UK UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 July 1986

[asyousay]

If you look at the page from Suzy's diary that day she had an appointment at 6pm so wouldn't be able to get to the pub at that particular time.

Also CV did say that he'd taken a call from Suzy around lunchtime to say that she'd be there before they opened, but of course never turned up.

I agree though that there is no real evidence to say that Suzy was going to the pub at 12.45 that day.

In fact after MG had gone to lunch I don't see as to why Suzy would not just mention it to NH or SF that she was going to the pub to collect her things, why would she keep it a secret from them?

It seems super coincidental that she makes up a “fake appointment” and then is murdered.


The police believe she went to SR so what is the evidence for that?


Is is coincidental that a man and a women were seen out the the front of the house that day or was that really her?!

One set of keys we are told yet why did nobody in the office report this to the police that day or the days after?!

it’s not rocket science is it that the keys were at the office and yet supposedly Suzy was viewing that property. So why did not one person in that office stand up and say “ well the keys are here so she couldn’t of been showing the property”. How many brain dead idiots were in the office that not one person couldn’t realize that and speak up?!

 

[WiseOwl]

Yes I don’t like the keys mystery at all and how could the police not suss this off the bat?


I will admit I wonder how truthful the book is as something’s don’t add up.


Then add in the Police being so dismissive about the evidence as well.

MOO

Same here, we get the story from AS's book of MG going to Shorrolds Road that afternoon and actually entering the property, as well as speaking to HR.

It's amazing that no-one at the time questioned him about it, or why he didn't come forward with the information to the police that he'd found the keys.

This is how I picture MG's afternoon went when he returned to the office from the Crocodile Tears:

MG returns to the office after his lunch to find that one of his staff is missing. She should be at a property at 12.45 but doesn't return to the office. He makes some phone calls but no-one has seen Suzy, so he visits the property in Shorrolds Road, knocks on the door and shouts Suzy's name but to no avail.

He returns to the office and at some point he finds the keys in the office, so what crosses his mind when he finds them? That Suzy didn't in fact go to a viewing at Shorrolds Road that day because he now has the keys to the property in his hand.

At this point he hasn't yet informed the police of Suzy's disappearance so he decides to go to the property for a second time and looks inside, again no sign of Suzy but he would know that she wouldn't be there because he has the only set of keys.

He eventually phones the police at 6.45 pm to report Suzy missing. The question is, what exactly did he tell them? It doesn't appear that he mentioned the problem of the keys because no mention of them was ever recorded in those early days of Suzy's disappearance.

What could his reason be for not informing them of the keys situation?

As @asyousay has said, something just doesn't add up.

 

[Lady Stoddart-West]

For me, this important point more or less torpedoes CV as any sort of suspect. It is juuuuuuust about possible that he did the right thing, having found a random female's stuff; and that then, when the random female in question turned up and he got an eyeful of her, he was overcome with lust and decided to do her a bad turn instead of a good one. Even though her colleagues probably, the bank certainly, and others at the pub knew where she'd gone.

Trouble is, as well as doing this off the cuff, he also had the world's best hiding place ready to hand - what a stroke of luck. And when quizzed by the plod, he needlessly volunteered two phone calls, guaranteed to attract their intense curiosity. Now why would he do that? Wouldn't he just say Yes, she phoned around lunchtime and said she'd be over later, but she never came.

Incidentally, some of the accounts suggest that she didn't go to the pub at lunchtime at all, because on the phone she said she'd go over there later. It seems highly likely to me that this was for the benefit of / intended to be overheard by her office colleagues. Her story to them, via her diary, was that she was going to a viewing. So she couldn't very well say anything else on the phone to the pub. Hence she tells the pub later or after work but heads right over.



I would say not, but DV dwells on a previous case where a killer was interviewed downstairs with his victim's body under his bed upstairs - so who knows.



Yes, I'd guess more of a contacts diary really. But she did keep a diary in which she wrote “The company puts me in the window desk, as the most attractive female. That’s how it is, the most attractive female on display for any man to see.” Was that in a pocket diary or a third one, a larger private diary perhaps? If a pocket diary it would not have been in the one the police retrieved, because she was hired in 1985.

The slightly chilling thing about this diary is that we can probably infer that her killer is not in it. If he were, he'd presumably want the diary to disappear when she did.

I think DV is right that she went off on this direction and not to 37SR, but where I part company from him is his claim that she went to the PoW and died there. It seems more likely to me that she went to do her other errand - retrieving her tennis kit so she could go straight to a game at 7pm following a viewing at 6pm. As has been pointed above, she could have retrieved her diary at any time that evening, but if she kept her 6pm viewing appointment she'd have missed her 7pm tennis. If you were her and pushed for time at lunchtime wouldn't you go home as first priority and to the pub only if there was time? DV notes that he tennis stuff was found by the police at home, so she never went there. But her other stuff was found by the police at the pub, so by the same logic she didn't go there.

There is something DV has left out that he can't tell us.

The calls at lunchtime give CV a clear alibi, he was clearly there all afternoon.

Same here, we get the story from AS's book of MG going to Shorrolds Road that afternoon and actually entering the property, as well as speaking to HR.

It's amazing that no-one at the time questioned him about it, or why he didn't come forward with the information to the police that he'd found the keys.

This is how I picture MG's afternoon went when he returned to the office from the Crocodile Tears:

MG returns to the office after his lunch to find that one of his staff is missing. She should be at a property at 12.45 but doesn't return to the office. He makes some phone calls but no-one has seen Suzy, so he visits the property in Shorrolds Road, knocks on the door and shouts Suzy's name but to no avail.

He returns to the office and at some point he finds the keys in the office, so what crosses his mind when he finds them? That Suzy didn't in fact go to a viewing at Shorrolds Road that day because he now has the keys to the property in his hand.

At this point he hasn't yet informed the police of Suzy's disappearance so he decides to go to the property for a second time and looks inside, again no sign of Suzy but he would know that she wouldn't be there because he has the only set of keys.

He eventually phones the police at 6.45 pm to report Suzy missing. The question is, what exactly did he tell them? It doesn't appear that he mentioned the problem of the keys because no mention of them was ever recorded in those early days of Suzy's disappearance.

What could his reason be for not informing them of the keys situation?

As @asyousay has said, something just doesn't add up.

DV says that everyone in the rush and panic assumed there must have been two sets of keys AND, as quickly, HR came forward and said he'd seen a couple outside etc and someone bundled into a van, well clearly, she must have gone there. It was all in her diary too. Things snowballed. If a mistake on the keys was made, well, irrelevant, she went there and that was that. There was clear evidence as everyone saw it.

 

[Crusader21]

So the police recovered the diary, postcard and chequebook from CV at the PoW and viewed their contents for clues as to SLs whereabouts.

Then these three items would have been handed back to the SL family where most probably, they are still retained today.

You'd have thought that someone with DVs background looking afresh in to the SL Mystery, would have asked to see these items.

I wonder did he contact the family?

 

[Terryb808]

So the police recovered the diary, postcard and chequebook from CV at the PoW and viewed their contents for clues as to SLs whereabouts.

Then these three items would have been handed back to the SL family where most probably, they are still retained today.

You'd have thought that someone with DVs background looking afresh in to the SL Mystery, would have asked to see these items.

I wonder did he contact the family?

I get the impression that DV is not a favourite with the remaining Lamplugh family and would not have been given access to these items.
IMO these lost items hold the key to what happened to SJL, and that’s particularly true if they contain nothing contentious.

 

[Crusader21]

I get the impression that DV is not a favourite with the remaining Lamplugh family and would not have been given access to these items.

I agree with you Terry, yet it does seem odd. You'd think the family would co-operate to a certain degree, with almost anyone who is genuinely trying to locate SLs remains.

Also family backing may have forced the Met's hand in searching the PoW (as per DVs book).

Perhaps the family, dont agree with DVs take on events?

 

[WestLondoner]

I think DV's thought process is that having squabbled with her colleague NH that morning, SJL didn't feel like asking him any favours. If she had a viewing to attend, that would take precedence over whatever he had planned for lunch, so no favour needed. So off she goes, to a viewing, except DV thinks there was no viewing because there would have been one bunch of keys and they were still in the office.

The assumption that she did take the keys probably arose easily. First, everyone started by assuming the viewing was real. So of course she'd have taken the keys. Next, MG wasn't in when she left. He'd have remembered if she took some keys had he been there, but he wasn't. The police then reasonably assume that the keys that got them in were a spare set. By the time MG pieces together what's happened, everyone's bought into the inaccurate narrative and he's going to make himself and the police look like utter @rses if he mentions this now, especially after Crimewatch when the plod say on national television that they're still looking for the keys MG gave them.

So if she didn't go to 37SR, DV wonders, where did she go?

He's identified a couple of possibilities. One's the PoW further to the phone conversations. Another's her own flat, to collect the tennis gear (although if DL got this wrong, she left her tennis gear at home because she didn't in fact need it). There is another entry in her diary that day, though: "Wardo Road / bike contract". DV mentions this and can't fathom what it was about, except that one of the Herring brothers she was mates with lived in Wardo and another in Shorrolds. Wardo + Shorrolds + Herring = kipper = Mr Kipper. Among the places she could have gone, though, why isn't Wardo considered?

 

[WestLondoner]

What was in this pocket book? DV seems to suggest the police may know it was allegedly salacious. Was this 'secret diary' the source of what AS decided not to include in the book but unfortunately had to later disclose to family. NB: AS interviews etc.

I don't think we know - unless it's mentioned in the AS book. There are two types of diary we know about - the office desk diary and the pocket diary. Anything juicy wouldn't be in the first, and frankly I doubt there'd be room in the second, because think how small the sections are for each day.

From DV's book:

there was a steady stream of news stories which attempted to paint a picture of Suzy as being sexually promiscuous. The basis for these stories had been Suzy’s older personal diaries.

I'm guessing the pocket diary was either a bit bigger - A5 perhaps - or that there was yet a third diary or series thereof, the kind with undated blank pages and hence room for entries like “The company puts me in the window desk, as the most attractive female. That’s how it is, the most attractive female on display for any man to see.”

 

[WestLondoner]

I agree with you Terry, yet it does seem odd. You'd think the family would co-operate to a certain degree, with almost anyone who is genuinely trying to locate SLs remains.

Also family backing may have forced the Met's hand in searching the PoW (as per DVs book).

Perhaps the family, dont agree with DVs take on events?

It seems pretty clear DV hasn't seen the police files. ISTR he tried a FOIA request for them that was declined because it's a live investigation (they keep it live by namedropping JC every few years). SJL's diary would therefore probably be in police hands still, as evidence.

The implication of his conversation with SR, the Met officer currently in charge, is that there isn't anything salacious in what they have. This section, page 240 on, is actually quite interesting on a reread:

Caroline began by disputing the numerous false eyewitness accounts which claimed to have seen Suzy at 37 Shorrolds Road on the day she had gone missing.

none of the three eyewitnesses the police had interviewed in 1986 had ever positively identified a woman they claimed to have seen as being Suzy.

AC had claimed to us 'It [her car] was sitting unlocked, close to or just outside one of the addresses that they’d viewed.’ ...Both SR and AC believed there was a second house viewing the day Suzy had gone missing, and that this viewing had been where Suzy’s car had been abandoned

MG...had originally said in his witness statement that he had gone to 37 Shorrolds Road looking for Suzy when he’d discovered the entry in her diary after she’d gone missing. MG’s assumption had been, at the time, that the key was missing, and that Suzy must have had it with her.

With the police accepting we were right about the witnesses, and right about the key, this meant
that the ‘Mr Kipper’ diary entry and the Shorrolds Road appointment were fictitious.

'...you need a proper motive. You need a proper identification that she actually attended the pub that day.’ SR lowered his voice. ‘You’ve got to prove that actually there’s something salacious in her diary.’

Something we're perhaps apt to forget is that DV probably had both a maximum word count and a publishing deadline to hit. Either might explain why stuff that he has concluded leads nowhere does not get a mention.

 

[WiseOwl]

I agree with you Terry, yet it does seem odd. You'd think the family would co-operate to a certain degree, with almost anyone who is genuinely trying to locate SLs remains.

Also family backing may have forced the Met's hand in searching the PoW (as per DVs book).

Perhaps the family, dont agree with DVs take on events?

Suzy's brother is now the spokesperson for the Lamplugh family.

From what I have read the family are still with the police on the narrative that JC is the person responsible for Suzy's abduction.

Earlier on this year he did ask the police to question SW, the Suffolk strangler, about the disappearance.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/family-woman-who-vanished-35-24710984

 

[asyousay]

You have to wonder if Suzy attracted a odd ball from being in the office front window on show daily?


I still think the items she lost are personal items unlike stealing a wallet. So either a jealous boyfriend took them to check out what she was up to or she had a unsavory type into her and a busy pub is the perfect time to take those items. IMO

 

[WestLondoner]

From what I have read the family are still with the police on the narrative that JC is the person responsible for Suzy's abduction.

It's more that the police are still with the media and the family's narrative that it was JC! - that's where the idea came from. The police "reinvestigations" were no such thing as, far from trying to find out who did it, they set out (and failed) to prove that JC did it.

 

[asyousay]

It's more that the police are still with the media and the family's narrative that it was JC! - that's where the idea came from. The police "reinvestigations" were no such thing as, far from trying to find out who did it, they set out (and failed) to prove that JC did it.

to be honest though you can’t blame the family who have been living with this for over 3 decades. It must be absolutely exhausting to have this dark cloud over the family so in a way it may help them with the healing to think it’s solved.


MOO

 

[Konstantin]

It seems pretty clear DV hasn't seen the police files. ISTR he tried a FOIA request for them that was declined because it's a live investigation (they keep it live by namedropping JC every few years). SJL's diary would therefore probably be in police hands still, as evidence.

The implication of his conversation with SR, the Met officer currently in charge, is that there isn't anything salacious in what they have. This section, page 240 on, is actually quite interesting on a reread:

Caroline began by disputing the numerous false eyewitness accounts which claimed to have seen Suzy at 37 Shorrolds Road on the day she had gone missing.

none of the three eyewitnesses the police had interviewed in 1986 had ever positively identified a woman they claimed to have seen as being Suzy.

AC had claimed to us 'It [her car] was sitting unlocked, close to or just outside one of the addresses that they’d viewed.’ ...Both SR and AC believed there was a second house viewing the day Suzy had gone missing, and that this viewing had been where Suzy’s car had been abandoned

MG...had originally said in his witness statement that he had gone to 37 Shorrolds Road looking for Suzy when he’d discovered the entry in her diary after she’d gone missing. MG’s assumption had been, at the time, that the key was missing, and that Suzy must have had it with her.

With the police accepting we were right about the witnesses, and right about the key, this meant
that the ‘Mr Kipper’ diary entry and the Shorrolds Road appointment were fictitious.

'...you need a proper motive. You need a proper identification that she actually attended the pub that day.’ SR lowered his voice. ‘You’ve got to prove that actually there’s something salacious in her diary.’

Something we're perhaps apt to forget is that DV probably had both a maximum word count and a publishing deadline to hit. Either might explain why stuff that he has concluded leads nowhere does not get a mention.

I find some of this quite confusing.

If there was a second house viewing that day, then which house? Were more keys missing? Without evidence she took more keys or forensic evidence of her presence in another Sturgis property on Stevenage Road then how can this assumption even be made?

The state of SJLs abandoned car suggests it was driven there by a male after somethign happened to SJL not that she and AN Other Kipper drove together and somehow in broad daylight she was moved to another vehicle in front of witnesses and her car just left like that.

When did MG say his assumption at the time was that hte key was missing? I dont remember that being in the AS book.

DId the police accept DV is right about the key? I don't see how you can prove that either way 30 years on to be honest unless there is actual documentation in the form of statements in the oroginal police file.

The police read her diary, they went to the pub to collect it to see what it contained so they KNOW what it contains and that would be on record, i doubt the diary, which is a piece of evidence would be returned to her family.

 

[WiseOwl]

You have to wonder if Suzy attracted a odd ball from being in the office front window on show daily?


I still think the items she lost are personal items unlike stealing a wallet. So either a jealous boyfriend took them to check out what she was up to or she had a unsavory type into her and a busy pub is the perfect time to take those items. IMO

I think you might have just solved the mystery of how the missing items came to be found outside the PoW pub on the Friday night (I say Friday as opposed to Sunday as I'm going with AS's book on this one).

Who was Suzy out with that night? Someone who might be jealous of a new man in her life? Someone who might have wanted a nose in her diary to see what she had been up to with this new bloke.

Maybe they took their chance and took these items out of Suzy's bag while she went to the loo? And later on chucked these things outside the pub after leaving, making it look like the items had fallen out of her bag?

Has the answer been under our noses all the time?

 

[sian morris]

I find some of this quite confusing.

If there was a second house viewing that day, then which house? Were more keys missing? Without evidence she took more keys or forensic evidence of her presence in another Sturgis property on Stevenage Road then how can this assumption even be made?

The state of SJLs abandoned car suggests it was driven there by a male after somethign happened to SJL not that she and AN Other Kipper drove together and somehow in broad daylight she was moved to another vehicle in front of witnesses and her car just left like that.

When did MG say his assumption at the time was that hte key was missing? I dont remember that being in the AS book.

DId the police accept DV is right about the key? I don't see how you can prove that either way 30 years on to be honest unless there is actual documentation in the form of statements in the oroginal police file.

The police read her diary, they went to the pub to collect it to see what it contained so they KNOW what it contains and that would be on record, i doubt the diary, which is a piece of evidence would be returned to her family.

Indeed, AS states that MG 'remembered S coming behind his desk to pick up the keys...attached to the large and distinctive yellow Sturgis key fob.'

 

[sian morris]

Indeed, AS states that MG 'remembered S coming behind his desk to pick up the keys...attached to the large and distinctive yellow Sturgis key fob.'

AS page 6

 

[WestLondoner]

Indeed, AS states that MG 'remembered S coming behind his desk to pick up the keys...attached to the large and distinctive yellow Sturgis key fob.'

Except he can't have remembered that, as he had already gone to lunch.

 

[sian morris]

Except he can't have remembered that, as he had already gone to lunch.

We're going round in circles

 

[WiseOwl]

We're going round in circles

Does AS's book cover what happened in the Sturgis office that morning? Does it mention MG going for an early lunch with his boss?