Search: Claudia Lawrence
The mother of missing university chef Claudia Lawrence has said she knew nothing about a mystery boyfriend her daughter spent the night with just two days before her disappearance.
Joan Lawrence said she would need to consult diaries to see if they contained any information about the man who detectives leading the hunt for Miss Lawrence want to identify.
As the Lawrence family marked the first anniversary of her disappearance, Mrs Lawrence told GMTV: "I just don't know about him, I'll need to look it up. I've got diaries at home going back 10 years so I know what she (Claudia) was doing or if she talked to me that day."
Miss Lawrence, 35, was last seen near her home in Heworth, York, on March 18 last year.
She failed to arrive for work at the University of York's Goodricke College the following morning and police believe she may have come to harm by someone she knew.
Detective Superintendent Ray Galloway described the new information about Miss Lawrence as "extremely hot intelligence" and said it was "critical" they spoke to the man who Miss Lawrence was said to have been with until the early hours of the morning.
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He said: "Critically, information has come to us only today whereby we understand that Claudia has told (someone) that she was actually out on one of the evenings, on one of the nights which immediately preceded her disappearance - out into the very early hours with what she described as a boyfriend and we are talking deep into the night, half past four or five o'clock in the morning."
He added there was "nothing suspicious" in the new information but the man would need to be identified so that he could be eliminated from the investigation.
It was also disclosed that Miss Lawrence was involved in a long-term, casual sexual relationship with another man when she vanished. The man was himself involved in a long-term relationship with a woman, but is not believed to be the boyfriend Miss Lawrence was with a few nights before she went missing.
Mrs Lawrence added she hoped for even the smallest amount of information on her daughter because it would be "awful" to have another year like the previous one.
