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.
I would like to see the original diary entry you quote. It was said in the AS book that SJL had the desk nearest the window because she was the most attractive female, but she wasn't exactly spotlighted and sat sideways on. Even if what you quote comes from her family, I would still like other evidence. Looking at photos of Sturgis - as seen in the 1986 Crimewatch reconstruction - most of the staff seem quite visible. I don't imagine SJL would have simply put up with her desk if she didn't like it. And chivalry was (and still is) a formidable force. She could have moved.
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