UK UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #7

[Ljh21]

This is more or less DV's argument.

The trouble with it is that he has not shown the pub was closed and hence that SJL walked into an attackable situation. The handover stocktake at the pub was done by noon, so there seems no reason why it could not have opened normally. Even if the pub weren't doing food (I think it was, but not all pubs that do food do it all day), this would mean two or three staff* being about the place, plus any billy bunters who rocked up. Someone would have remembered that visit. Soooooo, either it was open normally and she never turned up or it was closed and she arranged to go there even so. We've no reason or evidence that would lead one to think it was closed.

There were quite a few sightings of someone who could have been SJL near 123SR. So for my money, her presence there is actually better supported than her presence outside 37SR. The car to me looks like it could have been ditched or could perhaps have been stopped in haste, rather than parked. The seat was pushed back further than she'd need to push it back, which along with the unlocked driver's door and purse in the door pocket suggests it was ditched by a different driver.

However, these could also point to it being parked in haste and then searched / ransacked by someone looking for something in a hurry. The Shorrolds keys? Property particulars she'd brought that pointed to where she'd been, i.e. sites to be searched? An abductor's personal effects that would tie him to the scene? If you're the killer Fred Q. Kipper, and your tieclip monogrammed "FQK" went missing in a struggle at some point that day, you're going to want to find that - or at least make sure it didn't go missing in her car.

The ransacking idea also foots with the print evidence from the car. It had not been wiped down, so if Kipper went inside it, he did so with gloves on. He can't have done this while she was innocently driving him, for obvious reasons. But his going back later to search the car would explain the seat position, lack of prints, etc.

* barman, washer-up, maybe cellar guy if any barrel wanted changing

 

[Ljh21]

This is more or less DV's argument.

The trouble with it is that he has not shown the pub was closed and hence that SJL walked into an attackable situation. The handover stocktake at the pub was done by noon, so there seems no reason why it could not have opened normally. Even if the pub weren't doing food (I think it was, but not all pubs that do food do it all day), this would mean two or three staff* being about the place, plus any billy bunters who rocked up. Someone would have remembered that visit. Soooooo, either it was open normally and she never turned up or it was closed and she arranged to go there even so. We've no reason or evidence that would lead one to think it was closed.

There were quite a few sightings of someone who could have been SJL near 123SR. So for my money, her presence there is actually better supported than her presence outside 37SR. The car to me looks like it could have been ditched or could perhaps have been stopped in haste, rather than parked. The seat was pushed back further than she'd need to push it back, which along with the unlocked driver's door and purse in the door pocket suggests it was ditched by a different driver.

However, these could also point to it being parked in haste and then searched / ransacked by someone looking for something in a hurry. The Shorrolds keys? Property particulars she'd brought that pointed to where she'd been, i.e. sites to be searched? An abductor's personal effects that would tie him to the scene? If you're the killer Fred Q. Kipper, and your tieclip monogrammed "FQK" went missing in a struggle at some point that day, you're going to want to find that - or at least make sure it didn't go missing in her car.

The ransacking idea also foots with the print evidence from the car. It had not been wiped down, so if Kipper went inside it, he did so with gloves on. He can't have done this while she was innocently driving him, for obvious reasons. But his going back later to search the car would explain the seat position, lack of prints, etc.

* barman, washer-up, maybe cellar guy if any barrel wanted changing

To go back to the car after abandoning it must take some balls, that does sound realistic so if we assume they struggled in the car then the item lost would most likely be a name badge or the like, policemans number even

 

[Ljh21]

To go back to the car after abandoning it must take some balls, that does sound realistic so if we assume they struggled in the car then the item lost would most likely be a name badge or the like, policemans number even

Did any colleagues wear name badges

 

[Ljh21]

Did any colleagues wear name badges

Did her boyfriend have anysuch item?

 

[Ljh21]

Sjl may have agreed to meet at a location rather than at pub then i still cannot let go of the fact member of staff had her personal belongings and can just say they were left on the doorstep

i was trying so hard to leave jc out of this but the deeper you go the more it seems possible as he would have been erratic enough to return to the car

 

[Cherwell]

Sjl may have agreed to meet at a location rather than at pub then i still cannot let go of the fact member of staff had her personal belongings and can just say they were left on the doorstep

If they had anything to hide, why wouldn't they just destroy them and say nothing?

 

[RichardKimble]

i was trying so hard to leave jc out of this but the deeper you go the more it seems possible as he would have been erratic enough to return to the car

The issue being at no time can JC be placed with SJL, she left the office for a diary entry appointment of 12-45, if you take the BW sighting at 2-45 this is 2 hrs of not being seen with JC, the 2-45 time was the last time SJL being indentified by someone seeing her who knew her.So even after this JC still cannot be placed with her.One thing we've never learnt is the movements of JC.

 

[lee sumner]

This is more or less DV's argument.

The trouble with it is that he has not shown the pub was closed and hence that SJL walked into an attackable situation. The handover stocktake at the pub was done by noon, so there seems no reason why it could not have opened normally. Even if the pub weren't doing food (I think it was, but not all pubs that do food do it all day), this would mean two or three staff* being about the place, plus any billy bunters who rocked up. Someone would have remembered that visit. Soooooo, either it was open normally and she never turned up or it was closed and she arranged to go there even so. We've no reason or evidence that would lead one to think it was closed.

There were quite a few sightings of someone who could have been SJL near 123SR. So for my money, her presence there is actually better supported than her presence outside 37SR. The car to me looks like it could have been ditched or could perhaps have been stopped in haste, rather than parked. The seat was pushed back further than she'd need to push it back, which along with the unlocked driver's door and purse in the door pocket suggests it was ditched by a different driver.

However, these could also point to it being parked in haste and then searched / ransacked by someone looking for something in a hurry. The Shorrolds keys? Property particulars she'd brought that pointed to where she'd been, i.e. sites to be searched? An abductor's personal effects that would tie him to the scene? If you're the killer Fred Q. Kipper, and your tieclip monogrammed "FQK" went missing in a struggle at some point that day, you're going to want to find that - or at least make sure it didn't go missing in her car.

The ransacking idea also foots with the print evidence from the car. It had not been wiped down, so if Kipper went inside it, he did so with gloves on. He can't have done this while she was innocently driving him, for obvious reasons. But his going back later to search the car would explain the seat position, lack of prints, etc.

* barman, washer-up, maybe cellar guy if any barrel wanted changing

driving SL car around with gloves on during the day would look proper weird. or she was taken by someone close, and there prints are all over the interior of the car.

 

[greenwoodlad]

Fascinated by this unsolved case I was 17 in 1986 and its doesn't stop intriguing me......Do we think SJLs white ford fiesta still exists in a police evidence compound or ? it shows as last registered with DVLA is 1990? but would the police have kept the vehicle? - if so surely DNA could be obtained from the car - or do we assume this car is long since scrapped? if so why wasn't it kept?

 

[greenwoodlad]

The publicly-rehearsed facts of this case don’t really get us anywhere, not least because a number of them turn out not to be definite facts at all.

She seems to have left the office at 12.40pm on Monday 28th July, leaving only two clues as to where she was going. One was the desk diary entry noting a viewing with a non-existent person, Mr Kipper, and the other was a phone call to the pub where she had mislaid her diary and cheque book.

She may have gone to 37SR to meet Mr Kipper, but it’s not cut-and-dried that she did so. First, it’s not clear she even took the keys. Colleagues were later able to enter the house to search it, and when the police forensicated it the next day, regardless of how they got in, they found no evidence anyone had been inside. Second, it’s not clear she was seen outside 37SR either. The most-cited witness claimed to have heard people coming out of 37SR, which isn’t possible if she never went in. He later conceded it could have been from 33 that he heard people leaving. The e-fit looks like most 30-year-old men in 1986, and that and the description are markedly different from other witness accounts. Some were so vague as to timing they could have been describing MG’s visit and misremembering the time.

If we accept on an Occam’s Razor basis that she did go, the next difficulty is that several witnesses are adamant her car was at 123SR by 12.40 - meaning she went straight there. If she intended to go to 37SR, she instead went to 123SR when she left the office, i.e. headed in 180 degrees the wrong direction. She there met someone, a mile away from 37SR, then got a lift back to Shorrolds, leaving her car unlocked outside 123SR.

There are several anomalous sightings and non-sightings that afternoon in Stevenage Road. Sightings include the jogger who saw a BMW apparently driven by a woman either screaming or laughing, which may have been an LHD car driven by its male “passenger”. Another was a James Galway lookalike who told a cabbie he’d just seen a right ruck going on. Another is MJ’s sighting of a good looking couple. None of these people ever came forward. Another is a reported strange howl that the witness assumed at the time to be a cat. Non-sightings include the BT workers who never noticed her car being ditched a few feet from them, nor heard any ruck. Another is the non-sighting of her retrieving her car at about 2.30. This has to have happened because she was seen in it then, heading away from 123SR, by someone who actually knew her. This time undermines all the other sightings.

So what actually happened? Well, SJL would IMO not have wasted time going out to a viewing with a quantity so unknown he’d yet to be logged as a potential customer. Until someone had checked out his situation, credibility etc, nobody would know if he was a plausible buyer, so you’d waste no time showing him houses until all that was clear. Ergo, Mr Kipper - the kind of nickname her clique tended to acquire - was a mate, or a private non-Sturgis contact dangling some sort of opportunity. He could have been a sexual partner, actual or contemplated - SJL was four-timing AL the week before she disappeared.

Who this was is conjecture. There were three men’s prisons within 4.5 miles of where she lived and worked, who between them released 1 to 2 rapists per week. So by the end of July, there could have been 30 to 50 released that year, any of whom might have hung around Fulham. She cultivated prosperous men as contacts and some were never tracked down. She was engaged in but had cooled on a business venture with a friend financed by the husband, who went bankrupt 8 days later. She told relatives she had a big deal on and that a man she was in touch with was pressuring her.

Probably SJL was inveigled into meeting someone she knew, we don’t know how, who got her to drive to a place where she could be taken inside an unremarkable house, garage or other building and attacked. She was probably either raped and then murdered so she couldn’t ID or accuse her rapist, or just murdered. I suspect a garage or warehouse, because she could then have been transferred from one car to another and disposed of elsewhere. Or perhaps hidden under a floor, depending on the sort of building (if you take up the ground floor boards of a London house, underneath there is the dirt the house was built on). Her car was abandoned at some point, the sloppy parking suggesting either a hurry, a short stop or someone returning to it to remove evidence.

The conjecture is that this person was JC. The “evidence” the police give for this is completely laughable, and consists of hearsay, coached statements 14 years after the fact, and assertions of their own opinion presented as fact. The CPS looked at the police case and concluded there was no evidence JC and SJL had ever met. A better circumstantial case against JC is possible, but presenting the best circumstantial case publicly would involve the police admitting that they missed leads, clues and obvious lines of inquiry in 1986. Had they been followed, and if it was JC, these would have led them to him in 1986 and hence saved the life of SB 2 years later. So the reason the police's public case against Cannan is so feeble is that the more damningly comprehensive one is simply too embarrassing to make.

Given the complexity and compartmentalization of her life, it didn't have to be JC. It could have been some other business contact who did this, or it could have been any other of the locally-released rapists. All of these are conjectural killers who may not exist, so on an Occam’s Razor basis, you tend to give it to Cannan because he did. But even here, although he does actually exist, evidence he met her does not. And as plausible as the circumstantial case against him sounds, nobody ever tried to see if any similarly plausible case could be made against any similar local offender. So while it fits Cannan, it’s not clear who else it fits too.

that's a great summary ! My thoughts are she was obviously meeting someone at 12.40 , someone she knew..... but who ? she gave this person a nickname of Mr Kipper - so she could go and meet without office staff being suspicious as she'd put something in her diary and no one would question that...

 

[Ljh21]

It's been suggested that for privacy, when her flatmate was home, she used the telephone box which was then adjacent to the pub. That on this occasion it was occupied and she sat at one of the tables outside the pub while waiting, and somehow managed to leave the items on the table.

Then why take your chequebook and postcard if just making a call

 

[Kasparthecat1]

This is more or less DV's argument.

The trouble with it is that he has not shown the pub was closed and hence that SJL walked into an attackable situation. The handover stocktake at the pub was done by noon, so there seems no reason why it could not have opened normally. Even if the pub weren't doing food (I think it was, but not all pubs that do food do it all day), this would mean two or three staff* being about the place, plus any billy bunters who rocked up. Someone would have remembered that visit. Soooooo, either it was open normally and she never turned up or it was closed and she arranged to go there even so. We've no reason or evidence that would lead one to think it was closed.

There were quite a few sightings of someone who could have been SJL near 123SR. So for my money, her presence there is actually better supported than her presence outside 37SR. The car to me looks like it could have been ditched or could perhaps have been stopped in haste, rather than parked. The seat was pushed back further than she'd need to push it back, which along with the unlocked driver's door and purse in the door pocket suggests it was ditched by a different driver.

However, these could also point to it being parked in haste and then searched / ransacked by someone looking for something in a hurry. The Shorrolds keys? Property particulars she'd brought that pointed to where she'd been, i.e. sites to be searched? An abductor's personal effects that would tie him to the scene? If you're the killer Fred Q. Kipper, and your tieclip monogrammed "FQK" went missing in a struggle at some point that day, you're going to want to find that - or at least make sure it didn't go missing in her car.

The ransacking idea also foots with the print evidence from the car. It had not been wiped down, so if Kipper went inside it, he did so with gloves on. He can't have done this while she was innocently driving him, for obvious reasons. But his going back later to search the car would explain the seat position, lack of prints, etc.

* barman, washer-up, maybe cellar guy if any barrel wanted changing

Was there a palmprint left on the driver's mirror or did I imagine that? Was it determined to whom it belonged?

 

[Ljh21]

that's a great summary ! My thoughts are she was obviously meeting someone at 12.40 , someone she knew..... but who ? she gave this person a nickname of Mr Kipper - so she could go and meet without office staff being suspicious as she'd put something in her diary and no one would question that...

that's a great summary ! My thoughts are she was obviously meeting someone at 12.40 , someone she knew..... but who ? she gave this person a nickname of Mr Kipper - so she could go and meet without office staff being suspicious as she'd put something in her diary and no one would question that...

Shorrolds road stevenage road s/r s/r

 

[WestLondoner]

Was there a palmprint left on the driver's mirror or did I imagine that? Was it determined to whom it belonged?

Yes there was, no you didn't and no it wasn't - unless it's been identified as not JC and this has not been disclosed (as it doesn't support the preferred LE narrative).

 

[greenwoodlad]

Was there a palmprint left on the driver's mirror or did I imagine that? Was it determined to whom it belonged?

Do we even think someone else had ever been in the car? I feel the driver seat position is not enough evidence to suggest that alone ?

 

[Ljh21]

Shorrolds road stevenage road s/r s/r

Imagine parking over someones drive entrance some people go nuts over things like that with 123 over the road maybe sjl had done this before and someone was not happy arranged a booking and

 

[WestLondoner]

that's a great summary ! My thoughts are she was obviously meeting someone at 12.40 , someone she knew..... but who ? she gave this person a nickname of Mr Kipper - so she could go and meet without office staff being suspicious as she'd put something in her diary and no one would question that...

Yup. Wasn't a genuine Sturgis contact as there was no record of him, and an EA was not going to waltz off and start showing houses to someone who had just rocked up, and who might be a timewaster without a bean to spend on a house.

So, perhaps a personal contact of SL's? - yet one whose contact details were never found in any diary. So we have no idea how she knew him or how she thought she could contact him. It's hard to see how a day-release lag like Cannan could have faked up a phone number so as to be contactable (I don't say it's impossible, just that it was hard. Maybe he gave out Superhire's phone number and got someone there to take messages?). So if a personal contact, one whom she couldn't actually contact. Very rum. The only thing I can think of that might explain that is if this was someone who had made advances to her but claimed to be "married and therefore you can never phone me". Cannan had actually been married and had a kid. So although this wasn't in fact why she couldn't call him, it's something he might have used to avoid giving her any number.

The train of thought some then proceed to is that given he can't have been a real Sturgis client or a personal contact of SJL's, he didn't exist, therefore there was no "12.45 37 Shorrolds O/S", and he was just a fake name prompted by the nearest set of For Sale particulars to her desk and her mate Herring, aka Kipper, who lived in that road.

 

[WestLondoner]

Do we even think someone else had ever been in the car? I feel the driver seat position is not enough evidence to suggest that alone ?

Good spot. No, absent fingerprints the only reason for thinking someone unknown had been in the car was the seat position and BW's sighting of her at 2.45 with a male passenger who's never been tracked down. However, there are other explanations for the seat position and BW may have got the day wrong. So it's thin gruel.

 

[greenwoodlad]

Shorrolds road stevenage road s/r s/r

what I don't get is how the fiesta was verified as being in stevenage rd by the neighbours opposite at 12.45 yet at a similar time give or take 5 mins - 3 witnesses saw her outside 37 Shorrolds Rd (according to the Crimewatch reconstruction in 1986)
Also am I correct in thinking other witnesses support the car being parked in Stevenage Rd thoughout the afternoon / evening and that's where it was indeed discovered.
What was the significance of stevenage rd ? Its a massive clue I feel

 

[Ljh21]

Shorrolds road stevenage road s/r s/r

To go back to the car after abandoning it must take some balls, that does sound realistic so if we assume they struggled in the car then the item lost would most likely be a name badge or the like, policemans number even

But if you lived where the car was found you would not really have to worry, just search for what you mislaid and wheel the car out, i also find it odd 2 women can get their story so wrong