UK UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #4

[EddietheEagle]

No, SJL may have gone behind MG's desk, maybe she didn't, but if she did, which keys did she take, if indeed she took keys?

Did MG assume SJL took keys because 'someone' went behind his desk - SJL or JC? Has he got eyes in the back of his head? Was he confused with what SJL did on other occasions? Was he concerned that he wasn't in the office at the time but had no alibi? Lots of questions, which one would expect have been ironed by the police to understand exactly who saw, said and did what.

JC's testimony is compelling. He has reason to remember, it involved an action on his part.

There is some conflict of evidence here with the BBC Crimewatch report regarding SL's last minutes in the office. At 20.05:-

"And, as was often the case, she told no one where she was going or when she'd be back".

The discrepancies cannot be easily reconciled. She may have asked for the keys more casually without making it known she was going right away to Shorrolds Road. A visit to more than one property perhaps. Difficult to square the two versions.

Behaviourally, I could see SL not taking her bag were she going to show someone around a house or two then return to the office, the purse required only to buy a bite to eat perhaps. However a visit to a pub in Putney to collect personal belongings and the possibility of stopping off to do something else en route, is a somewhat different scenario. In my view, it would make that person more inclined to take her bag. After all, a bag is where you'd naturally put your effects once collected.

As a complete aside, I cannot find a reference to her car parked in Radipole Rd (as opposed to Whittingstall). I've skimmed through the AS and B-D books but cannot see anything. Was this covered in a documentary?

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

What’s not really known is the arrangements generally for that Friday evening. Also just how bulky an item the diary actually was. I can understand taking a chequebook, but not the diary.
I base this on SJL going home from work and then going for the meal with AL, to the PoW afterwards for a drink and then home?
Now if you believe the police version of events JC was a PoW regular and he knew SJL. This being the case SJL would have avoided the PoW as she’d not want to bump into JC while with AL.
What doesn’t make sence is someone dipping into SJL’s bag, stealing her items, only to leave them for CV to find.

Someone who's a scammer or fraudster would likely take a diary or such to see if it had any passwords or account numbers or info in it that could be utilised.

They might have just grabbed some stuff and put it on the side entrance step with the intention of picking up later -or- maybe sold it on to someone else and left it as a collection point?

 

[Jenesaisquoi]

1986. Can’t think of anything I would have had passwords for. The bank I ended up working for didn’t have individual desk computers until 1996 (possibly 1995).

 

[Cluesleuth]

According to AL in the video it wasnt just the diary, cheque book and cards that were taken from her bag.
I wonder what the few other things were?

 

[EddietheEagle]

Had SL gone to that pub, I reckon it's far more likely she'd have taken her bag with her than not. In other words, probable rather than possible. Even more reason had she other personal effects to collect.

 

[RichardKimble]

Out of interest who collected or who handed in the said items found ? at the POW ?

 

[WestLondoner]

CV claims it was him. The permanent manager can no longer remember. It appears from AS that the police turned up the next morning and spoke only to CV.

 

[RichardKimble]

CV claims it was him. The permanent manager can no longer remember. It appears from AS that the police turned up the next morning and spoke only to CV.

Thanks.

 

[Cherwell]

I have to ask. Where did the information come from that JC frequented the Prince of Wales pub?

 

[Whitehall 1212]

I have to ask. Where did the information come from that JC frequented the Prince of Wales pub?

I refer to my previous post. Watching these two documentaries will assist in providing a baseline for the discussion.

UK - UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #4

DV does not claim that, AFAICT. He met Mick Jones (MJ) and discussed the case with him. MJ was one of two detectives assigned on 28/7/86, was directed to SJL's flat, and did not go into 37SR. He is under the impressions that other officers probably did, but he's not sure who; and also that MG...

www.websleuths.com

 

[Konstantin]

There is some conflict of evidence here with the BBC Crimewatch report regarding SL's last minutes in the office. At 20.05:-

"And, as was often the case, she told no one where she was going or when she'd be back".

The discrepancies cannot be easily reconciled. She may have asked for the keys more casually without making it known she was going right away to Shorrolds Road. A visit to more than one property perhaps. Difficult to square the two versions.

Yes this detail is a little hazy. If she went behind MG's desk to collect keys she could easily have done that before he went out for lunch that day. I don't think him being out at lunch when she left meant that he wasn't around when she took the keys, necessarily.

As she was showing houses all the time why would he ask her each time which one she was showing? He might have been on the phone or doing paperwork, when she went to collect the keys (if he is correct in his memory).

Behaviourally, I could see SL not taking her bag were she going to show someone around a house or two then return to the office, the purse required only to buy a bite to eat perhaps. However a visit to a pub in Putney to collect personal belongings and the possibility of stopping off to do something else en route, is a somewhat different scenario. In my view, it would make that person more inclined to take her bag. After all, a bag is where you'd naturally put your effects once collected.

As a complete aside, I cannot find a reference to her car parked in Radipole Rd (as opposed to Whittingstall). I've skimmed through the AS and B-D books but cannot see anything. Was this covered in a documentary?

The pub was close to her house so would involve her driving almost home and back in lunch time traffic, while pretending she was on a house viewing appointment, something there is no evidence she had done before.

Another detail-- AS records that her rather grand friend, PSS, who had talked about setting up a business with SJL in the past, had originally planned to meet her for lunch that Monday but had to schedule the lunch for Tuesday as her nanny did not work Mondays (so she would have to take care of her child herself...). This suggests that it was only the nanny issue that stopped SJL meeting PSS for lunch that day, i.e. if so it appears there could not have been a huge deal about her having to be in the office that lunchtime, as no other fee earners were there. However we only have PSS's word for this lunch arrangement stuff.

 

[Konstantin]

I refer to my previous post. Watching these two documentaries will assist in providing a baseline for the discussion.

UK - UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #4

DV does not claim that, AFAICT. He met Mick Jones (MJ) and discussed the case with him. MJ was one of two detectives assigned on 28/7/86, was directed to SJL's flat, and did not go into 37SR. He is under the impressions that other officers probably did, but he's not sure who; and also that MG...

www.websleuths.com

I found them useful in understanding how and why JC was ruled in as a suspect in the case.

AS was written before this happened, and DV's book gives the impression that this was done because DL. SJL's mother, had a tip from a very dodgy source and she influenced things.

 

[Cherwell]

I refer to my previous post. Watching these two documentaries will assist in providing a baseline for the discussion.

UK - UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #4

DV does not claim that, AFAICT. He met Mick Jones (MJ) and discussed the case with him. MJ was one of two detectives assigned on 28/7/86, was directed to SJL's flat, and did not go into 37SR. He is under the impressions that other officers probably did, but he's not sure who; and also that MG...

www.websleuths.com

There's just a bare statement that JC frequented the PoW with nothing to back it up, afaicr. Followed by a witness who never mentions the Prince of Wales by name and wasn't filmed outside it.

"He just said that it was a lively pub and it was like a proper wine bar ... he used to go there quite regular."

She doesn't give a name or location. And she's relating what she remembers him saying - she doesn't say that she went to that pub herself. She's described as a former work colleague and there's no indication that she socialised with him.

 

[WestLondoner]

The one on YouTube labelled "Cannan documentary" is IMO very poor. As well as the unsourced and unsubstantiated assertions already noted above, it also contains nonsensical errors.

For example, the dating video is said to have resulted in the agency being inundated with women wanting to meet Cannan. Yet elsewhere the agency owner has said she thought something wasn't quite right, and that she never issued it. Both can't be true. The source of the claim that the agency was inundated appears to have been Cannan himself:

John [sic] wrote to the authors claiming he was inundated with telephone calls from women as a result of his video. But Caroline and Tim Francis were so concerned about their client’s intentions that they took his name off their dating list and did not show it. ‘We felt there was something very strange about him,’ they said later.

Berry-Dee, Christopher. Prime Suspect - The True Story of John Cannan, The Only Man the Police Want to Investigate for the Murder of Suzy Lamplugh (p. 124). John Blake. Kindle Edition.

This appears to be sloppy research by the TV producers. Another example is the assertion that Cannan looked like the Mr Kipper sketch. This is a matter of opinion, not fact. It's asserted that he had a BMW. Cannan was in fact using a red Sierra and no sign of this BMW has ever turned up.

One thing that was interesting was that Bryan Saunders of A&SP confirms in this video that the Met interviewed Cannan and there is no evidence that connects him to the Lamplugh case.

 

[WestLondoner]

This 1988 BBC documentary on Cannan is also interesting. A&SP put JC on an identification parade and had JH attend. She instantly recognised Cannan as the man who had threatened her. Nothing of the kind was ever done with any of the 1986 witnesses who reckoned they'd seen Mr Kipper. How odd.

There is also an interesting comment from a lawyer with the Bristol CPS who was asked by the police for advice on their plan to publish photos of Cannan to appeal for further evidence against him. He observes that "if we used Cannan's photograph in the press any identification evidence would be tainted by that"; and that there was also "the need to secure a fair trial so far as Cannan was concerned", neither of which appear to have troubled the Met when soliciting sightings of him later. One does wonder why claimed sightings of him 14 years later are thought to have any value given these two CPS points. Bryan Saunders also comments on one of the sightings that the appeal brought forth: "Clearly she was a well-intentioned lady...but in Crown Court terms a witness who doesn't come forward until a number of weeks later and then makes statements really has to be looked at with a fine-toothed comb", and a caption across the bottom notes that the judge told the jury to disregard this evidence because of how long she took to come forward.

 

[Cluesleuth]

There's just a bare statement that JC frequented the PoW with nothing to back it up, afaicr. Followed by a witness who never mentions the Prince of Wales by name and wasn't filmed outside it.

"He just said that it was a lively pub and it was like a proper wine bar ... he used to go there quite regular."

She doesn't give a name or location. And she's relating what she remembers him saying - she doesn't say that she went to that pub herself. She's described as a former work colleague and there's no indication that she socialised with him.

Isnt that Wormwood Scrubs in the background?

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

1986. Can’t think of anything I would have had passwords for. The bank I ended up working for didn’t have individual desk computers until 1996 (possibly 1995).

I agree, I recall when ringing the bank branch to deal with things like unagreed overdraft or to cancel a cheque or dispute bank charges, they'd always ask for your sort code and account number. Maybe some people wrote those sort of things down in notebooks? I imagine personal diaries, even small ones can be handy for gleaning info - even if it says something like 'my birthday lunch' then they know your birthday.

 

[Cherwell]

Isnt that Wormwood Scrubs in the background?

Yes, I thought so.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

I found them useful in understanding how and why JC was ruled in as a suspect in the case.

AS was written before this happened, and DV's book gives the impression that this was done because DL. SJL's mother, had a tip from a very dodgy source and she influenced things.

Who was the dodgy source? Sounds like they have more to do with it than JC!

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

According to AL in the video it wasnt just the diary, cheque book and cards that were taken from her bag.
I wonder what the few other things were?

Back in the olden days they used to call cheque book fraud 'kiting' - if someone could pretend to be the genuine cheque book holder, just a couple of other forms of ID and that could secure more 'kiting' - opening other types of accounts, cashing cheques, getting store credit, taking out payment plans on large value items (then walking off with that item), and also spending cheques of more than £50. A couple of forms of ID such as a utility bill and a bank statement could suffice.

I imagine someone dipping bags would be looking for drivers' licence, official letters, keys - home, work, car, garden shed, as well as items of value such as jewellery.