to play on the swings. I knew I had to get to my house.
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“He was walking alongside me and I tricked him, he stepped ahead and I ran to my front gate and to loudly banged on my front door, I knew my brother was in.
“I was yelling back to him, ‘I’ll just tell my brother we’re going to the park’. He leaned on this old brick wall, lit a cigarette and shielded his face.”
When Melanie’s 19-year-old brother Dave answered the door, he was not what Cannan expected and her sibling recognised a “frantic look” in his sister’s eyes.
She recalls: “He looked at my brother mortified, there was this six-foot bloke standing there, not a 14-year-old boy – the brother he claimed to have known.
“He gave me a look like he was going to kill me. He knew I’d tricked him. He pegged out his fag and ran for his life. My brother said, ‘Who the f*** was that?’ but I couldn’t tell him.”
‘Ran for his life’
After getting inside, Melanie collapsed on the sofa in the living room still in her coat and lay in the fetal position in a “ball of pain”, sometimes crying, unable to move for hours or speak about what happened.
“My brother was angry at me,” she recalled. “I got told off for talking to a stranger and was scared I would be in trouble when my mum and dad came home.
If they could have taken a photo of nine-year-old me, placed it in front of him to see him sweat and squirm, so the b*****d knew he didn’t get away with it, then I may not have spiralled
Melanie Gregory
“Part of the reason I’m so traumatised now was because of the lack of support and fear I had done something wrong.”
Later when questioned by her mum, Melanie said she had a “tummy ache” and was sent to bed with two spoonfuls of Milk of Magnesia.
Alone in her room, she recalls being unable to sleep because the room was spinning, no matter whether she lay down or sat up, and due to the pain.
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Vile onslaught
Melanie buried what happened to her deep inside for decades and back then didn’t know the identity of her attacker – who would strike again just weeks later.
Cannan raped a knitwear shop assistant at knifepoint after threatening to stab her 17-month-old baby, who was in the backroom.
The monster also held up two female workers at a petrol station with a knife streets away from the workplace. For those two crimes, he was sentenced to eight years but served just five.
In 1986, shortly after he was released, he raped a woman in Reading, Berks, in a terrifying 45-minute ordeal after stopping to ask her for directions.
That same year, Cannan is also believed to have murdered Sandra Court, 27, who was found dead in a ditch after stumbling home drunk in Bournemouth, and Suzy Lamplugh, 25, who vanished in Fulham, London.
I have a little nine-year-old girl inside of me who has never been heard and there’s a man who has never been held accountable
Melanie Gregory
In 1987, he abducted Shirley Banks, 29, after a shopping trip in Brodmead, Bristol, held her hostage in his flat and forced her to call in sick to work the next day before strangling her to death and dumping her body.
Two years later, Cannan was given three life terms after being found guilty of Shirley’s murder, the knifepoint rape in Reading and the attempted gunpoint kidnapping of Julia Holman, who miraculously managed to fight him off.
No justice
Melanie was unaware of Cannan’s crimes for many years. It wasn’t happen until 2019 when another sex abuse survivor suggested she may be able to identify her attacker by looking for those who carried out similar attacks in her area.
She read about sex killer Patrick Hassett, who abducted, raped, and murdered schoolgirl Candace Williams, in Edrington, in 1978, and spotted the name of a suspect – John Cannan.
Pictures of him were hauntingly familiar and after watching a video he recorded for a dating agency, she was certain. Shivers ran down her spine, there was no doubt in her mind.
Later, when talking to other Cannan survivors online she noticed “similarities” in his approach, his methods and his use of the fake name ‘Dave’.
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In April 2021, Melanie felt compelled to report what happened to the police after reading that Cannan was being considered for parole.
“That scared me,” she said. “I was terrified that if he got out of jail he would do something to another child. They didn’t know he wasn’t only a murderer but a child rapist too.”
Melanie contacted The Met, who referred her to West Midlands Police. It wasn’t until June 2022 that they got in touch and she claims within a month they had dropped the case before carrying out any real investigation.
She believes had police DNA tested a black whip, black ropes or “maybe a bottle of baby oil” among Cannan’s belongings they could have found her DNA on it.
Melanie says having her experiences looked into would have made her feel “validated” but instead, the rejection put her into a self-destructive downward spiral.
“It left me broken,” she says. “I have a little nine-year-old girl inside of me who has never been heard and there’s a man who has never been held accountable.
He was infamous, he received all this attention for the worst reasons. It should be about the victims not him
Melanie
“The decision left my life in tatters at that point. I was suffering PTSD, self-harmed, attempted suicide and was drinking heavily, I was in turmoil.
“If they could have taken a photo of nine-year-old me, placed it in front of him to see him sweat and squirm, so the b*****d knew he didn’t get away with it, then I may not have spiralled.”
While Melanie didn’t get justice through the courts, she did get a moment of personal revenge to help “take back the power stolen from me as a child”.
In 2022, she sent him a photograph of the derelict launderette alongside a letter and demanded he confessed to Suzy’s and his other murders.
On November 6, it was reported that Cannan had died after years of palliative care for cancer and having suffered a stroke five years earlier. An inquest this week was told that a ruptured aortic aneurysm in his abdomen killed him.
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The news brings a mix of complex emotions for Melanie who says she feels “relieved it’s over” but also “triggered and angered”. She also holds “a lot of resentment towards West Midlands Police”.
“He was infamous, he received all this attention for the worst reasons. It should be about the victims not him, which is why I’m telling my story now.
“I hope it will help other survivors to show them you can stand up to these monsters, even if it’s from the other side of the world against a famous serial killer.”
In response to Melanie’s claims, a West Midlands Police spokesperson told The Sun: “A report was made to us and formally recorded.
“We have carefully considered the information provided and unfortunately we do not have enough evidence to proceed any further with an investigation. The complainant has been fully updated with our rationale.
“We fully understand this is not the outcome she had wished for, but we have to consider if there would be a realistic prospect of a conviction, and sadly in this case there is not.
“We do understand the complainant’s frustration at this decision and victims of rape and sexual abuse deserve the very best of our attention.
“We take every report of sexual assault extremely seriously and our Public Protection Unit are committed to improving our service to increase convictions.”
