The following article from the Wolverhampton and Star printed in November 1987, may go some way to explaining why the police seem to lose momentum over the potential linking of Cannan to SL.
But seemingly, for all the wrong reasons.
By proving that Cannan murdered SB, they appear to have then automatically assumed that Cannan was the notorious rapist from the Midlands, and then tried to link this HFS rapist with SL.
And this is where they possibly went wrong.
Because it became fairly evident that Cannan wasn't the 'House for sale' rapist.
By discovering that the HFS rapist wasn't Cannan, it then broke any potential link between the murder of SB to the abduction of SL.
Cannan was linked very early on to the disappearance of SL; as evidenced by early news reports; essentially from the moment they found SB had been a victim of Cannan, but rather than pursue it further once the link to the HFS rapist was broken, they appear to have put Cannan in the background while they followed other leads.
Incidentally. the disappearance of actress and model; Gloria Bielby from Humberside in 1979, remains unsolved to this day.
The fact that Humberside police planned to visit Bristol to interview Cannan about Gloria's disappearance, perhaps implies that they knew Cannan had committed more murders than SB alone.
Fascinating indeed