UK UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #3

[Cluesleuth]

One wonders if AS made more of it than it was. It's not that hard to understand why he would have got a phone call from someone looking for SJL on the day she disappeared when it does seem to be the case that people in her office, who were looking for her, knew she had mentioned the POW. A year later, time has passed and since the police did attend literally the next day to get her stuff and likely called ahead, it's not surprising he mixed the day up.

A phone call to the pub from SJL's office looking for her at the pub is not suspicious or interesting so perhaps that is why it was not documented at the time?

I think it got a mention because the Sarah could never be traced.
Apparrently it wasnt SH SJL's friend.

 

[ruby925]

The PoW was extended and refurbished in 1984 and reopened at the end of that year under one landlord, NB, for less than a year before MH took over in August 1985. MH says he took it over from people under whom it was doing £1,500 which he improved to £8,000 - details which confirm it was a brewery-owned tenanted site and not a free house owned by its landlord. Presumably the people were NH and partner (the brewery seems to have liked couples running pubs). In 1986, therefore, the place would have been in reasonable nick 18 months after its facelift and presumably as it was being used for training it can't have been that grotty. By the mid-90s if no more was done it could have been looking quite scruffy again.

This seems to have been a thing with pubs. They were quite frequently allowed to get quite rundown before the owner either spent some money to jazz them up or they just closed (which is more normal now).

There is no suggestion that SJL was ever a patron, though. MH didn't recognise her as a regular. Given where her stuff was found, i.e. by the phone boxes outside, and that she was at her mother's until gone 9, and that she drove home, and that in doing so passed the PoW, and that she had a phone conversation with AL about 10, it would appear she lost this stuff when she stopped off to use a phone box, then drove on home.

I tend to doubt that she drove past, went home, parked, and then walked back 200 yards to use a phone box. If her flatmate was out she could just use the phone in the flat for a personal call, whereas if he's in, she has to go out again and walk to a phone box she has literally just driven past.

Ah, I didn't realise that SJL was only there to make a call from the phone box.. personally I don't understand why she wouldn't have used her own landline to call AL, especially as she had only seen him that day. <modsnip - no link>

 

[asyousay]

From my understanding there is zero proof she did make a phone call on the Sunday night from the pub phone it just fits into peoples theory’s.


Because logically it actually makes zero sense she would of done that considering back then my parents say there was telephone boxes on basically every street corner. There was also a train station at the end of her road so again she would of walked past telephone boxes to go to the pub ones?


The boyfriend also claims the items were lost Friday which contradicts Sunday evening as time lost.

For all anybody knows somebody took the items Friday night and spent the weekend with them and returned them Sunday night.


MOO

 

[Whitehall 1212]

The PoW was extended and refurbished in 1984 and reopened at the end of that year under one landlord, NB, for less than a year before MH took over in August 1985. MH says he took it over from people under whom it was doing £1,500 which he improved to £8,000 - details which confirm it was a brewery-owned tenanted site and not a free house owned by its landlord. Presumably the people were NH and partner (the brewery seems to have liked couples running pubs). In 1986, therefore, the place would have been in reasonable nick 18 months after its facelift and presumably as it was being used for training it can't have been that grotty. By the mid-90s if no more was done it could have been looking quite scruffy again.

This seems to have been a thing with pubs. They were quite frequently allowed to get quite rundown before the owner either spent some money to jazz them up or they just closed (which is more normal now).

There is no suggestion that SJL was ever a patron, though. MH didn't recognise her as a regular. Given where her stuff was found, i.e. by the phone boxes outside, and that she was at her mother's until gone 9, and that she drove home, and that in doing so passed the PoW, and that she had a phone conversation with AL about 10, it would appear she lost this stuff when she stopped off to use a phone box, then drove on home.

I tend to doubt that she drove past, went home, parked, and then walked back 200 yards to use a phone box. If her flatmate was out she could just use the phone in the flat for a personal call, whereas if he's in, she has to go out again and walk to a phone box she has literally just driven past.

Why use a phone box to call AL when there is a phone at home, even if the lodger is there?

As SJL was looking to end her relationship with AL I expect it would have been a matter of fact conversation.

If SJL used the phone box I suggest that it was someone who she was calling or receiving a call from in secret, not wanting the conversation overheard or itemised on her telephone bill.

 

[WestLondoner]

Ah, I didn't realise that SJL was only there to make a call from the phone box.. personally I don't understand why she wouldn't have used her own landline to call AL, especially as she had only seen him that day. <modsnip - no link>

Probably because landlines were literally fixed in place and the place was usually some shared area like the living room. So if SJL wanted to have a personal call it would be hard to do it from home without Roger the Lodger hearing it all. If she's literally passing a pub with phone boxes outside, and it's Sunday at 10pm so she can park anywhere, that would be my guess.

To turn it on its head, it's hard to see how her stuff gets to the PoW at all unless she was there. 'There' needn't mean there as a customer.

 

[Cluesleuth]

Ah, I didn't realise that SJL was only there to make a call from the phone box.. personally I don't understand why she wouldn't have used her own landline to call AL, especially as she had only seen him that day. <modsnip - no link>

It has only been discussed here as a possibility that she used phone box.

 

[Whitehall 1212]

Probably because landlines were literally fixed in place and the place was usually some shared area like the living room. So if SJL wanted to have a personal call it would be hard to do it from home without Roger the Lodger hearing it all. If she's literally passing a pub with phone boxes outside, and it's Sunday at 10pm so she can park anywhere, that would be my guess.

To turn it on its head, it's hard to see how her stuff gets to the PoW at all unless she was there. 'There' needn't mean there as a customer.

It's just one of a myriad of possibilities.

As @Cluesleuth says.....that SJL used the phone box O/S the PoW is only a possibility.

It would be useful to know how/where/when this assertion first appeared in the SJL story along with that stating SJL frequented the PoW as a customer.

 

[Pinkizzy]

@Whitehall 1212 should read DVs book and then you can analyse the extra dialogue from CV and the other witnesses

 

[Konstantin]

It's just one of a myriad of possibilities.

As @Cluesleuth says.....that SJL used the phone box O/S the PoW is only a possibility.

It would be useful to know how/where/when this assertion first appeared in the SJL story along with that stating SJL frequented the PoW as a customer.

She didn't frequent it, not according to AL anyway. SJL was a sloane ranger, a social climber who liked expensive, posh places. Wine bars, fancy clubs. By all accounts the POW was not that type of place, it was your more traditional rougher London boozer. It was just near her house.

The phone box thing has been suggested as a theory for why her stuff ended up outside the pub and her phoning AL from there as a theory to suggest why she used a phone box rather than calling from home. It's just a hypothesis...

Phone boxes are not very big though are they so if stuff fell out of her bag in one you'd assume she'd see it. Also wasn't it possible to tell if someone was calling from a box and not from home? Plus if SJL had called AL to dump him you'd think someone else would have known that fact. And why would she care what her flatmate thought? But we have no idea... It's possible I suppose. We don't have a clue how her stuff ended up outside the pub entrance and it's not clear what night it was found, although if MH's suggestion that he showed it/asked around the pub was true then it would be more likely to be the Friday night than after closing time on Sunday since if it was the latter when would he have shown it around the pub? The punters would have been kicked out. If it was on the Friday, he'd have had two days to do it.

Maybe SJL's weekend was so busy she didn't take much notice about her stuff until the Monday, we don't know.

 

[WestLondoner]

From my understanding there is zero proof she did make a phone call on the Sunday night from the pub phone it just fits into peoples theory’s.


Because logically it actually makes zero sense she would of done that considering back then my parents say there was telephone boxes on basically every street corner. There was also a train station at the end of her road so again she would of walked past telephone boxes to go to the pub ones?


The boyfriend also claims the items were lost Friday which contradicts Sunday evening as time lost.

For all anybody knows somebody took the items Friday night and spent the weekend with them and returned them Sunday night.


MOO

It's a good assumption point to challenge, but if it's not what happened, we need some alternative idea of how her stuff came to be found outside a pub she did not frequent, why she didn't notice it had gone missing sooner, and how it came to move from Mossops or elsewhere to the PoW without being noticed or missed in the intervening 48 hours. She mentioned it at work on Monday. So presumably, if AL was right and she lost her stuff on Friday, it's quite surprising she didn't mention to anyone at work on Saturday, or indeed to anyone else before Monday.

I sort of wonder how AL knew she had lost her stuff at all, if she lost it on Friday. If he knew she had lost it, he would have known where it could be found. If he didn't know, he had scant chance to find out, because she barely talked to him over the weekend. He is the source for there having been a call on Sunday night, so she could only have mentioned it then - which also seems unlikely because by that time she probably hadn't lost it.

The idea that someone stole it from one place and "returned" it to another seems quite far-fetched. If you wanted to steal her stuff why give it back? Why not just bin it? If the idea was to get her to return to the PoW to collect it, aren't we then back at rather elaborate schemes to lure her there?

 

[WestLondoner]

Another apparent hard point of data that's not often audited is SJL's departure from the office at 12.40.

The trouble with this is I am not really persuaded anyone would happen to have looked at their watch just to check the time of something so unremarkable as a colleague leaving the office. Do we actually have any witnesses to this, or is this just working backwards from a supposed 12.45 viewing? I.e. she must have left at 12.40 because it's 5 minutes to Shorrolds?

How do we know she didn't leave at 12.20 or 12.30 - which would make the timing of WJ's sighting of her car outside 123SR possible?

 

[Konstantin]

The trouble with this is I am not really persuaded anyone would happen to have looked at their watch just to check the time of something so unremarkable as a colleague leaving the office. Do we actually have any witnesses to this, or is this just working backwards from a supposed 12.45 viewing? I.e. she must have left at 12.40 because it's 5 minutes to Shorrolds?

According to AS there was no clock at Sturgis (I know, right!) so in fact the time she left was estimated. I guess probably based on the viewing timing.

 

[Whitehall 1212]

Another apparent hard point of data that's not often audited is SJL's departure from the office at 12.40.

The trouble with this is I am not really persuaded anyone would happen to have looked at their watch just to check the time of something so unremarkable as a colleague leaving the office. Do we actually have any witnesses to this, or is this just working backwards from a supposed 12.45 viewing? I.e. she must have left at 12.40 because it's 5 minutes to Shorrolds?

How do we know she didn't leave at 12.20 or 12.30 - which would make the timing of WJ's sighting of her car outside 123SR possible?

AS says there was no clock in Sturgis.

I am not aware of any specific information that provides clarity for the time SJL left Sturgis.

The accuracy of timings are of vital importance in showing how the 'circumstances' fit together in a conceivable way.

 

[Pinkizzy]

SJL was a sporty girl and if the PoW was a sporty pub (footy and racing) she may have visited the place for a good reason

 

[Konstantin]

I sort of wonder how AL knew she had lost her stuff at all, if she lost it on Friday. If he knew she had lost it, he would have known where it could be found. If he didn't know, he had scant chance to find out, because she barely talked to him over the weekend. He is the source for there having been a call on Sunday night, so she could only have mentioned it then - which also seems unlikely because by that time she probably hadn't lost it.

We don't know when he found out. Reading between the lines, which is not the best way to make assumptions but is what we have, I would guess that he found out from either Sturgis staff after she went missing or from the medi Probably the former, I have no idea when it was reported that she'd lost stuff. But in other words my guess is he did not find out from SJL. So he is guessing when he says she lost it Friday. If she had mentioned it to him over the weekend, along the lines of, my chequebook and stuff is missing, do you recall seeing my bag tip over? where do you reckon it could have fallen out? he would have said SHE said she had probably lost it when we went out. He doesn't say that, though. Meaning she likely did not ask him about it. You might think she would have dropped by Mossops on the Sunday if it were open that night, to see if they had it.

If I were out on Friday night with someone, realised I'd lost stuff then, I'd be onto the person asking them about it and trying to get them to think where it could have got to. I am not SJL though so who knows how she would react. Maybe her weekend was so full she had no time to really fuss about it and she could not call the bank til Monday anyway. Again, conjecture.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

I lived down the road in the centre of Wandsworth from 1995-2001, and lived and worked in SW London generally until 4 or 5 years ago. I knew that stretch of the Upper Richmond Road well in those years; there was definitely a fairly steady turnover of restaurants and bars, though I reckon you’re probably right about the same sites being used rather than new ones. Kelly’s Directories are good for finding out what businesses were where in the past - using them, along with street view and visiting the area, you can usually reconstruct things quite well. I know the Bishopsgate Institute have a full set in their archive room.

I drank in the PoW now and then over the years, and recall that in my early years in the area - say, mid 90s to early 00s - it was a comparatively scruffy place, you know the type, quite dingy, a few older regular most days, a load of the guvnor’s mates hanging round the pool table most evenings, very far from “gastro”. It’s certainly smartened up since then - I’m too young to remember what it was like in the 80s, though!

That's what many pubs were like in those days - pretty rough.

It was only throughout the 90s a notable large pub chain starting acquiring premises with a key part of their mission being at that time women should feel safe and welcome, office workers should feel comfortable to nip in for lunch, and the toilets must always be clean.

Before that pubs were mostly grubby, dusty, smoke-filled, noisy, boozy affairs with juke boxes, fruit machines, pool tables, pin ball machines, crisps and peanuts, not too many women.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

SJL was a sporty girl and if the PoW was a sporty pub (footy and racing) she may have visited the place for a good reason

Certainly watching matches was a reason why people (including women) would leave home to go to a pub - wimbledon and the FA cup used to be part of the pub calendar.

 

[Crusader21]

It's just a hypothesis...

Correct!

Monday lunchtime left work, 10.01pm car discovered in Stevenage Rd.

The rest? Just a hypothesis .....

 

[Crusader21]

Certainly watching matches was a reason why people (including women) would leave home to go to a pub - wimbledon and the FA cup used to be part of the pub calendar.

Out of interest, would the Pow been packed for the Wednesday lunchtime wedding of Andy and Fergie?

I remember being miffed at not being afforded a day off work that day!

 

[Pinkizzy]

It would be interesting to see which sporting fixtures were televised at that time

Certainly watching matches was a reason why people (including women) would leave home to go to a pub - wimbledon and the FA cup used to be part of the pub calendar.