FRIENDS of missing Claudia Lawrence say they are convinced that the 35-year-old was abducted on her way to work.

Claudia, who worked as a chef at the University of York, had been due to start her shift at 6am last Thursday – but never turned up.

The previous night, she had been in high spirits when she spoke to her parents on the phone, even arranging to have a drink with her father on Friday evening.

Claudia’s devastated best friends, Suzy Cooper and Jen King, told The Press they believed she had been abducted.

Suzy, an office administrator from Tang Hall, York, said: “I personally think she’s been taken for some reason on the way to work.

“I don’t think she’s safe. I think whatever situation she’s in at the moment, it’s out of her control.”

Suzy, 44, described Claudia as the sweetest person she had ever met.

“She’s beautiful on the outside and she’s beautiful on the inside,” she said.

“She’s a happy, sociable girl, friendly with everybody. Everybody loves her.

“I feel like I’ve had my right arm cut off. We’re always in constant contact, and then suddenly there’s nothing.”

She said she had arranged to meet Claudia for a drink in the Nags Head pub, in Heworth, on Thursday evening.

“She didn’t turn up and when I tried to ring her phone it was either switched off or the battery had died,” she said.

“I wasn’t unduly concerned because due to her shift work, she sometimes comes home and goes to sleep and might not have woken up to her phone alarm if the battery was dead.

“But I began to worry on Friday morning when I still couldn’t get hold of her.

“I knew something wasn’t right.”

Suzy said she had phoned Claudia’s father, who had a spare key to her home, and he came round immediately.

“Inside her house, everything just looked like she had left for work,” she said.

“There was no sign of a break-in. Everything in her bedroom seemed in order.”

Jen, who first met Claudia three years ago in the Nags Head pub, fought back tears as she described her best friend.

“She’s just lovely, so friendly, caring and completely selfless.

“You can’t imagine anybody that would want to harm her.

“We love her and we want her back desperately.”

The 24-year-old, who works as an administrator, said Claudia had let her live in a spare room in her house in the months after she split from her boyfriend. She said: “It’s been six days now.

“We are trying to be positive, but you can’t help but have that cloud over you that someone has taken her.

“She wouldn’t just leave. She has mentioned in the past that she would love to live abroad, but she said she couldn’t because she would miss her family and friends too much.

“She’s a creature of habit. She never shirked off her work, even when she was poorly she would go in until she was told to go home.

“She used to go to work and then come in here with us. She would never do anything out of the ordinary.

“She wasn’t impulsive in that way.”


Childminder’s last sighting

The last person to see missing chef Claudia Lawrence before her mysterious disappearance has spoken of her anguish.

Childminder Linda Chapman, 50, is a friend of Claudia’s from her local pub The Nag’s Head, only yards from her home in Heworth Road, York.

Linda was walking to pick a child up from the nearby primary school when she saw Claudia walking back from her job at the University of York at about 3.10pm last Wednesday.

This is the last confirmed sighting of her before she went missing.

Linda said: “It was Claudia who spotted me first. She shouted ‘hiya’ and waved enthusiastically at me. I said hello back and we went on our way. She seemed her usual happy, cheery self then she disappeared round the corner. I presumed she was going home from work or maybe popping into the pub because she lives close to it.

“It chills me to think I might have been the last person to see her.

“Now we have police helicopters overhead, police vans everywhere and police going through bushes and people’s back gardens. There are two big police vans near our house that have been there all day. It doesn’t seem real. I’m just hoping and praying like everyone is that she is found safe.”


* Download a copy of the Claudia Lawrence search appeal poster