UK UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #6

[Terryb808]

I have ordered the AS book now, but not up to speed with all the details. As far as I remember there was no physical evidence that SJL was ever at Shorrolds. Is it possible that the diary entry was a fake name and a plausible address to enable Suzy to leave the office, but the intention was always to meet someone (she knew) at Stevenage Rd at lunchtime? I can't see anyone leaving a car unlocked with a purse in the door pocket in London, parking overhanging the driveway etc sounds like it was intended to be a quick stop/pick up someone.

DV’s book “Finding Suzy” (which he doesn’t) outlines well why Suzy put the fake entry in her desk diary. His research justifies his conclusion very well.
Where he differs from your conclusion is that in his opinion Suzy went straight to the PoW pub and not to Stevenage Road.
You can get DV’s book as a Kindle E-Book & it’s not expensive, IMO worth reading.
In order I’d read AS first, DV second and then if you want to know why the Met are fixated on John Cannan, take a look at CBD’s book “Prime Suspect”, again available via Kindle.
These books don’t provide any answers, but, they do give you enough information to form your own opinions.
This forum has come up with some very good narratives, chances are one of them is correct, but they all lack evidence.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

I've just ordered a used copy of AS's book and also a Kindle of DV's. I guess I should put my money where my mouth is.

I can't shake the feeling that, as with so many cases, Suzy's is actually really simple. But without that one crucial piece of evidence, you don't even know where to start looking.

 

[RichardKimble]

I've just ordered a used copy of AS's book and also a Kindle of DV's. I guess I should put my money where my mouth is.

I can't shake the feeling that, as with so many cases, Suzy's is actually really simple. But without that one crucial piece of evidence, you don't even know where to start looking.

It is probably simple, she left the office never to be in contact with any one bar her killer or alleged killer, the issue is who did she see, the MET say it's JC, the CPS are far from convinced but the issue now is the MET are unlikely to be looking for anyone else.All imo.
The thing with JC is he left SB body to be found, if responsible for SC he left her body to be found, but yet no hide nor hair of SLJ.

 

[Terryb808]

It is probably simple, she left the office never to be in contact with any one bar her killer or alleged killer, the issue is who did she see, the MET say it's JC, the CPS are far from convinced but the issue now is the MET are unlikely to be looking for anyone else.All imo.
The thing with JC is he left SB body to be found, if responsible for SC he left her body to be found, but yet no hide nor hair of SLJ.

I think you’re both right, the answer is going to be a simple one and JC’s track record doesn’t support it being him.
Being on a sentence that’s going to see him die In prison, he’ll happily watch the police digging up the countryside all over the place knowing they’ll find nothing.
Sadly, Suzy’s lifestyle left no shortage of possibilities. However, I do think the answer is linked to the use of Mr Kipper as a fake appointment. She knew her boss would realise this was fake immediately and know she’d gone to lunch anyway.
The question is, who would she do this for, there aren’t that many men she really liked enough.
There’s an awful lot of back story to the couple of weeks before she disappeared that’s not in these books.
How you interpret that is subjective, but when you read through the recent posts a lot of things have been clarified.
I’ll leave it there, everyone has their preferences when it comes to a narrative and I’m always interested to read them.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

I'm up to Chapter 8 of DV's book, and so far my main take-away is that DL appears to have been a very controlling woman who caused a lot of problems for the investigation. I can't help thinking, in the absence of other evidence, that the Met might have investigated JC just to shut her up.

 

[RichardKimble]

I'm up to Chapter 8 of DV's book, and so far my main take-away is that DL appears to have been a very controlling woman who caused a lot of problems for the investigation. I can't help thinking, in the absence of other evidence, that the Met might have investigated JC just to shut her up.

I don't see them going to the CPS for that though.

 

[ruby925]

DV’s book “Finding Suzy” (which he doesn’t) outlines well why Suzy put the fake entry in her desk diary. His research justifies his conclusion very well.
Where he differs from your conclusion is that in his opinion Suzy went straight to the PoW pub and not to Stevenage Road.
You can get DV’s book as a Kindle E-Book & it’s not expensive, IMO worth reading.
In order I’d read AS first, DV second and then if you want to know why the Met are fixated on John Cannan, take a look at CBD’s book “Prime Suspect”, again available via Kindle.
These books don’t provide any answers, but, they do give you enough information to form your own opinions.
This forum has come up with some very good narratives, chances are one of them is correct, but they all lack evidence.

I have read every post on this forum over the past years, brain just can't retain it all . I remember the theory that Suzy went to the POW. As you say, all scenarios lack evidence.

 

[Terryb808]

I don't see them going to the CPS for that though.

DL had the ear of some very high up individuals, I can see the possibility that they might bend the ears of those lower down the food chain.
Also, that looks to be the reason for the unprecedented statement that JC is the Mets one and only suspect.
This smacks of being issued to placate DL, once does, there was no going back.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

Now on Chapter 11. AL seems to be hiding something. What he's hiding, it's hard to tell. I don't think he was involved in Suzy's disappearance (at least, I don't YET) but he knows more than he's telling about *something*.

 

[WestLondoner]

I posted a link to an article the other day about the misuse of statistics. The applicability to this case is very high.

Essentially the police assumption was "this was the kind of thing Cannan did, so it was probably him", and they then looked for stuff that supports this. This is not valid reasoning. The correct issue to examine is "based on what we know, what are the chances this was JC?"

This requires what a statistician would call a "prior", which usually just means what is the range of outcomes you expect. Suppose you're on a golf course and you can see the green, the pin and the hole, but not the players teeing off. A ball is teed off out of your sight, it lands on the green and rolls straight into the hole. A hole in one! So who played the hole in one? Next thing you see is Tiger Woods striding towards the hole. OK, old, but a very skilled player, long career, won many tournaments, expert at getting the ball to go where he wants, and he's holding a driver. It's obviously Tiger Woods, right? QED.

Then behind Tiger appear Jon Rahm, Rory McIlroy and Dustin Johnson. The last three world #1 golfers and they're all holding a driver too. Is it still obvious now that it was Tiger's hole in one? No, obviously it's not. It's still the kind of thing he'd do, but it's also the kind of thing the other three would do, and you have no way to know which of them it was. The chances this was Tiger are at best about 25% and maybe less, because a/ Tiger's a has-been and b/ you don't know who's following just behind Rahm, McIlroy and Johnson. Justin Thomas might turn up.

In the case of SJL the crucial prior never established was, how many people might have done this? That number is not 1. As we've discussed before, it's the total of everyone in the area who had done, or would go on to do, something like this. Cannan's one of them for sure, but one out of how many? Your prior is to establish that number, which might be 50, and on that basis, the chances that it's any of them in particular are 2%.

What you do not do is pick one, decide it fits him and then declare he therefore must have done it. You do not do this because there are 49 other people you have failed to consider, and for all you know (because you didn't look), the same might be said of all of them.

The Cannan narrative proceeds exactly to an unsustainable conclusion via this wrong reasoning. Yes, it could be him, but for all we know it might have been 49 others. Why can't it be one of them? Where's the evidence it could only have been him? Tumbleweed - nobody, until DV, tried cogently to show that it could have been someone else,and we still don't have a baseline for how many people that was.

 

[WestLondoner]

Now on Chapter 11. AL seems to be hiding something. What he's hiding, it's hard to tell. I don't think he was involved in Suzy's disappearance (at least, I don't YET) but he knows more than he's telling about *something*.

For my money, he's anxious not to be challenged about

• why he said SL lost her stuff on Friday when in fact it can only have been Sunday,
• why he claimed they spoke by phone on Sunday when they could have done so any time that day,
• why she ghosted him the whole weekend when the pair of them ought to have been gagging for it,
• whether DL had ever asked him to lie to protect SJL's reputation, and
• if he was aware he'd been Cuck of the Walk 1986 as SJL carried on with at least three other blokes.

DV immediately bringing up his relationship with SJL tells him this is not going to be one of those deferential conversations where we all agree it was Cannan. It's a big red flag that all this might be about to come up - and what's in it for AL to discuss it?

 

[Salah11]

The fake diary entry makes zero sense. From all accounts a model employee and there is zero reason to believe she would risk her job to go and pick up her diary at a pub that’s literally on her doorstep.

Moo

 

[WestLondoner]

Unless she needed it back immediately. It would contain contact numbers not obtainable except directly. If she was trying to flog a house to the head of the German gilts desk at Dean Witter, that number's not in the phone book.

If that were so, if there was a work contact she needed to call, she could in theory probably have said so, and legitimately asked to run and get the diary. The pushback however would have been "why are you keeping Sturgis contacts in a personal diary", or "why aren't this guy's details in our database?" So the idea that she urgently needed a personal number seems credible. IMO.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

I'm now on Chapter 16. It has been questioned why Suzy would have taken a client to 123SR when that wasn't a property she had ever dealt with before, and when there was no appointment for a viewing.

But NH mentions that making a sale was very competitive, and that he and Suzy had argued on the day she disappeared about another property they both wanted to sell. Was NH trying to sell 123SR? Although she hadn't dealt with that property previously, could Suzy have taken a client there at the last minute, hoping to snatch the sale for herself?

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

The details about lunchtime on July 28, with Suzy left sitting at her desk when everyone else was out having fun, definitely increases the chance that she just said, "To hell with it," and wrote a fake appointment in her diary as an excuse to leave.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

At the end of Chapter 2 of DV's book, it says her work colleagues reported her missing at 6:45PM after she failed to turn up for a 6:00PM viewing appointment. But hadn't she also supposedly made an appointment to pick up her lost belongings at the PoW at 6:00PM?

Would Suzy have made two appointments for 6:00PM?!?

 

[Terryb808]

One factor to add to WestLondoner’s statistics is that some people kill once and never again.
I think this is the case with Suzy, on this basis it’s certainly not JC.
That someone killed in an act of rage, and probably had someone help him cover up. This someone is loyal beyond reproach and will never give the killer away.

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

I'm told by my family (who admittedly may be biased) that I'm good at reading people and judging their character. I know it's only words on a screen, but reading DV's book it seems like *everybody* who knew Suzy is hiding something.

Whether it's knowledge of Suzy's private life, or something they're hiding about themselves. I won't say they're lying, but IMO they're definitely obfuscating and omitting. After close to 40 years, with both of Suzy's parents dead, it seems a little pointless to cover things up.

 

[Salah11]

I'm told by my family (who admittedly may be biased) that I'm good at reading people and judging their character. I know it's only words on a screen, but reading DV's book it seems like *everybody* who knew Suzy is hiding something.

Whether it's knowledge of Suzy's private life, or something they're hiding about themselves. I won't say they're lying, but IMO they're definitely obfuscating and omitting. After close to 40 years, with both of Suzy's parents dead, it seems a little pointless to cover things up.

Yep DV book makes a lot of people look suspicious in the book. Even her work colleges seem to be hiding stuff imo

 

[Interested_But_Confused]

The stories in DV's book about DL are deeply concerning. Smashing a soup bowl full of hot soup over PL's head, deliberating breaking up Suzy and another daughter's relationships, her attempt to control everything and badmouth anyone who didn't do what she wanted... she sounds downright abusive by today's standards. Physically, verbally, and emotionally.

I don't actually think DL had anything to do with Suzy's disappearance. I'm not suggesting she did. But I also won't be surprised if one day it turns out she did.