UK UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #2

[asyousay]

With this second viewing did the police take all the keys that Sturgis had for “Stevenage Road” and do searches inside?!

 

[WestLondoner]

LOL, who can tell? Maybe she was an expert lockpicker, a sort of a female Raffles character, who had a secret life burgling houses and didn't need keys to conduct viewings?

 

[Terryb808]

With this second viewing did the police take all the keys that Sturgis had for “Stevenage Road” and do searches inside?!

The Met are just on it now, taken 36 years, but they manage it in the end. DV is next up?

 

[Crusader21]

From memory, there was a team of 'civilian assessors' that looked afresh at all avalable evidence from the original investigation team, either prior to or as part of the year 2000 police review (led by Dickey).

Yet (I assuming), they too backed Mr Kipper / JC as the person responsible .....

 

[Terryb808]

From memory, there was a team of 'civilian assessors' that looked afresh at all avalable evidence from the original investigation team, either prior to or as part of the year 2000 police review (led by Dickey).

Yet (I assuming), they too backed Mr Kipper / JC as the person responsible .....

Looking at the general culture within the Met at the time I don’t think any independent group would be allowed to come up with anything except JC did it. Especially if Dickey had any say in it.

 

[WestLondoner]

I could be thinking of a different reinvestigation, but I thought the terms of reference in 2000 were to either incriminate or eliminate JC. That's not actually a reinvestigation worthy of the name - it began by assuming its conclusion.

As there's no evidence JC was ever near Fulham, there was no prospect of incriminating him. As the police didn't check his alibi until 2000, by which time those who'd provided it were all dead, there was no prospect of eliminating him, either. So the police told the CPS anyway that JC did it, and the CPS told the police to stroll on.

We may disagree with DV's conclusion, but you can't really fault how he's gone about this. He's identified a number of places SJL could have been going - Shorrolds, home to get her tennis stuff, or the PoW. He's methodically eliminated the first two, meaning the one that's left is the PoW.

Furthermore, it looks circumstantially as though the entire police-accepted narrative re the PoW relies on the statements of someone who may have been the only person at the PoW that afternoon, if that is where SJL actually went. If so, he should have been considered a suspect from the outset until eliminated by a search of hiding places to which CV had access. In 1986 it would have been ten minutes' work for one dog.

Because of that and because it has never been searched, you eliminate the PoW next. If she did come to harm there, it is conceivable that it was too difficult to move her, so she might still be there. It's not too late.

It's bizarre. Why would the police search Shorrolds and her home, but not the other place they knew she was headed?

 

[Terryb808]

I could be thinking of a different reinvestigation, but I thought the terms of reference in 2000 were to either incriminate or eliminate JC. That's not actually a reinvestigation worthy of the name - it began by assuming its conclusion.

As there's no evidence JC was ever near Fulham, there was no prospect of incriminating him. As the police didn't check his alibi until 2000, by which time those who'd provided it were all dead, there was no prospect of eliminating him, either. So the police told the CPS anyway that JC did it, and the CPS told the police to stroll on.

We may disagree with DV's conclusion, but you can't really fault how he's gone about this. He's identified a number of places SJL could have been going - Shorrolds, home to get her tennis stuff, or the PoW. He's methodically eliminated the first two, meaning the one that's left is the PoW.

Furthermore, it looks circumstantially as though the entire police-accepted narrative re the PoW relies on the statements of someone who may have been the only person at the PoW that afternoon, if that is where SJL actually went. If so, he should have been considered a suspect from the outset until eliminated by a search of hiding places to which CV had access. In 1986 it would have been ten minutes' work for one dog.

Because of that and because it has never been searched, you eliminate the PoW next. If she did come to harm there, it is conceivable that it was too difficult to move her, so she might still be there. It's not too late.

It's bizarre. Why would the police search Shorrolds and her home, but not the other place they knew she was headed?

Agree, this really bugs me because pure logic and deduction (which detectives are supposed to use) dictate this should happen.
It’s so starkly obvious that this has been overlooked and not just by the Met at the time, but also the independent review that was supposed to highlight areas that needed to be looked at.
And today 36 years on this one location continues to be ignored, I really hate “if I ignore it long enough it’ll go away attitude”.
I find this frustrating because my background is in forensics and you can’t ignore anything at all. If you do and you go to court another expert will pick this up and it could sink a CPS case.
I’m glad I don’t do this anymore, it’s nice being able to pick what you want to do.

 

[WestLondoner]

I find this frustrating because my background is in forensics and you can’t ignore anything at all. If you do and you go to court another expert will pick this up

100%.

My background has included expert witness work in commercial litigation and being a criminal trial witness. In each case you simply cannot leave this sort of point unresolved. A classic is the expert witness report where the executive summary is not based verbatim on copy-pasted text from the main body of the report. This is an absolute gift to the opposition, because you can then say Hang on, the so-called summary includes stuff not in the main body - so it's not a summary at all, is it? Did you form your opinion and write it first, and then decide what to pad it out with? Is there some analysis that went on between the main body and the exec sum that you haven't included? What else haven't you included?

You could do the same here to the police really. Why did you search Shorrolds, her flat, and 123 Stevenage Road, but not the PoW? Why did you assume she had the keys? Why did you only ask for witnesses in Shorrolds and nowhere else? Why do you attach weight to supposed witness sightings 14 years after the fact? Why didn't you establish who knew she had lost stuff at the PoW?

Shambles really...

 

[Terryb808]

100%.

My background has included expert witness work in commercial litigation and being a criminal trial witness. In each case you simply cannot leave this sort of point unresolved. A classic is the expert witness report where the executive summary is not based verbatim on copy-pasted text from the main body of the report. This is an absolute gift to the opposition, because you can then say Hang on, the so-called summary includes stuff not in the main body - so it's not a summary at all, is it? Did you form your opinion and write it first, and then decide what to pad it out with? Is there some analysis that went on between the main body and the exec sum that you haven't included? What else haven't you included?

You could do the same here to the police really. Why did you search Shorrolds, her flat, and 123 Stevenage Road, but not the PoW? Why did you assume she had the keys? Why did you only ask for witnesses in Shorrolds and nowhere else? Why do you attach weight to supposed witness sightings 14 years after the fact? Why didn't you establish who knew she had lost stuff at the PoW?

Shambles really...

Like minds.

When I look at a case I always avoid books and try to get as much fact / witness accounts as possible and from this form an opinion.

In this case I read AS’s book because it had received much praise for being accurate and being written close to the actual event.

My immediate thought was of SJL’s lost things, and the PoW. It’s very hard not to go that way because it’s one of a couple of options open to you.

Above all I agree with DV regards following the timeline, this is good practice and I struggle to understand why the Met detectives of the day didn’t do the same.
AS expressed his concerns (while including the caveat “blatantly honest”) in his book.

You have to ask yourself was it just AS’s opinion or did one of the Met detectives plant that thought.
If it was a detective then his suspicions went unheard or ignored and are still being ignored today.

 

[WestLondoner]

Incidentally the price of AS' book has now subsided to a more realistic £10 to £12. Just as well because I never got a reply from the publisher to my mail suggesting they put it out on Kindle.

 

[Terryb808]

Incidentally the price of AS' book has now subsided to a more realistic £10 to £12. Just as well because I never got a reply from the publisher to my mail suggesting they put it out on Kindle.

I paid a lot more for my copy, the price drop is good and should allow those with a new interest in the case to get a copy.

I understand that AS suffered as a result of this book, so it’s unlikely that it would be reprinted or a Kindle version made available.

Having spent almost 3 years on this case and received an incredible amount of help from like minded people it’s a shame our collective knowledge won’t be used to solve the case.

 

[WestLondoner]

Until about a year or two ago ago all I really knew about SJL's disappearance was that the plod thought JC had done it, and that the CPS disagreed.

What I read in the press and elsewhere, however, simply emphasised the thinness of the police case: it rests entirely on JC's supposed likeness to "Mr Kipper". Some fringe nutter would suggest something obviously crazy, like Jimmy Savile had done it or Fred West's brother had done it. I'd realise that actually, the case against any of them wasn't any weaker than the police case against JC. They might have done it; they might have been in the area; they might have known SJL; it's the kind of thing they'd probably do; and so on. Now and then there'd be another search of JC-related territory announced, and nothing would be found.

So my interest in this was rekindled when DV first indicated, a few years ago, that he thought he'd solved the case and had identified a living perp. I bought his book and was initially a bit mystified: SJL intended to go to the PoW, she never went there, so she died there and is still hidden there - eh? How did she get there? Who is DV saying did it?

From discussing it here, it's been possible to work out what DV's suggesting, necessarily between the lines. There are a couple of places SJL could have been heading, and we can eliminate all of them bar the PoW. So as it was possible for her to go there unobserved and be hidden there, it needs searching, which should have been done routinely in 1986.

The fact that DV has heavily anonymised CV (I didn't know he'd done that until I learnt it here), that CV's story apparently changed between 1986 and 1987, that he may have been the only person who knew when SJL was coming and the only person there when she did, and that his ex-partner appears still to be scared of him 30 years on, are huge red flags.

It also seems clear that if, alternatively, CV's account of phone calls was actually accurate - as opposed to just chaff that he later thought he'd better introduce, so as to confuse the police - then there are a couple of other people whose movements and associations need to be understood.

So between AS, DV and the discussion here, on balance I think DV is right and she could be at the PoW or on the adjacent embankment. Inferentially, this would be because she was attacked and killed by CV, possibly as she struggled.

This requires CV to be the sort of person who assaults women while his partner has popped out, who kills and hides them to keep it quiet, and who then regains his composure and acts normal. This is a stretch, but people like this do exist and so it at least merits the search. The police appear not to think so and hence it appears likely to me that SJL's killer will get away with it.

 

[Terryb808]

Until about a year or two ago ago all I really knew about SJL's disappearance was that the plod thought JC had done it, and that the CPS disagreed.

What I read in the press and elsewhere, however, simply emphasised the thinness of the police case: it rests entirely on JC's supposed likeness to "Mr Kipper". Some fringe nutter would suggest something obviously crazy, like Jimmy Savile had done it or Fred West's brother had done it. I'd realise that actually, the case against any of them wasn't any weaker than the police case against JC. They might have done it; they might have been in the area; they might have known SJL; it's the kind of thing they'd probably do; and so on. Now and then there'd be another search of JC-related territory announced, and nothing would be found.

So my interest in this was rekindled when DV first indicated, a few years ago, that he thought he'd solved the case and had identified a living perp. I bought his book and was initially a bit mystified: SJL intended to go to the PoW, she never went there, so she died there and is still hidden there - eh? How did she get there? Who is DV saying did it?

From discussing it here, it's been possible to work out what DV's suggesting, necessarily between the lines. There are a couple of places SJL could have been heading, and we can eliminate all of them bar the PoW. So as it was possible for her to go there unobserved and be hidden there, it needs searching, which should have been done routinely in 1986.

The fact that DV has heavily anonymised CV (I didn't know he'd done that until I learnt it here), that CV's story apparently changed between 1986 and 1987, that he may have been the only person who knew when SJL was coming and the only person there when she did, and that his ex-partner appears still to be scared of him 30 years on, are huge red flags.

It also seems clear that if, alternatively, CV's account of phone calls was actually accurate - as opposed to just chaff that he later thought he'd better introduce, so as to confuse the police - then there are a couple of other people whose movements and associations need to be understood.

So between AS, DV and the discussion here, on balance I think DV is right and she could be at the PoW or on the adjacent embankment. Inferentially, this would be because she was attacked and killed by CV, possibly as she struggled.

This requires CV to be the sort of person who assaults women while his partner has popped out, who kills and hides them to keep it quiet, and who then regains his composure and acts normal. This is a stretch, but people like this do exist and so it at least merits the search. The police appear not to think so and hence it appears likely to me that SJL's killer will get away with it.

I hope DV is right as the alternatives offer little hope of finding SJL.
One thing CV said (either according to AS or DV was that he was surprised at how quickly the police acted, saying “after all she’s an adult and not a child”.
This seemed a strange comment for someone of his age (29) to make. It’s not the sort of comment I’d expect someone unrelated to police procedures to say.
It’s one of those little things that jump out when you read them.
The other thing was a comment by DV who said he wondered what he’d been up to in the meantime?
I did take a look at disappearance within the area and yes, there’s been some, and at least two (from memory) remain unsolved.
As I’ve said in the past, if it’s not CV (IMO) we have two options:

1. Dickey is right and JC did it.
2. It’s far more complex and SJL’s disappearance was a pro job.

There is a case (be it again with only circumstantial evidence) for both these options.

 

[Crusader21]

I've followed this case as a 17 year old. I'd never seen the like of it before, it fascinating me then and still does.

Times when perhaps when I've over-thought what has happened. Did SL stumble in on a criminal gang meeting and seal her own fate? Is her killer known to the police and protected because he's a police informer on London's underworld? Was SL part of an estate money laundering outfit, which she fell foul of?

It's prob best to keep simple. Taking in what we know now, CV at the PoW appears very likely to be key in her disapperance. Why wasn't he ever taken to a police station and questioned?! There's no record of this. Never mind being arrested as a person of interest. A few visits from the police is all this man has ever reported to have had.

IMO sadly, police incompetence then and coupled with a head in the sand / refusal to deal with things policy now means that it's most likely, SLs disappearance will remain one of Britain's infamous mysteries ...

 

[Terryb808]

I've followed this case as a 17 year old. I'd never seen the like of it before, it fascinating me then and still does.

Times when perhaps when I've over-thought what has happened. Did SL stumble in on a criminal gang meeting and seal her own fate? Is her killer known to the police and protected because he's a police informer on London's underworld? Was SL part of an estate money laundering outfit, which she fell foul of?

It's prob best to keep simple. Taking in what we know now, CV at the PoW appears very likely to be key in her disapperance. Why wasn't he ever taken to a police station and questioned?! There's no record of this. Never mind being arrested as a person of interest. A few visits from the police is all this man has ever reported to have had.

IMO sadly, police incompetence then and coupled with a head in the sand / refusal to deal with things policy now means that it's most likely, SLs disappearance will remain one of Britain's infamous mysteries ...

As long as the Mets head is firmly in the sand I agree. Can’t see this changing unless A N OTHER finds SJL for them and force’s them to get on the case.
The CV did it scenario needs to be investigated and eliminated before the more complex possibilities are looked at.
Sadly if the Met can’t be bothered to look at the simple possibility, what do we have with anything more complex.

 

[WestLondoner]

100%. Before getting into conjectural explanations for which there's no evidence, first exhaust the obvious avenues of inquiry for which there is evidence. DV's point is surely that the PoW ought to have been searched as a matter of routine simply because she might have gone there.

 

[WestLondoner]

Telegraph has a piece today, on the anniversary of the Sarah Everard murder by a police officer, on the impression made by previous notorious murders. One is about SJL:

‘My world tilted on its axis’
Judith Woods

Suzy Lamplugh. Hers is a name that still has the power to give me a moment’s there-but-for-the-grace-of-God pause. I was 20 years old and at university in Edinburgh when she went missing – and the world as we knew it tilted on its axis.

This was slap-bang in the 1980s and my generation of students were revelling in a giddy sense of empowerment, faintly militant as we teamed our short skirts with Doc Marten’s. Margaret Thatcher was our first female prime minister, Madonna was our beacon of liberated womanhood, right-on alternative comedy ruled supreme. We knew the score. And then, suddenly we didn’t.

For us, Suzy Lamplugh’s sudden disappearance was all the more shocking because she wasn’t engaging in any of the behaviour we had been warned was risky. Not drinking shots. Not popping pills. Not swaying home late at night with a stranger she met in a nightclub.

This was a young professional doing her job, in daylight. Her body was never found, her grieving family never received answers or closure. The nationwide horror hammered home the vulnerability of simply being a woman in modern Britain.

Suzy Lamplugh – I’ve only ever used her full name as anything else seems weirdly presumptive – was reported missing on July 28 1986 after attending an appointment with someone calling himself ‘Mr Kipper’, to show him round a house in Shorrolds Road, Fulham.

She was never seen again. Police named a suspect, John Cannan, who was subsequently jailed for the abduction and murder of 29-year-old Shirley Banks just over a year later, but insufficient evidence meant he was never charged with her murder. Even when the case was reopened in the early 2000s no action was taken. He has always denied any involvement.

The Suzy Lamplugh Trust was established in December 1986 by her grieving parents, Paul and Diana, with a mission to raise awareness of personal safety. It has become the go-to authority for media comment and opened a Sarah Everard fundraising appeal after her murder.

Even 36 years after her fatal kidnapping, it’s no exaggeration to say the mention of Suzy Lamplugh’s name serves as the very worst kind of salutary reminder; namely that simply by being a woman you will always be a potential target.

What happened to her is still happening to women like Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa.

The truth is that any one of us - any one of our daughters or sisters or friends – can become a wrong-time, wrong-place victim without any provocation, without any inkling of the danger, without any hope of escape. That is the terrifying reality that we must live with every day.​

Although not a bad summary, it shows what DV is up against in trying to overturn the established narrative. It's assumed that there was a visit to Shorrolds; that there was a Mr Kipper; up pops JC's name again; missing as always is any suggestion of other possibilities; and there's no mention of DV's reinvestigation. Whoever did this, whether CV or someone else, they are being protected by the police, because it would be too embarrassing for the police to prosecute them now. Just insane.

 

[Terryb808]

Telegraph has a piece today, on the anniversary of the Sarah Everard murder by a police officer, on the impression made by previous notorious murders. One is about SJL:

‘My world tilted on its axis’
Judith Woods

Suzy Lamplugh. Hers is a name that still has the power to give me a moment’s there-but-for-the-grace-of-God pause. I was 20 years old and at university in Edinburgh when she went missing – and the world as we knew it tilted on its axis.

This was slap-bang in the 1980s and my generation of students were revelling in a giddy sense of empowerment, faintly militant as we teamed our short skirts with Doc Marten’s. Margaret Thatcher was our first female prime minister, Madonna was our beacon of liberated womanhood, right-on alternative comedy ruled supreme. We knew the score. And then, suddenly we didn’t.

For us, Suzy Lamplugh’s sudden disappearance was all the more shocking because she wasn’t engaging in any of the behaviour we had been warned was risky. Not drinking shots. Not popping pills. Not swaying home late at night with a stranger she met in a nightclub.

This was a young professional doing her job, in daylight. Her body was never found, her grieving family never received answers or closure. The nationwide horror hammered home the vulnerability of simply being a woman in modern Britain.

Suzy Lamplugh – I’ve only ever used her full name as anything else seems weirdly presumptive – was reported missing on July 28 1986 after attending an appointment with someone calling himself ‘Mr Kipper’, to show him round a house in Shorrolds Road, Fulham.

She was never seen again. Police named a suspect, John Cannan, who was subsequently jailed for the abduction and murder of 29-year-old Shirley Banks just over a year later, but insufficient evidence meant he was never charged with her murder. Even when the case was reopened in the early 2000s no action was taken. He has always denied any involvement.

The Suzy Lamplugh Trust was established in December 1986 by her grieving parents, Paul and Diana, with a mission to raise awareness of personal safety. It has become the go-to authority for media comment and opened a Sarah Everard fundraising appeal after her murder.

Even 36 years after her fatal kidnapping, it’s no exaggeration to say the mention of Suzy Lamplugh’s name serves as the very worst kind of salutary reminder; namely that simply by being a woman you will always be a potential target.

What happened to her is still happening to women like Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa.

The truth is that any one of us - any one of our daughters or sisters or friends – can become a wrong-time, wrong-place victim without any provocation, without any inkling of the danger, without any hope of escape. That is the terrifying reality that we must live with every day.​

Although not a bad summary, it shows what DV is up against in trying to overturn the established narrative. It's assumed that there was a visit to Shorrolds; that there was a Mr Kipper; up pops JC's name again; missing as always is any suggestion of other possibilities; and there's no mention of DV's reinvestigation. Whoever did this, whether CV or someone else, they are being protected by the police, because it would be too embarrassing for the police to prosecute them now. Just insane.

Well put and 100% correct.

 

[WestLondoner]

So my copy of the AS book arrived and I've re-read it. There was much I'd forgotten.

From the postscript, PL liked the first six chapters, but four days later took exception to it, demanded the return of all papers, and tried to suppress publication. It seems clear that what happened in those 4 days was that DL dyslexically managed to read the six chapters and objected to them; hence her husband's total volte face. The material she objected to, presumably, would have included the incident on the QE2 where SJL interrupted a card game by coming into the room and climbing into bed with one of the players; agreeing to what we'd now call a "FWB" arrangement; sleeping with a number of her men on the first date; and that she was four-timing AL with three other FWB exes just before she went missing. This is the stuff that was left in despite AS accommodating some of her demands for cuts, so one can only guess what was left out.

Otherwise: first off, HR is a totally, totally unreliable witness. He failed to identify the woman he says he saw, but according to AS, he assumed it was SJL because the police said she had been there. He then claimed to have seen her being bundled into a car before retracting this "exaggeration", or as we might say, "fabrication". This I knew but what I did not know was that he also IDed DR, the Belgian diamond dealer, as looking like Mr Kipper. AS notes that DR is short, podgy and 40-something, yet HR thought he was a dead ringer for "Mr Kipper", who was slim, well dressed and 30-odd. So according to the only witness who saw him, Mr Kipper was a slim, pudgy, 30-something in his 40s. So that's all clear then.

Several members of the public called in at the time to say the artist's impression of Mr Kipper looked a lot like MG. This is a point that's been made here many times. The police just laughed, apparently, at the suggestion that MG might have done it. It seems not to have occurred to them that maybe the callers weren't saying MG had done it, but that "Mr Kipper" looked like MG because that is who HR was describing!

The Stevenage sightings situation is even worse than it seems: a schoolboy said the car was there at midday - 40 minutes before SJL left the office. WJ thought the car she saw was silver, not white. It seems unavoidable that there was more than one car.

For the 37SR visit to have taken place followed by Stevenage, AS sets out what must have happened. "Mr Kipper" must have persuaded SJL to let him drive her there in her car (why?), supposedly to look at the Sturgis property there (without the keys to a second house?), parked in a hurry (why, if he's given her some spiel?), dragged her out across the driver's seat, and driven her away in another car. This was what 'James Galway' man described as 'a right ruck', but AS concedes that it's impossible to understand how 'James Galway man' noticed it, but the two BT workers did not. His sighting, related only at second-hand by the cabbie who dropped him off, is the only evidence SJL was ever in Stevenage Road.

Inferentially, the police seem only to have looked into SJL's background and contacts before she disappeared. It does not appear they noticed the bankruptcy of her close friend's husband eight days after she disappeared.

The whole story of CV's involvement is astonishing (AS uses CV's real name). The police relied entirely on his evidence in concluding that SJL never went to the PoW at all. Yet when his story changed a year later, they decided that his new story wasn't reliable after all. So they discarded it and continued to rely 100% on the the original. Nobody picked this up until DV did.

To me the best explanation of CV's story change is that in 1986, assuming the PoW was indeed where she met her end, his best bet was to act dumb and to say SJL had never turned up. By 1987 he realised, from reading the newspapers, that he had been gifted HR, the world's worst eyewitness, who had convinced the Keystone Cops 100% that she went to 37SR. This glorious, glorious bit of luck means that in 1987 he needed to make it clear he was nowhere near 37SR or her car. And he definitely wasn't 'James Galway' man near Stevenage Road - not me, officer. No way (did the police ever consider what he looked like? Did CV look like James Galway in 1986? DV has anonymised his name, so I assume also his appearance). So he made up a couple of phone calls that 'prove' he was at the PoW all day, and that he claimed to have mentioned a year before. Was that what CV was doing? Was he backdating his alibi by trying to get the police to believe they knew about it but they had bungled and lost the evidence?

The civilian reinvestigation was clearly as incompetent as the police initial investigation because they failed to notice the obvious significance of the PoW. They had SJL colleagues saying she intended to go there but they only had CV saying she never showed. If she showed up and only CV was there, well, he would say that, wouldn't he?

Nothing here undermines DV's hypothesis. Interestingly, if you think about it, if SJL did somehow take the keys to 37SR that doesn't prove she went there. If she did not have them, it does more or less prove that she didn't go. So DV's theory doesn't actually rely on the keys detail at all. In fact everything you need to be curious about the PoW is in there, if you're looking. We still don't have a motive for CV to harm her, unless he's some sort of sex criminal, with psychopath levels of detachment so he can switch the aggression on and off. Or, if the contents of SJL's diary were similar to the material that AS cut from the book, and CV read the diary, maybe he demanded sexual favours for its return? The only way to understand this is to search the locations DV suggests, so as to exonerate CV or incriminate him, at which point maybe we get an account of what happened and why.

Towards the end, AS describes another person as possibly involved but never charged. He gives no name but I wonder if that's the first reference to JC?

AS' main source is clearly the police because a/ he says so and b/ he has tacitly bought into a lot of their assumptions. The apocryphal story that SJL got her job at Sturgis by walking into a branch and being hired by MG is repeated, but we know this is not true. The claim that MG saw her take the keys is repeated, but we know this also isn't true, because AS elsewhere says he was at lunch. There is no real challenge of things the police inexplicably failed to do, such as ask for sightings of SJL elsewhere, search phone call logs to find out who spoke to whom when, and so on. Ultimately, and this is the main difference with DV's book, AS has no suggestions as to what else could have been done and hence no suggestions or hypothesis as to what might have happened to SJL.

 

[Konstantin]

Where does this narrative about a second viewing come from?

Who is saying there was a second viewing? What is that idea based on, evidentially? There can't be a house viewing without keys unless (a) the owner of the house is inside it and lets you in, which wasn't the case here or (b) the potential buyer just wants to look at the outside of a house which doesn't make sense.

It makes more sense for SJL's car to have been dumped there by someone involved in her disappearance after the event, to distance the car from where the disappearance or something else happened. Wherever that was, some time must have elapsed between SJL going missing/coming to harm and the car being removed from the scene and dumped so I can't believe that this occurred very soon after she left her office, and I think that the witness testimony of the lady living in Stevenage road is just mistaken.

If SJL allowed someone else to drive her car to Stevenage road with her inside it, then there were people around who would have seen her especially if she was forced out under duress, and no right minded kidnapper is going to do that with BT road workers right in front of him. Or in plain view of houses in broad daylight. It's more likely SJL drove somewhere, went inside somewhere, something happened to her there.

I don't believe in a complicated conspiracy of someone luring her to the POW or somewhere else, and CV caught up in it, if he is involved it's more likely SJL went there, something happened and he covered it up then a year later tried to put the police off the scent of thinking that SJL ever attended/muddy the waters about what happened to her by suggesting that mysterious people were phoning him about her. I don't believe two trusted officers forgot his testimony a year before and lost a piece of paper with vital evidence on it. Either he's a bit of a mess and very muddled in his mind, or he's a liar trying to distance himself from events.