[7] On the weekend of 7–8 March 1970, she had spent time collecting belongings from her old house in London and had attended a party in Earl's Court, where she met a young man.

[8] On the day she disappeared, she was wearing a blonde wig, false eyelashes, a dark blue coat and maroon shoes.

[7] A number of witnesses sighted her there including a chef, Delia Brown, who said that a man came through the door, went up to Ansell-Lamb and then came to order two coffees.

[2] A final unconfirmed sighting of Ansell-Lamb put her thumbing for a lift on the A556 road, one mile from where her body was found.

[2] On 14 March, the partially clothed body of Ansell-Lamb was found by a ten-year-old boy and his father as they walked through woodland in Mere, Cheshire, just off the M6 motorway, near the café she was last seen at.

[11] On 12 October 1970 she set off to hitch-hike to Catterick, North Yorkshire to pick up her boyfriend's car, which had broken down there.

[7] Four days later, a family out walking in an isolated wood just off the M1 motorway at Ault Hucknall near Chesterfield, Derbyshire discovered her partially clothed body under a pile of leaves.

[4] Investigators soon determined that neither the man Ansell-Lamb had met in Earl's Court nor any of her other male associates could have been responsible for the murder.

[11] The investigation into her murder was led by Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Pollard from Scotland Yard, as Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire police had limited resources.

[11] In an unprecedented move, police set up checkpoints across 150 miles of the M1 between London and Leeds to ask drivers if they had any information, although this was not done until two weeks after the murder.

[7] A significant sighting came from a man who said he was certain he had seen Mayo or a girl fitting her description at 4:00 p.m. on 12 October, thumbing for a lift and then getting into a white Morris Traveller at Kimberley, Nottinghamshire.

[4] Another notable witness who came forward after the reconstruction was a butcher from Kimberley who said that he thought she had come into his shop and then walked down the hill towards the main road.

[7] Media reports soon suggested a link between the murders of Ansell-Lamb and Mayo, noting their clear similarities.

[7] A number of women came forward after the appeals to say they had been sexually assaulted in the same area where Mayo was last seen shortly before or after her murder.

[7] It was also noted that the man she was last seen with was described as a rep or a salesman, and that it was the investigator's belief that the murderer had some connections to the carpet industry.

[19] Detectives were also hopeful of DNA advances assisting the Ansell-Lamb inquiry and in determining whether the two women had been killed by the same man.

A Derbyshire Police spokesperson stated: "Should a test be successful and find matching DNA, we would have a serial killer investigation that would get huge".

[15] In August 2001 detectives from Derbyshire Police made a televised appeal for information on a 90-minute programme titled Britain's Ten Most Wanted Murderers.

[24] He said that the claims that one had been originally came from a Reuters report that erroneously assumed that a DNA match had been made when police announced in 1990 that they believed the murders were likely linked.

[26] In 2009, crime writer Scott Lomax revealed in a book he published about unsolved murders that Manchester City were playing in London at the time of Mayo's murder, just as in Ansell-Lamb's case, and that police had never investigated whether the killer could again have been returning from the football match in London when he came across Mayo on the M1.

[4] In 2015, crime writers Chris Clark and Tim Tate published a book in which they claimed that Ansell-Lamb and Mayo's murders could be linked to Yorkshire Ripper Peter Sutcliffe.

[29] Notably, neither the Mayo or Ansell-Lamb case featured in the subsequent 2022 ITV documentary version of Clark's book.

[32] Both Hale and Clark continue to regularly make claims in the media that either Sutcliffe or the killer of Wendy Sewell was responsible for Ansell-Lamb and Mayo's deaths, or that they are the same.