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

[RichardKimble]

There certainly appear to have been four places she might have gone - home, 37SR, 123SR, and the PoW. The first three were all searched, she wasn't found at any and there was no sign she'd been inside 37SR or 123SR. The last place, the PoW, never was searched.

I still find this unfathomable, given that the pub was the last place she spoke to, and was the only one of those four places that we know she definitely intended to go to that day. IMO, she can't be said definitely to have intended to go to 37SR. As the client name is made up, so might the whole appointment be.

The POW will always leave a cloud over the case unless JC does a deathbed confession but thats improbable imo.

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

There certainly appear to have been four places she might have gone - home, 37SR, 123SR, and the PoW. The first three were all searched, she wasn't found at any and there was no sign she'd been inside 37SR or 123SR. The last place, the PoW, never was searched.

I still find this unfathomable, given that the pub was the last place she spoke to, and was the only one of those four places that we know she definitely intended to go to that day. IMO, she can't be said definitely to have intended to go to 37SR. As the client name is made up, so might the whole appointment be.

As the client name is a fabrication, so may the whole appointment have been ALSO factoring in that SJL had just been refused time out for her mother's 50th birthday lunch - so she *knew*, probably for the first time ever, that asking for time out would result in a resounding 'no'. People say she didn't usually fake appointments but maybe she didn't ever previously get refused a reasonable request for a long lunch break.

Why did her boss refuse her the time out for her mother's birthday? Seems petty to me. I've never worked anywhere they'd flat out decline such a request. Also most of her salary would be commission based I imagine, so her time out is at her own expense surely?

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

It's hard to fathom. If CV did it, he would have had the same motive as any abductor, but it's not obvious that he had as much opportunity, given that he had a pub to run. He did, however, tell DV he was at the pub on his own ('...I was in by myself while… this was going on’ - DV p. 168) and, in the second interview, that KF was not there:

Was she present when it was happening? How does she know about it all?’ I asked, smiling at him. Clive stayed silent. ‘Was she there on the Monday?’ I asked again. ‘No,’ he said flatly, staring back at me in an odd way....– he began shouting again at the top of his voice; this time he couldn’t control himself, getting angrier by the second – ‘SHE HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH IT!’ ‘I don’t understand why I’ve upset you,’ I verbally prodded him. ‘I told you she had nothing to do with it.’ Clive lowered his voice (p195, 199).

AS says the police found his revised account of what happened so hard to understand that they eventually decided he had made a mistake, and that his previous account was correct. This, along with handwaving BW's sighting away, makes me uneasy about how well the investigation was conducted. Both instances suggest they'd settled on a narrative, and that information undermining that narrative was explained away, rather than taken seriously.

'Nothing to do with it...' ?? If something hasn't happened, there's no 'it' for someone to have nothing to do with, so this is a bit of a giveaway. Was this conversation audio recorded by DV?

 

[WestLondoner]

'Nothing to do with it...' ?? If something hasn't happened, there's no 'it' for someone to have nothing to do with, so this is a bit of a giveaway. Was this conversation audio recorded by DV?

I reckon so. It reads like it.

 

[WiseOwl]

'Nothing to do with it...' ?? If something hasn't happened, there's no 'it' for someone to have nothing to do with, so this is a bit of a giveaway. Was this conversation audio recorded by DV?

IMO CV was annoyed at DV for getting in touch with his ex-wife, that's why he was beginning to get annoyed with him.

And 'nothing to do with it' could mean anything; she had nothing to do with the finding of Suzy's things, nothing to do with speaking to the police about it, nothing to do with it at all.

Also don't forget that MH said a member of staff (obviously CV) had found the items and had handed them to his wife.

I think the following day after the stocktake, MH & his wife went on holiday and left it to CV to phone the bank to say that Suzy's cheque book was at the PoW.

 

[NorthParade]

Mossops wasn't a Chinese, and if she never went to the PoW, how did she lose property there? Isn't that evidence she did go there?

He would probably have walked past Mossops to Bayee House (and then back) for the Chinese takeaway. It’s closed now but was at 100 Upper Richmond Road, just before the railway bridge. Quite a posh Chinese restaurant as I recall, they still had a branch in Wimbledon Village until 2018.

I find it plausible that he might have remembered more details about this years later, if DV had jogged his memory. Maybe it was quite a treat, and also the name is quite memorable (I always noticed it when going past for that reason).

 

[Cluesleuth]

He would probably have walked past Mossops to Bayee House (and then back) for the Chinese takeaway. It’s closed now but was at 100 Upper Richmond Road, just before the railway bridge. Quite a posh Chinese restaurant as I recall, they still had a branch in Wimbledon Village until 2018.

I find it plausible that he might have remembered more details about this years later, if DV had jogged his memory. Maybe it was quite a treat, and also the name is quite memorable (I always noticed it when going past for that reason).

Indian food is very popular with Northerners. Was it ever checked that CV ate at or ordered a take away from Mossops on the Friday night?

 

[Terryb808]

I reckon so. It reads like it.

DV is a writer, he has a narrative to push and will be as creative as necessary to push that narrative.

 

[Cherwell]

DV is a writer, he has a narrative to push and will be as creative as necessary to push that narrative.

I haven't read his book, but from the extracts I've seen I don't trust him. The comments about "CV" are far from objective.

 

[WestLondoner]

I'm not sure reporting someone's words verbatim counts as being 'creative'. If he'd paraphrased, the challenge would then have been "yes but you put words into X's mouth - what did X actually say?" As written, we know exactly what his interviewees said.

The takeaway for me from his CV conversations was that this chap seemed to remember a staggering amount about events 35 years ago which by his own account were of no significance or import. So how come he can remember the time of phone calls and what takeaway he had for supper? If I try to remember the details of any day 35 years ago I come up completely empty. DV is then told by one Professor Bull that he ought to dig up the pub!

 

[asyousay]

DV has an agenda to me which is why he hasn’t pushed forward with anything he claims.


He couldn’t sell a book with an ending of “I don’t know what the hell happened” as it wouldn’t sell. So he changed the pub landlords name so he couldn’t get in trouble and claims some outlandish theory that literally makes zero sense.

Then he wonderers why the family and LE won’t listen to him but he was a cop so he knew he would need evidence and he has literally none.


MOO

 

[WiseOwl]

I'm not sure reporting someone's words verbatim counts as being 'creative'. If he'd paraphrased, the challenge would then have been "yes but you put words into X's mouth - what did X actually say?" As written, we know exactly what his interviewees said.

The takeaway for me from his CV conversations was that this chap seemed to remember a staggering amount about events 35 years ago which by his own account were of no significance or import. So how come he can remember the time of phone calls and what takeaway he had for supper? If I try to remember the details of any day 35 years ago I come up completely empty. DV is then told by one Professor Bull that he ought to dig up the pub!

So are we suspecting NH as well then, because in his interview with DV (pages 67 - 74) he seems to remember pretty much everything that went on in the office the morning Suzy vanished, including having a disagreement with her and going to lunch with SF.

He even remembers that they both had the same bidder for one property.

IMO just because someone can remember things in detail from a long time ago doesn't make them guilty of anything.

 

[Cherwell]

Yeah, they probably had to go over it all more than once with the police, and then in conversation as other people would be curious and ask questions. The whole thing being a high-profile mystery, they would have cause to remember.

 

[Pinkizzy]

Yeah, they probably had to go over it all more than once with the police, and then in conversation as other people would be curious and ask questions. The whole thing being a high-profile mystery, they would have cause to remember.

I don't think you can discuss the content of a police interview with others.

 

[asyousay]

I don't think you can discuss the content of a police interview with others.

How would the police know if you told your friends about a police interview?

There is nobody to enforce that rule!

 

[WestLondoner]

DV has an agenda to me which is why he hasn’t pushed forward with anything he claims.


He couldn’t sell a book with an ending of “I don’t know what the hell happened” as it wouldn’t sell. So he changed the pub landlords name so he couldn’t get in trouble and claims some outlandish theory that literally makes zero sense.

Then he wonderers why the family and LE won’t listen to him but he was a cop so he knew he would need evidence and he has literally none.


MOO

He didn't need to spend so much time on it if so, nor did he need to put his suspicions to the police. He could have done what Berry-Dee et al do which is write a book and leave it at that.

The police have an agenda too; I am not sure why they get a free pass?

 

[WestLondoner]

Yeah, they probably had to go over it all more than once with the police, and then in conversation as other people would be curious and ask questions. The whole thing being a high-profile mystery, they would have cause to remember.

NH would, yes, because he saw and spoke to and was with SJL the morning she disappeared. CV, per his own account, was not, however. She never turned up, end of, so there was nothing for him to say or remember.

Indeed, the whole episode was so unimportant that he never even mentioned it to the permanent landlord. The first the latter knew that police had been re SJL was a year later, when they turned up again looking for CV. How did CV forget all about this after 2 weeks, yet remember so much after 35 years?

 

[WestLondoner]

Something else that puzzles me about the police belief in Mr Kipper is that in one obvious respect, HR's claimed sighting was clearly mistaken. HR said he heard a door slam and saw a couple coming out of 37SR. The door being closed was the only reason he noticed anything happening at 37SR at all. The woman was blonde, and was assumed by the police to have been SJL even though HR never said this and saw only the back of her head.

If this account is true, and this was SJL, then HR is unequivocally saying she went inside 37SR. The police assumed both points in their first reconstruction, in which they showed their SJL stand-in entering and leaving. It was this that prompted others to come forward claiming to have seen the same thing.

The police later fingerprinted the house, however, and found no sign she had ever been inside. Let's leave aside the contentious point of whether SJL even had the keys. Even if she did indeed have them, how did she manage to enter and walk around 37SR, conducting a viewing, without touching a single door, door handle, banister rail, kitchen cupboard knob, or anything else at all?

Answer (IMO): she didn't. SJL never went into 37SR. HR's claim to have seen a woman leaving 37SR is either total fiction, made up God knows why - perhaps as something to do; or he is describing an actual visit, but by implication, at a different time by different people. SF with MG, for example, fit the physical descriptions given and the actions described. They may have had keys, may have looked inside, came out again. They just didn't do it at 1pm.

It seems to me that no further credence at all should have been given to HR's sighting once the house was fingerprinted. He claims to have seen something that the fingerprint evidence completely debunks, yet his sighting continues to be relied on and cited as evidence that SJL really went there.

And hence I am back to wondering where SJL really went when she left the office.

 

[WestLondoner]

This is quite interesting - a body from the 80s in an oil drum and dropped into a lake in the USA has been found as water levels fell.

Body found in barrel by boaters at drought-starved Lake Mead: authorities

“My husband walked over and found the body. His shirt and belt were the only thing we could see over his decomposing bones.”

nypost.com

Warning - you get a glimpse of the body.

This is contemporaneous with SJL, so if the canal theory were actually true, it tells you something about the chances of making a case against anyone now. Basically, unless they find bullets or a broken neck or something, they're going to struggle to establish even how this victim died.

 

[Pinkizzy]

How would the police know if you told your friends about a police interview?

There is nobody to enforce that rule!

They will find out at the 1 year review