older article 18 October, 2012
Family of missing mother of one, Lana Purcell, want police to treat her disappearance as a murder inquiry
Lana, the mother of a seven-year-old girl, has not been seen or heard from for 21 months – and now her family fear the worst.
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The family – she has five siblings – had feared that their sister may be being held as part of a prostitution trafficking ring but now, after hearing rumours that she had crossed violent gangsters, worry that she may never be seen again.
Lana, who had been living in Agar Grove before she disappeared, has had long standing issues with drug abuse.
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A friend of Lana, a film-maker who did not wish to be named, says he has two leads as to what may have happened to her. He said: “I first met her five years ago on the number 29 bus. She was sitting with two friends. They were getting ready to go out, doing their make-up and smoking crack. I started talking to them and realised they may make a good subject for a documentary film. Lana said to me: ‘If you are interested, why not come out with us?’”
He was taken on a shocking tour of Soho and the West End, where drug addicts meet men hoping to pay for sex.
He became friends with Lana and would visit her at home. When he first met her he says she kept a nice flat, had food in the cupboards and didn’t live the usual chaotic lifestyle of a person with drug addiction.
He says: “She was beautiful, and she had a lot of people interested in her. She did not have the tell-tale signs of being a drug addict.”
Lana lived for a time on the Castlehaven estate, in south Kentish Town, and friends recall her fighting her addictions, visiting her daughter regularly and looking after a pet cat. Her house was well-kept and there were no real signs of the dangerous drugs she had been dabbling in.
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But behind the facade, her world was increasingly fraught. She was mixing with people who were dealing drugs, stealing and selling their bodies to fund their habits.
This dangerous world saw Lana attacked on a number of occasions, according to friends.
“She had got into trouble,” said the source. “A well-known Camden Town gangster, who had a crew of people working for them, had used Lana’s flat in Agar Grove to cut up drugs.”
The flat in Agar Grove where Lana Purcell lived
Chillingly, her family were given a warning before she disappeared that she may be in danger. The source added: “Someone had warned Lana’s family just before she disappeared that she was mixing with dangerous people.”
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LANA Purcell was last seen alive by her brother John at 10pm on January 13, 2011, a Friday evening.
John, a postman, was walking down Queen’s Crescent when he spotted his sister.
“I said hi,” he recalls. “She asked if I was ok, and we had a chat.” He gave her £2. “She said thanks, and walked off towards the flat where my mum used to live,” he says. “That was the last time I saw her.”
Her sister Davina was having a meal at Hampstead restaurant Gauchos when Lana rang her for what would be the last time before she disappeared. “She said she was in the area and could she pop by to my house,” recalls Davina.
But as Davina was having a meal out, they agreed they’d catch up over the weekend. “That was the last time I spoke to her,” she says.
On the Sunday, two friends of Lana’s called her sister asking if she had been seen. Davina wondered why they had rung – and contacted another friend of her sister, whose flat she would often stay in and whose bank account she had her benefits paid into.
“He said he hadn’t seen her but she was bound to come by on the Wednesday to collect the money that had been paid into her account,” says Davina.
“On the Wednesday, he said he hadn’t seen or heard from her, so I called the police.”
Family of missing mother of one, Lana Purcell, want police to treat her disappearance as a murder inquiry | Camden New Journal
