UK UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #6

[Interested_But_Confused]

I'm about halfway through AS's book, and I'm just going to say it.

The description of Suzy as nervous, anxious, frequent stomach problems. The only one of the four children who didn't go away to boarding school. Trapped at home with her parents, desperate to please DL and effectively acting as her Mini-Me.

Suzy sounds like an abuse victim who was desperate to get away and live her own life. If she did run away, it actually *wouldn't* surprise me after what I've just read.

It's no wonder the Lamplughs didn't want AS's book to be published. They may not have liked what it said about Suzy, but I think they were far more concerned about what it said about THEM.

 

[WestLondoner]

Well if she printed out the property details and they were missing that points to a legitimate viewing

Bear in mind this was 1986, a time when there was no "printing out". Printing in 1986 meant green and white striped paper on very slow, text-only "daisy wheel" printers.

Property particulars would be typed on A4 paper using an electric typewriter or, if you were very advanced (an estate agent would not be), on a word processor. This was simply an electric typewriter with a monitor, a memory and the ability to print documents out once they were correct, i.e. no Tippex required. It could save documents to a 10" floppy disk (that was incompatible with early 5.25" computer floppy disks).

If you look at the desks in the Sturgis office, as seen in the reconstruction, nobody has a PC. Literally not one desk. Nobody even has a word processor.

Sturgis would have prepared details by having the Australian temp type them up, leaving white space for film-camera photos to be pasted in once they had been developed. The master thus created would then have been taken to somewhere like Kall Kwik to be photocopied in colour, because photocopiers in offices weren't colour. In 1988 I worked in the London office of a very wealthy oil company, and we had one colour copier in the whole five-storey building. It was in Reprographics. To use it, you had to take your document along with a manager's signature and they'd then grudgingly let you have x copies, because cost of ink cartridges.

I mention all this because you wouldn't necessarily hand property details around like Smarties. If you ran out, it would be a bloody nuisance, because you'd have to find the master and send Sheila out to get 50 more printed off for £10.

 

[WestLondoner]

Suzy sounds like an abuse victim who was desperate to get away and live her own life. If she did run away, it actually *wouldn't* surprise me after what I've just read.

It's been heavily implied that there was major ƃuᴉƃƃɐɥs going on ("News ofthe World" material indeed), either as a rejection of the parents' values or because she sought regard having lacked it when growing up. Plus she was very keen to make enough money to get decisively out of the orbit of her parents. It does add up to a volatile cocktail of risky behaviour.

Her mother comes across as clinically ʇᴉɥsʇɐq crazy.

SJL was dyslexic. When she wrote "Kipper" I wonder what she meant to write?

 

[ruby925]

Re printed details for properties, I was buying a house in 1987 and estate agents gave out and sent details as black and white photocopies. Maybe more expensive properties had colour print outs, but it wasn't the norm.

 

[Terryb808]

Well if she printed out the property details and they were missing that points to a legitimate viewing as she took the details when she got out of the car to show the property.

She would if hardly of gone to the POW pub and taken the property details inside to pick up her lost items. They would have still been in the car when it was found.

Jane C said he printed up copies of property details as part of his job. Suzy would only need to take a copy.
Given the appointment was fake (as per DV) she would have taken any keys or property details, so they would alway be missing.
On the question of getting into 37 SR, depending on the type of door lock, you could open them without a key and without damaging it.
I’m sure the police would have know this.
This just adds more questions than it answers.

 

[WiseOwl]

I'm about halfway through AS's book, and I'm just going to say it.

The description of Suzy as nervous, anxious, frequent stomach problems. The only one of the four children who didn't go away to boarding school. Trapped at home with her parents, desperate to please DL and effectively acting as her Mini-Me.

Suzy sounds like an abuse victim who was desperate to get away and live her own life. If she did run away, it actually *wouldn't* surprise me after what I've just read.

It's no wonder the Lamplughs didn't want AS's book to be published. They may not have liked what it said about Suzy, but I think they were far more concerned about what it said about THEM.

Where did AS get all this information about Suzy from though? Was this drawn from the police reports he was working on, was it from the police officers working on the case he spoke to, or did a friend/work colleague/family member give these details to the police?

 

[WestLondoner]

Re printed details for properties, I was buying a house in 1987 and estate agents gave out and sent details as black and white photocopies. Maybe more expensive properties had colour print outs, but it wasn't the norm.

I remember that too. I thought it was a ruse to get viewings booked. The photo quality was so terrible, you had to go and physically look around.

 

[WestLondoner]

Where did AS get all this information about Suzy from though? Was this drawn from the police reports he was working on, was it from the police officers working on the case he spoke to, or did a friend/work colleague/family member give these details to the police?

The police tried to talk to everyone in her diary, assuming one of the contacts was Mr Kipper. So in the course of doing that they would have met many of her friends (I use this loosely - she seems to have had 500 acqaintances but only one friend). One officer commented that they were identikit "clones" - all very similar in every way.

 

[Eastend Eagle]

Bear in mind this was 1986, a time when there was no "printing out". Printing in 1986 meant green and white striped paper on very slow, text-only "daisy wheel" printers.

Property particulars would be typed on A4 paper using an electric typewriter or, if you were very advanced (an estate agent would not be), on a word processor. This was simply an electric typewriter with a monitor, a memory and the ability to print documents out once they were correct, i.e. no Tippex required. It could save documents to a 10" floppy disk (that was incompatible with early 5.25" computer floppy disks).

If you look at the desks in the Sturgis office, as seen in the reconstruction, nobody has a PC. Literally not one desk. Nobody even has a word processor.

Sturgis would have prepared details by having the Australian temp type them up, leaving white space for film-camera photos to be pasted in once they had been developed. The master thus created would then have been taken to somewhere like Kall Kwik to be photocopied in colour, because photocopiers in offices weren't colour. In 1988 I worked in the London office of a very wealthy oil company, and we had one colour copier in the whole five-storey building. It was in Reprographics. To use it, you had to take your document along with a manager's signature and they'd then grudgingly let you have x copies, because cost of ink cartridges.

I mention all this because you wouldn't necessarily hand property details around like Smarties. If you ran out, it would be a bloody nuisance, because you'd have to find the master and send Sheila out to get 50 more printed off for £10.

The temporary secretary was merely there to make the fake diary entry IMO
What part of Australia was she from by the way, somewhere untraceable?

 

[WestLondoner]

Jane C said he printed up copies of property details as part of his job. Suzy would only need to take a copy.

If we go with the idea that there really was a person calling himself Kipper trying to trap an estate agent, we can say two things right away.

One is that obviously nobody had his genuine contact address or a phone number for him. So, he can have had no details of properties sent to him.

Given this, then point two is that neither could he have used property details to scope out whether a house made a good place to SA someone. For all he knew, 37SR had paper thin walls and was overlooked by adjoining properties. He wasn't going to book a SA at a location he has never been.

Therefore he probably did not intend to attack SJL at a property with which she was familiar, but at one with which he was.

 

[Eastend Eagle]

If we go with the idea that there really was a person calling himself Kipper trying to trap an estate agent, we can say two things right away.

One is that obviously nobody had his genuine contact address or a phone number for him. So, he can have had no details of properties sent to him.

Given this, then point two is that neither could he have used property details to scope out whether a house made a good place to SA someone. For all he knew, 37SR had paper thin walls and was overlooked by adjoining properties. He wasn't going to book a SA at a location he has never been.

Therefore he probably did not intend to attack SJL at a property with which she was familiar, but at one with which he was.

...or of course that the untraceable temporary secretary made the diary entry
MOO

 

[Observe_dont_Absorb]

Surely they police did search SR that night as it would of been due diligence as that was the last known place she would of been.

40 years after the fact memories fade on what really happened. I know the case was botched but even so they must of searched the last know location she should have been night. IMO

I belief it this was a planned abduction with nefarious intent, there's no way the perpetrator actually met her at SR, ie immediately at the house or outside the house and no way they went inside with her. The address of the house was just a lure to get her in the area. Or SJL was never going there anyway and just put that in the diary as a cover for a personal meet up (in which case perp would not even know that she'd put that address).

The perp wouldn't want anyone nearby to see them at that location -or- worse yet anyone from the estate agency to pop round to the house whilst the perp was in the middle of ... who knows what... also to leave zero forensic evidence, no footprints, fingerprints, hair, fibres etc if there were some form of struggle

 

[WestLondoner]

...or of course that the untraceable temporary secretary made the diary entry
MOO

I think the handwriting was confirmed to be SJL's. There were loads of samples in the rest of the desk diary.

Australians disappearing back to Oz is not a new thing. The Canonical Australian Temp at the time was allowed to live and work in the UK for up to two years as long as s/he was under 27. This ended after 1992 because the EU.

At the time CATs were ubiquitous - you could get some quite well educated people for not a lot of money because they were on their adventure. Every office seemed to have several. We had one who shared a one-room two-bunk bedsit with two other girls in Earl's Court (all Australians lived in Earl's Court). They got three people into two bunks by hot-bunking. They figured they wouldn't often all be home at the same time. Earl's Court is around the corner from Shorrolds.

I can't remember any of the names in ours. Even if I could, they'd be tough to track down as they'd be married and you wouldn't know the new name. DV did go to NZ for his book, but has not used any material in it that he might have got there. So I don't know whom he spoke to down under.

 

[WestLondoner]

I belief it this was a planned abduction with nefarious intent, there's no way the perpetrator actually met her at SR, ie immediately at the house or outside the house and no way they went inside with her.

100% - it is wholly incredible that anyone would make such an appointment and thereby inform the police exactly where to look for the forensics. And yet the police believed HR when he said he heard a door close and saw 2 people coming out of 37. So they think he did exactly that.

I'm aware there are issues with the timing of MG's visit, but if we buy the idea that MG had another set of keys then the only person who could have emerged from 37SR is MG. Kipper and SJL would not have done so whether she had the keys or not.

Alternatively, MG didn't emerge. MG and SF went to the front door, knocked, got no response - so they step back from the property and look up at it hoping to see signs of someone inside. You can actually see them doing this in the reconstruction.

 

[RichardKimble]

100% - it is wholly incredible that anyone would make such an appointment and thereby inform the police exactly where to look for the forensics. And yet the police believed HR when he said he heard a door close and saw 2 people coming out of 37. So they think he did exactly that.

I'm aware there are issues with the timing of MG's visit, but if we buy the idea that MG had another set of keys then the only person who could have emerged from 37SR is MG. Kipper and SJL would not have done so whether she had the keys or not.

Alternatively, MG didn't emerge. MG and SF went to the front door, knocked, got no response - so they step back from the property and look up at it hoping to see signs of someone inside. You can actually see them doing this in the reconstruction.

Who determined the seat was not in SJLs driving position? From the recon, Shorrolds looks busy and narrow maybe she arranged to meet whomever away from there because of parking.

 

[Salah11]

100% - it is wholly incredible that anyone would make such an appointment and thereby inform the police exactly where to look for the forensics. And yet the police believed HR when he said he heard a door close and saw 2 people coming out of 37. So they think he did exactly that.

I'm aware there are issues with the timing of MG's visit, but if we buy the idea that MG had another set of keys then the only person who could have emerged from 37SR is MG. Kipper and SJL would not have done so whether she had the keys or not.

Alternatively, MG didn't emerge. MG and SF went to the front door, knocked, got no response - so they step back from the property and look up at it hoping to see signs of someone inside. You can actually see them doing this in the reconstruction.

Massive issues with the time as you don’t think midday if they saw somebody after 4pm.

The police believed that she went there that day and multiple people say they saw a woman or a woman and a man and then you look at the diary entry and it adds up.

For this to be a fake appointment that she made and then got kidnapped you would have to prove a pattern of behavior where she made a habit out of doing this and there is zero proof she would lie and go on lunch time jaunts.

Moo

 

[Terryb808]

Massive issues with the time as you don’t think midday if they saw somebody after 4pm.

The police believed that she went there that day and multiple people say they saw a woman or a woman and a man and then you look at the diary entry and it adds up.

For this to be a fake appointment that she made and then got kidnapped you would have to prove a pattern of behavior where she made a habit out of doing this and there is zero proof she would lie and go on lunch time jaunts.

Moo

It really has to be a fake appointment in order to meet someone she knew and trusted.
In this case she’ll just pull up outside and collect them.
It’s entirely possible to do this and for her car to be left in Stevenage Road for WJ to see.
It would depend on Suzy leaving Sturgis early, but, no one’s really watching and there’s no clock.
Why, I can’t think, but if her disappearance was unplanned, then whoever she met wouldn’t be hiding, just waiting to be picked up.

 

[WiseOwl]

I have always wondered if there was the possibility that Suzy's car was parked twice that day in Stevenage Road. We know that when the car was found at 10pm that the handbrake was off and the driver's side door unlocked, but how do we know this was the case at 12.45?

Maybe Suzy was meeting up with someone that lunchtime, and had made up the 37SR appointment in her diary as a subterfuge. She arranges to meet at Stevenage Road, and parks her car overlapping the entrance to the Mahon's garage. There were two workmen laying pipes that day so possibly they had taken up some of the parking spaces in the road, leaving Suzy having to park the way she did. She then leaves her car to meet whoever (handbrake on & driver's door locked), and when WJ leaves her home at 12.45 she notices the car parked near to the garage.

On the Crimewatch reconstruction, WJ returns home around 3.30 and notices the car is still there. However, she has been gone for nearly 3 hours, so possibly the car had gone and then been returned during that time. So, could Suzy and mystery man have returned to the car sometime after 12.45? They then drive away and whatever became of Suzy happened after that. Then, mystery man drives her car back to Stevenage Road at sometime before 3.30, parks the car where it was previously, departs in a hurry leaving the handbrake off and the driver's door unlocked - forgetting or not aware of Suzy's purse in the door pocket.

WJ returns from her shopping expedition and sees the car parked over the driveway, as if it had never moved. LM returns home from work at 5.15 and the car is still there, then of course it is located just after 10.00 that night.

Who Suzy would be meeting and why Stevenage Road i don't know, but it might explain the various sightings of the car that day.

 

[Salah11]

It really has to be a fake appointment in order to meet someone she knew and trusted.
In this case she’ll just pull up outside and collect them.
It’s entirely possible to do this and for her car to be left in Stevenage Road for WJ to see.
It would depend on Suzy leaving Sturgis early, but, no one’s really watching and there’s no clock.
Why, I can’t think, but if her disappearance was unplanned, then whoever she met wouldn’t be hiding, just waiting to be picked up.

So you believe it’s somebody she knew?

Why wouldn’t she just do that after work or actually wait until her lunch break?!


I was born in 1986 so maybe I just can not comprehend the differences back then but I just Not Understand why you would go to all that trouble to make up a fake appointment when she would of had a lunch break.

 

[WestLondoner]

The police believed that she went there that day and multiple people say they saw a woman or a woman and a man and then you look at the diary entry and it adds up.

The people who say they saw a couple do not all agree about the time. It's only HR who's categorical, but his sighting did not ID SJL. He said he heard them coming out of the house, which they did not. There is no forensic trace, it would have been foolish, and SJL may not even have had the keys. HR described Mr Kipper as late 20s to early 30s and slim but later IDed the Antwerp BMW owner as Mr Kipper even though he was 44 and podgy. HR has no idea what he saw essentially.

This leaves ND1 and JI, who were unsure about the time between 12 and 4. ND1's man is quite different to HR's who is in turn quite different to JI's, who saw a man with a suntan. These people could perfectly well have been identifying MG. ND2 turned up only later and repeated the reconstruction without adding anything.

You also have to consider what the chances are of seeing a man and woman in a London street. They aren't zero. Why would one assume these sightings are all of the same person?