'Vanishing act': UK Magic Circle seeks disappearing woman

Britain's Magic Circle has launched an appeal to track down a woman it expelled over three decades ago for posing as a man to gain admittance to the formerly male-only magicians' society.

The London-based international magic organization now wants to apologize to Sophie Lloyd who was ejected in 1991 for "masquerading as a male".

Efforts to locate Lloyd, however, have so far drawn a blank.

"It's almost as if they just made her vanish from thin air, tried to brush it under the carpet, but obviously now the story has come out and we're so desperate to right this wrong," Laura London, the first female chair of the Magic Circle, told The Guardian.

Lloyd, who had posed as Raymond Lloyd for 18 months, unmasked herself as a woman when the organization voted to admit women in 1991.

But members angered at her "deliberate deception, went ahead with her expulsion.

Although women have been admitted now for over 30 years, they still make up only around five percent of the society's 1,700 membership.

Lloyd was last heard of around 1997 when she appeared in local newspaper articles in Coventry and Leamington Spa in central England.

After that the trail goes cold, said London, adding that the society was keen to hear the story from Lloyd's side and invite her to rejoin.

And she said the saga could soon find its way onto the big screen.

"We're already in talks about making a movie of her extraordinary heist," she said.