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

[WestLondoner]

popping car doors used to be easy in those days didn't it?

Breaking into a Fiesta or indeed any Ford was trivially easy. I was selling engine oil to car dealers at the time and spent a lot of time with service managers. One of them showed me how to do it in case I ever locked myself out of my Orion.

All you needed was a coat hanger. You just pop out the waterproofing strip along the lower edge of the door glass. Then, noting where the push-down locking knob is on the inside of the door, your insert the hooky end of your coat hanger into the gap where the waterproofing strip was. You fish around there until the hook catches on something. This is the door locking mechanism. A tug upward with the coat hanger unlocks it. Replace waterproofing strip and you are into the car, which is undamaged.

EDIT: if you didn't have a coat hanger handy, a pound coin would do instead. You just threw this at the side window as hard as you could. This usually broke the glass and you could then reach in to unlock the car. You damaged the car, but if you're a thief you don't care, because it's not your car.

Nicking the stereo was easy too. Amazingly, Ford made a stereo-nicking tool. It was a pair of u-shapes, about as thick as a knitting needle, but bent around a bit like a big staple. There were two holes one above the other at each end of the stereo fascia. To remove the stereo you just prodded one of these into each end of the stereo and pushed them outwards. This released the locking springs and the stereo would then just slide out.

I asked one of my customers why the stereo was so easy to nick, and the answer was 'it increases Ford's turnover'.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

There was no ransom call, either to Sturgis or the Lamplugh's.

I think it is important to consider what we know about the police involvement from an early stage.

For some reason, this and the Claudia Lawrence investigation give rise to theories that have no basis in the evidence or the statistical analysis for such cases.

This need for answers and understanding is a deeply entrenched human trait, but it can often result in throwing out what is incomplete but credible in favour of much less credible answers with nothing tangible to support them.

Not everything has to be conducted like a movie though. There's ways of conveying messages, threats, and making deals on someone's head that don't involve ringing up and making overt ransoms. We all assume that every single incoming and outgoing phone call from Sturgis and the Lamplughs and SJL's flat and even the phone box she may or may not have used have been scrutinised but where is the evidence of that as it's never been stated and there's so many conflicting stories of who rang who and when etc, including the odd calls to the PoW.

 

[WestLondoner]

Or that its even a Sex Crime.
My advice would be KEEP AN OPEN MIND! it will serve you well when seeking the truth.
JMO

Very good point. As SJL basically just disappeared, there is no evidence she was abducted, assaulted, or what. Obviously harm came to her, but when, where and further to what aim we don't know.

Personally I rule out a kidnap for ransom because there was nobody who could be tapped up to pay one for her, but that's all I rule out.

JMO

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

Breaking into a Fiesta or indeed any Ford was trivially easy. I was selling engine oil to car dealers at the time and spent a lot of time with service managers. One of them showed me how to do it in case I ever locked myself out of my Orion.

All you needed was a coat hanger. You just pop out the waterproofing strip along the lower edge of the door glass. Then, noting where the push-down locking knob is on the inside of the door, your insert the hooky end of your coat hanger into the gap where the waterproofing strip was. You fish around there until the hook catches on something. This is the door locking mechanism. A tug upward with the coat hanger unlocks it. Replace waterproofing strip and you are into the car, which is undamaged.

Nicking the stereo was easy too. Amazingly, Ford made a stereo-nicking tool. It was a pair of u-shapes, about as thick as a knitting needle, but bent around a bit like a big staple. There were two holes one above the other at each end of the stereo fascia. To remove the stereo you just prodded one of these into each end of the stereo and pushed them outwards. This released the locking springs and the stereo would then just slide out.

I asked one of my customers why the stereo was so easy to nick, and the answer was 'it increases Ford's turnover'.

It's a miracle anyone kept their cars at all bearing in mind there was no CCTV or alarms in those days!

Bearing in all this in mind, wouldn't it be rather more likely that if SJL parked near her home and the cheque book and diary etc was found discarded or stashed on the street very close to her home, that someone took it from her glove compartment - maybe they were spying on her, maybe they were aggrieved with her, maybe they were just a petty thief. Would the car door close like normal afterwards or would it be obvious that it had been tampered with?

 

[WestLondoner]

It's a miracle anyone kept their cars at all bearing in mind there was no CCTV or alarms in those days!

Bearing in all this in mind, wouldn't it be rather more likely that if SJL parked near her home and the cheque book and diary etc was found discarded or stashed on the street very close to her home, that someone took it from her glove compartment - maybe they were spying on her, maybe they were aggrieved with her, maybe they were just a petty thief. Would the car door close like normal afterwards or would it be obvious that it had been tampered with?

Via the coat hanger method there'd be no trace of entry at all unless you chose to leave one. You unlocked the door, replaced the waterproof strip, enter the car and do whatever, then push the locking button down and shut the door. The car is now locked like before.

 

[Whitehall 1212]

All you needed was a coat hanger. You just pop out the waterproofing strip along the lower edge of the door glass. Then, noting where the push-down locking knob is on the inside of the door, your insert the hooky end of your coat hanger into the gap where the waterproofing strip was. You fish around there until the hook catches on something. This is the door locking mechanism. A tug upward with the coat hanger unlocks it. Replace waterproofing strip and you are into the car, which is undamaged.

I take it this is word of mouth and not practical experience! Far too much poking around if you ask me.....you'd be locked up before you were in. Not to mention the scratches on the paintwork, around the door, from the coat hanger.

One thin long bladed screwdriver to create just enough of a gap between the door seals and then slide in a loop of packing tape, is all it needed.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

Very good point. As SJL basically just disappeared, there is no evidence she was abducted, assaulted, or what. Obviously harm came to her, but when, where and further to what aim we don't know.

Personally I rule out a kidnap for ransom because there was nobody who could be tapped up to pay one for her, but that's all I rule out.

JMO

We can't even be 100% certain harm came to her as she could have voluntarily disappeared herself or taken her own life. What if all her situations had come on top and she couldn't see a way out? Or she took off to start a new life? She did have several situations playing out. The main thing that goes against that is how her car was oddly parked with the seat pushed back.

 

[Whitehall 1212]

We can't even be 100% certain harm came to her as she could have voluntarily disappeared herself or taken her own life. What if all her situations had come on top and she couldn't see a way out? Or she took off to start a new life? She did have several situations playing out. The main thing that goes against that is how her car was oddly parked with the seat pushed back.

And this is just where the detective mindset differs.

People are creatures of habit. The greatest predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.

Experience and case histories teach us about offender behaviour and also what circumstances make people take off of their own volition and how they behave both before and after they go missing.

It's all very well saying I think this or that happened, but has anyone really considered what features will be present to prove or disprove the assertion and if so, have they applied them?

Ultimately it falls down to experience. If one has the requisite experience of offender behaviour, investigative skills, how/why missing people behave the way they do, how bodies decompose in different environments, how bodies behave in water etc, then it is an easy step to be confident in concluding the basic nature of SJL's disappearance.

I know we have access to limited information here, but the police did highlight all these hypotheses at the outset. They weren't dismissed out of hand....they were discounted because the things that one would expect to see weren't present. Other factors combined to highlight that SJL did not disappear of her own volition.

 

[Whitehall 1212]

The main thing that goes against that is how her car was oddly parked with the seat pushed back.

No, the main thing that discounts all that is that her past behaviour, together with any evidence before she went missing and since.

Consider, if you will, how if you wanted to disappear without trace how much planning, emotional strength, sacrifice and single minded determination it would need....not for a week or two, for always? And that's only if you're inclined to want to do so.

 

[Whitehall 1212]

It's a miracle anyone kept their cars at all bearing in mind there was no CCTV or alarms in those days!

Bearing in all this in mind, wouldn't it be rather more likely that if SJL parked near her home and the cheque book and diary etc was found discarded or stashed on the street very close to her home, that someone took it from her glove compartment - maybe they were spying on her, maybe they were aggrieved with her, maybe they were just a petty thief. Would the car door close like normal afterwards or would it be obvious that it had been tampered with?

Petty thieves wouldn't use this method. It's too slow and risks getting caught/seen. It's only any good (not the coat hanger please) if you're locked out with the keys inside.

Access to motor vehicles, for the purpose of theft from, required speed for an effective escape. The side window was smashed to access the car and the property, usually a bag on view and/or the radio. A bag was taken but soon searched with cash taken and generally the rest discarded. Offenders don't want to be slowed down by carrying heavy/bulky items or stopped with items which may identify or can be identified by the owner and essentially prove theft or handling stolen goods.

 

[Cluesleuth]

It's a miracle anyone kept their cars at all bearing in mind there was no CCTV or alarms in those days!

Bearing in all this in mind, wouldn't it be rather more likely that if SJL parked near her home and the cheque book and diary etc was found discarded or stashed on the street very close to her home, that someone took it from her glove compartment - maybe they were spying on her, maybe they were aggrieved with her, maybe they were just a petty thief. Would the car door close like normal afterwards or would it be obvious that it had been tampered with?

You have to ask yourself if should we be more interested in what AL decsribed as 'some other stuff' that was also stolen and has never been recovered.
Were these items more important to the person who stole them than the Diary, cheque book and cards?

The only person/people that would know these items were missing would be the person who took them or the person/people that SJL had told.

MOO

 

[Cluesleuth]

Breaking into a Fiesta or indeed any Ford was trivially easy. I was selling engine oil to car dealers at the time and spent a lot of time with service managers. One of them showed me how to do it in case I ever locked myself out of my Orion.

All you needed was a coat hanger. You just pop out the waterproofing strip along the lower edge of the door glass. Then, noting where the push-down locking knob is on the inside of the door, your insert the hooky end of your coat hanger into the gap where the waterproofing strip was. You fish around there until the hook catches on something. This is the door locking mechanism. A tug upward with the coat hanger unlocks it. Replace waterproofing strip and you are into the car, which is undamaged.

EDIT: if you didn't have a coat hanger handy, a pound coin would do instead. You just threw this at the side window as hard as you could. This usually broke the glass and you could then reach in to unlock the car. You damaged the car, but if you're a thief you don't care, because it's not your car.

Nicking the stereo was easy too. Amazingly, Ford made a stereo-nicking tool. It was a pair of u-shapes, about as thick as a knitting needle, but bent around a bit like a big staple. There were two holes one above the other at each end of the stereo fascia. To remove the stereo you just prodded one of these into each end of the stereo and pushed them outwards. This released the locking springs and the stereo would then just slide out.

I asked one of my customers why the stereo was so easy to nick, and the answer was 'it increases Ford's turnover'.

A photo of the interior of SJL's car can be found on Shutterstock

I noticed from the interior photo of the Fiesta that it had a cassette player but no cassettes in the car. I wonder if one of the missing stolen items was a music cassette?

I also noticed what appeared to be a screwed up wrapper in the glove compartment space.

Having watched the Crimewatch Oct 86 reconstruction programme it was followed by a burglarly at a London jewellers one of the burglars had offered the female being held hostage some Dentyne chewing gum.

Thinking about how DNA can be left at a crime scene I wondered if the screwed up wrapper in the Fiesta had been forensically tested and wether any DNA was found on it.
JMO

 

[Terryb808]

A photo of the interior of SJL's car can be found on Shutterstock

I noticed from the interior photo of the Fiesta that it had a cassette player but no cassettes in the car. I wonder if one of the missing stolen items was a music cassette?

I also noticed what appeared to be a screwed up wrapper in the glove compartment space.

Having watched the Crimewatch Oct 86 reconstruction programme it was followed by a burglarly at a London jewellers one of the burglars had offered the female being held hostage some Dentyne chewing gum.

Thinking about how DNA can be left at a crime scene I wondered if the screwed up wrapper in the Fiesta had been forensically tested and wether any DNA was found on it.
JMO

Very good point, I’d guess the police haven’t and also that the item has not been stored correctly to allow it to be used as evidence if it contained DNA.
Also, one part of me tends to think that having named JC as the one and only POI that there’s no urgency to look anything else.

 

[Cluesleuth]

AN interesting piece on BBC News this morning.
Newspaper editors have expressed alarm at police guidance which has not been released publicly telling officers to declare any relationship with a journalist in the same way they would with a criminal disclose links with a criminal. The advice was issued by the college of policing several years ago but its only recently come to light.

BBC correspondent Sean Dilly talks more on this on the programme. It definately worth watching.
sorry no link avail at the moment but you should be able to find it later on the BBC News website.

 

[Konstantin]

And this is just where the detective mindset differs.

People are creatures of habit. The greatest predictor of future behaviour is past behaviour.

Experience and case histories teach us about offender behaviour and also what circumstances make people take off of their own volition and how they behave both before and after they go missing.

It's all very well saying I think this or that happened, but has anyone really considered what features will be present to prove or disprove the assertion and if so, have they applied them?

Ultimately it falls down to experience. If one has the requisite experience of offender behaviour, investigative skills, how/why missing people behave the way they do, how bodies decompose in different environments, how bodies behave in water etc, then it is an easy step to be confident in concluding the basic nature of SJL's disappearance.

I know we have access to limited information here, but the police did highlight all these hypotheses at the outset. They weren't dismissed out of hand....they were discounted because the things that one would expect to see weren't present. Other factors combined to highlight that SJL did not disappear of her own volition.

It's also very rare that people just cut off all contact with their past lives. It's just not remotely likely in SJL's case. She was a popular, successful young woman with tons of friends, a great life, and plans for her future. She was beloved by her family and cared deeply about them. For her to just disappear without a trace to "start a new life" is just not worth considering.

Even people who have tried to disappear for good reasons-- the Canoe Man story is a good case in point--were not able to cut themselves off completely from their old lives. Canoe Man even lived with his wife after he faked his own death, and eventually tried to pretend he had amnesia because he wanted to reconnect with his family. And he was a sociopathic idiot. SJL was far from being that.

Unfortunately, women are murdered and raped. Usually by people they know but in some cases by strangers who are psychopathic monsters. Sometimes the bodies are not found.

It's actually hard to believe that someone is capable of doing these things because we would not even have any urges to do them. Reading about JC for example (who may be responsible for SJL's murder) it is hard to fathom how someone could abduct, rape and murder (yes we don't know he raped SB but he was a convicted rapist, so we can assume he must have) a young newly wedded woman (SB) then a week or so later have his mum stay in the flat where he had held SB captive. He managed to go out with women, and not murder them. (Yet he did stalk and threaten them--he was fond of getting others to help him do this, e.g. he hired a private investigator to find out info on his solicitor girlfriend). It's hard to fathom how one minute SB was buying a new dress in a department store, next minute she's abducted to be murdered--because we would not be capable of this behaviour ourselves.

 

[Pinkizzy]

AN interesting piece on BBC News this morning.
Newspaper editors have expressed alarm at police guidance which has not been released publicly telling officers to declare any relationship with a journalist in the same way they would with a criminal disclose links with a criminal. The advice was issued by the college of policing several years ago but its only recently come to light.

BBC correspondent Sean Dilly talks more on this on the programme. It definately worth watching.
sorry no link avail at the moment but you should be able to find it later on the BBC News website.

This doesn't make sense at all. A journalist could help the police with tipoffs, couldnt they?

 

[Whitehall 1212]

A photo of the interior of SJL's car can be found on Shutterstock

I noticed from the interior photo of the Fiesta that it had a cassette player but no cassettes in the car. I wonder if one of the missing stolen items was a music cassette?

I also noticed what appeared to be a screwed up wrapper in the glove compartment space.

Having watched the Crimewatch Oct 86 reconstruction programme it was followed by a burglarly at a London jewellers one of the burglars had offered the female being held hostage some Dentyne chewing gum.

Thinking about how DNA can be left at a crime scene I wondered if the screwed up wrapper in the Fiesta had been forensically tested and wether any DNA was found on it.
JMO

DNA testing was not an established criminal forensics technique in 1986.

It was used for the first time by Leicestershire police following the rape and murder of Dawn Ashworth in July 1986.

It was used to compare two semen samples from two rape and murder victims, and to discount the veracity of a confession for the one of the offences.

The DNA from the crime scenes confirmed that the same offender was responsible.

DNA comparison with the male who had admitted one of the offences confirmed that he did not match the offenders profile.

 

[Whitehall 1212]

This doesn't make sense at all. A journalist could help the police with tipoffs, couldnt they?

It makes perfect sense.

Pre-employment vetting for police officers has long required a declaration of any relationships, which could cause undue influence, e.g.

1. Any association with known criminals
2. Any close family member owning a licenced business
3. Any personal business interest

A police officer has access to confidential material. Any police officer that has a relationship (often close personal) with a journalist could be compromised to assist them with information, albeit unlawfully.

There are established channels in the police for communication with journalists. This matter regards 'additional', unauthorised ones.

 

[Whitehall 1212]

Very good point, I’d guess the police haven’t and also that the item has not been stored correctly to allow it to be used as evidence if it contained DNA.
Also, one part of me tends to think that having named JC as the one and only POI that there’s no urgency to look anything else.

1. Any item of evidential value will have been retained.

2. All new evidence is acted on, irrespective of whether is points towards or away from JC.

3. JC being declared the "only suspect" does not mean the police will discount any new suspects.

This is a flawed mindset. It needs to change.

 

[Whitehall 1212]

It's also very rare that people just cut off all contact with their past lives. It's just not remotely likely in SJL's case. She was a popular, successful young woman with tons of friends, a great life, and plans for her future. She was beloved by her family and cared deeply about them. For her to just disappear without a trace to "start a new life" is just not worth considering.

Even people who have tried to disappear for good reasons-- the Canoe Man story is a good case in point--were not able to cut themselves off completely from their old lives. Canoe Man even lived with his wife after he faked his own death, and eventually tried to pretend he had amnesia because he wanted to reconnect with his family. And he was a sociopathic idiot. SJL was far from being that.

Unfortunately, women are murdered and raped. Usually by people they know but in some cases by strangers who are psychopathic monsters. Sometimes the bodies are not found.

It's actually hard to believe that someone is capable of doing these things because we would not even have any urges to do them. Reading about JC for example (who may be responsible for SJL's murder) it is hard to fathom how someone could abduct, rape and murder (yes we don't know he raped SB but he was a convicted rapist, so we can assume he must have) a young newly wedded woman (SB) then a week or so later have his mum stay in the flat where he had held SB captive. He managed to go out with women, and not murder them. (Yet he did stalk and threaten them--he was fond of getting others to help him do this, e.g. he hired a private investigator to find out info on his solicitor girlfriend). It's hard to fathom how one minute SB was buying a new dress in a department store, next minute she's abducted to be murdered--because we would not be capable of this behaviour ourselves.

An excellent assessment @Konstantin.