UK UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #5

[ChocolateChip]

MOO

I’m thinking the crime scene was in Hammersmith. Therefore, SL’s remains could well be there too.

 

[WestLondoner]

Taggart's flat was in Sun Road, I believe (LSW provided this info). Sun Road contains several three- to four-storey blocks of council flats typically with six ground-floor flats and four garages per such block. It's a 10 minute walk from Shorrolds, maybe four in a car.

To get there when heading north up the Fulham Palace Road, where BW saw SJL, you turn right into Greyhound Road then keep going. It's about a mile from that point. To get back to Stevenage Road, you just retrace the same route, turning right off the FPR into Kenyon Street. This street brings you into Stevenage Road, so that if you turn right again and dump your Fiesta right there, you are opposite WJ's house.

It's then about a mile and a quarter back to Sun Road on foot. If Taggart's job was to get on with losing the car while JC did something else, he could have walked home from where the car was left in about 25 minutes. He'd have been walking away from, not past, the little tent the BT workers were inside - the ones who noticed nothing.

We don't know if Taggart had access to any of the garages or what he told the Babylon. But you can imagine either Cannan telling Taggart to get rid of the Fiesta, or Taggart telling Cannan to get rid of the Fiesta, because it was obviously going to get very hot indeed and you don't want your victim's car found in a garage that can be linked to you. If this was Cannan he seems to have forgotten this lesson by the time he murdered SB. The seat position does not suit Cannan but may have suited Taggart. You'd expect him to have nicked the cash in the purse, but if all Taggart did was get rid of a hot car he'd not have known there was a purse in the car.

The thing is, it's hard to see Taggart knowing anything specific enough to be useful unless he was an active accomplice - which his own crimes don't suggest he would have been.

Cannan aside, it has just occurred to me that the Scrubs was not the only nick near where SJL lived. HMP Brixton is actually even nearer to where she lived than the Scrubs - five miles or so - and presumably was also releasing rapists at much the same time.

 

[Terryb808]

Taggart's flat was in Sun Road, I believe (LSW provided this info). Sun Road contains several three- to four-storey blocks of council flats typically with six ground-floor flats and four garages per such block. It's a 10 minute walk from Shorrolds, maybe four in a car.

To get there when heading north up the Fulham Palace Road, where BW saw SJL, you turn right into Greyhound Road then keep going. It's about a mile from that point. To get back to Stevenage Road, you just retrace the same route, turning right off the FPR into Kenyon Street. This street brings you into Stevenage Road, so that if you turn right again and dump your Fiesta right there, you are opposite WJ's house.

It's then about a mile and a quarter back to Sun Road on foot. If Taggart's job was to get on with losing the car while JC did something else, he could have walked home from where the car was left in about 25 minutes. He'd have been walking away from, not past, the little tent the BT workers were inside - the ones who noticed nothing.

We don't know if Taggart had access to any of the garages or what he told the Babylon. But you can imagine either Cannan telling Taggart to get rid of the Fiesta, or Taggart telling Cannan to get rid of the Fiesta, because it was obviously going to get very hot indeed and you don't want your victim's car found in a garage that can be linked to you. If this was Cannan he seems to have forgotten this lesson by the time he murdered SB. The seat position does not suit Cannan but may have suited Taggart. You'd expect him to have nicked the cash in the purse, but if all Taggart did was get rid of a hot car he'd not have known there was a purse in the car.

The thing is, it's hard to see Taggart knowing anything specific enough to be useful unless he was an active accomplice - which his own crimes don't suggest he would have been.

Cannan aside, it has just occurred to me that the Scrubs was not the only nick near where SJL lived. HMP Brixton is actually even nearer to where she lived than the Scrubs - five miles or so - and presumably was also releasing rapists at much the same time.

This is exactly my thoughts on JC’s possible involvement. Timings are right (SJL’s car may have been abandoned earlier than 4.00pm, but not that much.
If it was just JC & JT it’s been kept quiet all these years. As the case got more attention I feel JT would have had even more reason to keep his mouth shut.
There are more complex possibilities, but sometimes the simplest solution turns out to be the right one.
It certainly fits with JC’s impulsive nature, and it may be possible that JT was just an unwilling partner in one of JC’s random acts of violence.

 

[WestLondoner]

A further thought on this is that if we accept, for argument's sake, that this was a JC effort, based somehow out of Sun Road, then some other aspects of the various sightings become possible.

He can't be sure of being left undisturbed to attack or kill her while inside 37SR, because it's not his house and he knows nothing about the owner or agents' movements. Even if he were or did, he will leave evidence of himself there that he will not be able to hide or clean up at leisure. So 37SR is just a place to meet her, not to kill her.

If he arrives at 37SR by car, takes her away in his car to be killed and hers is then found there, that's the starting point for the inquiry. How, when and with whom did she leave, if not in her own car? So obviously he has to get both her car and his own away from there. If he leaves with her in either car, this raises the problem that he has to go back and retrieve the other. Depending on how long the abduction took, he could have been trying to retrieve it from what might by then already have been designated a crime scene.

The solution? He walks to 37SR from Sun Road (or perhaps a block such as Cheesemans Terrace, where Sun Road becomes Star Road; a council block, with garages round the back in May Street). If this were arranged by a call at 12.40, he's got time to get there on foot from Sun Road - or from some 'phone box or pub payphone in between - just after she gets there by car. This makes the sightings of her waiting outside plausible.

He then ensures they leave in the only car there - hers - on some pretext. They do not go inside, hence no fingerprints left inside by either of them.

Per BW, they are still in her car two hours later. We don't know what happened in those two hours. But she would be anxious to get back to the office. So JC says could you just drop me where I left my car? At this point, they switch into the BMW in which she is later seen. At some later point still, but before 4pm, he drives back to Sun Road where she is led inside, kidnapped and / or killed.

Taggart then maybe unexpectedly turns up at Sun Road - it's his flat, after all. He is told by Cannan it's in both their interests for that bl00dy Fiesta outside to disappear ASAFP, and here are the keys. It may be hot already. Taggart asks no questions but instead drives off in her Fiesta, after moving the seat back to suit him. He dumps the car and sets off back to Sun Road on foot, at about the time MG is wondering where SJL has got to.

Inside Taggart's garage, Cannan puts SJL's body into the boot of the BMW and drives to Sutton Coldfield. He is gone before Taggart gets back. All Taggart knows is, he got rid of a hot car. He never saw SJL.

Cannan gets rid of both SJL's body and the BMW within the next few days. He maintains an apparently solid alibi by moving back in with his mother and making these moves overnight, leaving the house after she's gone to bed, and returning in the small hours before she's awake (a 3 hours' drive each way).

This hypothetical sequence of events fits quite a few of the sightings, and explains why the police have been looking for deposition sites in the Midlands; Cannan took her away on Monday afternoon. But it requires an accomplice, and like the other hypotheses, there's no evidence for any of it.

 

[Terryb808]

A further thought on this is that if we accept, for argument's sake, that this was a JC effort, based somehow out of Sun Road, then some other aspects of the various sightings become possible.

He can't be sure of being left undisturbed to attack or kill her while inside 37SR, because it's not his house and he knows nothing about the owner or agents' movements. Even if he were or did, he will leave evidence of himself there that he will not be able to hide or clean up at leisure. So 37SR is just a place to meet her, not to kill her.

If he arrives at 37SR by car, takes her away in his car to be killed and hers is then found there, that's the starting point for the inquiry. How, when and with whom did she leave, if not in her own car? So obviously he has to get both her car and his own away from there. If he leaves with her in either car, this raises the problem that he has to go back and retrieve the other. Depending on how long the abduction took, he could have been trying to retrieve it from what might by then already have been designated a crime scene.

The solution? He walks to 37SR from Sun Road (or perhaps a block such as Cheesemans Terrace, where Sun Road becomes Star Road; a council block, with garages round the back in May Street). If this were arranged by a call at 12.40, he's got time to get there on foot from Sun Road - or from some 'phone box or pub payphone in between - just after she gets there by car. This makes the sightings of her waiting outside plausible.

He then ensures they leave in the only car there - hers - on some pretext. They do not go inside, hence no fingerprints left inside by either of them.

Per BW, they are still in her car two hours later. We don't know what happened in those two hours. But she would be anxious to get back to the office. So JC says could you just drop me where I left my car? At this point, they switch into the BMW in which she is later seen. At some later point still, but before 4pm, he drives back to Sun Road where she is led inside, kidnapped and / or killed.

Taggart then maybe unexpectedly turns up at Sun Road - it's his flat, after all. He is told by Cannan it's in both their interests for that bl00dy Fiesta outside to disappear ASAFP, and here are the keys. It may be hot already. Taggart asks no questions but instead drives off in her Fiesta, after moving the seat back to suit him. He dumps the car and sets off back to Sun Road on foot, at about the time MG is wondering where SJL has got to.

Inside Taggart's garage, Cannan puts SJL's body into the boot of the BMW and drives to Sutton Coldfield. He is gone before Taggart gets back. All Taggart knows is, he got rid of a hot car. He never saw SJL.

Cannan gets rid of both SJL's body and the BMW within the next few days. He maintains an apparently solid alibi by moving back in with his mother and making these moves overnight, leaving the house after she's gone to bed, and returning in the small hours before she's awake (a 3 hours' drive each way).

This hypothetical sequence of events fits quite a few of the sightings, and explains why the police have been looking for deposition sites in the Midlands; Cannan took her away on Monday afternoon. But it requires an accomplice, and like the other hypotheses, there's no evidence for any of it.

Again a perfectly workable scenario, if we take it just one step further and add a water based deposition sight (one Whitehall asked me about) in Sutton Coldfield.
The sight has links to JC and given his childhood and schooling would be very ironic indeed.
It would most definitely appeal to JC and it’s a place that’s never been searched.

 

[ChocolateChip]

Taggart's flat was in Sun Road, I believe (LSW provided this info). Sun Road contains several three- to four-storey blocks of council flats typically with six ground-floor flats and four garages per such block. It's a 10 minute walk from Shorrolds, maybe four in a car.

To get there when heading north up the Fulham Palace Road, where BW saw SJL, you turn right into Greyhound Road then keep going. It's about a mile from that point. To get back to Stevenage Road, you just retrace the same route, turning right off the FPR into Kenyon Street. This street brings you into Stevenage Road, so that if you turn right again and dump your Fiesta right there, you are opposite WJ's house.

It's then about a mile and a quarter back to Sun Road on foot. If Taggart's job was to get on with losing the car while JC did something else, he could have walked home from where the car was left in about 25 minutes. He'd have been walking away from, not past, the little tent the BT workers were inside - the ones who noticed nothing.

We don't know if Taggart had access to any of the garages or what he told the Babylon. But you can imagine either Cannan telling Taggart to get rid of the Fiesta, or Taggart telling Cannan to get rid of the Fiesta, because it was obviously going to get very hot indeed and you don't want your victim's car found in a garage that can be linked to you. If this was Cannan he seems to have forgotten this lesson by the time he murdered SB. The seat position does not suit Cannan but may have suited Taggart. You'd expect him to have nicked the cash in the purse, but if all Taggart did was get rid of a hot car he'd not have known there was a purse in the car.

The thing is, it's hard to see Taggart knowing anything specific enough to be useful unless he was an active accomplice - which his own crimes don't suggest he would have been.

Cannan aside, it has just occurred to me that the Scrubs was not the only nick near where SJL lived. HMP Brixton is actually even nearer to where she lived than the Scrubs - five miles or so - and presumably was also releasing rapists at much the same time.

Your theory certainly ticks a lot of boxes. An easy memorable route to and from Stevenage. I’d be inclined to go from Stevenage to Queensmill to FPR to Greyhound to Star and Sun. 10 minutes by car and 30 by foot. (Shorrolds and Sturgis are also close)
As SL would have been in a hurry to get back to the office, she would have more likely agreed to a drop off of just 10 minutes away. She was probably aiming to get back to the office for 3pm. (12:40-3pm is a very long time to show somebody around even if you go back and say he viewed 3 properties)
It fits in with BW’s sighting on FPR past the cemetery. (And I’m assuming before the hospital, otherwise BW would have mentioned past the hospital)
It fits in with my quiet location theory. A cul de sac so no through traffic.
It fits in with the Police’s JC theory.
It fits in with not being seen dumping the car as 3-4pm on Monday 28th July would have been the summer holidays so no school runs.
A man walking along a street alone wouldn’t have been suspicious.

I would certainly look at this theory first. It ticks a lot of boxes. It cannot be discounted.

Could the deposition site be a garden? Council tenants don’t dig or build in their gardens as they don’t own the property. So another tick would be that the remains haven’t surfaced as the gardens haven’t been dug up or built on since the 80s.

I’m presuming a garage would have stuff in it and a concrete floor. Plus, the tenants might not be given keys to garages. This is why I’m leaning towards a garden than a garage.

Regards the car seat position, I find men always move my seat back whether they’re tall or short. Maybe us women prefer being closer to the pedals.

I’ve tried finding information on Taggart but there doesn’t seem to be any anywhere.

 

[WestLondoner]

Yes, thinking on it, the only way you'd hide a body under a garage floor is if you'd already taken that floor up in preparation. If it's cement or concrete, this would involve picks and angle grinders and be noisy, and then you have to make it good again. It would be easier to do if it's tiled, but tiles would be an expensive oddity in a council flat's garage.

Your garden idea makes much sense, but it would need to be a garden to which nobody else had physical or even visual access.

If Cannan put her in the boot of a car already inside the garage, and better yet if the garage connects to a ground floor flat, then all he had to do was get her into the flat. He kills her there, takes her into the garage and leaves without ever having to move a body around in potential plain view.

He could then dispose of the body anywhere - into any garden, not limited to the one attached to the flat.

This must be fairly similar to the police thinking, otherwise they wouldn't be digging up gardens in Sutton Coldfield. It would also explain why Taggart gave them nothing useful when he eventually snitched on Cannan: he didn't have anything. All he had was that he had organised the odd car for Cannan - the LHD BMW maybe, the red Sierra definitely - and had got rid of a white Fiesta which he later realised must have been SJL's. But he never saw her, that day or any other, and has no idea where Cannan might have taken her.

Apparently the police wasted much time on a search for a black classic BMW that they later gave up on before completing it. If what they should have been looking for was a LHD car then this would slash the number they needed to locate by about 99%, meaning they could have traced the owner. If that turned out to be, say, Taggart....I think at that point in 1986 he'd have given Cannan up. IMO...

By the way, the above MO speculation works for anyone, obvs, not limited to Cannan.

 

[Terryb808]

Yes, thinking on it, the only way you'd hide a body under a garage floor is if you'd already taken that floor up in preparation. If it's cement or concrete, this would involve picks and angle grinders and be noisy, and then you have to make it good again. It would be easier to do if it's tiled, but tiles would be an expensive oddity in a council flat's garage.

Your garden idea makes much sense, but it would need to be a garden to which nobody else had physical or even visual access.

If Cannan put her in the boot of a car already inside the garage, and better yet if the garage connects to a ground floor flat, then all he had to do was get her into the flat. He kills her there, takes her into the garage and leaves without ever having to move a body around in potential plain view.

He could then dispose of the body anywhere - into any garden, not limited to the one attached to the flat.

This must be fairly similar to the police thinking, otherwise they wouldn't be digging up gardens in Sutton Coldfield. It would also explain why Taggart gave them nothing useful when he eventually snitched on Cannan: he didn't have anything. All he had was that he had organised the odd car for Cannan - the LHD BMW maybe, the red Sierra definitely - and had got rid of a white Fiesta which he later realised must have been SJL's. But he never saw her, that day or any other, and has no idea where Cannan might have taken her.

Apparently the police wasted much time on a search for a black classic BMW that they later gave up on before completing it. If what they should have been looking for was a LHD car then this would slash the number they needed to locate by about 99%, meaning they could have traced the owner. If that turned out to be, say, Taggart....I think at that point in 1986 he'd have given Cannan up. IMO...

By the way, the above MO speculation works for anyone, obvs, not limited to Cannan.

I wonder if the ex met JD reads any of the last few posts, he’d be very much encouraged that he has the right man in JC.
Yes it does work for others, but not as perfectly as JC.
The complicated business deal going wrong would most likely involve more than just two people.
As would the super complicated link to the million pound Jewel robbery that occurred 3 days after SJL disappeared.
I personally favour the simple explanation of either JC or CV from the PoW as most likely.
AFAIK the railway embankment behind the PoW pub has remain undisturbed since SJL disappeared.

 

[WestLondoner]

I had to drop the fam off at the theatre in Hammersmith today and had time to kill waiting for pick them up. So for my own amusement I parked in Hammersmith then wandered down the FPR to 123SR, as outlined in my post above. I wanted to see how long it takes to walk from there to Sun Road. It look me 20 minutes at my normal pace. I then walked to 37SR and that took 10 minutes. Then it started chucking it down so I lost interest.

It does suggest that it is possible to ditch a car at 123SR and walk back to Sun without hurrying in a reasonable time. For quite a bit of the shortest route you are in parks and on footpaths so you'd know if anyone had seen you.

 

[Terryb808]

I had to drop the fam off at the theatre in Hammersmith today and had time to kill waiting for pick them up. So for my own amusement I parked in Hammersmith then wandered down the FPR to 123SR, as outlined in my post above. I wanted to see how long it takes to walk from there to Sun Road. It look me 20 minutes at my normal pace. I then walked to 37SR and that took 10 minutes. Then it started chucking it down so I lost interest.

It does suggest that it is possible to ditch a car at 123SR and walk back to Sun without hurrying in a reasonable time. For quite a bit of the shortest route you are in parks and on footpaths so you'd know if anyone had seen you.

I live too far away from London so couldn’t do this.
It’s invaluable info when put together with all the previous posts and IMO just adds weight to its likelihood of being correct.
I wonder if the police ever looked at this, maybe they did after interviewing JT and this is just one of the reasons they are so set on JC as a prime suspect.

 

[WestLondoner]

The point of the musing really was to see if it is possible to hypothesise a way JT could know a lot about JC that day, while not actually knowing that he had abducted and murdered someone. If you can't, this compromises JT as an informant because it would mean he'd have to edit his story to leave his own role out.

The layout is such that you enter these flats from the block main front entrance but the garages are then round the back. Perhaps JC asked JT if he could use his garage / flat that day with no questions asked, nudge nudge say no more mate. In the above scenario, it seems just about possible that JC could take SJL without JT knowing exactly what he was about. If JT turns up, perhaps unexpectedly, via the front door JC gets him out of the way again by sending him on the errand to dump the Fiesta without letting him see what's happening in his garage. The time taken to drive it away and walk back would be at most half an a hour, but this could be as long as JC needed if he's inside a garage.

Nobody would notice Taggart, or even Mr Kipper, on the walk back. The route is mostly via parks and footpaths through council estates; there would not be many people around and you can do it without appearing to hurry in 20 minutes.

The thing is that anybody could have done something similar via another property nearby - not limited to Cannan. There's no evidence any of this actually happened, and different supposed sightings then become hard to fit in - the jogger sighting of a BMW, for example, has her in a BMW and still in Stevenage Road a lot later.

Regards the car seat position, I find men always move my seat back whether they’re tall or short. Maybe us women prefer being closer to the pedals.

Or the steering wheel maybe? Women have shorter arms as well, and Fiestas didn't have power steering, making them heavy to park. SJL's seat position may have been too close to the steering wheel. Mrs WL sits so close to the steering wheel that I physically can't get into a car she's just driven.

 

[ChocolateChip]

Again a perfectly workable scenario, if we take it just one step further and add a water based deposition sight (one Whitehall asked me about) in Sutton Coldfield.
The sight has links to JC and given his childhood and schooling would be very ironic indeed.
It would most definitely appeal to JC and it’s a place that’s never been searched.

Which site is this please?

 

[Terryb808]

Which site is this please?

The site is within the boundaries of Sutton Park nature reserve. Wyndley pool is actually just outside one of the main gates into the park.
It has 24/7 365 days access and from the road you are less than 2 metres from the pool.
What links this to JC is the fact that his school backs into this pool, if you believe the account within CBD’s book “Prime Suspect” JC hated this school and said he was abused while there.
Sutton Park has 7 pools (including this one) and over the last 40 years they’ve all been drained except this one AFSIK.
Additionally, JC disposed of the knife he used in the knitting shop rape in another one of the Sutton Park pools.
The police seem to think JC buried SJL in his mom’s house somewhere, that turned up negative as did the Norton military site.
While a logical person wouldn’t bring a victims body into his own backyard, JC isn’t normal.

 

[ChocolateChip]

The site is within the boundaries of Sutton Park nature reserve. Wyndley pool is actually just outside one of the main gates into the park.
It has 24/7 365 days access and from the road you are less than 2 metres from the pool.
What links this to JC is the fact that his school backs into this pool, if you believe the account within CBD’s book “Prime Suspect” JC hated this school and said he was abused while there.
Sutton Park has 7 pools (including this one) and over the last 40 years they’ve all been drained except this one AFSIK.
Additionally, JC disposed of the knife he used in the knitting shop rape in another one of the Sutton Park pools.
The police seem to think JC buried SJL in his mom’s house somewhere, that turned up negative as did the Norton military site.
While a logical person wouldn’t bring a victims body into his own backyard, JC isn’t normal.

A body would bloat and float after a few weeks in water. It could be weighed down I suppose. I very much doubt JC was part of the dismemberment brigade. Nothing surfaced in all these years. It would be good to know for certain when it was last drained.

 

[Terryb808]

A body would bloat and float after a few weeks in water. It could be weighed down I suppose. I very much doubt JC was part of the dismemberment brigade. Nothing surfaced in all these years. It would be good to know for certain when it was last drained.

It definitely would float to the surface, IMO just like the canal story the body would have been in a large canvas bag or suitcase.
The nature reserve comes under the control of the Birmingham city council, maybe they could confirm when maintenance was last carried out.

 

[lee sumner]

I had to drop the fam off at the theatre in Hammersmith today and had time to kill waiting for pick them up. So for my own amusement I parked in Hammersmith then wandered down the FPR to 123SR, as outlined in my post above. I wanted to see how long it takes to walk from there to Sun Road. It look me 20 minutes at my normal pace. I then walked to 37SR and that took 10 minutes. Then it started chucking it down so I lost interest.

It does suggest that it is possible to ditch a car at 123SR and walk back to Sun without hurrying in a reasonable time. For quite a bit of the shortest route you are in parks and on footpaths so you'd know if anyone had seen you.

wish i could walk the SL locations, but iam from manchester.

 

[duquesne]

I'm new to this case and have pretty much skipped the last 18mths of threads. I remember well when it happened, although I was the best part of a decade younger than SJL, but honestly wouldn't have been able to reel off SJL's name from the top of my head at any time since, right up until a few weeks ago. How it sunk into the public-at-large's conciousness, for those that never really followed closely such as me, can be summed up simply by 'young female estate agent' and 'Mr Kipper' imo.

I was pretty familiar with London, or central London at least, when this happened, and used to travel there regularly for shopping, gigs and to visit friends who lived there. Three years after SJL's disappearance, in 1989, I was living on the Fulham Rd in fact - but at the Chelsea end of the road - so I never really spent much time in Fulham or Putney until much later (although I did also live in Richmond and visit Sheen shortly after my Fulham road residence).

Turns out it's a very interesting case, with many possible suspects (ex-Alibi) and motives.

A few things stuck out for me that may not have been mentioned on this series of threads (apologies if these have already been stated).

Regarding SJL's fiesta on Stevenage Rd..

1) It's possible that she parked it there, and realising that she was overlapping the garage then deliberately left the door open, pushed the seat back and left off the handbrake so that it could easily be rolled forward by the garage owner if the car in front had departed - probably soon after work hours and just before the garage owner would likely return with his car. I also remember that my grandmother used to sit right up close to the steering wheel, and would slide the seat back when exiting the vehicle/move the seat forward upon entry before starting the engine.

2) It's also not impossible that the car was parked there, departed, and then returned to the exact same spot later on.. as an 80's fiesta is a pretty compact car, and so the 'empty' half-space was almost a full space for a fiesta, & less likely to be occupied by another car if she departed and then later returned there for some reason.

3) If she was abducted in her car, the passenger seat occupant/abductor as per the BW sighting on FPR, could have been threatening her with a knife or imitation gun (!) perhaps. As far as I can tell she was spotted in her car travelling North past the cemetary gates but before the church. A point of confusion for me here is that BW(?) was in that case travelling South on her bicycle, trying to remember, from her home towards an estate agent's office which she names.. past the cemetary gates? Anyone know where that estate agency was located? Can't remember the name off-hand whilst I am typing this. Shortly afterwards, if the abductor had spotted BW's handwave, he could have instructed her to turn left, finding their way to the furthest and least connected street, left again, right, left etc. where there would be hardly any through-traffic, only local traffic. He instructs her to turn car after they pass the 'half-space' and pull up in there. Now.. he is threatening her with a knife/imitation gun, so he needs to follow her through the driver door.. he does this by moving the seat back, and taking the handbrake off so that he can skip over handbrake and driver's seat and stay close to SJL with the weapon.

As stated on here before, the only two absolute facts are that she left the office sometime around 1240pm and the car was located around 10pm. Also the known witness accounts are conflicting - so we are unable to simply interpolate every sighting (overfitting the data). So by picking different combinations of a selection of witness accounts as hypothesized facts, we end up with a multitude of possible scenarios/hypotheses.

So, here is just one example scenario, taking one witness account that isn't mentioned much as far as I can tell.. that SJL was eager to purchase a higher-end car for herself... and she was just about to receive a nice commission.

Suppose a certain suspect has a history of fraud/deception. He boosts a 'nice' car perhaps with the intention of using it himself for a while, or for fraudulently selling it on to a punter. His big problem with taking in a potential buyer is having the correct papers for the sale. He reasons that by boosting a continental LHD car he is more likely to find the papers in the glove compartment or above the passenger sun visor. He finds a nice looking LHD BMW and his luck is in.. papers in the glove compartment list the owner as a one 'Mr Kiper' from Belgium. (Yes, I agree, this is a bit of a reach!)

Now to sell this car he needs to put an untraceable advert somewhere, so not in a paper/auto-trader mag where the telephone number could be circled, found and traced, and as well in an area affluent enough to be seen by a punter with the desire and means to make such a purchase in cash. Well.. one thing I remember about the 80s was the state of the public telephone boxes (see where I'm going with this?).. absolutely stuffed with cards for prostitutes/escort services and dodgy goods for sale (correct me if my memory is wrong).

Sunday night SJL needs to make a few private telephone calls, she brings her Filofax organizer (which happens to have her chequebook and some other items within the pages and is clipped shut with the leather popper) and heads to the box just down Oxford road & across the railway tracks from her flat (where her tenant is watching the television not far from where the landline is..) next to the PoW public house. During one of her calls she notices an advert for a lovely used dark BMW, cheap, stuck on the board behind the phone unit amongst all the other numerous solicitations. No tear off numbers, and she forgot to reattach the filofax default pen and no other pen, so she just calls the number and reaches an 'imposter' Mr Kiper and they agree to a rendevous outside one of Sturgis' realty sales properties at 12:45pm the next day. She leaves the advert with no tear-off numbers on the board in the box. In her excitement, finding such a good value-for-money deal for exactly the type of car she is interested in, she accidently leaves her Filofax there (in the telephone box outside the PoW - and later on it is found by someone intending to make a call and left on the beer-table seat close to the door of the pub).

Next day she arrives on time, they meet. He says he was worried about parking and so has parked the car a few streets away, and she agrees to bring him to the car in her fiesta - throwing some caution to the wind due to the fact that he speaks in a very educated manner/accent, and is very well groomed, wearing an expensive looking suit.

They arrive at Stevenage Rd, where there is little parking, and so SJL pulls into a small space slightly overlapping a garage. She leaves off the handbrake and her door unlocked in case it needs to be moved (not uncommon thinking back then imo). She forgets about her purse in the door as the charming gentleman has her distracted with his yarns.

Test-drive time.. but he will first drive and show her a few quirks about this LHD car before they can then change places and she can test-drive for herself. She goes along with the plan, although slightly annoyed that it was never mentioned that it was a LHD vehicle. He attempts to charm her by putting his foot down sharply causing a high acceleration and then abruptly braking.. it has the desired effect.. she is screaming 'stop!' whilst simulataneously laughing hysterically etc. He cannot believe his luck that this young attractive fox answered his advert and his sales plans change

Later on, perhaps not even the same day, the car is abandoned a few miles away. Just one scenario (perhaps unlikely, but perhaps a little different).

IMO & MOO

 

[duquesne]

well.. a lot of things don't really add-up in that scenario.. not least the 2-hour gap until the BW sighting.. so that would be one of the witness accounts left out in this scenario (and that sighting imo seems to be one of the most reliable seeing as it was a Monday and that she personally knew SJL, and the time-of-day has to be correct imho)

 

[WestLondoner]

Regarding SJL's fiesta on Stevenage Rd..

1) ... left off the handbrake so that it could easily be rolled forward by the garage owner ... slide the seat back when exiting the vehicle/move the seat forward upon entry before starting the engine.

Hi Duquesne and welcome to the discussion.

The above are fair points, although re leaving the handbrake off, if SJL was driving, this suggests she expected to be away from the car for quite some time. In which case, why did she not lock it, or take her purse with her (it was left in the driver's door pocket)? It is possible she did the thing with the seat, but the location, unlocked door etc again suggest she did not expect to be out of the car for long. In that case, she must have been meeting someone, and have entered another vehicle, but AFAIK nobody was seen.

2) It's also not impossible that the car was parked there, departed, and then returned to the exact same spot later on.

Indeed. Ford sold Fiestas not just in white, but in several other light colours you might easily misremember as white, e.g. silver, beige, and so on. Then there is the consideration that others made cars in that size, too - Vauxhall Nova, Renault 5, Peugeot 205. To a lot of people, these and her Fiesta all looked much the same, especially when seen side-on with no grille badges etc visible. Also, in the 80s, when you bought a car there were typically three colours: white, red, or blue. Any other colour was usually an extra-cost option, and metallic or black paint always were. Company car drivers didn't usually get any extra cost options so the majority of the base-model production would be in one of those colours.

For my money, the car was not there at 12.45 at all. A schoolboy reported seeing the car there at 12 noon, before SJL left the office. This says he and WJ saw a different car - possibly a different white Fiesta, or possibly one of the many lookalikes in white or thereabouts, but not her car.

Now.. he is threatening her with a knife/imitation gun, so he needs to follow her through the driver door.. he does this by moving the seat back, and taking the handbrake off so that he can skip over handbrake and driver's seat and stay close to SJL with the weapon.

AS goes through what this would entail in his 1988 book and it doesn't really work. There would be no reason why she couldn't run for it making a noise as soon as she's out of the car. Climbing across two seats to get out makes no sense when her attacker could simply get out via the passenger door.

Also the known witness accounts are conflicting - so we are unable to simply interpolate every sighting (overfitting the data). So by picking different combinations of a selection of witness accounts as hypothesized facts, we end up with a multitude of possible scenarios/hypotheses.

Agreed. Some of the accounts are irrelevant and no pattern of events fits every supposed sighting into it. It is impossible, most obviously, for WJ to have seen the car at 12.49 and for it not to have moved, for HR to have seen SJL at 37SR at the same time, and for BW also to have seen SJL at 2.45 a few streets away. At least one of those is wrong. Personally I think BW is likeliest to be right as she actually knew SJL, so I rule out most hypotheses that don't square with the BW sighting.

...SJL was eager to purchase a higher-end car for herself... and she was just about to receive a nice commission

All a tad elaborate for my tastes. SJL had a fully-expensed if modest company car. She wasn't about to buy and fund another for personal use at the weekend. A new 3-series BMW cost about £12 - 13,000 in 1986, plus about another £1,000 a year to insure around London. So a second-hand LHD one available for £3,000 would have been a 100,000-mile junkheap that would have impressed nobody.

SJL seems to have commented to mates occasionally that she'd like a Mercedes convertible, but these were £30,000 new in 1986 and not realistically within her reach.

 

[Terryb808]

I'm new to this case and have pretty much skipped the last 18mths of threads. I remember well when it happened, although I was the best part of a decade younger than SJL, but honestly wouldn't have been able to reel off SJL's name from the top of my head at any time since, right up until a few weeks ago. How it sunk into the public-at-large's conciousness, for those that never really followed closely such as me, can be summed up simply by 'young female estate agent' and 'Mr Kipper' imo.

I was pretty familiar with London, or central London at least, when this happened, and used to travel there regularly for shopping, gigs and to visit friends who lived there. Three years after SJL's disappearance, in 1989, I was living on the Fulham Rd in fact - but at the Chelsea end of the road - so I never really spent much time in Fulham or Putney until much later (although I did also live in Richmond and visit Sheen shortly after my Fulham road residence).

Turns out it's a very interesting case, with many possible suspects (ex-Alibi) and motives.

A few things stuck out for me that may not have been mentioned on this series of threads (apologies if these have already been stated).

Regarding SJL's fiesta on Stevenage Rd..

1) It's possible that she parked it there, and realising that she was overlapping the garage then deliberately left the door open, pushed the seat back and left off the handbrake so that it could easily be rolled forward by the garage owner if the car in front had departed - probably soon after work hours and just before the garage owner would likely return with his car. I also remember that my grandmother used to sit right up close to the steering wheel, and would slide the seat back when exiting the vehicle/move the seat forward upon entry before starting the engine.

2) It's also not impossible that the car was parked there, departed, and then returned to the exact same spot later on.. as an 80's fiesta is a pretty compact car, and so the 'empty' half-space was almost a full space for a fiesta, & less likely to be occupied by another car if she departed and then later returned there for some reason.

3) If she was abducted in her car, the passenger seat occupant/abductor as per the BW sighting on FPR, could have been threatening her with a knife or imitation gun (!) perhaps. As far as I can tell she was spotted in her car travelling North past the cemetary gates but before the church. A point of confusion for me here is that BW(?) was in that case travelling South on her bicycle, trying to remember, from her home towards an estate agent's office which she names.. past the cemetary gates? Anyone know where that estate agency was located? Can't remember the name off-hand whilst I am typing this. Shortly afterwards, if the abductor had spotted BW's handwave, he could have instructed her to turn left, finding their way to the furthest and least connected street, left again, right, left etc. where there would be hardly any through-traffic, only local traffic. He instructs her to turn car after they pass the 'half-space' and pull up in there. Now.. he is threatening her with a knife/imitation gun, so he needs to follow her through the driver door.. he does this by moving the seat back, and taking the handbrake off so that he can skip over handbrake and driver's seat and stay close to SJL with the weapon.

As stated on here before, the only two absolute facts are that she left the office sometime around 1240pm and the car was located around 10pm. Also the known witness accounts are conflicting - so we are unable to simply interpolate every sighting (overfitting the data). So by picking different combinations of a selection of witness accounts as hypothesized facts, we end up with a multitude of possible scenarios/hypotheses.

So, here is just one example scenario, taking one witness account that isn't mentioned much as far as I can tell.. that SJL was eager to purchase a higher-end car for herself... and she was just about to receive a nice commission.

Suppose a certain suspect has a history of fraud/deception. He boosts a 'nice' car perhaps with the intention of using it himself for a while, or for fraudulently selling it on to a punter. His big problem with taking in a potential buyer is having the correct papers for the sale. He reasons that by boosting a continental LHD car he is more likely to find the papers in the glove compartment or above the passenger sun visor. He finds a nice looking LHD BMW and his luck is in.. papers in the glove compartment list the owner as a one 'Mr Kiper' from Belgium. (Yes, I agree, this is a bit of a reach!)

Now to sell this car he needs to put an untraceable advert somewhere, so not in a paper/auto-trader mag where the telephone number could be circled, found and traced, and as well in an area affluent enough to be seen by a punter with the desire and means to make such a purchase in cash. Well.. one thing I remember about the 80s was the state of the public telephone boxes (see where I'm going with this?).. absolutely stuffed with cards for prostitutes/escort services and dodgy goods for sale (correct me if my memory is wrong).

Sunday night SJL needs to make a few private telephone calls, she brings her Filofax organizer (which happens to have her chequebook and some other items within the pages and is clipped shut with the leather popper) and heads to the box just down Oxford road & across the railway tracks from her flat (where her tenant is watching the television not far from where the landline is..) next to the PoW public house. During one of her calls she notices an advert for a lovely used dark BMW, cheap, stuck on the board behind the phone unit amongst all the other numerous solicitations. No tear off numbers, and she forgot to reattach the filofax default pen and no other pen, so she just calls the number and reaches an 'imposter' Mr Kiper and they agree to a rendevous outside one of Sturgis' realty sales properties at 12:45pm the next day. She leaves the advert with no tear-off numbers on the board in the box. In her excitement, finding such a good value-for-money deal for exactly the type of car she is interested in, she accidently leaves her Filofax there (in the telephone box outside the PoW - and later on it is found by someone intending to make a call and left on the beer-table seat close to the door of the pub).

Next day she arrives on time, they meet. He says he was worried about parking and so has parked the car a few streets away, and she agrees to bring him to the car in her fiesta - throwing some caution to the wind due to the fact that he speaks in a very educated manner/accent, and is very well groomed, wearing an expensive looking suit.

They arrive at Stevenage Rd, where there is little parking, and so SJL pulls into a small space slightly overlapping a garage. She leaves off the handbrake and her door unlocked in case it needs to be moved (not uncommon thinking back then imo). She forgets about her purse in the door as the charming gentleman has her distracted with his yarns.

Test-drive time.. but he will first drive and show her a few quirks about this LHD car before they can then change places and she can test-drive for herself. She goes along with the plan, although slightly annoyed that it was never mentioned that it was a LHD vehicle. He attempts to charm her by putting his foot down sharply causing a high acceleration and then abruptly braking.. it has the desired effect.. she is screaming 'stop!' whilst simulataneously laughing hysterically etc. He cannot believe his luck that this young attractive fox answered his advert and his sales plans change

Later on, perhaps not even the same day, the car is abandoned a few miles away. Just one scenario (perhaps unlikely, but perhaps a little different).

IMO & MOO

A warm welcome to our discussions.

WestLondoner has already summoned up the general opinions related to WJ & BW as witnesses.
Also DV’s book “Finding Suzy” also tends to question the accuracy of WJ’s sighting of SJL’s car in Stevenage Road at approximately 12.40pm.
Some go along with the school boys sighting at 12 noon and hypothesis that there was an elaborate conspiracy to abduct SJL with two white Ford Fiestas involved.
This is somewhat based on the car enthusiasts statement highlighting two white Ford Fiestas in Shorrolds Road.
The way SJL’s car was abandoned points to someone in a desperate hurry to leave it and get back to where SJL was actually being held.
In the elaborate scenario above this is explained as being deliberately done to mislead the police.
If we’re logical about this how could the perpetrators know just how quickly SJL’s disappearance would explode in the media.
Within the recent posts we’ve explored the simple theories and IMO the way the posts go hold water.
We’re looking at a single perpetrator who abducted SJL because they were rejected (there’s more than one person who could have felt this way on that faithful day).
She way most likely restrained and still alive when her car was abandoned in Stevenage Road (between 4 & 5pm), but died later.
What tends to go against JC is he’s impulsive and does not make elaborate plans. On this basis he’d have needed a place to keep SJL which he’d already had access to on an ongoing basis.
LSW has outlined events that JC could have been involved in that make him a prime suspect.
There’s just no evidence.