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

[WestLondoner]

SJL - The Police had a tough time
When you take a step backwards and look at the Suzy Lamplugh case you can’t help but feel the police had a tough time back in 1986. SJL’s disappearance hit the headlines almost immediately and was in the media eye big time.

Well, yes - but they put it there.

SJL disappeared at lunchtime on Monday. She was actually reported to the police as missing at around 6.45 on Monday evening. The initial press conference was held at 10 o'clock on Tuesday morning.

It's thus self-evident that at the time this event was held, they had taken no statements, gathered no evidence other than finding her car, and had interviewed no witnesses. The police may have been on the case all night - although the same shop had just done a big fraud bust involving 30 or 40 arrests, so probably not - but the witnesses certainly hadn't. So when they went public on Tuesday, the police hadn't yet tried anything else, or explored any other avenues at all.

The only evidence they presented for a visit to 37SR was a diary entry mentioning a non-existent person. The only account they had of what (if anything) happened there came from HR. He should have been considered unreliable from the outset. He didn't describe her, he made a nonsensical claim about seeing her bundled into a van that was then sheepishly retracted, and the sketch and description resemble MG and SF. Despite this, the police went instantly with the narrative that SJL went to 37SR and sought witnesses to that and only that.

We don't know what else HR claimed to have seen that he did not in fact see. Konstantin has helpfully posted a picture above of DR. HR, later shown a photo of this man, declared him a dead ringer for "Mr Kipper". If so, then the sketch is grossly wrong.

Some attempt later seems to have been made to identify all the places SJL might have gone, which included police visits to unoccupied houses for sale through Sturgis. Inexplicably, no search was made of the PoW, somewhere she definitely did intend to go. If you lost your diary and cheque book, obviously you were going to retrieve them.

The inquiry thus went haywire within 24 hours. The insistence that she went to 37SR ensured that apart from BW, nobody who saw her anywhere else came forward. If you saw her outside the PoW you thought nothing of it, because you had been told she was elsewhere. Nobody came forward for several days following that press conference either, the police professing themselves disappointed by the reaction. You'd think that would make them rethink whether she had ever been there, but instead the police staged and broadcast a "reconstruction" of something that little evidence supported as having happened. This started the "sightings" coming in, a narrative was cemented further by the October Crimewatch episode.

Probably the majority of the evidence obtained was worthless. The "available evidence" off which the police continue to insist this was JC is of the same value as the "available evidence" that it was my neighbour who scratched my car last week. It's the kind of thing he'd do, he was in the area, it was done by a silver car and he's got a car. Plus you can tell he's a wrong 'un by looking at him.

 

[Terryb808]

Well, yes - but they put it there.

SJL disappeared at lunchtime on Monday. She was actually reported to the police as missing at around 6.45 on Monday evening. The initial press conference was held at 10 o'clock on Tuesday morning.

It's thus self-evident that at the time this event was held, they had taken no statements, gathered no evidence other than finding her car, and had interviewed no witnesses. The police may have been on the case all night - although the same shop had just done a big fraud bust involving 30 or 40 arrests, so probably not - but the witnesses certainly hadn't. So when they went public on Tuesday, the police hadn't yet tried anything else, or explored any other avenues at all.

The only evidence they presented for a visit to 37SR was a diary entry mentioning a non-existent person. The only account they had of what (if anything) happened there came from HR. He should have been considered unreliable from the outset. He didn't describe her, he made a nonsensical claim about seeing her bundled into a van that was then sheepishly retracted, and the sketch and description resemble MG and SF. Despite this, the police went instantly with the narrative that SJL went to 37SR and sought witnesses to that and only that.

We don't know what else HR claimed to have seen that he did not in fact see. Konstantin has helpfully posted a picture above of DR. HR, later shown a photo of this man, declared him a dead ringer for "Mr Kipper". If so, then the sketch is grossly wrong.

Some attempt later seems to have been made to identify all the places SJL might have gone, which included police visits to unoccupied houses for sale through Sturgis. Inexplicably, no search was made of the PoW, somewhere she definitely did intend to go. If you lost your diary and cheque book, obviously you were going to retrieve them.

The inquiry thus went haywire within 24 hours. The insistence that she went to 37SR ensured that apart from BW, nobody who saw her anywhere else came forward. If you saw her outside the PoW you thought nothing of it, because you had been told she was elsewhere. Nobody came forward for several days following that press conference either, the police professing themselves disappointed by the reaction. You'd think that would make them rethink whether she had ever been there, but instead the police staged and broadcast a "reconstruction" of something that little evidence supported as having happened. This started the "sightings" coming in, a narrative was cemented further by the October Crimewatch episode.

Probably the majority of the evidence obtained was worthless. The "available evidence" off which the police continue to insist this was JC is of the same value as the "available evidence" that it was my neighbour who scratched my car last week. It's the kind of thing he'd do, he was in the area, it was done by a silver car and he's got a car. Plus you can tell he's a wrong 'un by looking at him.

Not saying any of this is untrue or wrong, if I had witnessed SJL in Putney lunchtime on the 28th July I’d come forward and say so.
The fact that a reconstruction said she went to SR doesn’t mean she can’t have gone somewhere else as well.
The general public must be very gullible if they can be convinced that SJL could only have gone to SR and nowhere else.
On the basis that there were no witnesses prior to the reconstruction, SJL went to a location, got out of her car (thinking she’d be a few minutes) was seen by no one and never got back in her car.
Again on the no witness basis, she never saw the light of day again, her car was then removed and abandoned in Stevenage Road by a perpetrator.
In summary, we have absolutely no witnesses to SJL’s disappearance and unless DV is right with his theory no chance of find out what happened.
I’m not being negative, just assessing the facts based on the evidence presented.

 

[Cluesleuth]

SJL - The Police had a tough time
When you take a step backwards and look at the Suzy Lamplugh case you can’t help but feel the police had a tough time back in 1986. SJL’s disappearance hit the headlines almost immediately and was in the media eye big time.
Add to this the amount of information that the police had to deal with and the lack of any computer aided assistance and you have a recipe for chaos. Then you have very influential parents and in particular DL’s desire to run the police enquiry herself, IMO the influence she had seriously derailed the polices efforts to solve SJL’s disappearance.
THe amount of information in the public domain alone is overwhelming and finding a serious trail to follow is very difficult, so think about how much more information the police have that's not available to us out here.
For example, SJL’s desk diary has at least 3 lines of enquiry, then there's her social circle, this must have an enormous number of leads to follow. Her personal diary (which we don’t have access to) has to have enough lines of enquiry to keep a complete team of detectives in work for months.
We’ve not touched on the Mr Kipper line of enquiry yet, was he real, was he fake, what is for sure is that someone must have been outside 37 Shorrolds Road for witnesses to have come forward. Instead of assuming he was real, more effort should have been put into actually validating the entry and evaluating other possibilities.
I’m sure the police will have been aware of some of SJL’s other leisure activities, to name but two, tennis & gym. The exclusive gym she frequented had some interesting members and this alone would have taken up a fair bit of detective time.
It’s easy to see why the police seemed to go around in ever decreasing circles and disappear down the rabbit hole, the amount of information available was just totally overwhelming.
We’re lucky today, we have computers to do the data sifting, CCTV to be our eyes, ANPR to track vehicles, I bet the detectives back then would have thought this absolute paradise.
But having said that people still disappear without trace, we have all this yet Leah Croucher did just that.
I’m not making excuses, just trying to see the other side of the coin.

An excellent summary.
I totally agree.
It will be an enormous task trying to uncover the truth of what really happened.

 

[Pinkizzy]

Ruck is prison slang for a fight.

I agree with the heavy workload of the police in July 1986 - Royal wedding, IRA bomb campaign, a property fraud set up spanning from Bristol to London and a serial rapist who had targeted 7 old people within the local area of the city.

 

[WestLondoner]

Ruck is also a rugby term. James Galway was depicted in what looked a hooped rugby shirt, FWIW.

The thing is that, as Pinkizzy and others have pointed out, we can infer quite a lot about SJL's intentions from what she did and did not take with her. She didn't take her handbag, which points to a short errand. It also points away from her intending an afternoon quickie in some empty property, because surely she'd at least take a hairbrush. So a short errand, and she took money presumably because she intended to buy lunch on the way there or back.

It is unclear at best if she took keys or particulars. At least one of the accounts of what happened, MG's, is inaccurate, because he wasn't there when she left. This is enough, for me, to cast doubt on everything said on this subject. Did anyone really describe what they actually saw her do, or did they describe what they expected to have seen her doing?

The purse was found in her car. When she left the car she didn't take it with her, which says to me she didn't intend to leave the car for long. Assuming the car was ditched by a male without her in it, he would have left the purse either because he didn't see it or because he would have been conspicuous carrying a woman's purse unless he had somewhere to stash it.

There is quite a lot about this that points away from premeditated abduction.

1/ Most obviously, if she were stalked and this were premeditated, why did it not occur to her abductor to disguise the car? If that were me, I'd have scoped out an identical white Fiesta and had its plates copied. Then on abducting her, I'd switch the plates and get rid of the hat, the purse and the original plates. I can then move the anonymised car anywhere, maybe even sell it, and thereby lay a far better false trail than telling a cabbie I've just seen "a right ruck".

2/ The abductor can have had no idea how long he had to get away with this. None at all. He hasn't got her desk diary, so for all he knows, she is expected back and will be missed within the hour. Whenever he dumped that car, it could have been found minutes later. For all he knows she has told everyone where she's really going. Her lack of a handbag should have been a warning sign. She's left it on her desk, like people leave jackets over their chairs, to mean "I won't be long".

3/ Why abduct someone on a Monday afternoon? Why not do it in such a way that she'll not be missed for days or hours? If he set this up somehow, why not abduct her at 10pm the night before? She wouldn't be missed till the next day, or even the next evening.

 

[Terryb808]

Ruck is also a rugby term. James Galway was depicted in what looked a hooped rugby shirt, FWIW.

The thing is that, as Pinkizzy and others have pointed out, we can infer quite a lot about SJL's intentions from what she did and did not take with her. She didn't take her handbag, which points to a short errand. It also points away from her intending an afternoon quickie in some empty property, because surely she'd at least take a hairbrush. So a short errand, and she took money presumably because she intended to buy lunch on the way there or back.

It is unclear at best if she took keys or particulars. At least one of the accounts of what happened, MG's, is inaccurate, because he wasn't there when she left. This is enough, for me, to cast doubt on everything said on this subject. Did anyone really describe what they actually saw her do, or did they describe what they expected to have seen her doing?

The purse was found in her car. When she left the car she didn't take it with her, which says to me she didn't intend to leave the car for long. Assuming the car was ditched by a male without her in it, he would have left the purse either because he didn't see it or because he would have been conspicuous carrying a woman's purse unless he had somewhere to stash it.

There is quite a lot about this that points away from premeditated abduction.

1/ Most obviously, if she were stalked and this were premeditated, why did it not occur to her abductor to disguise the car? If that were me, I'd have scoped out an identical white Fiesta and had its plates copied. Then on abducting her, I'd switch the plates and get rid of the hat, the purse and the original plates. I can then move the anonymised car anywhere, maybe even sell it, and thereby lay a far better false trail than telling a cabbie I've just seen "a right ruck".

2/ The abductor can have had no idea how long he had to get away with this. None at all. He hasn't got her desk diary, so for all he knows, she is expected back and will be missed within the hour. Whenever he dumped that car, it could have been found minutes later. For all he knows she has told everyone where she's really going. Her lack of a handbag should have been a warning sign. She's left it on her desk, like people leave jackets over their chairs, to mean "I won't be long".

3/ Why abduct someone on a Monday afternoon? Why not do it in such a way that she'll not be missed for days or hours? If he set this up somehow, why not abduct her at 10pm the night before? She wouldn't be missed till the next day, or even the next evening.

Perfect logic, this accounts for the lack of witnesses because SJL got out of her car, walked across the pavement into a building and never came out.
We have no confidence in the accounts of her colleagues, they were busy and just assumed that she did certain things rather than actually knowing she did.
It’s unclear regarding the keys to 37 SR or the paperwork, so this casts doubt on the viewing being legit.
One place she could have gone into and not really attracted attention was the PoW, and as pointed out by many, it’s never been searched.
If CV was responsible he has no motive and it would have needed to be a rush of blood to the head and a spontaneous reaction of some kind.
While a planned abduction looks unlikely, it’s still possible if two perpetrators were involved. The car would still be in the same condition if one took SJL while the other abandoned her car.
The problem has always been the lack of any solid sighting of SJL after she left the office. Additionally, there are no actual sightings of whoever abandoned SJL’s car.
I’m sure that back in 86 someone saw something, but the memories were never triggered and thus they never came forward.
The James Galway Man maybe a red herring, however, he is suspicious and until he’s eliminated has to be considered a suspect.

 

[Pinkizzy]

The witness statements on cards should be reviewed again, I'm sure something has been overlooked

 

[Cluesleuth]

Ruck is also a rugby term. James Galway was depicted in what looked a hooped rugby shirt, FWIW.

The thing is that, as Pinkizzy and others have pointed out, we can infer quite a lot about SJL's intentions from what she did and did not take with her. She didn't take her handbag, which points to a short errand. It also points away from her intending an afternoon quickie in some empty property, because surely she'd at least take a hairbrush. So a short errand, and she took money presumably because she intended to buy lunch on the way there or back.

It is unclear at best if she took keys or particulars. At least one of the accounts of what happened, MG's, is inaccurate, because he wasn't there when she left. This is enough, for me, to cast doubt on everything said on this subject. Did anyone really describe what they actually saw her do, or did they describe what they expected to have seen her doing?

The purse was found in her car. When she left the car she didn't take it with her, which says to me she didn't intend to leave the car for long. Assuming the car was ditched by a male without her in it, he would have left the purse either because he didn't see it or because he would have been conspicuous carrying a woman's purse unless he had somewhere to stash it.

There is quite a lot about this that points away from premeditated abduction.

1/ Most obviously, if she were stalked and this were premeditated, why did it not occur to her abductor to disguise the car? If that were me, I'd have scoped out an identical white Fiesta and had its plates copied. Then on abducting her, I'd switch the plates and get rid of the hat, the purse and the original plates. I can then move the anonymised car anywhere, maybe even sell it, and thereby lay a far better false trail than telling a cabbie I've just seen "a right ruck".

2/ The abductor can have had no idea how long he had to get away with this. None at all. He hasn't got her desk diary, so for all he knows, she is expected back and will be missed within the hour. Whenever he dumped that car, it could have been found minutes later. For all he knows she has told everyone where she's really going. Her lack of a handbag should have been a warning sign. She's left it on her desk, like people leave jackets over their chairs, to mean "I won't be long".

3/ Why abduct someone on a Monday afternoon? Why not do it in such a way that she'll not be missed for days or hours? If he set this up somehow, why not abduct her at 10pm the night before? She wouldn't be missed till the next day, or even the next evening.

Interesting
1. But even if it was a planned abduction why would they need to disguise her car. It didnt work for JC when he did it where as abandoning it in tact seems to have worked perfectly in this case.

2. I agree timing is an important factor but just how long does it take to abduct someone from a car, off the street or from a property.
Because there is a doubt over where she meant to go and who she was meeting we have no idea at what point and how she disappeared.
Even if the car was left at the location of the abduction the abducted person could be miles away by the time the she was missed or the car was found.

3. But she did go missing on a Monday afternoon and she wasnt missed for hours so it proves these things do not have to happen at night.
MOO

 

[Cluesleuth]

The witness statements on cards should be reviewed again, I'm sure something has been overlooked

Im in agreement with that but I feel the police are not interested they say they have their man and DL and as DL said they arent looking for anyone else.

Every Google search you do now re SJL comes up with JC a tv programme screened the other week skips over most of the events of the day giving most of the time over to JC.

We will probably have to wait another 20 years before the truth comes out.

 

[Cluesleuth]

I was looking at Riverside Amenity Gardens apartments it has secure underground parking which would offer some privacy for anyone visiting. I know DL took an interest in the building and visited the apartments in disguise to approach the residents.
It also adjoins Stevenage Park

I wondered if anyone else has taken an interest in the building and has found anything they feel is interesting that they are willing to share?

 

[asyousay]

It also should be remembered that Suzy may of not been seen anywhere that day. If she was abducted when she left the office there would of been no sightings to report.


A quiet residential road she could of been jumped before she could even scream.

 

[Whitehall 1212]

Well, yes - but they put it there.

SJL disappeared at lunchtime on Monday. She was actually reported to the police as missing at around 6.45 on Monday evening. The initial press conference was held at 10 o'clock on Tuesday morning.

It's thus self-evident that at the time this event was held, they had taken no statements, gathered no evidence other than finding her car, and had interviewed no witnesses. The police may have been on the case all night - although the same shop had just done a big fraud bust involving 30 or 40 arrests, so probably not - but the witnesses certainly hadn't. So when they went public on Tuesday, the police hadn't yet tried anything else, or explored any other avenues at all.

The only evidence they presented for a visit to 37SR was a diary entry mentioning a non-existent person. The only account they had of what (if anything) happened there came from HR. He should have been considered unreliable from the outset. He didn't describe her, he made a nonsensical claim about seeing her bundled into a van that was then sheepishly retracted, and the sketch and description resemble MG and SF. Despite this, the police went instantly with the narrative that SJL went to 37SR and sought witnesses to that and only that.

We don't know what else HR claimed to have seen that he did not in fact see. Konstantin has helpfully posted a picture above of DR. HR, later shown a photo of this man, declared him a dead ringer for "Mr Kipper". If so, then the sketch is grossly wrong.

Some attempt later seems to have been made to identify all the places SJL might have gone, which included police visits to unoccupied houses for sale through Sturgis. Inexplicably, no search was made of the PoW, somewhere she definitely did intend to go. If you lost your diary and cheque book, obviously you were going to retrieve them.

The inquiry thus went haywire within 24 hours. The insistence that she went to 37SR ensured that apart from BW, nobody who saw her anywhere else came forward. If you saw her outside the PoW you thought nothing of it, because you had been told she was elsewhere. Nobody came forward for several days following that press conference either, the police professing themselves disappointed by the reaction. You'd think that would make them rethink whether she had ever been there, but instead the police staged and broadcast a "reconstruction" of something that little evidence supported as having happened. This started the "sightings" coming in, a narrative was cemented further by the October Crimewatch episode.

Probably the majority of the evidence obtained was worthless. The "available evidence" off which the police continue to insist this was JC is of the same value as the "available evidence" that it was my neighbour who scratched my car last week. It's the kind of thing he'd do, he was in the area, it was done by a silver car and he's got a car. Plus you can tell he's a wrong 'un by looking at him.

What you assert is absolute nonsense.

The reason why it is nonsense is that you make claims that are nothing more than your regurgitated rhetoric.....what you say has no evidence to support it, apart from the confirmation that SLP's lost items had been found at the PoW and that she was aware.

Like DV you have allowed the PoW theory to consume you. It has rendered you incapable of assessing the evidence, its credibility, relevance and weight.

If experienced detectives, particularly those involved with the full review from 2000-2006, have made conclusions based on their assessment of ALL the available evidence then they have a significant advantage over all of us.

 

[Whitehall 1212]

The witness statements on cards should be reviewed again, I'm sure something has been overlooked

Witness statements are not on cards. At the time they would have been handwritten by an officer on A4 sized statement forms.

During the 2000-2006 review the original statements will have been studied and searchable data, e.g. vehicle details, suspect descriptions, locations, will have been entered into the HOLMES2 database.

This data will then have been retrieved when search parameters, which corresponded to the source data, were entered into HOLMES2.

 

[Whitehall 1212]

It also should be remembered that Suzy may of not been seen anywhere that day. If she was abducted when she left the office there would of been no sightings to report.


A quiet residential road she could of been jumped before she could even scream.

That is true, but to date no one has provided any sound basis for dismissing the sightings of SJL and the man in Shorrolds Road.

There was a diary entry by SJL and three independent witnesses, who provided a composite picture of a woman matching SJL, with a smartly dressed male in Shorrolds Road at approximately 12:45. This included detail of the male carrying a champagne bottle with a ribbon and a dark BMW adjacent to them.

In spite of all the publicity no one has come forward to say it was him/her/them/their BMW in Shorrolds Road at that time.

What are the police supposed to do? Should they follow the evidence they have or put it to one side and consider a whole host of different 'possibilities', for which there is no evidence?

There are limited resources to do a huge job. It's not realistic to go chasing shadows.

 

[Whitehall 1212]

For those who haven't seen it, the Channel 5 documentary entitled 'The Vanishing of Suzy Lamplugh' is a factual non-dramatised, non-sensationalist presentation of the police investigation covering the initial investigation, issues, the review and the conclusions.

It's an honest, no nonsense statement of fact. Available on the Channel 5 player online.

 

[Pinkizzy]

I'm wondering whether SJL left Sturgis via the rear exit if she was collecting the company car from Radipole Rd

 

[Whitehall 1212]

I'm wondering whether SJL left Sturgis via the rear exit if she was collecting the company car from Radipole Rd

Do you know that Sturgis had a rear entrance with direct access to Radipole Road?

There is no indication that there would have been on StreetView.

 

[Terryb808]

What you assert is absolute nonsense.

The reason why it is nonsense is that you make claims that are nothing more than your regurgitated rhetoric.....what you say has no evidence to support it, apart from the confirmation that SLP's lost items had been found at the PoW and that she was aware.

Like DV you have allowed the PoW theory to consume you. It has rendered you incapable of assessing the evidence, its credibility, relevance and weight.

If experienced detectives, particularly those involved with the full review from 2000-2006, have made conclusions based on their assessment of ALL the available evidence then they have a significant advantage over all of us.

Ian Huntley fooled experienced detectives, why not CV?

 

[Konstantin]

What you assert is absolute nonsense.

The reason why it is nonsense is that you make claims that are nothing more than your regurgitated rhetoric.....what you say has no evidence to support it, apart from the confirmation that SLP's lost items had been found at the PoW and that she was aware.

Like DV you have allowed the PoW theory to consume you. It has rendered you incapable of assessing the evidence, its credibility, relevance and weight.

If experienced detectives, particularly those involved with the full review from 2000-2006, have made conclusions based on their assessment of ALL the available evidence then they have a significant advantage over all of us.

My problems with the POW theory are:

- the police attended the pub and interviewed the relief landlord the day after Suzy went missing and knew about his part in her story, i.e. he was known to them, the situation was known to them. He would have been considered. THey knew about the phone calls between him / his wife / Suzy / her bank, and they knew she had plans to go there and collect her items. This scenario would have been considered.

- it requires either a complex conspiracy (the relief landlord is part of a group of people who conspired to abduct Suzy through a complicated plot involving stealing a postcard, a chequebook and a pocket diary and then having the relief landlord pretend to find these items, call her bank and arrange for her bank to get them to call his wife at the pub at a time when a stock take was going on and the regular landlord might still be around. Or at the very least a conspiracy silence between a group of people to cover up either a spur of the moment, brutal killing or an accident as the relief landlord was not alone at the pub, his wife and probably other staff must have been there.

-- A body lying in a cellar under some rubble where people do and could access for decades is not that plausible, and if the body was moved in the small window of time that would have been available it would have been done with the knowledge of others, who amazingly kept silent about this horrific event for decades, every day being terrified that someone woudl find the body.

-- we are not privy to most of the evidence and intel that the detectives working on the case are

I don't know, when you break it down, it doesn't seem that convincing any more.
-

 

[Konstantin]

Ian Huntley fooled experienced detectives, why not CV?

This is true.

The truth came out though, thank God. That case is horrifying. Gives me the chills to remember it.