Updated: POLICE have admitted that they fear Claudia Lawrence has come to harm – and that someone she knows may be involved in her disappearance.

Speaking as more than 100 officers joined the search for the missing York chef, Detective Superintendent Ray Galloway, the senior investigating officer, said it was “highly unlikely” she had been abducted by a stranger, and appealed for more information about any relationships she may have been involved in recently.

He said he believed that whoever she went with, she had known. “It’s more likely she got into a vehicle or went to meet somebody she knew. It’s very unlikely she would have had a lift with someone she didn’t know, particularly at that time of the morning.

“My focus is on the people she knew. She would have got into a vehicle or met someone she knew, not someone she didn’t know. I believe she is with or has gone with someone she knows. She was a young, single woman. Did she have a new boyfriend?

“There is no tangible evidence she has been harmed, but my professional judgement is that she has probably come to harm,” he said. There had already been an “overwhelming” response from the public to appeals for help in tracing the 35-year-old Heworth woman, who disappeared a week ago after finishing work at the University of York. “We have had hundreds and hundreds of calls,” Mr Galloway said.

“But we are asking people to tell us more. We need to know where she was after half-past-eight last Wednesday night.”

He said Claudia was a sociable and gregarious person who was a prolific texter, but there had been no phone calls or text messages from her phone since she spoke to her mother on a mobile phone at about 8.10pm last Wednesday evening, having spoken previously to her father, and he had no information as to her whereabouts after that time.

He said this meant that police were as concerned about her movements that evening as they were about the following morning, when she failed to turn up to work.

He said that CCTV cameras had picked up Claudia walking home from work on her usual route on the Wednesday afternoon, when she was wearing a white t-shirt and blue jeans, but no images had been found of her walking back to work the following morning.

He said the investigation had moved on in recent days but he couldn’t elaborate on the leads he had at the moment.

The detective was speaking at a press conference attended by dozens of newspaper, radio and TV reporters, covering a story which is now hitting the headlines nationwide. The conference was held at St Nicholas Fields, just off Claudia’s route to work along Melrosegate, one of a number of areas along the route where officers are searching.

DS Galloway said: “We need to establish Claudia’s whereabouts from about 8.10pm on Wednesday, March 18, when she had a conversation on a mobile phone with her mother.

“They spoke about what they were watching on TV – Location, Location, Location. There was nothing untoward whatsoever.”

He said he could not be sure Claudia was at her home at that time, but there was no reason to believe she was not.

He said that if she had gone out that evening intending to sleep elsewhere and go straight to work from there, she would have taken a rucksack and her chef’s clothes with her.

There was nothing suspicious at her home in Heworth Road.

“The house is in good order. All her belongings are in the house.”