[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JsSFhQrc-9Q]
By Oliver Farrimond
THE FATHER of missing chef Claudia Lawrence vowed never to give up trying to find her as he took his search to Scotland yesterday.
Peter Lawrence was at Waverley Station in Edinburgh where he unveiled a poster in the concourse and handed out flyers before moving to Princes Street where he stopped random strangers to tell them about his daughter’s disappearance.
Claudia, who worked as a chef at York University, has now been missing for seven months and efforts to trace her have now widened to the whole of the UK.
Questions over her disappearance intensified in June following revelations in a Sunday newspaper that she may have had as many as 40 secret lovers – many of them married men.
But dad Peter, 63, dismissed the figure, and expressed doubt that the relationships were a factor in her disappearance.
Speaking on Edinburgh’s Princes Street, he said: “I want to find my daughter – she’s a very important part of my life, and I will keep going with this campaign until we do.
“I think we’ve now established that over a period of six or more years Claudia had something like 12 or relationships which is not out of the ordinary, and certainly not the 40 or so that was mentioned in a Sunday newspaper.
“For a single 35-year-old, I don’t think that’s unusual and in fact I’ve met most of the people concerned – not all of them, but then I wouldn’t expect to.”
Claudia Lawrence was reported missing on Friday 20th March after failing to show up for work, and six weeks later North Yorkshire police declared the case to be one of suspected murder.
Hunt
The issue of her personal relationships was raised by Detective Superintendent Ray Galloway on BBC’s Crimewatch programme in June, and more recently it was reported that police had widened their search to include Cyprus.
And yesterday Peter Lawrence, a lawyer, continued his tireless hunt for information, bringing his message to Scotland.
He said: “We’ve come up to Edinburgh today to raise public awareness, and to try and find Claudia.
“Edinburgh is an important city, and although there’s no specific connection to Edinburgh or Scotland at the moment, somebody somewhere must have a piece of information.
“And even if they don’t think it’s important, and that piece of information will help find Claudia.
“She was a 35-year-old single girl working as a chef at York University, with her own little Georgian cottage which she loves.
Bubbly
“She had her own circle of friends, and while she’s quite shy with people she doesn’t know, she’s very bubbly with people that she does.”
He added: “I just have a feeling that she’s still alive – it’s partly spiritual and partly something else.
“If she wasn’t alive, I’d have an empty feeling inside of me that isn’t there at the moment.”
Anyone with information can contact North Yorkshire Police on 0845 606 0247, or Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.
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