title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: Lamplugh was an estate agent, who was reported missing after attending an appointment with someone calling himself "Mr Kipper", to show him round a house in Shorrolds Road, Fulham. Her office diary recorded the details of the appointment as: "12.45 Mr. Kipper – 37 Shorrolds O/S". The "O/S" annotation means "outside the property". 3 witnesses saw her outside 37 Shorrolds Road between 12:45 and 1:00 p.m. A man walking home past the house saw Suzy waiting in the gateway of the property at 12:50 p.m., and she seemed to be waiting for someone. 10 minutes after that the owner of the house next door heard someone leaving number 37, and saw Suzy and a man leaving the house and looking back up at it. This sighting was later the basis of an artists impression made of the unidentified male. The sighting of the pair standing outside the house was corroborated by another man who was walking past the property at around the same time. He noticed that the man was holding a bottle of champagne with ribbons around it. This sighting was later the basis of an identikit picture made of the man. Witnesses reported that they then saw the pair getting into a car. The neighbour later said that he thought that the pair had been arguing and that the man had bundled Lamplugh into a car. The witnesses described the man as a white male between 25 and 30, with a dark complexion and with dark hair swept back. He was immaculately dressed in a dark charcoal suit, and was described as a "public schoolboy type". He may have had a broken nose. A man said that he had seen a "couple arguing" between 2:00 and 2:30 p.m. in the area. There was then a sighting of Lamplugh driving her car erratically away from Shorrolds Road, arguing with the man in the car, causing the witness to have to swerve his own vehicle out of the way to avoid a collision.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: Lamplugh's white Ford Fiesta car (registration B396 GAN) was sighted poorly parked outside a garage opposite 123 Stevenage Road, about away, by several witnesses at various points in the afternoon. However, a close friend of Lamplugh's, Barbara Whitfield, saw Lamplugh driving north up the Fulham Palace Road in her car with a man at around 2:45 p.m., and she insisted that she had no doubt that it was Lamplugh. She waved to Lamplugh as she cycled south down the road but Suzy was talking to her passenger and didn't see her. Whitfield was the only witness that day who actually knew Lamplugh, and so her sighting was given significant weight. A woman living at 139 Stevenage Road also reported possibly seeing Lamplugh with a smartly-dressed man wearing a suit by the spot where her car was seen parked.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: By 3:30 p.m., Lamplugh's colleagues at the estate agents were becoming concerned that she had not returned. At 4:30 they went over to 37 Shorrolds Road to see if she was there, but she was not. At 5:30 they called the police to report her missing.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: At 10:00 p.m. a police officer found her car parked in the same spot it had been sighted at that afternoon, which was by another house for sale. The vehicle appeared to have been parked in haste: the driver's door was open, the handbrake was off and the car key was missing. It was also parked poorly and was partly overlapping a garage. Lamplugh's purse was found in the car. Neither her own keys or the keys to 37 Shorrolds Road were found. The driver's seat was pushed back from the position Suzy would usually have had it in, and with Lamplugh only being 5ft 6in tall, she could not have driven the car with the seat pushed as far back as it was. This indicated that someone else had driven the car.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: Police suggested that a black, left-hand drive BMW vehicle may have been involved, because of an eyewitness account of a car of that description seen parked in Shorrolds Road. The man remembered seeing it because many cars in the road had been double parked, causing him to have some difficulties driving through the road. Another witness corroborated this account and said that he had seen the dark BMW parked almost outside 37 Shorrolds Road. Witnesses also came forward to say that they had seen not one but two white Ford Fiestas parked in Shorrolds Road that day.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: A witness came forward some time later with another significant sighting. He had initially come forward after the disappearance, but had his account dismissed then because he described a blonde woman, and the officers who interviewed him incorrectly assumed that Lamplugh was brown-haired when she vanished. A man out jogging had seen a car speeding south down Stevenage Road (the same road Lamplugh's car was later found abandoned on) as he jogged out of Bishop's Park into the road at the exit by Fulham F.C.'s Craven Cottage stadium. The car, notably a dark left-hand drive BMW, suddenly came to a stop further down the road and a woman who matched Lamplugh's disappearance was seen struggling with a man inside it and beeping the horn in an apparent attempt to attract attention. In his description of the incident, the man stated:


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: Suzy's then boyfriend, a 27-year-old stockbroker, and her male flatmate were both questioned by police, but were found to have confirmed alibis for the day in question. They had both spent time with business associates or friends and many witnesses corroborated their accounts, meaning the pair were quickly eliminated from inquiries. Lamplugh's two-bedroom flat in Putney was searched, but nothing notable or suspicious was found. It was soon pointed out in the press that, were Mr Kipper to be given the first name Dan, that the words combined would be an anagram of 'Kidnapper'. Suzy's officer manager revealed that a bunch of red roses had been delivered to her office by a mystery man just days before she disappeared.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: An initial mistake made in the investigation into Lamplugh's disappearance was the issuing of an image of her with dark brown hair to the press; Lamplugh had actually tinted her hair blonde the Friday before she vanished. The initial investigation was conducted without computers, with an old-fashioned card index system being used, whereby all leads were filed on some 26,000 cards. Because Lamplugh was only considered a missing person, known criminals in the area were not considered as suspects.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: Six months after Lamplugh's disappearance, a man came forward to inform police that he had discovered that a BMW car that had been left abandoned in a road for some months was registered to a Belgian man known sometimes as "Mr Kiper". Because the car was a BMW, as had been seen in Shorrolds Road, detectives believed this was significant. However, the man was tracked down to Belgium and found to have a confirmed alibi for the day in question, and his BMW car was discovered to have been in a garage in Belgium on the day Lamplugh disappeared. He was swiftly eliminated from inquiries.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: One year after her disappearance, detectives noted that the artist's impression of "Mr Kipper" strongly resembled John Cannan, a convicted rapist (and later abductor and murderer) who had been residing in a nearby prison hostel outside HM Prison Wormwood Scrubs in the lead-up to Lamplugh's disappearance. In 1980 he had raped and beaten his girlfriend when she tried to leave him, before raping a shopkeeper at knifepoint in 1981. He had been on day release from the prison in the months preceding Lamplugh's disappearance, and had been given a job in the area as a porter. Cannan was public school-educatedand was known by others for his uncanny ability to attract women; he had told inmates and workmates, in the weeks before Lamplugh disappeared, that he was enjoying going to wine bars in Fulham and had met a new "uptown girl" girlfriend named 'Susu'. Some of these local wine bars were also visited by Suzy, with one named the Crocodile Tears located opposite the office in which she worked. Another place Cannan frequented was the Prince of Wales pub in Putney, which Lamplugh was known to have visited on the very day Cannan was released by the nearby prison, 3 days before Lamplugh was last seen. Cannan confirmed in 2021 that he visited such local drinking establishments. He also often delivered roses to women as a romantic ploy, as had happened in the Lamplugh case. He also had said to others that he was interested in buying a property in the area. Cannan was released from Wormwood Scrubs on 25 July 1986; 3 days later, Lamplugh vanished nearby.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: 15 months after Lamplugh's disappearance, in October 1987, John Cannan abducted and murdered 29-year-old Shirley Banks from Bristol, before attempting to rape two women in a shop three weeks later after driving to the shop in his black BMW. He had also tried to abduct a woman the night before he abducted Banks, and had been using wine bars in Bristol as "hunting grounds" to search for victims. He had held Banks hostage in his flat for 18 hours before killing her and dumping her at a site in the Quantock Hills known as "Dead Woman's Ditch". Inside his dark BMW was found an imitation handgun, handcuffs and the tax disc for Banks's car. Soon after Cannan was arrested, Banks' Mini car was found hidden in his garage, with a new, false number plate affixed reading "SLP 386S". Detectives would later note that the letters SLP could stand for Suzy Lamplugh, and the number 86 for 1986, the year she vanished. The media at this time began to note the likeness between Cannan and the photofit in the Lamplugh case, and speculated on a link between the Banks and Lamplugh cases. It was also highly-publicised that Cannan had joined a dating agency in Bristol only weeks before he murdered Banks, giving the false name of John Peterson, and had presented himself in a recorded video as a successful, smartly-dressed businessman. The video remains publicly available.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: At this point, Metropolitan Police detectives went to Bristol to interview Cannan about the Lamplugh disappearance. When he was asked by detectives if he understood the significance of the number plate, he unexpectedly replied immediately that it could be seen as a reference to Suzy Lamplugh, who had not yet been mentioned at that point. However, he claimed that he chose the letters on the plate at random. He claimed that he had bought the car off a "Bristol businessman" who was responsible for "the murders of Shirley Banks, Suzy Lamplugh and another girl", and that this man was in a lot of trouble. Cannan himself was known for masquerading as a Bristol businessman. When asked if this man was him, Cannan replied "yes" but then immediately recanted and ended the interview because he was overcome with emotion.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: Cannan was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Banks and for several other rapes, abductions and attempted abductions. He was also convicted of the rape of a woman in Reading, on the train line between London and Bristol, 6 weeks after his release from Wormwood Scrubs. The judge who sentenced him told him "you should never again be at liberty outside of prison walls". Further interviews were carried out with Cannan over Lamplugh's disappearance in 1988, 1989 and 1990. However, he was not put on an identity parade.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: In 1990, a woman named Gilly Paige, who Cannan had been in a relationship with after Lamplugh's disappearance, informed police that Cannan had spoken to her about the Lamplugh case and had told her that she was buried at Norton Barracks while they were driving past on the M5 motorway. Another of Cannan's former girlfriends, Daphne Sargent, also formed the view that Cannan was responsible, saying: "As soon as I heard about Suzy, I knew it was John. It had all the hallmarks - right down to the champagne."


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: In the years after Lamplugh's disappearance, police tested the DNA of 800 unidentified bodies and skeletal remains that matched her description. Lamplugh was officially declared dead, at her parents' behest, exactly seven years after her 1986 disappearance, on 27 July 1993; she was presumed to have been murdered.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: In 1988, journalist Andrew Stephen published a highly controversial book on the Lamplugh case. The book, which was initially supported by the Lamplugh family before they read the draft versions of it, made a number of allegations about her sex life and personal life. This included a suggestion at one stage that she could have been involved in prostitution. The book was widely labelled as salacious and false, and Stephen was accused of victim blaming. In an unprecedented move, the Metropolitan Police responded to the book by defending Lamplugh's personal life and stating "our investigations revealed nothing more than that Suzy was a modern young woman". A review of the book in "The Times" was highly critical and asserted that Stephen had included a large amount of his own speculations on what he called Lamplugh's "quest for sexual fulfilment" because he needed filler material to add to the story. The Lamplugh family took legal action and forced Stephen to add a disclaimer to the book stating that they did not recognise or accept the portrayal of Lamplugh.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: In the mid 1990s, there was speculation that Michael Sams could have murdered Lamplugh, since he had just been convicted of kidnapping an estate agent named Stephanie Slater in Birmingham. However, police found no evidence for this theory and discounted it, noting that Sam's own crimes were more likely influenced by the high-profile Lamplugh case. Furthermore, Sams only had one leg, and no witness sightings of the man Lamplugh was seen with that day report him having a limp or only one leg, demonstrating that he is not a viable suspect.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: In 1999, an internal report by the Metropolitan Police criticised the handling of the original investigation and failure to further investigate John Cannan. A new reinvestigation was subsequently launched in the early 2000s under a new team, with detectives being told that they should seek to find out whether Cannan could be eliminated as a suspect or implicated in her murder. The re-investigations established that Cannan could not be eliminated and in fact found more evidence which implicated him.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: The original index cards in the case were computerised, and it was discovered that a number of estate agents in Fulham had been visited at the time by a man calling himself Mr Kipper. Detectives believed that this was Cannan looking out for potential victims for abduction and murder. In the late 70s and into 1980, during the final years of Cannan's troubled marriage to his wife June Vale, there had been a series of mysterious rapes in homes for sale in the west Midlands, where Cannan was living at that time. The unidentified rapist specifically targeted homes on the market at estate agents, and became known as the "House for sale rapist". 20 women were assaulted and raped in properties in the area, and no one was ever arrested for the crimes. Police suspect that Cannan was responsible for these offences and that he began committing them after his marriage began to fail. The rapes stopped in early 1980 when Cannan began a new relationship with a woman named Sharon Major. Detectives would later note that the offences bore all the hallmarks of Cannan's later crimes and also noted the similarities to the Lamplugh case. Notably, Cannan had shown up uninvited to a house that was for sale in Shorrolds Road days before Lamplugh was last seen, believing that the young female occupant was alone in the house. He started acting strangely until the woman's husband appeared, causing him to quickly leave.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: After new reconstructions were shown on "Crimewatch" in 2000, this time with the correct pictures of Lamplugh with blonde hair used, new witnesses came forward. This included a man who said that he had seen a man resembling Cannan looking into the window of Lamplugh's estate agents the day she went missing, putting him in Fulham the day she disappeared. Lamplugh had worked at a desk right by the window, in part because the office believed that having an attractive woman such as her by the window would attract customers. Some individuals also came forward after police showed Cannan's 1987 dating video, with the witnesses positively identifying him as a man they had seen in Fulham that day.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: During the reinvestigation of the Lamplugh case, a mass of circumstantial evidence was uncovered that pointed to Cannan. It was discovered that Lamplugh had disclosed to relatives shortly before she disappeared that she had a new boyfriend from the Bristol area, to which Cannan moved days after Lamplugh's disappearance and where his family were from, and Lamplugh had told a relative shortly before she vanished that she was concerned about this man and that she was getting scared of him. Despite being in prison in the borough of Hammersmith and Fulham before the disappearance, Cannan denied ever having been to Fulham, the town from which Lamplugh had vanished. Police disproved this, as he was known to have had worked as a porter in the area at the time, while on day release from the open prison. The witness sightings of a dark, left-hand drive BMW being parked near to Lamplugh, and in which Lamplugh was believed to have been seen struggling were given added significance when it emerged that Cannan owned a dark-coloured left-hand drive BMW at the time, which he used to commit crimes with a fellow inmate. Cannan did not have an alibi for the days after leaving prison, and, conveniently, does not recall where he was, despite having an impeccable memory of other events at the time. He says he does not know where he was for the first three days after leaving prison and has never provided an alibi to police for Lamplugh's disappearance. Cannan's nickname in prison was also "Mr Kipper" due to his preference for wearing kipper-style broad ties.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: In December 2000, Cannan was arrested on suspicion of Lamplugh's abduction and murder and interviewed at Hammersmith police station. Video footage of parts of the interview were later leaked publicly and are still available for the public to view. In the footage, Cannan says that there are "one or two things I haven't been caught for". Over 5 days of interviews, Cannan did not provide interviewers with any information which could eliminate him from the inquiry, and did not provide an alibi for his movements between 25 and 28 July 1986. In September 2001 Cannan was arrested again and questioned at a London police station, but he again provided no information which could eliminate him from the inquiry.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: One piece of evidence investigators saw as significant regarded a mysterious phone call that was made on the afternoon Lamplugh disappeared, which detectives believed was made by Lamplugh herself. Three days before she disappeared, the same day Cannan was released from the open prison nearby, Lamplugh had gone to the Prince of Wales pub in Putney, which was also frequented by Cannan. While she was there, the contents of her handbag went missing, and after she left they were found by the landlord of the pub. The landlord telephoned Lamplugh to inform her and she arranged to collect her belongings at 6pm on Monday 28 July – the day she disappeared. On this afternoon, a few hours after she vanished, a woman who gave her name as 'Sarah' called the pub saying she had a message for Suzy, giving her number. Then, a man called the pub claiming to be a 'policeman', asking if they had Suzy's diary and chequebook. The police confirmed the man was not a policeman, and it was not known who 'Sarah' was. The landlord said he gave the paper he had written the number on to police, although it was then lost. The call was made well before Lamplugh's disappearance had even been reported, and it may have been Lamplugh making a plea for help, or calling under duress. The 'policeman' may have been Cannan. When Shirley Banks had been abducted by Cannan and held hostage in his flat in 1987, she made a call under duress to her workplace the next morning, saying that she wasn't coming in as she was unwell. It is believed that she did this because Cannan had duped her into thinking he would release her unharmed. This was the last that was heard from her before she was found murdered.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: Detectives on the reinvestigation team also believed that Cannan could have been responsible for taking the contents of her handbag in the first place, and stated the events were a clear indicator of stalking.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: On the evidence they found, the police made the decision to search for Lamplugh's body. Investigators wanted to dig at Norton Barracks, the location Cannan allegedly told former girlfriend Gilly Paige was the burial site of Lamplugh, and which an anonymous informant had identified to police in 1999 as being the place where Lamplugh was buried. However, the area had been massively re-developed in the intervening years, the army having left the site in 1979, and they were not able to dig at the area because it would have involved digging up houses and their foundations.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: Detectives considered the possibility that the number plate Cannan had attached to Banks' car which read SLP 386S could be an ordnance survey grid reference, since this would notably give a location very close to Dead Women's Ditch, where Banks was found dumped. Cannan was known as someone who would play such tricks with investigators, and it was believed that his decision to dump Banks' body in 'Dead Women's Ditch' was entirely intentional, and so too could be the wording of the number plate. As a result, investigators decided to search the area. However, Lamplugh's body was not found.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: In December 2000, police searched a brickworks nearby to Norton Barracks, which had been mentioned in several of the original witness statements. A year later, another search was conducted in Somerset at a location by a river which Cannan was said to have frequented. However, she was not found.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: The Lamplugh case team decided that there was significant enough evidence against Cannan to apply for a prosecution. The Crown Prosecution Service agreed that the police reinvestigation had been excellent and thorough, but ultimately decided, after four months of deliberations, that there was insufficient evidence to charge Cannan with the murder of Lamplugh. The police so strongly felt Cannan was responsible, however, that they announced in a press conference in November 2002, in an extremely rare move, that they believed Cannan was responsible. They also announced that all other possible suspects had been eliminated and that Cannan was the only suspect. The lead detective in the re-investigations, Jim Dickie, stated that he was as certain as he can be without going through a formal judicial process that Cannan was responsible.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: In 2007, a criminologist who had corresponded with Cannan revealed that the police reinvestigations of 2000–2002 had discovered DNA evidence in a car previously owned by Cannan that showed Lamplugh had previously been inside the vehicle. The criminologist had pointed out to police that Cannan himself said he had access to a red Ford Sierra at the time Lamplugh disappeared, which police were previously unaware of. Detectives subsequently attempted to find the car and discovered it in a north London scrap yard, allowing them to conduct DNA analysis on it. Although these tests indicated Lamplugh had been in the car, as well as Cannan, the Crown Prosecution Service felt there was insufficient evidence to prove that they had been in the vehicle at the same time, meaning charges were unable to be brought against Cannan for her murder. Although he previously had said he drove this car often, Cannan has since changed his story and now denies ever using the vehicle. This is despite the fact that the man who lent it to him has confirmed that Cannan had access to it at the time and said Cannan may have had used it on the day Lamplugh disappeared.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: When interviewed about the disappearance of Lamplugh in 1988, Cannan had said he knew a "Bristol businessman" that was responsible for "the murders of Shirley Banks, Suzy Lamplugh and another girl" (investigators believe him to be talking about himself, since he was convicted of Banks' murder). The "other girl" he referred to is believed to be Sandra Court, a 27-year-old officer worker who was abducted and killed in Bournemouth in May 1986. In November 2001, Police interviewed Cannan at a police station in York over her murder. He had been in the prison hostel at Wormwood Scrubs at the time, but was allowed out at weekends and had access to a red Ford Sierra (the same which was tested in the Lamplugh case). A pay-and-display ticket proves that Cannan was in Bournemouth the day she was killed. Court had been dropped off by a taxi driver in Throop, Dorset, near her sister's house after a night out, but her sister was not at home. She was last seen walking barefoot, appearing slightly drunk, at around 2:45 am. Court's body was found the next day in a water-filled ditch several miles away. When interviewed, Cannan denied having ever been to Bournemouth on the day in question, but was proved to be lying through the parking tickets discovered by police.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: When the Ford Sierra was discovered at the north London scrap yard during the Lamplugh reinvestigations of the early 2000s, two hairs were found inside that matched the DNA of Sandra Court. Cannan would have had access to this car when Court was murdered. Despite this, the DNA evidence was not strong enough to bring a prosecution against Cannan for her murder.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: In 1982, Lamplugh had worked as a beautician on the ocean liner "Queen Elizabeth 2." At the same time, Steve Wright, who was convicted in February 2008 of the murder of five women in Ipswich, was working as a steward on the "QE2". In 2008, the Metropolitan Police investigated whether Wright was connected with Lamplugh's disappearance, but this was not a strong line of enquiry and a senior Met police officer described the link as "speculative". Police looked into Steve Wright's "QE2" work records and found that he was working on the ship the day Lamplugh disappeared, meaning he could not have been responsible for her abduction and murder.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: In August 2010, police began searching a field off the B4084 between Pershore and Drakes Broughton, about three miles from the former Norton Barracks in Worcestershire where detectives had wanted to search in 2000. Investigators also returned to Norton Barracks itself and subjected it to a limited search, but her remains were not found.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: In December 2002, one of Cannan's fellow prisoners had told police that Cannan had said he had buried Lamplugh under the patio of his mother's house in Sutton Coldfield, in the West Midlands. In late October 2018, police began searching the house. They dismantled the garage and began removing its concrete floor, whilst also carrying out a search of the back garden. On 12 November 2018, police announced that the search of the property had ended and no evidence had been found.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: In July 2019, a police search of land in Pershore, with the assistance of archaeologists, produced no relevant evidence. In August 2019, the Specialist Investigation Team received a sighting from the time of the disappearance of a man resembling Cannan dumping a suitcase in the Grand Union Canal. However, this section of the canal was previously searched in September 2014 for an unrelated inquiry. This canal sighting was covered in the documentaries "The Vanishing of Suzy Lamplugh" and "In the Footsteps of Killers".


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: Cannan remains the prime (and only) suspect in the case. He has previously claimed that the Metropolitan Police have ruled him out as a suspect in the Lamplugh case, which is false. He protests his innocence not only of involvement in Lamplugh's disappearance but of nearly all other crimes he has been convicted of, including those which were proven with DNA links and fingerprint evidence, such as the case of the rape of the woman in Reading, in which forensic evidence showed the chances of the perpetrator being anyone other than Cannan were 260 million to one.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: In August 2016, Cannan wrote a letter to prisoners' newspaper "Inside Time" saying that prisoners should be given the vote. In August 2017 he sent another letter to the newspaper from prison, describing how he had written to Secretary of State for Justice David Lidington asking him to stop the implementation of a smoking ban in all English prisons. He said that his request should be granted "to allow fresh ideas, arguments and evidence from staff and inmates to be placed before him for his consideration" and added "I believe a delay would permit a wiser and more thoughtful consideration of its rationale". The smoking ban was implemented despite Cannan's objections.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: While in prison, Cannan told a solicitor that he might well "reveal all" about Lamplugh when his mother died. However, in 2020, his brother revealed that his sister had already unsuccessfully begged him to reveal the location of Lamplugh's body, and the brother insists he will "take his secrets to the grave" because he "doesn't have a modicum of regret, conscience or compassion" and is "a power freak". Criminologist Christopher Berry-Dee, who exchanged hundreds of letters with Cannan when writing a book on him, has also said that Cannan will not reveal where he put the body as he is a "control freak". Fellow criminologist David Wilson has agreed and said that Cannan will not confess because he is a psychopath.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: The Suzy Lamplugh Trust is a charitable foundation established in December 1986 by Lamplugh's parents, Paul and Diana. The mission of the Trust is to raise awareness of personal safety through training and various projects, to help people avoid becoming victims of aggression, and to offer counselling and support to relatives and friends of missing people. The Trust runs the UK's The National Stalking Helpline and organises National Personal Safety Day, an annual event that was first held in 2006.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: Paul and Diana Lamplugh were appointed to OBE, in 1992 and 2005 respectively, for their charitable work with the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. Diana Lamplugh died in August 2011 at the age of 75, and Paul Lamplugh died aged 87 in June 2018. Rachel Griffin, CEO of the Trust since 2012, died of cancer in August 2019.


title: Disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh

text: Lamplugh and her family were members of the congregation at All Saints Church, East Sheen, in the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames. She is commemorated there in a stained glass window which was installed in 1996.


title: John Bowes-Lyon

text: The Hon. John Herbert Bowes-Lyon (1 April 1886 – 7 February 1930) was the second son of the 14th Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne and the Countess of Strathmore and Kinghorne, and the brother of Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon, the future Queen Elizabeth. He was an uncle to Queen Elizabeth II, although he died when she was a small child, and before Princess Margaret was born.


title: John Bowes-Lyon

text: John Bowes-Lyon was educated at Eton and New College, Oxford, where he played first-class cricket for the university side in three matches in 1906 and 1907, playing as a fast-medium bowler.


title: John Bowes-Lyon

text: On 29 September 1914, Bowes-Lyon married the Hon. Fenella Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis (19 August 1889 – 19 July 1966), the younger daughter of Charles Hepburn-Stuart-Forbes-Trefusis, 21st Baron Clinton. They had five daughters:


title: John Bowes-Lyon

text: Before the outbreak of World War I, Bowes-Lyon worked as a stockbroker in the City of London for the firm Rowe and Pitman. In 1915, he was posted with the Black Watch. Just prior to the Battle of Aubers Ridge in that year, he accidentally shot himself in his left forefinger; it was amputated the following day. While receiving treatment in the UK, he admitted having experienced a nervous breakdown in 1912 and also suffered from neurasthenia. Late that year, he was posted to the Ministry of Munitions and then in the Territorial Army in 1916. After the war, he was twice threatened with courts-martial after having failed to show on parade for demobilisation. He later returned to his job in the city. On 19 June 1920, he was appointed a deputy lieutenant of Forfarshire.


title: John Bowes-Lyon

text: The Hon. John Bowes-Lyon died at the family home of Glamis Castle just after midnight on the morning of 7 February 1930 of pneumonia, aged 44, leaving his widow to care for their four young children. (Two of them, Nerissa and Katherine, were severely mentally disabled.) Three days later he was buried at St Paul's Walden Bury.


title: John Bowes-Lyon

text: His widow was a leading guest at the 1947 wedding of Princess Elizabeth and Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. She outlived him by thirty-six years and died on 19 July 1966, aged 76.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Mitchell Marner (born May 5, 1997) is a Canadian professional ice hockey right winger and alternate captain for the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League (NHL). He was selected fourth overall by the Maple Leafs in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft.


title: Mitch Marner

text: While Marner was growing up, he began developing his on ice skills with 3 Zones Hockey School. He attended The Hill Academy in Vaughan, Ontario, and then Blyth Academy.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Marner played his minor career in the Durham Region and the Greater Toronto Hockey League (GTHL). He played in the 2011–12 season with the Vaughan Kings and went on to win a GTHL title.


title: Mitch Marner

text: For the 2012–13 season, Marner transitioned to the Don Mills Flyers of the GTHL, where he played his minor midget year, registering 86 points in 55 games. He finished second in scoring in the GTHL behind Dylan Strome (who was then playing with the Toronto Marlboros). At the end of his season with the Flyers, Marner was immediately invited to join the St. Michael's Buzzers of the Ontario Junior A Hockey League, where he went on to win a championship.


title: Mitch Marner

text: During his minor midget season, Marner was initially unsure of his plans for the following season. He received a scholarship offer from the University of Michigan to play for the Wolverines ice hockey team, while also being drafted by the London Knights in the first round of the 2013 OHL Priority Selection, 19th overall.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Despite receiving a scholarship offer from the University of Michigan, Marner elected to sign with the London Knights, who selected him with their first round pick in the 2013 Priority Selection.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Marner had a strong rookie season with the Knights, registering 59 points in 64 games and was the runner-up for the OHL rookie of the year, behind Travis Konecny.


title: Mitch Marner

text: During the 2014–15 season, Marner played superbly alongside linemate Max Domi. As the season progressed, Marner was consistently included as one of the top prospects in the 2015 NHL Entry Draft, being listed as a definite top ten pick, if not top five. He would lead the league in scoring for most of the season until Dylan Strome of the Erie Otters recorded six points in the final game of the season, bumping Marner to second. As reward for his outstanding sophomore season, Marner was named to the OHL First All-Star team and awarded the Jim Mahon Memorial Trophy as the OHL's highest scoring right wing player. Marner was selected fourth overall by the hometown Toronto Maple Leafs in the 2015 Draft.


title: Mitch Marner

text: On October 1, 2015, Marner was named as co-captain of the Knights along with teammate Christian Dvorak. Marner played most of the season at right wing on a line with Dvorak and Matthew Tkachuk. The trio was a dominant force and the Knights ended the regular season as the highest scoring team in the OHL. Marner himself finished the regular season second in OHL scoring with 116 points in 57 games and was awarded the Red Tilson Trophy as the OHL's most outstanding player of the year.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Marner played an important role during the Knights' 2016 playoff run, resulting in the team winning the OHL Championship. He led the playoffs in scoring and with 44 points in 18 games and was awarded the Wayne Gretzky 99 Award as playoff MVP.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Marner helped lead the Knights in winning the 2016 Memorial Cup. He won both the Stafford Smythe Memorial Trophy and the Ed Chynoweth Trophy as tournament MVP and leading scorer.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Marner was the second player (after Brad Richards in 2000) ever to win a Memorial Cup, a Stafford Smythe Memorial Trophy, CHL Player of the Year, a league MVP trophy (Red Tilson Trophy) and a league playoff MVP trophy (Wayne Gretzky 99 Award) in the same season.


title: Mitch Marner

text: After an impressive training camp and pre-season (in which he led the team with four assists), it was announced that Marner would remain on the Toronto Maple Leafs roster for the upcoming 2016–17 season. He made his NHL debut in the team's season opener on October 12. Despite an effective first game with six shots on goal, he was overshadowed by a historic four-goal debut from teammate Auston Matthews. The next game on his first night playing in "Hockey Night in Canada", Marner would score his first NHL goal after receiving a pass between his legs. He would record his first career assist four days later.


title: Mitch Marner

text: On October 27, 2016, in a game against the Florida Panthers, Marner had his first multi-point game, accumulating three assists to lead the Leafs to a 4–2 win. Marner would then have his first multi-goal game against the Buffalo Sabres on November 3, 2016, as the Leafs won 2–1. On November 15, 2016, Marner had three points in a 6–2 win over the Nashville Predators, which at the time tied him in the lead for Leafs' leading scorer (with James van Riemsdyk) for the first time of his career.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Marner was named the NHL's Rookie of the Month for January 2017 after leading all rookies with 11 assists and 15 points in 13 games. He also led all rookies with eight power-play points and matched a career-high three point game. Marner was the third Leaf to be named Rookie of the Month during the 2016–17 season, making the Maple Leafs the first NHL team with three different Rookie of the Month honorees in one campaign.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Marner also set the Maple Leafs record for most assists in a season by a rookie with 42 on the year. This broke the previous record which was held for 73 years by Gus Bodnar, who had 40 assists in the 1943–44 season. Marner spent the entire season on a line with Van Riemsdyk and Tyler Bozak, finding offensive chemistry with the two veterans, and managed to finish the year with 61 points. The trio of Marner, William Nylander, and Auston Matthews became only the second team since the 1981 Quebec Nordiques to have three rookies finish with at least 60 points. His play assisted the team in qualifying for the 2017 Stanley Cup playoffs, where he scored his first playoff goal on his first shift of Game 1. Marner recorded four points in the series but it was not enough as the team lost in six games against the top-seeded Washington Capitals.


title: Mitch Marner

text: On December 19, 2017, during the Maple Leafs' Next Century Game, Marner broke a 15-game goal drought and recorded a four-point game, the first time in his career. He scored one goal and three assists to help defeat the Carolina Hurricanes 8–1. On February 10, 2018, Marner scored his first five-point game (two goals and three assists), becoming the first Leafs player to record five points in a game since Tomáš Kaberle in 2009. Marner ended the regular season leading the Leafs in assists and points, and setting career highs in goals, assists and points. His offensive play helped the Leafs to their second consecutive Stanley Cup playoffs appearance. During the 2018 Stanley Cup playoffs, Marner became the first Maple Leafs player since Brian Leetch to have a five-game point streak in the Stanley Cup playoffs. He led the Leafs in playoff scoring with nine points but the Maple Leafs were eliminated by the Boston Bruins in seven games during the first round.


title: Mitch Marner

text: On October 9, 2018, Marner recorded a four-point game (one goal and three assists) in a 7–4 win over the Dallas Stars. On October 27, Marner recorded his 100th career assist on a game-tying goal by Jake Gardiner against the Winnipeg Jets to help the Leafs win 3–2. In the last 20 years, only Mario Lemieux recorded more primary assists in his first 24 games of the season than Marner, who recorded 22 primary assists in his first 24 games. On January 3, Marner tied a Maple Leaf record for fastest goal to start a game by scoring seven seconds into a game against the Minnesota Wild. Marner scored again within the same period but the Leafs lost 4–3 to the Wild. On January 17, 2019, Marner recorded a goal during a 4–2 win over the league-leading Tampa Bay Lightning, becoming the first player in Maple Leafs franchise history to begin his NHL career with three consecutive 60-point seasons. On February 23, during a 5–3 win over the rival Montreal Canadiens, Marner recorded two assists to record the 200th point of his NHL career. He finished the regular season leading the team in scoring and third in the NHL with assists with career-highs of 26 goals, 68 assists and 94 points, becoming the first Maple Leaf to record at least 90 points in a season since Mats Sundin in 1996–97.


title: Mitch Marner

text: On September 13, 2019, Marner signed a six-year, $65.358 million contract with the Maple Leafs. At the start of the 2019–20 season, Marner was named an alternate captain for the team. On November 9, 2019, during a game against the Philadelphia Flyers, Marner fell awkwardly onto his leg and was expected to miss a minimum 4 weeks due to an ankle injury. He played strongly in his return on December 4 in a loss against the Colorado Avalanche. On December 23, 2019, Marner recorded his 2nd career five-point game (two goals and three assists) in thrilling 8–6 win over the Carolina Hurricanes at the Leafs 3rd annual Next Generation Game. Down 6–4 in the 3rd period, Marner sparked the Leafs comeback when he one-timed a spinning cross-ice pass from Auston Matthews to cut the Hurricanes lead. Mitch then set up Tyson Barrie for the game tying goal 53 seconds later. Just 6 seconds after tying, Marner stole the puck and scored the game-winning breakaway goal. Mitch had recorded the Leafs' previous five-point game on February 10, 2018. On January 11, 2020, he was selected to participate in the NHL All-Star Game for the first time in his career. On February 7, 2020, Marner recorded his 200th NHL assist on a late overtime goal scored by John Tavares in a 5–4 win over the Anaheim Ducks.


title: Mitch Marner

text: The regular season ended abruptly due to the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Months later, the NHL arranged to hold the 2020 Stanley Cup playoffs in a bubble, with Eastern Conference games held in Toronto. The Maple Leafs faced the Columbus Blue Jackets in the qualifying round, and lost 3–2. Marner managed only four assists in five games, attracting criticism from fans and commentators for his lack of playoff production.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resultant limitations on cross-border travel, the 2020–21 NHL season occurred under a vastly different arrangement than previously, with the Leafs grouped in an all-Canadian North Division and playing exclusively within that division for the regular season. On April 15, 2021, Marner became the fourth player in Maple Leafs history to record at least five consecutive seasons with 40 assists. The Maple Leafs finished first in the North Division, and faced the Montreal Canadiens in the first round of the 2021 Stanley Cup playoffs, where they were considered the heavy favourites to win, which would have been the team's first playoff series win since 2004. The Leafs lost the first game of the series, but won the next three to take a seeming stranglehold. However, they went on to lose the next three games and the series 4–3, the team's fifth-straight early exit. Marner again scored only four assists in the post-season, this time in seven games, further amplifying criticism of his perceived underperformance. At the end of the year, Marner was named to the NHL First All-Star Team on right wing, the first time a Maple Leafs player was named to the NHL's First All-Star team since Börje Salming in 1977.


title: Mitch Marner

text: With the restoration of the traditional season, Marner enjoyed another highly successful regular season, recording 35 goals and 62 assists in 72 games. Marner, Matthews and newcomer Michael Bunting formed one of the most successful forward lines in the league for much of the year. On February 26, 2022, Marner recorded a career high four goals and six points to help the Toronto Maple Leafs to a 10-7 win over the Detroit Red Wings. It was the first NHL hat-trick and four-goal game in his career. After recording a natural hat-trick in the second period, Marner capped off his night by scoring the Leafs' tenth goal, his fourth of the game, on a Michael Bunting breakaway drop-pass that Marner started deploying that season. The last time the Maple Leafs recorded 10 goals in a game was a 10-2 victory on Jan. 4, 2007 over the Boston Bruins. Having accrued 97 points, Marner hoped to become only the fourth Maple Leaf player to break the 100-point barrier, but coach Sheldon Keefe opted to sit him out of the final game of the season to prepare for the playoffs. Marner admitted it was "definitely tough," but said that "at the same time, I want to just make sure I'm ready to go." At the end of the year, Marner was again named to the NHL First All-Star team as the league's best right winger, joining teammate Auston Matthews on the first team.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Advancing into the Stanley Cup playoffs, Marner and the Maple Leafs drew the Tampa Bay Lightning, two-time defending champions, in the first round. Marner had not scored a goal in eighteen playoff games prior to the beginning of the series, and in light of disappointing results against both the Blue Jackets and the Canadiens, how he would perform against the Lightning was subject to considerable speculation. In Game 1 of the series against the Lightning, Marner scored his first playoff goal since April 11, 2019, as part of a 5–0 Leafs victory. He had two assists as well, nearly equaling his totals from each of the previous two playoff series in a single game.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Marner made his international debut for Canada at the 2014 Ivan Hlinka Memorial Tournament, where he won a gold medal. He tied Mathew Barzal for the leading scorer from Canada at the tournament.


title: Mitch Marner

text: At the 2016 IIHF World Junior Championships in Helsinki, Marner and Dylan Strome each scored four goals and two assists in five games to lead Canada in scoring. Canada reached the quarterfinals but was eliminated by hosts Finland. Marner scored twice in the game, both times to bring Canada back to an even score, but it was not enough to overcome the eventual gold medalists.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Marner made his Canada senior team debut at the 2017 IIHF World Championship, where team Canada won silver. Scoring 12 points in 10 games, Marner was placed in the top ten in scoring and was only second to Nathan MacKinnon in team scoring.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Marner was born in Markham, Ontario, and spent the majority of his life in the neighbourhood of Thornhill. His parents are Paul and Bonnie Marner, and he has an older brother, Christopher, who is four years older. The Marners consider themselves an animal family; they currently own two pets: a cat named Burbank and a chocolate Labrador named Winston.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Marner attended Hill Academy, a private school focused on athletics, located in Vaughan. He would later go to Blyth Academy. At Blyth, Marner partnered with Knights teammates Christian Dvorak and Owen MacDonald to establish a café known as MOD Feast, with "MOD" being an acronym for each creators names (Marner, Owen and Dvorak). The group offered "bagels and stuff", with Fridays being designated to serving pizza.


title: Mitch Marner

text: Growing up, Marner was a fan of the Toronto Maple Leafs, the team that eventually drafted him. He was also a fan of the Chicago Blackhawks and Pittsburgh Penguins due to the presence of his two favourite players, Patrick Kane and Sidney Crosby. Marner has listed his favourite movie as "Step Brothers", his favourite television show as "The Big Bang Theory" and cited his favourite video games as the "Grand Theft Auto" and "Call of Duty series".


title: Mitch Marner

text: In July, 2020, Marner became part owner of OverActive Media, an esports company with "Call of Duty" and "Overwatch" teams based in Toronto.


title: Mitch Marner

text: In May 2022, Marner was the victim of a carjacking, in which his Range Rover was stolen but he was uninjured.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Show Me a Hero is a 2015 American miniseries based on the 1999 nonfiction book of the same name by former "New York Times" writer Lisa Belkin about Yonkers mayor Nick Wasicsko. Like the book, the miniseries details a white middle-class neighborhood's resistance to a federally mandated scattered-site public housing development in Yonkers, New York, and how the tension of the situation affected the city as a whole.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: The miniseries was written by David Simon and journalist William F. Zorzi, with whom Simon worked at "The Baltimore Sun" and on the HBO series "The Wire". It was directed by Paul Haggis. Six episodes were ordered by HBO; the miniseries premiered on August 16, 2015.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: The story is set between 1987 and 1994 in Yonkers, New York, a city north of New York City in Westchester County, and focuses on efforts to desegregate public housing. Federal judge Leonard B. Sand ruled against Yonkers and issued a desegregation order, mandating that public housing for 200 units – possibly scattered-site public housing ("SSPH"), which became the example of new public housing – be built in the middle-class, mostly white, east side of Yonkers. By 1988, the city had already spent $11 million in legal fees fighting against the order, including a failed effort to appeal to the Supreme Court of the United States. The case and resulting politics resulted in national focus on issues of race, class, and housing. Mayor Nick Wasicsko ran on the platform opposing the judge's order, but before taking office, in the face of the issue being supported by a federal appeals court, became an advocate for desegregation in Yonkers. Wasicsko and the city councillors who supported him worked out a plan to meet the court order, using the SSPH system to build the 200 homes at eight different sites of only 25 homes each, spread across a city with more than 10,000 homes. Despite this, four councillorsa majorityrefused to vote to uphold the law, consistently opposing any limited desegregation. For refusing to follow the court order, the city of Yonkers was crippled by heavy, possibly bankrupting fines – estimated to be close to $1 million a day from a compounded charge that started at $100 a day. Basic services stopped and parks and libraries were shuttered, with 630 city workers facing mandatory lay-offs in order to maintain enough budget for police and fire services. There were ongoing protests, including Wasicsko and others receiving death threats, such as letters containing bullets with a note that “You won’t see the next one”. Wasicsko was forced to comply. The suit was finally settled in May 2007.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: In addition to the Yonkers City Council members and other local politicians, two groups took opposing sides on the issue: Save Yonkers Federation, led by Jack O'Toole, who were anti-desegregation and voted to defy the federal order, and the Citizens and Neighbors Organized to Protect Yonkers ("Canopy"), who supported the court order, wanting to end the crippling fines. New York Secretary of State Gail Shaffer was appointed by then governor Mario Cuomo as the chair of the Yonkers Emergency Financial Control Board, which was in charge of the city's finances in 1988 as the fines reduced all city services and the city became bankrupt. The Housing Education Relocation Enterprise (H.E.R.E.) was a community-based organization that supported the tenants moving into the scattered-site public housing.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Yonkers hires city planner Oscar Newman, originator of the defensible space theory, to work with the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development on the housing plan. Newman's theories emphasize the value of small groups of townhouses with yards, rather than multi-story apartment blocks, to provide a sense of ownership for the low income residents, while being immersed in the activities and culture of middle-class neighborhoods. The challenges of the existing projects are shown through the lives of a number of families living there.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Simon said that Gail Mutrux (who runs the production company Pretty Pictures), a producer Simon knew from working with her on "," had sent him a copy of Belkin's book. In 2001, Simon sent Zorzi, who at that time was assistant city editor at "The Baltimore Sun," a copy of the book, which he was taking to HBO as a potential project. In 2002, Zorzi quit his job at "The Sun" and began working on this miniseries, on what became a long-term project.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: The story was in development for over a decade, with co-writer Zorzi working on the passion project during that time, even as he and Simon were working on "The Wire." HBO had an option on the book, but it spent years in script re-writes with Zorzi as Simon and Zorzi were both busy working on other projects.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Simon says that Mayor Nick Wasicsko's story is what drives the narrative, and that if the character's arc wasn't right, the series would fail. Simon calls Isaac the key to making it work. Wasicsko's wife, Nay Wasicsko-McLaughlin, who worked at City Hall during the time of the conflict, was a consultant on the show. Wasicsko-McLaughlin met with Isaac, which Isaac said was vital to the story.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Simon refers to Yonkers as one of the first locations of the birth and growth of scattered site housing and the integration of architect and city planner Oscar Newman's work on defensible space theory and his 1972 work "Creating Defensible Space," and that this story went on to impact methods of public housing programs on a national scale. Yonkers was the very public staging ground.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Director Paul Haggis states that when he heard about Simon's project, he told his agents to agree his participation, even without him reading the script. Once he had read it, he asked to direct not one or two episodes, as requested, but the entire series. This was the first time that Haggis, who typically both writes and directs his pieces, didn't write the material himself. He said he did this because it was so important to him to work with Simon.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: The miniseries began shooting on October 1, 2014, and wrapped shooting on location January 25, 2015. "Show Me a Hero" made use of primary locations in Yonkers, New York, including the William A. Schlobohm Houses public housing projects, which was the subject of a July 2012 FBI investigation of drugs and firearm trafficking by a gang called the Strip Boyz. The Schlobohm Houses were one of the examples of a 1980 federal case – initially started in 1979 by the Carter Justice Department – then brought as a friend of the court case by a local NAACP chapter who sued the city of Yonkers with claims of segregation by the city, where the poorest residents were forced into living in the western part of town. The claim was that out of a city of almost 200,000 people with an area of approximately 21 square miles, that almost all non-white residents lived in 7,000 units of low income housing within the space of 1 square mile, in public housing that was located on the west side of Saw Mill River Parkway. The high concentration was the result of years of concentrated 40+ year old racial covenants prohibiting non-whites from living east of the Parkway.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Another Yonkers location was The Grinton I. Will branch of the Yonkers Public Library, where scenes of town gatherings were shot. The Cottage Place Gardens was used to substitute for the garden-style Mulford Gardens public housing project, as it has since been torn down. Some scenes were also shot at the Yonkers City Hall, within the Yonkers City Council Chambers where those actual events took place. Additionally, Haggis said that Mary Dorman's house was the actual location. Additional Yonkers locations used were The Department of Buildings at 87 Nepperhan Avenue and Oakland Cemetery. Scenes portraying the Dominican Republic were shot in Puerto Rico.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Working with the show's art department, graffiti artist Chris Capuozzo, with assistance of his photographer wife Denise Ranallo Capuozzo, who documented the graffiti in Yonkers during the time of the show, created temporary reproductions of period graffiti at the Schlobohm Houses and on Palisade Avenue.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: The show makes an extensive use of Bruce Springsteen music, with Springsteen's music often appearing during scenes that feature Wasicsko. The scenes in the housing projects incorporate period hip hop and rap by acts like Digable Planets and Public Enemy. Steve Earle's song, "When The People Find Out," from his 1990 album "The Hard Way," is used in the closing credits. In most of Simon's other works, he has made use of diegetic sound – music that is incorporated within the scenes in a practical way (i.e., musicians playing music, boom boxes playing). In "Show Me a Hero", Simon used music to cue the main character Wasicsko with a protagonist's aural identity that has elements of emotion conveyed by Springsteen's early music. The show used a total of 12 tracks by Springsteen.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Creator Simon said the appeal of the story was a focus on the disintegration of American politics and its corrosive dysfunctional nature in urban cities. Simon wrote that the series "...addresses class and racial segregation in our society, is more about our calcified political processes than directly relevant to the core grievances underlying current events." Simon said that the show depicts a city that is paralyzed by both fear (of integration) and money (valuations of real estate properties). He saw the story as allegorical of current America with refusal to share and the collapse of civilized behavior (with rage and fury quickly fracturing a city) due to the hyper-segregation of the poor in large WWII era high rise housing projects — ironically not the proposed scattered-site town houses that were actually being mandated.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Regarding the impetus for the choice of the shows he makes: in an interview on "Slate," Simon referred to the concept of reportorial instinct, which comes from the efforts by journalists to create new discussion points that are centered upon issues of societal friction; with "Show Me a Hero," Simon's methodical instinct is to focus on these. The idea is not part of a larger whole, a bigger picture, with each of his shows taking up real estate within that vision; it is both disparate and less organized than a global overview. He is not trying to duplicate "The Wire," he's trying to tell a new story here.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: The name of both the show and the book that it is based upon comes from an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote: "Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy."


title: Show Me a Hero

text: The miniseries premiered in Canada on HBO Canada on August 16, 2015 – airing concurrently with the American broadcast. It premiered in Australia and the United Kingdom on August 17, 2015, on Showcase and Sky Atlantic, respectively. The miniseries was released on Blu-ray and DVD on February 2, 2016.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: "Show Me a Hero" received critical acclaim from reviewers although U.S. cable original programming viewership was low. The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes reports a 96% 'Certified Fresh' approval rating with an average rating of 8.6/10 based on 54 reviews. The website's consensus reads, ""Show Me a Hero" is an impressively crafted period drama whose timely themes prove as absorbing as its engaging, compassionately drawn characters." On Metacritic, it has a score of 85 out of 100 based on 33 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim". Tim Goodman of "The Hollywood Reporter" cited the strong storytelling as making the unsexy story rewarding, with a commendably even focus on both racism as well as the problems of systemic bias of public housing systems. Ginia Bellafante of "The New York Times" focused on the relevance to current day issues of race and economics.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Oscar Isaac received universal praise. Alan Sepinwall from "HitFix" cited his performance as being especially strong, describing him as compulsively watchable even during long scenes with a lot of dialogue, while Daniel Fienberg of The Fien Print said Isaac is the key to the story and is compelling, inhabiting his character fully. Sepinwall also said the writers did an excellent job of illustrating the conflict, which in its essence is not compelling, but in this depiction, becomes great. Fienberg cites the somewhat dry nature of the source material, and laughingly embraced what he called the "perversely uncommercial" nature of the show. Brian Lowry from "Variety" also commended Isaac's central role. Emily Nussbaum of "The New Yorker" calls Isaac's "a star performance agile enough to elevate scenes that might veer into agitprop."


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Of the supporting cast, Catherine Keener drew critics' attention most positively. David Wiegand wrote for the "San Francisco Chronicle", "Keener makes Dorman the touchstone of the story, as she constructs an ordinary woman whose values and beliefs are largely unexamined and derive from a lack of exposure to alternative ways of thinking. At heart, she is not an evil person, just fearful of what she doesn’t know. Her moment of enlightenment is so beautifully written and performed, the scene should be preserved as an example of absolute perfection ... Keener’s is only one of the truly great performances that make 'Hero' compelling". Nussbaum also praised Keener's performance, writing that she plays her with "warm humility", while for "The Wrap" Mark Peikert said that "Keener brings every scene she’s in to life".


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Jacqueline Cutler of the "New York Daily News" cited the portrayals of the four women who are the focal points of the story, noting the strength of LaTanya Richardson Jackson's performance. Matt Zoller Seitz from "Vulture" opined that the supporting characters are the heart of the story and establish the resonance that careful viewers of Simon's show will find rewarding. NPR's David Bianculli calls the show nuanced, requiring focus and attention but worth the effort. Andy Greenwald from "Grantland" notes Simon has created a show that is both brilliant and vibrant despite being absurdly uncommercial. In comparison to the last two Simon produced shows, that had more of a downbeat feel, Greenwald sees this show being a return to form, as being both powerfully compelling as well as great entertainment. Greenwald also commends Haggis for his excellent direction throughout.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: Detractors included Jeff Simon (no relation) of "The Buffalo News," who cited Peter Riegert's facial hair choice – comparing it unfavorably to Horace Greeley – and leveling complaints of the choice of actors who are known for chewing the scenery. Other issues were the tone of the piece as well as the lack of drama. This critic acknowledged that he hadn't watched all episodes that were provided to critics before air dates. NPR TV critic Eric Deggans felt the show was too long, and called it slow.


title: Show Me a Hero

text: "The New York Times" featured a discussion between Simon and Senator Cory Booker, drawing parallels between Booker's family's experience growing up in New Jersey where his family was the only black family – and had to take difficult measures to buy their house – and the situation in Yonkers, as well as comparable historical and current scenarios today [2015]. In 1969, to move into town, Booker's family went to Harrington Park, New Jersey's Fair Housing Council represented by a Caucasian couple to break the social covenants of the town housing market.


title: Differential privacy

text: Differential privacy (DP) is a system for publicly sharing information about a dataset by describing the patterns of groups within the dataset while withholding information about individuals in the dataset. The idea behind differential privacy is that if the effect of making an arbitrary single substitution in the database is small enough, the query result cannot be used to infer much about any single individual, and therefore provides privacy.


title: Differential privacy

text: Another way to describe differential privacy is as a constraint on the algorithms used to publish aggregate information about a statistical database which limits the disclosure of private information of records whose information is in the database. For example, differentially private algorithms are used by some government agencies to publish demographic information or other statistical aggregates while ensuring confidentiality of survey responses, and by companies to collect information about user behavior while controlling what is visible even to internal analysts.


title: Differential privacy

text: Roughly, an algorithm is differentially private if an observer seeing its output cannot tell if a particular individual's information was used in the computation. Differential privacy is often discussed in the context of identifying individuals whose information may be in a database. Although it does not directly refer to identification and reidentification attacks, differentially private algorithms probably resist such attacks.


title: Differential privacy

text: Differential privacy was developed by cryptographers and thus is often associated with cryptography, and draws much of its language from cryptography.


title: Differential privacy

text: Official statistics organizations are charged with collecting information from individuals or establishments, and publishing aggregate data to serve the public interest. For example, the 1790 United States Census collected information about individuals living in the United States and published tabulations based on sex, age, race, and condition of servitude. Statistical organizations have long collected information under a promise of confidentiality that the information provided will be used for statistical purposes, but that the publications will not produce information that can be traced back to a specific individual or establishment. To accomplish this goal, statistical organizations have long suppressed information in their publications. For example, in a table presenting the sales of each business in a town grouped by business category, a cell that has information from only one company might be suppressed, in order to maintain the confidentiality of that company's specific sales.


title: Differential privacy

text: The adoption of electronic information processing systems by statistical agencies in the 1950s and 1960s dramatically increased the number of tables that a statistical organization could produce and, in so doing, significantly increased the potential for an improper disclosure of confidential information. For example, if a business that had its sales numbers suppressed also had those numbers appear in the total sales of a region, then it might be possible to determine the suppressed value by subtracting the other sales from that total. But there might also be combinations of additions and subtractions that might cause the private information to be revealed. The number of combinations that needed to be checked increases exponentially with the number of publications, and it is potentially unbounded if data users are able to make queries of the statistical database using an interactive query system.


title: Differential privacy

text: In 1979, Dorothy Denning, Peter J. Denning and Mayer D. Schwartz formalized the concept of a Tracker, an adversary that could learn the confidential contents of a statistical database by creating a series of targeted queries and remembering the results. This and future research showed that privacy properties in a database could only be preserved by considering each new query in light of (possibly all) previous queries. This line of work is sometimes called "query privacy," with the final result being that tracking the impact of a query on the privacy of individuals in the database was NP-hard.


title: Differential privacy

text: In 2003, Kobbi Nissim and Irit Dinur demonstrated that it is impossible to publish arbitrary queries on a private statistical database without revealing some amount of private information, and that the entire information content of the database can be revealed by publishing the results of a surprisingly small number of random queries—far fewer than was implied by previous work. The general phenomenon is known as the Fundamental Law of Information Recovery, and its key insight, namely that in the most general case, privacy cannot be protected without injecting some amount of noise, led to development of differential privacy.


title: Differential privacy

text: In 2006, Cynthia Dwork, Frank McSherry, Kobbi Nissim and Adam D. Smith published an article formalizing the amount of noise that needed to be added and proposing a generalized mechanism for doing so. Their work was a co-recipient of the 2016 TCC Test-of-Time Award and the 2017 Gödel Prize.


title: Differential privacy

text: Since then, subsequent research has shown that there are many ways to produce very accurate statistics from the database while still ensuring high levels of privacy.


title: Differential privacy

text: The 2006 Dwork, McSherry, Nissim and Smith article introduced the concept of ε-differential privacy, a mathematical definition for the privacy loss associated with any data release drawn from a statistical database. (Here, the term "statistical database" means a set of data that are collected under the pledge of confidentiality for the purpose of producing statistics that, by their production, do not compromise the privacy of those individuals who provided the data.)


title: Differential privacy

text: The intuition for the 2006 definition of ε-differential privacy is that a person's privacy cannot be compromised by a statistical release if their data are in the database. Therefore, with differential privacy, the goal is to give each individual roughly the same privacy that would result from having their data removed. That is, the statistical functions run on the database should not overly depend on the data of any one individual.


title: Differential privacy

text: Of course, how much any individual contributes to the result of a database query depends in part on how many people's data are involved in the query. If the database contains data from a single person, that person's data contributes 100%. If the database contains data from a hundred people, each person's data contributes just 1%. The key insight of differential privacy is that as the query is made on the data of fewer and fewer people, more noise needs to be added to the query result to produce the same amount of privacy. Hence the name of the 2006 paper, "Calibrating noise to sensitivity in private data analysis."


title: Differential privacy

text: The 2006 paper presents both a mathematical definition of differential privacy and a mechanism based on the addition of Laplace noise (i.e. noise coming from the Laplace distribution) that satisfies the definition.


title: Differential privacy

text: Let ε be a positive real number and formula_1 be a randomized algorithm that takes a dataset as input (representing the actions of the trusted party holding the data).


title: Differential privacy

text: Let formula_2 denote the image of formula_1. The algorithm formula_1 is said to provide formula_5-differential privacy if, for all datasets formula_6 and formula_7 that differ on a single element (i.e., the data of one person), and all subsets formula_8 of formula_2:


title: Differential privacy

text: Differential privacy offers strong and robust guarantees that facilitate modular design and analysis of differentially private mechanisms due to its composability, robustness to post-processing, and graceful degradation in the presence of correlated data.


title: Differential privacy

text: (Self-)composability refers to the fact that the joint distribution of the outputs of (possibly adaptively chosen) differentially private mechanisms satisfies differential privacy.


title: Differential privacy

text: Sequential composition. If we query an ε-differential privacy mechanism formula_11 times, and the randomization of the mechanism is independent for each query, then the result would be formula_12-differentially private. In the more general case, if there are formula_13 independent mechanisms: formula_14, whose privacy guarantees are formula_15 differential privacy, respectively, then any function formula_16 of them: formula_17 is formula_18-differentially private.


title: Differential privacy

text: Parallel composition. If the previous mechanisms are computed on "disjoint" subsets of the private database then the function formula_16 would be formula_20-differentially private instead.


title: Differential privacy

text: For any deterministic or randomized function formula_21 defined over the image of the mechanism formula_1, if formula_1 satisfies ε-differential privacy, so does formula_24.


title: Differential privacy

text: Together, composability and robustness to post-processing permit modular construction and analysis of differentially private mechanisms and motivate the concept of the "privacy loss budget". If all elements that access sensitive data of a complex mechanisms are separately differentially private, so will be their combination, followed by arbitrary post-processing.


title: Differential privacy

text: In general, ε-differential privacy is designed to protect the privacy between neighboring databases which differ only in one row. This means that no adversary with arbitrary auxiliary information can know if one particular participant submitted his information. However this is also extendable. We may want to protect databases differing in formula_25 rows, which amounts to an adversary with arbitrary auxiliary information knowing if formula_25 particular participants submitted their information. This can be achieved because if formula_25 items change, the probability dilation is bounded by formula_28 instead of formula_29, i.e., for D and D differing on formula_25 items:


title: Differential privacy

text: Thus setting ε instead to formula_32 achieves the desired result (protection of formula_25 items). In other words, instead of having each item ε-differentially private protected, now every group of formula_25 items is ε-differentially private protected (and each item is formula_35-differentially private protected).


title: Differential privacy

text: Since differential privacy is a probabilistic concept, any differentially private mechanism is necessarily randomized. Some of these, like the Laplace mechanism, described below, rely on adding controlled noise to the function that we want to compute. Others, like the exponential mechanism and posterior sampling sample from a problem-dependent family of distributions instead.


title: Differential privacy

text: Let formula_36 be a positive integer, formula_37 be a collection of datasets, and formula_38 be a function. The "sensitivity" of a function, denoted formula_39, is defined by


title: Differential privacy

text: where the maximum is over all pairs of datasets formula_6 and formula_7 in formula_37 differing in at most one element and formula_44 denotes the formula_45 norm.


title: Differential privacy

text: In the example of the medical database below, if we consider formula_46 to be the function formula_47, then the sensitivity of the function is one, since changing any one of the entries in the database causes the output of the function to change by either zero or one.


title: Differential privacy

text: There are techniques (which are described below) using which we can create a differentially private algorithm for functions with low sensitivity.


title: Differential privacy

text: The Laplace mechanism adds Laplace noise (i.e. noise from the Laplace distribution, which can be expressed by probability density function formula_48, which has mean zero and standard deviation formula_49). Now in our case we define the output function of formula_50 as a real valued function (called as the transcript output by formula_50) as formula_52 where formula_53 and formula_54 is the original real valued query/function we planned to execute on the database. Now clearly formula_55 can be considered to be a continuous random variable, where


title: Differential privacy

text: which is at most formula_57. We can consider formula_58 to be the privacy factor formula_59. Thus formula_60 follows a differentially private mechanism (as can be seen from the definition above). If we try to use this concept in our diabetes example then it follows from the above derived fact that in order to have formula_50 as the formula_59-differential private algorithm we need to have formula_63. Though we have used Laplace noise here, other forms of noise, such as the Gaussian Noise, can be employed, but they may require a slight relaxation of the definition of differential privacy.


title: Differential privacy

text: According to this definition, differential privacy is a condition on the release mechanism (i.e., the trusted party releasing information "about" the dataset) and not on the dataset itself. Intuitively, this means that for any two datasets that are similar, a given differentially private algorithm will behave approximately the same on both datasets. The definition gives a strong guarantee that presence or absence of an individual will not affect the final output of the algorithm significantly.


title: Differential privacy

text: For example, assume we have a database of medical records formula_6 where each record is a pair (Name, X), where formula_65 is a Boolean denoting whether a person has diabetes or not. For example:


title: Differential privacy

text: Now suppose a malicious user (often termed an "adversary") wants to find whether Chandler has diabetes or not. Suppose he also knows in which row of the database Chandler resides. Now suppose the adversary is only allowed to use a particular form of query formula_47 that returns the partial sum of the first formula_67 rows of column formula_65 in the database. In order to find Chandler's diabetes status the adversary executes formula_69 and formula_70, then computes their difference. In this example, formula_71 and formula_72, so their difference is 1. This indicates that the "Has Diabetes" field in Chandler's row must be 1. This example highlights how individual information can be compromised even without explicitly querying for the information of a specific individual.


title: Differential privacy

text: Continuing this example, if we construct formula_7 by replacing (Chandler, 1) with (Chandler, 0) then this malicious adversary will be able to distinguish formula_7 from formula_6 by computing formula_76 for each dataset. If the adversary were required to receive the values formula_47 via an formula_5-differentially private algorithm, for a sufficiently small formula_5, then he or she would be unable to distinguish between the two datasets.


title: Differential privacy

text: A simple example, especially developed in the social sciences, is to ask a person to answer the question "Do you own the "attribute A"?", according to the following procedure:


title: Differential privacy

text: (The seemingly redundant extra toss in the first case is needed in situations where just the "act" of tossing a coin may be observed by others, even if the actual result stays hidden.) The confidentiality then arises from the refutability of the individual responses.


title: Differential privacy

text: But, overall, these data with many responses are significant, since positive responses are given to a quarter by people who do not have the "attribute A" and three-quarters by people who actually possess it.


title: Differential privacy

text: Thus, if "p" is the true proportion of people with "A", then we expect to obtain (1/4)(1-"p") + (3/4)"p" = (1/4) + "p"/2 positive responses. Hence it is possible to estimate "p".


title: Differential privacy

text: In particular, if the "attribute A" is synonymous with illegal behavior, then answering "Yes" is not incriminating, insofar as the person has a probability of a "Yes" response, whatever it may be.


title: Differential privacy

text: Although this example, inspired by randomized response, might be applicable to microdata (i.e., releasing datasets with each individual response), by definition differential privacy excludes microdata releases and is only applicable to queries (i.e., aggregating individual responses into one result) as this would violate the requirements, more specifically the plausible deniability that a subject participated or not.


title: Differential privacy

text: A transformation formula_80 is formula_25-stable if the Hamming distance between formula_82 and formula_83 is at most formula_25-times the Hamming distance between formula_85 and formula_86 for any two databases formula_87. Theorem 2 in asserts that if there is a mechanism formula_88 that is formula_5-differentially private, then the composite mechanism formula_90 is formula_91-differentially private.


title: Differential privacy

text: This could be generalized to group privacy, as the group size could be thought of as the Hamming distance formula_92 between


title: Differential privacy

text: formula_85 and formula_86 (where formula_85 contains the group and formula_86 doesn't). In this case formula_90 is formula_98-differentially private.


title: Differential privacy

text: Since differential privacy is considered to be too strong or weak for some applications, many versions of it have been proposed. The most widespread relaxation is (ε, δ)-differential privacy, which weakens the definition by allowing an additional small δ density of probability on which the upper bound ε does not hold.


title: Differential privacy

text: To date there are over 12 real-world deployments of differential privacy, the most important to date being:


title: Differential privacy

text: There are several public purpose considerations regarding differential privacy that are important to consider, especially for policymakers and policy-focused audiences interested in the social opportunities and risks of the technology:


title: Sakura Wars

text: The original "Sakura Wars" was an ambitious title for the then-in-production Sega Saturn. The first game's overlap of the tactical role-playing, dating sim and visual novel genres prompted Sega to classify it as a "dramatic adventure", a moniker which has endured during the series' lifetime. Both Red Entertainment and Sega co-developed most of the games until 2008, when the series went on hiatus. Sega rebooted the series as sole developer because of fan demand. Recurring elements include anime cutscenes created by notable studios including Production I.G, and music by composer Kohei Tanaka.


title: Sakura Wars

text: The series has sold over 5.7 million copies as of 2022, and garnered both critical and popular acclaim. The original Sega console games have been voted among the most popular for the Saturn and Dreamcast. The "Sakura Wars" franchise includes numerous anime productions, manga, and other media projects such as stage shows. With the exception of "" and the 2019 soft reboot, the video game series has not been released in English. Several of the anime series have been localized for English territories.


title: Sakura Wars

text: The first installment was released on September 27, 1996. Many "Sakura Wars" games have been localized for markets in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia on numerous video game consoles, personal computers (PC), and mobile phones. As of December 2019, the series includes the main installments from the 1996 "Sakura Wars" to the 2019 "Sakura Wars", as well as direct sequels and spin-offs, both released and confirmed as being in development. Most of the older games have been remade or re-released on multiple platforms.


title: Sakura Wars

text: The original "Sakura Wars" was released in 1996 for the Sega Saturn. It was ported to a number of platforms including Dreamcast, Microsoft Windows and mobile devices. A remake for the PlayStation 2 (PS2), "Sakura Wars: In Hot Blood", was released in 2003. The remake includes additional voice acting, redone graphics and battle system based on later entries. Its sequel "" was released for the Saturn in 1998. It was the last title developed for the platform, receiving ports to Dreamcast and Windows, and as a bundle with the first game to the PlayStation Portable (PSP).


title: Sakura Wars

text: The next entry, "", was released in 2001 for the Dreamcast. It was later ported to Windows, and then to the PS2 with Dreamcast-exclusive features redesigned to work on the PS2. "" was released in 2002 for the Dreamcast. It was the last "Sakura Wars" game produced for Sega hardware, and was later ported to Windows.


title: Sakura Wars

text: The fifth game, "Sakura Wars V: Farewell, My Lovely", was first released for the PS2 in Japan in 2005. It was the first mainline "Sakura Wars" game to be produced after Sega abandoned game console production. In North America, Europe, and Australia, the game was localized as "" and published by NIS America for the PS2 and the Wii in 2010; this release removed the number from the title. The sixth entry is a soft reboot of the series, titled "Sakura Wars" ("New Sakura Wars" in Japan). The game carries over multiple elements while featuring a new cast and action-based combat system. It was released for the PlayStation 4 (PS4) in 2019 in Asia, and 2020 worldwide.


title: Sakura Wars

text: In addition to the main series, numerous spin-off games covering multiple genres were released. The first spin-off title was "Sakura Wars: Hanagumi Taisen Columns", released for the Saturn in 1997. A sequel for the Dreamcast was released in 2000. A spin-off set just after "Sakura Wars" for the Game Boy Color, "Sakura Wars GB", was developed by Jupiter and released by Media Factory in 2000. A direct sequel was released the following year. A small peripheral titled "Pocket Sakura" was also developed by Jupiter and released alongside the first Game Boy Color title.


title: Sakura Wars

text: A small group of spin-off titles were developed under the umbrella title "Sakura Wars World Project". "Sakura Wars Story: Mysterious Paris", a visual novel adventure set after the events of "Is Paris Burning?", was released in 2004 for the PS2. A prequel to "So Long, My Love", "Sakura Wars V Episode 0: Samurai Daughter of the Wild", was also released for the PS2 that year. The gameplay deviated from the main series in featuring hack and slash action. A Nintendo DS dungeon crawler spin-off, "Dramatic Dungeon: Sakura Wars — Because You Were There", was developed by Neverland and released in 2008, featuring the casts of all mainline games up to that point.


title: Sakura Wars

text: Other releases included fan discs, supplementary materials related to "Sakura Wars" and its first sequel, and "Sakura Wars"-themed pachinko machines. Multiple mobile titles based on the series were also released, beginning in 2001 with "Sakura Wars: Keitai Club". "Sakura Wars Online" for the Dreamcast was released in 2001 with two character packs, one themed after the Tokyo Flower Division and one after the Paris Flower Division. It operated until Sega closed down its servers in 2005.


title: Sakura Wars

text: A mobile game by Sega and Delight Works, "Sakura Kakumei ~Hana Saku Otome-tachi~" for iOS and Android devices was announced for a 2020 release in September. The game is set in 2011, (Taisho 100) after a great calamity 16 years earlier, a new combat revue known as B.L.A.C.K. has risen to defend the citizen of Japan from new demon hordes and unravel a deep government conspiracy. Anime studio, CloverWorks produced a short anime for streaming to promote the new game.


title: Sakura Wars

text: The "Sakura Wars" series is set during a fictionalised version of the Taishō period, with the chronology currently running from 1923 (Taisho 12) to 1940 (Taisho 29). The games are set in the cities of Tokyo, Paris and New York. The setting combines real locations with fantastical events and steampunk-based technology. The central conflict of the series is between demonic forces created by the ingrained darkness in human hearts. To combat this in Tokyo, the Japanese government created a unit of steam-based mecha called Koubu powered by spirit energy. While a few men are capable of using them, women form the main combat units because of their stronger spiritual power. This group is known as the Imperial Assault Force, based in a theater and working undercover as the Imperial Theater Revue. The group to which the protagonists belong is the Flower Division (Hanagumi), the main combat troop. Other groups make cameo appearances in the story if present.


title: Sakura Wars

text: The first four games follow the military and romantic exploits of Imperial Army officer Ichiro Ogami. Originally assigned to the Imperial Assault Force in Tokyo, he later traveled to Paris and trained the newly formed Paris Assault Force before returning to Tokyo and commanding the two united Flower Divisions during the events of "Sakura Wars 4". For "So Long, My Love", the lead protagonist was changed to Ogami's nephew Shinjiro Taiga, who is sent in place of Ogami to train the New York Combat Revue. The 2019 soft reboot of "Sakura Wars" takes place in 1940, twelve years after an event called the "Great Demon War" saw the destruction of all three original Flower Divisions. New divisions were created across the world and began competing with each other, with the newly reformed Tokyo Flower Division being the main protagonists.


title: Sakura Wars

text: The gameplay of "Sakura Wars" incorporate role-playing, dating sim and visual novel elements. This blend of genres and styles resulted in it being labeled as a new genre dubbed "dramatic adventure" in its marketing. The original combination of narrative and tactical role-playing gameplay was inspired by the "Fire Emblem" series. The gameplay is split between adventure-style segments where the player explores environments and interacts with cast members; and battle sections where choices during the adventure segments come into play. With the main female cast, the protagonist can pursue a romance. Romance options can be carried between the first four titles using save data.


title: Sakura Wars

text: Throughout the series, the games have used different battle systems. The first "Sakura Wars" and its sequel made use of a traditional turn-based battle system on a tilted two-dimensional grid-based battlefield. Each unit has two actions from a selection of five. The sequel expanded the selection to six, and included cinematic attacks. The leader could also issue commands to the entire squad to take specific battle formations. "Sakura Wars 3" introduced the "Active & Realtime Machine System" (ARMS), which takes place in three-dimensional battle arenas. Under this system, units have an allotment of Action Points (AP). AP are used up by moving around the battlefield. Units can perform one of six actions, with two actions per turn as in earlier titles. Each unit has special abilities, and attack ranges based on their weaponry. For the 2019 "Sakura Wars", the battle system was redesigned to use action-based combat, focusing on free movement within large arenas.


title: Sakura Wars

text: Central to all the games and most spin-off titles is the "Live & Interactive Picture System" (LIPS). During conversations with characters and key story sections, the player is faced with critical choices with an imposed time limit. The concept behind LIPS was to maintain player engagement while making narrative rather than freezing time and allowing prolonged time for thought, a trend the staff found annoying. The most basic version was established in the first "Sakura Wars", then later expanded into "Double LIPS" with the incorporation of a personality meter which could indicate a character's feelings towards the player. Between "Is Paris Burning?" and "So Long, My Love", a version called "Analog LIPS" was used. This allowed players to alter the intensity of a single response. It also included interacting with the character and environments. "So Long, My Love" expanded it further with quick time events using the control sticks and buttons. The 2019 "Sakura Wars" continues this use of the LIPS system, featuring Analog LIPS and new free-roaming elements. Choices made during LIPS sections directly impact character performance in battle.


title: Sakura Wars

text: In 1990, Oji Hiroi at Red Entertainment (formally Red Company) decided to create "Sakura Wars". Hiroi drew inspiration from Japanese stage shows when creating the project, initially titled . Because of lack of interest from publishers, Hiroi shelved the project until he was approached by Sega vice president Shoichiro Irimajiri to develop a new project for the Saturn. Successfully pitching his project to Irimajiri, the game began production under the title "Sakura Wars". While the scenario and gameplay went through multiple redrafts, "Sakura Wars" always made use of a steampunk setting, a female lead and mecha combat. Development lasted three years, double the original estimate, and was Sega's most expensive project at the time. Many within both Red Company and Sega were sceptical of the game's success, but Hiroi remained confident. Following the critical and commercial success of "Sakura Wars", Sega and Red Company expanded the original premise into a franchise, starting with "Thou Shalt Not Die". A recurring feature from "Thou Shalt Not Die" onwards was the use of subtitles drawn from famous poetry or other types of fiction related to a game's location or mood. A recurring poet was Akiko Yosano, whom Hiroi admired.


title: Sakura Wars

text: Following "Thou Shalt Not Die", the team moved onto the Dreamcast to develop "Sakura Wars 3", rebuilding the game engine and utilising the console's functions for gameplay elements. Following the release of "Sakura Wars 3", Sega discontinued the Dreamcast because of declining console sales, transitioning to a software developer and publisher. Rather than move their planned next entry to the PlayStation 2, the team created a final Dreamcast entry as a celebratory title for series fans. This became "Sakura Wars 4", which was completed in 10 months as opposed to the usual two year development period of other entries. The original story planned for "Sakura Wars 4" was moved for the team's next entry on the PlayStation 2.


title: Sakura Wars

text: In 2005, Red Entertainment split from Sega after it bought back its majority share holding, although it continued to be involved in the "Sakura Wars" series. The next entry, "Sakura Wars V", formed part of a seven-game group dubbed "Sakura Wars World Project"; the aim was to release these games overseas. In the event, only "Sakura Wars V" was published overseas as "Sakura Wars: So Long, My Love", and only three of the other planned games were released. The remaining three titles were cancelled in 2008. Sega and Red Entertainment greenlit "Dramatic Dungeon: Sakura Wars" in an attempt to revitalise the franchise using a new gameplay genre. In August 2008, Sega decided to end the franchise, with the final "Sakura Wars"-themed event being a concert that month. Red Entertainment was bought by Chinese company UltaZen in 2011, with Sega retaining the "Sakura Wars" property. Fan demand eventually persuaded Sega to greenlight a new title in the series, which would both continue the narrative and feature a new cast.