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

[WestLondoner]

As Konstantin points out above, what undermines the idea of her being carjacked is that SJL herself didn't know where her car was parked, and had to ask!

The trouble with any scenario in which CV covers up a mere horrible accident is that nobody in their right mind would. You'd call 999 - unless the nature of the injuries, state of her clothing etc made it obvious that the "accident" happened while she was being assaulted.

It's not obvious that he would illegally detain or restrain her by force simply because a mystery caller asked him to. Wouldn't an obvious rejoinder be 'Sorry, how am I supposed to "keep her here", exactly? I can tell her you've called, if that's what you mean?'

Also - rereading DV's interview with NH and MG, they mention that the Fulham office was very busy and was known to sell 50 to 60 properties per month. Elsewhere it is said that Sturgis as a whole shifted 1,500 a year. It seems unlikely that Fulham branch did 60 sales a month every month, because they'd then be doing 50% of the chain's volume all by themselves, while 7 or 8 other branches did not a lot. But if Fulham did 400 or so a year, and these were divided among four negotiators, that's about 100 each per year, or 8 per month if evenly spread.

This, to my mind, supports the previous conjecture we discussed, that SJL's much-mentioned imminent £3,000 commission was exactly that. It was her ordinary estate agent's commission on a million's worth of sales that had just become payable. And payday was later that week. If she was doing 100 properties a year at £100,000, she'd make £30,000 a year in commission, based on what a friend of mine was paid at the same time (15% 0f the agency's 2%). Her £3,000 was probably nothing more mysterious than her share of the proceeds of ten or twelve sales at £80k to £100k each.

 

[WestLondoner]

A fun thing we could do, now that with DV's invaluable input we know who killed SJL and where she is, is propose famous people who look like Mr Kipper.

Inspired by a comment on the talk page of the Wikipedia article about her, I'd like to propose that Mr Kipper in fact resembles Warren Cann, the drummer out of Ultravox.
http://mikedolbear.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Warren-Cann-1.jpg

Come on, that resemblance is uncanny. And I bet he had a BMW as well.

 

[Terryb808]

As Konstantin points out above, what undermines the idea of her being carjacked is that SJL herself didn't know where her car was parked, and had to ask!

The trouble with any scenario in which CV covers up a mere horrible accident is that nobody in their right mind would. You'd call 999 - unless the nature of the injuries, state of her clothing etc made it obvious that the "accident" happened while she was being assaulted.

It's not obvious that he would illegally detain or restrain her by force simply because a mystery caller asked him to. Wouldn't an obvious rejoinder be 'Sorry, how am I supposed to "keep her here", exactly? I can tell her you've called, if that's what you mean?'

Also - rereading DV's interview with NH and MG, they mention that the Fulham office was very busy and was known to sell 50 to 60 properties per month. Elsewhere it is said that Sturgis as a whole shifted 1,500 a year. It seems unlikely that Fulham branch did 60 sales a month every month, because they'd then be doing 50% of the chain's volume all by themselves, while 7 or 8 other branches did not a lot. But if Fulham did 400 or so a year, and these were divided among four negotiators, that's about 100 each per year, or 8 per month if evenly spread.

This, to my mind, supports the previous conjecture we discussed, that SJL's much-mentioned imminent £3,000 commission was exactly that. It was her ordinary estate agent's commission on a million's worth of sales that had just become payable. And payday was later that week. If she was doing 100 properties a year at £100,000, she'd make £30,000 a year in commission, based on what a friend of mine was paid at the same time (15% 0f the agency's 2%). Her £3,000 was probably nothing more mysterious than her share of the proceeds of ten or twelve sales at £80k to £100k each.

Take your point about not knowing where her car was, but stalkers do just that and if determined enough would have followed her when she left the office.
Didn’t the Met say that SJL had so many partners that they couldn’t trace them all?
While there’s no evidence that she met JC, if she had she wouldn’t have broadcast it.
JC managed to seduce his female legal adviser who was (IMO) above his station. We’ve all ruled him out, said SJL wouldn’t have been interested, but he may just have been one of the entries in her diary and that’s what the Met have as evidence.

 

[Terryb808]

A fun thing we could do, now that with DV's invaluable input we know who killed SJL and where she is, is propose famous people who look like Mr Kipper.

Inspired by a comment on the talk page of the Wikipedia article about her, I'd like to propose that Mr Kipper in fact resembles Warren Cann, the drummer out of Ultravox.
http://mikedolbear.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/Warren-Cann-1.jpg

Come on, that resemblance is uncanny. And I bet he had a BMW as well.

John Travolta in Pulp Fiction?

 

[Konstantin]

Take your point about not knowing where her car was, but stalkers do just that and if determined enough would have followed her when she left the office.
Didn’t the Met say that SJL had so many partners that they couldn’t trace them all?
While there’s no evidence that she met JC, if she had she wouldn’t have broadcast it.
JC managed to seduce his female legal adviser who was (IMO) above his station. We’ve all ruled him out, said SJL wouldn’t have been interested, but he may just have been one of the entries in her diary and that’s what the Met have as evidence.

I reckon if they could prove a direct link between JC and SJL that would be enough to charge him.

The problem is there is nothing at all linking them apart from wishful thinking.

It's definitely true she could have been stalked by someone or she could have had a jealous ex or current on again off again partner who realised he wasn't the only one and confronted her. I think it's less likely that happened in this case because abducting SJL in broad daylight during her working day when she would be expected to be places is risky and I would argue probably unnecessary given that SJL was a young woman who enjoyed going out and about at night. There must have been other opportunities that were less risky.

The circumstances around this make the theory that something happened inside a place we knew SJL was supposed to be going to, and that whatever happened was not planned and was a result of an escalation of events that occurred unexpectedly, very plausible to me.7

A random, spontaneous carjacking in the middle of the day in a busy street seems less plausible to me than the above.

We know something didn't happen in the SR house as no evidence SJL really went in, let alone with someone else, let alone where a disturbance happened.

Another possibility is that the diary issue is a red herring and SJL made Mr Kipper up to go off for a lunchtime liaison with a man she knew, inside a private home--his, for example--and met her end there after something went wrong. The man involved then dumped her car to avoid having it outside his place. (The dumping of the car almost certainly was to remove it from a place that would incriminate whoever harmed SJL).

 

[WestLondoner]

Agreed, if the diary contained evidence she knew JC the police would have gone bigtime on that.

DV shows persuasively that the origin of the JC story was the press and later DL. There is literally no evidence for a JC connection whatsoever. His suppositious involvement is based entirely on his looking in DL's opinion a bit like the artist's impression of MG, whom HR and the police mistook for the non-existent Mr Kipper.

The amazing thing is that if you go back to thread 1 on this subject, the case against CV is perfectly articulated in the first few pages - months before DV's book came out. The likely perp has been in plain sight all along, protected by the police, because if they now move against someone they should have been suspicious of no later than 1987, they will look foolish. Not looking foolish is evidently more important to them than catching criminals.

 

[Terryb808]

Agreed, if the diary contained evidence she knew JC the police would have gone bigtime on that.

DV shows persuasively that the origin of the JC story was the press and later DL. There is literally no evidence for a JC connection whatsoever. His suppositious involvement is based entirely on his looking in DL's opinion a bit like the artist's impression of MG, whom HR and the police mistook for the non-existent Mr Kipper.

The amazing thing is that if you go back to thread 1 on this subject, the case against CV is perfectly articulated in the first few pages - months before DV's book came out. The likely perp has been in plain sight all along, protected by the police, because if they now move against someone they should have been suspicious of no later than 1987, they will look foolish. Not looking foolish is evidently more important to them than catching criminals.

Yes in thread 1 CV does appear, DV said "Just follow the timeline" and that is what I did back then, one of the members asked me about this and I said if you do as DV says it leads straight to the temporary landlord & the PoW.

As Konstantin points out if SJL went to meet someone she knew and it ended badly this will be the most likely option if the PoW turns out to be wrong. This is the worst possible outcome because the perpetrator is likely to be the only one involved, so the truth will never come out.
AL's very words still haunt me "You'll never find her, no one will", I still think this is an odd thing to say after all these years.

JC is a poor third in the likely people to have been involved.

 

[Terryb808]

Just a note on our threads, we had thread zero which was (as it appeared to me) randomly zapped and removed entirely. It probably mentioned too many names, having said that all the names are in AS’s book anyway.
Then we started thread 1, and we’re now on thread 2. Thread zero had some good info, and if I remember correctly this is where the DV “just follow the timeline” came from.

 

[WestLondoner]

I guess the mods can't be expected to read every book, so using initials means anything potentially defamatory is only intelligible to people who've read the book.

If you've read the AS book you'd refer to CV as KH, but I guess as more people have read DV than AS, we all stick to CV most of the time.

It is bizarre really though. SJL is supposed at some point to go to the PoW; she disappears; the relief landlord claims she made an impossible arrangement then never turned up; not a shred of evidence pointing to the identity of any Mr Kipper surfaces; yet the police never wonder if CV / KH might have been lying? And then a year later he changes his story and still the police aren't curious? I mean really, as the young people say, WTF?

 

[WestLondoner]

Indeed it would. DV has anonymised KH's name and location. I'd be amazed if he hasn't also anonymised his appearance. He's described as short and stout with a 'tache. I wonder if he's tall and thin, with a beard. And looks like an older James Galway.

I wonder if anyone's sent him a copy of the book and a note saying "oi mate - you're in this"?!

 

[Sillybilly]

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[Terryb808]

I’ve concluded that the James Galway lookalike featured in the Oct 86 crime watch programme is more important than I first thought.

• He was picked up close to where SJL’s car was abandoned.
• He made reference to “a right ruck” which no one else seems to have noticed.
• The term “right ruck” isn’t local to London.
• He was carrying a bag, ideal to hold gloves etc if you had just abandoned a car.
• The taxi driver came forward? But the James Galway man didn’t, this is despite National Press & TV coverage.

All this is very suspicious, I’ve always thought that the Mets detectives were a cut above most. However, to dismiss credible alternatives is unforgivable. Maybe the foot soldiers would have followed up all possible alternatives, but the ones in charge were far too single minded by Mr Kipper to let them.

 

[WestLondoner]

I reckon the reason DV makes no mention of the 'James Galway' sighting because he dismisses pretty well every police witness as unreliable. He can't very well say 'CV did it and was James Galway man', because only if you thought CV did it would he then be James Galway man. If you had no view who did it, would anything about the James Galway man sighting make it obviously more reliable, and hence point you to CV? I don't think so. All the other police witnesses are wrong in some important way. He can't really seize on 'James Galway' as supporting his view (even though I think it does) because he's then cherry-picking just the witness sighting he agrees with as being accurate, and dismissing all the others, with no solid basis for doing so.

CV features in AS' book in 1987 / 1988, but he is described as 'a patently honest and straightforward person', so he doesn't feature as someone who might have done it. JC alone was in the frame for the next 30 years. The CPS dismissal of the plod's case in 2000, and the periodic fruitless digging-up of random places, showed that the police had no evidence. The various media reinvestigations all placed undue weight on witness accounts from 14 years ago and all tried to make it fit JC.

Only when DV started trailing his book 3 years or so ago did the idea emerge that someone else altogether - who you could identify - had done this. Of course, I had not looked at or even kept AS' book from 30 years before and I had no recollection of the lost property at the pub. As a matter of interest, does anyone know when the idea that CV was behind this first entered the discourse on this case? Was it before DV (obliquely) suggested it?

 

[Terryb808]

I reckon the reason DV makes no mention of the 'James Galway' sighting because he dismisses pretty well every police witness as unreliable. He can't very well say 'CV did it and was James Galway man', because only if you thought CV did it would he then be James Galway man. If you had no view who did it, would anything about the James Galway man sighting make it obviously more reliable, and hence point you to CV? I don't think so. All the other police witnesses are wrong in some important way. He can't really seize on 'James Galway' as supporting his view (even though I think it does) because he's then cherry-picking just the witness sighting he agrees with as being accurate, and dismissing all the others, with no solid basis for doing so.

CV features in AS' book in 1987 / 1988, but he is described as 'a patently honest and straightforward person', so he doesn't feature as someone who might have done it. JC alone was in the frame for the next 30 years. The CPS dismissal of the plod's case in 2000, and the periodic fruitless digging-up of random places, showed that the police had no evidence. The various media reinvestigations all placed undue weight on witness accounts from 14 years ago and all tried to make it fit JC.

Only when DV started trailing his book 3 years or so ago did the idea emerge that someone else altogether - who you could identify - had done this. Of course, I had not looked at or even kept AS' book from 30 years before and I had no recollection of the lost property at the pub. As a matter of interest, does anyone know when the idea that CV was behind this first entered the discourse on this case? Was it before DV (obliquely) suggested it?

I don’t know when CV came into the discussions, but when I started looking at this DV wasn’t someone I’d heard of.
I’m very analytical and disregard everything except witness accounts, trying to find a pattern that fits together.
Then I obtained a copy of AS’s book, this allowed me to look at the complete timeline and what might be important to SJL.
From this it just jumps out that her lost items are important and that one trail goes straight to the PoW.
When DV came along he reiterated this and the importance of following the timeline. His book reaffirmed the fake Mr Kipper appointment and the fact that SJL never went to SR at all (no keys, police had them the following day).
I did point out however, that it’s entirely possible that 37 SR was opened without the need for a set of keys and without damaging the door. Although, this does not appear to be the Mets approach (just break down the door).
I think DV knows about the James Galway man and possibly links to his prime suspect, but has not mentioned it for the reasons you outline above.
What is odd is the reaction it generates when anyone suggests a possible link between DV’s prime suspect and the James Galway man from the Oct 86 Crimewatch programme.

 

[Konstantin]

I’m skeptical about the “James Galway man” being the same person who abandoned SJLs car.

if you were that person you’d know that the car would be discovered and the police would appeal for witnesses. It was almost certainly abandoned in a public place like that knowing it would be found there not just to get rid of it in a hurry but because the perpetrator would want to also lead the trail away from whatever happened to SJL. He would surely not want to attract any attention as a future witness by making a story up about an altercation between a man and a woman that was so noteworthy he told someone, that occurred close to where he abandoned the car. It’s way too risky. The perpetrator would reasonably think that when the car was found and witnesses appealed to the taxi driver would recall this exciting story and the description of the chap who told it.

 

[Terryb808]

I’m skeptical about the “James Galway man” being the same person who abandoned SJLs car.

if you were that person you’d know that the car would be discovered and the police would appeal for witnesses. It was almost certainly abandoned in a public place like that knowing it would be found there not just to get rid of it in a hurry but because the perpetrator would want to also lead the trail away from whatever happened to SJL. He would surely not want to attract any attention as a future witness by making a story up about an altercation between a man and a woman that was so noteworthy he told someone, that occurred close to where he abandoned the car. It’s way too risky. The perpetrator would reasonably think that when the car was found and witnesses appealed to the taxi driver would recall this exciting story and the description of the chap who told it.

Like the logic, however, it assumes that DV’s prime suspect is that clever.
The location where SJL’s car was abandoned is close to Craven Cottage and the PoW was a favourite with Fulham fans back then.
So it’s not unreasonable to link the two facts, also, trying to put SJL in Stevenage Road by highlighting the couple and the “right ruck” story further distances her from the PoW.
He’s likely to know that the taxi driver would come forward, and it’s not unreasonable to conclude that the James Galway man would also (if he had nothing to hide).
You can apply both our logical conclusions to the DV / James Galway man link.
If DV is correct we’re not looking at a master criminal, just someone who got into a bad situation and managed to dig himself out.

 

[Konstantin]

Like the logic, however, it assumes that DV’s prime suspect is that clever.
The location where SJL’s car was abandoned is close to Craven Cottage and the PoW was a favourite with Fulham fans back then.
So it’s not unreasonable to link the two facts, also, trying to put SJL in Stevenage Road by highlighting the couple and the “right ruck” story further distances her from the PoW.
He’s likely to know that the taxi driver would come forward, and it’s not unreasonable to conclude that the James Galway man would also (if he had nothing to hide).
You can apply both our logical conclusions to the DV / James Galway man link.
If DV is correct we’re not looking at a master criminal, just someone who got into a bad situation and managed to dig himself out.

Yes. Thinking about it, this same person--according to DV's hypothesis--also made up complicated stories about phone calls, which as we've discussed does look very odd and only serve to draw attention to himself. If this person had not mentioned those calls, it's likely he would have just been forgotten for all of time.

 

[WestLondoner]

Yes, CV isn't a master criminal, he's a pub landlord. He got lucky that SJL put a false entry in her diary that created the Mr Kipper narrative, lucky that where he dumped her car was close enough to Shorrolds that the police just assumed it had been driven straight there, and lucky that the police were rubbish.

So many of the witness accounts are mutually contradictory that if you believe one theory based on a witness account, then you have to dismiss as unreliable all the other witness accounts.

In the matter of when her car was in Stevenage, it's clear that most if not all the witnesses must logically be wrong. Her car was supposedly seen at 12:00, at 12:30, at 2:30, no sooner than 4:00, and by about 5:00. The latter is pretty solid as it was the garage owner who noticed that the car did not later move.

• 12:00 and 12:30 are clearly both wrong because she hadn't left the office by then.
• 2:30 and not-before-4pm cannot both be right, but both could be wrong.
• 2.30 and by 5pm could both be right but the 12, 12:30, and not-before-4pm sightings are then wrong.

So we eliminate the first two and take the 5pm as accurate. This means the car was parked either at 2.30 or after 4. Which is accurate?

The witnesses to the 4pm non-sighting didn't notice any 'right ruck' which they surely would have. So either the 2.30 sighting is wrong, or the not-before-4pm sighting is wrong. If the 2:30 sighting was him, it requires him to have dropped the car without the BT witnesses noticing. It's 50:50 either way, but it would be very interesting if CV in 1986, as well as sounding northern, also looked like James Galway.

 

[Konstantin]

If you were trying to ditch the car of someone you’d just harmed —even accidentally— you would, in my view, not dump it right next to a couple of workmen on the road. Because even the most inexperienced criminal could figure out that the car would be found and witnesses called for. You wouldn’t want anyone to see you.

there is some indication that whoever dumped the car did so in a hurry and rushed away because he left it parked badly partly blocking the entry to a garage. I doubt that was deliberate to “set a scene.”

where was this James Galway man picked up?

 

[WestLondoner]

He was picked up in Finlay Street, which is a turning off Stevenage Road, about a quarter of a mile south of where the car was found. This is actually back towards the bridge, in the general direction of the pub. So if this is CV, he's heading the right way.

What I am not sure of is where the BT workers were. The car was parked on the 'wrong' side of the road i.e. someone cut across the road to dump it there. If the BT workers were further up in the same direction, then CV perhaps heads south to have his back to them. If they were in one of those little red and white workmen's tents at the time, it might not have been obvious to him that anyone was inside. There is nothing in the area today that looks like a phone junction box though.