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

[rvlvr]

SL had her lunch break at 1pm, so there is no need to make up a phony appointment at 1245pm. it was so close to her lunch break, it would be pointless anyway.

Lunch breaks weren’t set in stone like that, various former Sturgis folk discuss this with DV in his book.

AS was probably told by SIO, nick carter not to publish certain details regarding contact details. i was surprised myself when i read it, but it makes sense. mr kipper must have gave an address and phone number or SL would not have gone to the appointment at 37SR.

He must’ve decided not to tell Diana Lamplugh either, which seems peculiar.

“Suzy did not take 'Mr Kipper's' name, address and telephone number, ask him to meet her at the office or tell her colleagues when she meant to return.”

Page 426: https://bjgp.org/content/bjgp/37/302/423.full.pdf

 

[lee sumner]

Lunch breaks weren’t set in stone like that, various former Sturgis folk discuss this with DV in his book.



He must’ve decided not to tell Diana Lamplugh either, which seems peculiar.

“Suzy did not take 'Mr Kipper's' name, address and telephone number, ask him to meet her at the office or tell her colleagues when she meant to return.”

Page 426: https://bjgp.org/content/bjgp/37/302/423.full.pdf

lunch break not set in stone. it would be against the law to mess your workers around when it comes to break time.

 

[rvlvr]

lunch break not set in stone. it would be against the law to mess your workers around when it comes to break time.

Not sure what the law was in the 80s but workers today have quite limited rights when it comes to breaks:

Rest breaks at work

Workers' rights to rest breaks at work - length of breaks, how your age affects rest breaks, exceptions to the rules for shift workers, young people, and drivers

www.gov.uk

In any case, we know that at Sturgis in 1986 breaks were taken as and when, depending on the ebb and flow of the office, and it wasn’t uncommon for sandwiches to be consumed at desks - these guys made good money every time they made a sale, business was booming, no one wanted to be away from the phone for long. There was no ‘lunch is at 1pm’ rule.

 

[Eastend Eagle]

AS was probably told by SIO, nick carter not to publish certain details regarding contact details. i was surprised myself when i read it, but it makes sense. mr kipper must have gave an address and phone number or SL would not have gone to the appointment at 37SR.

If Kippa had given these details then surely he'd have been traced by the police MOO

 

[Spy Versus Spy]

London estate agent Susannah Lamplugh feared abducted

Police yesterday intensified their search in west London for Miss Susannah Lamplugh , an estate agent thought to have been abducted by a man posing as a house buyer.

www.theguardian.com

 

[DCROBBO]

i dont believe SL was ever on stevenage rd. her car was taken there to maybe give the impression she had been there, but she did not have a viewing there, so there is no reason for her to be there.

Are you sure WJ’s testimony was bogus then?

 

[lee sumner]

Lunch breaks weren’t set in stone like that, various former Sturgis folk discuss this with DV in his book.



He must’ve decided not to tell Diana Lamplugh either, which seems peculiar.

“Suzy did not take 'Mr Kipper's' name, address and telephone number, ask him to meet her at the office or tell her colleagues when she meant to return.”

Page 426: https://bjgp.org/content/bjgp/37/302/423.full.pdf

Are you sure WJ’s testimony was bogus then?

i think WJ was talking BS. why would she notice SL white ford fiesta badly parked facing her property. what made it stand out from other vehicles. i think the car was ditched later that day, possibly early evening.

 

[lee sumner]

If Kippa had given these details then surely he'd have been traced by the police MOO

mr kipper obviously gave a phony address and phone number. SIO, nick carter and the lamplugh team would have done research on the property and come up empty.

 

[lee sumner]

True. But we’re not talking about random witness sightings here, we’re talking about people who were very close to the victim - I’d argue the passing of time makes it easier for such people to talk more openly, particularly now that certain well meaning but overbearing individuals are no longer alive.

The reality is that within AS’s book we find irregularities, and also areas which imo should’ve been probed deeper. AS for instance devotes only a couple of paragraphs to the pub and the behaviour of its then acting landlord (“a curious development which was never satisfactorily explained”, that “left an uneasy feeling”, he writes in chapter 11, before quickly moving on). You don’t need to have read DV’s book to think that in a case with hardly any leads this surely should’ve warranted further investigation.

As @Klclevi alluded to the other day, AS’s hands were probably tied to an extent so perhaps we can excuse a lack of investigative zeal on his part. Still, DV’s book comes in handy as it fills this gap - again, perhaps his conclusion is incorrect, but the evidence he unearthed is incredibly useful.

AS book is very interesting. i like the fact JC is not in the book, because obviously he was not a suspect at that time. AS was told he could not print everything he found out about SL which is fair enough. i would love to read the original case file.

 

[lee sumner]

True. But we’re not talking about random witness sightings here, we’re talking about people who were very close to the victim - I’d argue the passing of time makes it easier for such people to talk more openly, particularly now that certain well meaning but overbearing individuals are no longer alive.

The reality is that within AS’s book we find irregularities, and also areas which imo should’ve been probed deeper. AS for instance devotes only a couple of paragraphs to the pub and the behaviour of its then acting landlord (“a curious development which was never satisfactorily explained”, that “left an uneasy feeling”, he writes in chapter 11, before quickly moving on). You don’t need to have read DV’s book to think that in a case with hardly any leads this surely should’ve warranted further investigation.

As @Klclevi alluded to the other day, AS’s hands were probably tied to an extent so perhaps we can excuse a lack of investigative zeal on his part. Still, DV’s book comes in handy as it fills this gap - again, perhaps his conclusion is incorrect, but the evidence he unearthed is incredibly useful.

i agree with you regarding more investigation should have been done on the POW pub and the acting landlord.

 

[lee sumner]

Not sure what the law was in the 80s but workers today have quite limited rights when it comes to breaks:

Rest breaks at work

Workers' rights to rest breaks at work - length of breaks, how your age affects rest breaks, exceptions to the rules for shift workers, young people, and drivers

www.gov.uk

In any case, we know that at Sturgis in 1986 breaks were taken as and when, depending on the ebb and flow of the office, and it wasn’t uncommon for sandwiches to be consumed at desks - these guys made good money every time they made a sale, business was booming, no one wanted to be away from the phone for long. There was no ‘lunch is at 1pm’ rule.

SL had a lunch break coming up around 1-2pm, so why would she risk losing her job by putting in a phony appointment at 1245pm. even in AS book, boss MG said he was expecting SL to bring lunch back to the office after her appointment.

 

[rvlvr]

SL had a lunch break coming up around 1-2pm, so why would she risk losing her job by putting in a phony appointment at 1245pm. even in AS book, boss MG said he was expecting SL to bring lunch back to the office after her appointment.

But there was no official ‘lunch break’. As DV established by interviewing Suzy’s colleagues, the Sturgis office was short staffed that day, meaning she’d have needed a reason - like a house viewing appointment - to leave when she did.

Let’s imagine that she was keen to retrieve her lost property from the pub, it should’ve taken no more than 20 minutes for her to drive there, pick up her things then return to the office, perhaps picking up a sandwich en route - in other words, about the same time a house viewing at 37SR would’ve taken her.

It’s likely she would’ve been back long before MG returned from Crocodile Tears and it doesn’t sound like he was a micromanager, he left his staff alone to get on with things, provided they were making sales, and she was.

 

[lee sumner]

But there was no official ‘lunch break’. As DV established by interviewing Suzy’s colleagues, the Sturgis office was short staffed that day, meaning she’d have needed a reason - like a house viewing appointment - to leave when she did.

Let’s imagine that she was keen to retrieve her lost property from the pub, it should’ve taken no more than 20 minutes for her to drive there, pick up her things then return to the office, perhaps picking up a sandwich en route - in other words, about the same time a house viewing at 37SR would’ve taken her.

It’s likely she would’ve been back long before MG returned from Crocodile Tears and it doesn’t sound like he was a micromanager, he left his staff alone to get on with things, provided they were making sales, and she was.

DV wanted to talk with SL work colleagues to try and find any small detail that would fit his theory. he probably thought the same thing i did regarding lunch break being so close to the mr kipper appointment. he even says SL and NH had a falling out over a sale, but if that was the case, why would SL share a cigarette with NH and SF during there morning break.

 

[Officer Dibble]

Brilliant post, but you forgot the serial killer who worked with Suzy, and was rumoured to be known as Skipper.

IIRC the police looked at both names (Kipper and Skipper) although the diary entry seems to clearly show that it's Kipper.

I guess there's also the possibility that Suzy didn't know how to spell Kiper.

Was there a known Kiper? Kyper? ever mentioned?

 

[Kasparthecat1]

David Kiper was an Israeli diamond dealer (aka Rosengarten) whose abandoned BMW was found in St John's Wood by a local man. I think he was living in Belgium at around the time of Sjl's disappearance. He was ruled out. I can't quite remember the details, but it was an odd episode if memory serves.

 

[SteveH]

Was there a known Kiper? Kyper? ever mentioned?

David Kiper (Rosengarten) was indeed an early suspect.

"On 16 January, the Belgian authorities banned news of British Scotland Yard inquiries at Antwerp in connection with the July 1986 disappearance of a London estate agent, Suzy Lamplugh. An Antwerp diamond dealer, David Rosengarten, sometimes known as David Kiper, who was first suspected as the kidnapper of Miss Lamplugh, was later cleared after lengthy questioning by Yard detectives. No Belgian radio or TV channel broadcast the story. A news item about it on BBC television, which can be seen in Belgium, ran for only a few seconds before it was cut and replaced by the Belgian TV test card. A British radio reporter, John Fraser, correspondent for Independent Radio News in Belgium, was arrested by Antwerp police for an hour while watching Mr Rosengarten's flat."

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064228708534224

Here's a clip from an ITN news report about the car and Mr K/R:

Getty Images

Getty Images UK. Find high resolution royalty-free images, editorial stock photos, vector art, video footage clips and stock music licensing at the richest image search photo library online.

www.gettyimages.co.uk

From a Mirror article 6 Feb 2024 by Nia Dalton:

"There were a lot of theories and speculation surrounding Mr Kipper. "Some people latched onto the fact that if you added 'DNA' to 'the word 'Kipper' you got 'Kidnapper'," said Detective Sergeant and Inspector Mick Barley, who worked on the case from 1986 to 1999. He added: "Or 'Kipper' rhyming slang for Jack The Ripper."

Six months later, a member of the public found the very thing the police had been searching for, a BMW registered to a Mr Kipper. Unfortunately, it leaked out to the press and there was a race to Belgium to speak to the Dutch national with that name, but he had an alibi and was fully eliminated from the inquiry.

Suzy's ex-colleague Steve Wright was investigated by the Metropolitan Police in connection with her disappearance and Mr Kipper. Wright worked on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth 2 with Suzy in 1982. In February 2008, he was convicted of murdering five prostitutes in Ipswich.

Wright's ex-wife, Diane Cole, told the Daily Mail he had shore leave around the time of Suzy's disappearance. She told the paper: "I'm sure Steve used the word 'Kipper' as slang for face." However, a senior Met police officer described the link as 'speculative'."

Chilling theories about estate agent Suzy Lamplugh's unsolved disappearance

Estate agent Suzy Lamplugh vanished in 1986 and her remains have never been found, leaving police investigators and her grieving family questioning what happened to her

www.mirror.co.uk

I didn't mention Wright in my original comment here but I did later mention him in a later Websleuths comment about Barry George/Jill Dando.

According to rumour Barry was infatuated with Wright's partner Pam Wright (her original surname). George accepted libel damages from NewsGroup Newspapers over the claim.

"His counsel, Gordon Bishop, told the court that Mr George had brought the action over a number of articles in The Sun and the News of the World between August and November last year...

Mr Bishop said various allegations were made in both newspapers in October 2008.
These included that Mr George had become obsessed with Kay Burley, that he pestered a woman whose advert about a dog he had answered, and that he became obsessed with Pam Wright, fiancee of Steve Wright, the Suffolk Strangler.

"The defendant now accepts that, although on one occasion Mr George did cycle to Sky TV studios to try to collect a tape of his interview with Kay Burley, Mr George did not pose a threat and was not obsessed with her, nor did he pester any woman who had a dog for sale, nor did he become obsessed with Pam Wright."

Barry George accepts libel damages

Barry George, who was cleared of murdering TV presenter Jill Dando, accepted substantial undisclosed libel damages today over claims that he had pestered women he was obsessed with.

www.standard.co.uk

PS A bit worrying for me is that I used to look just like John Cannan in certain photos. A photo taken of me on my graduation day in 1979 is almost identical to him as seen in, for example, the below:

We had the same small mouth and our rather wan smiles were identical but no-one EVER said I was attractive or good looking - maybe cos my eyebrows didn't meet in the middle, which may have given Mr Cannan a certain lycanthropic glamour.

"John Cannan was handsome, self-confident and self-assured, and a self-confessed ladies man who would later claim to have had one hundred [one] night stands,"

John Cannan - The True Crime Database Membership John Cannan Suzy Lamplugh Serial Killer

Suspected in many unsolved crimes, rapist and serial killer John Cannan is the prime suspect in the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh.

www.thetruecrimedatabase.com

Also I am a Bristolian, unlike Cannan who lived here for a few years and claimed to be a well known Bristol businessman (and murdered Shirley Banks who lived in the city). According to my aunt, Cannan once offered to bump off someone she knew when he met her husband in a pub in Clifton (Coronation Tap, a well known cider house) and he told Cannan that his wife was causing him a lot of trouble. He didn't take him up on the offer!

 

[SteveH]

We don’t know if that appointment was legitimate - if it was, no good reason has ever been put forward to explain why Suzy didn’t follow procedure and fill out a card containing the client’s details. We don’t know for certain that Suzy took the keys. The Shorrolds Road witnesses aren’t particularly reliable imo but if we assume they’re correct then we also have to assume WJ’s sighting of Suzy’s car parked in Stevenage Road from 12.45 is incorrect - either way, we’re making assumptions.

The ‘Crime Guy’ link provided by @SteveH is interesting because CG claims “the only place we know that Suzy Lamplugh visited after she left Sturgis is … Stevenage Road”. But we don’t know this? No one knows how her car got there. If she did drive straight to Stevenage Road after leaving Sturgis, then the sightings in Shorrolds Road can’t be correct, and WJ is right.

Would Suzy, having lost her diary and chequebook on the Sunday evening, and having been ‘preoccupied’ the following morning with making plans to retrieve them, then have left her car unlocked with her purse inside on Stevenage Road?

Suzy’s straw hat was found in the vehicle. A woman wearing a straw hat was apparently seen walking along Stevenage Road with a smartly dressed man. If she was then abducted, how did the hat end up back in the car? It’s likely Suzy possessed several hats but would she have had more than one hat to hand in her vehicle?

And then of course there’s the issue of the seat being pushed back, suggesting “a man had driven Susannah Lamplugh’s car to Stevenage Road” (page 15 of AS’s book).

I agree with CG that the entire diary entry was likely fake. But I’m not convinced she went to Stevenage Road either.

Crime Guy (Paul Dettman) has written other articles on the case such as a recent two-parter about the River Thames:

"Anyway, the most convenient disposal site in the whole of Fulham and Putney is staring us in the face."

He stands by his assertion that Suzy did indeed go to Stevenage Road:

"My belief, using only logic and reason, is that Suzy was meeting someone in that area. And indeed at least two witnesses saw someone fitting her description talking to a man and looking at properties with Sturgis sale boards. Someone said the woman they saw was wearing a straw hat. A straw hat, Suzy’s hat, was found on the back parcel shelf of the Fiesta.

If she did meet a man then there are surely only two possible outcomes: either they stayed in the area and she died close by, or she was driven away from the scene in another car and killed elsewhere. The latter seems improbable. And there are no credible eyewitnesses for it."

Suzy: The River

Why is the most obvious feature on the Suzy Lamplugh crime scene always ignored?

www.crimeguy.com

Suzy 2: The River (continued)

The previous post was the most successful ever on Crime Guy. Why?

www.crimeguy.com

See also: CRIME GUY | Paul Dettmann | Substack (some of these pieces are subscriber only)

Apparently he's going to write a book about Fleetwood Mac, having travelled "the world" watching them. I mean the Mac are okay but a bit too AOR/MOR for my taste, at least in the Buckingham/Nicks era. Prefer Steely Dan meself. My own gig going days, long over, were spent mainly watching punk/post punk and the more experimental "alternative rock" bands in the late '70s and the '80s, along with an eclectic mix of soul/jazz/reggae/hip hop etc.

This piece which CG recommends has some interesting photos etc:

Suzy Lamplugh - And Some Personal Recollections Of The Summer of 1986...

I 'v e just read The Suzy Lamplugh Story by Andrew Stephen - and what a fascinating read it was...

www.1980sactual.com

 

[rvlvr]

The story of how Mr Kiper became linked to the crime is great, imo (from AS’s book, chapter 10):

It had all started innocently enough. Back in August Richard Ward, a businessman living in north London, was taking his dog for a walk when he first noticed a car abandoned in Queen’s Grove, St John’s Wood. It did not move for weeks, and when autumn turned into winter Ward started wondering how such a car could be left unclaimed for so long — for it was an expensive, metallic-blue two-litre BMW 518. Surely someone would miss such a car? The explanation, he presumed, was that the car was stolen. It had Belgian number plates, which probably meant that because it involved complicated procedures the British police had not traced the owner or alerted the Belgian authorities to ask them to do so. The Belgian driver, Ward reasoned, almost certainly had no idea that his car was languishing and slowly rotting on a north London street.

In the coming weeks the abandoned car became almost an obsession with Ward. It had already been broken into, a window broken and a stereo radio and cassette player stolen. Ward vowed that if the police took no action he would do something about the car himself, and might even try to buy it. His first step was to try to trace the Belgian owner, using the Automobile Association in Belgium. The owner, the information soon came back, was a David Kiper apparently living in Antwerp. In December Ward went to Belgium and tried to locate Kiper there — but with no success. Then, back in England, the realization hit him. In Flemish ‘Kiper’ sounded something like ‘Kipper’.

A nice bit of sleuthing. But ultimately it went nowhere.

Rosengarten was able to produce a receipt from an Antwerp garage that showed his car was being serviced on Monday 28 July 1986 — the day Susannah disappeared. They checked its authenticity with the garage’s computer records, and David Rosengarten, alias Mr Kiper, was totally in the clear. He had no connections whatsoever with Susannah Lamplugh.

Our man from Shorrolds Road, HR, was flown by a newspaper to Belgium to ‘identify’ Kiper, and further undermined his credibility as a witness:

‘He is just like the mysterious Mr Kipper I saw with Suzy last July,’ he was then quoted as saying. ‘I came to Antwerp fully prepared to say “That’s not the man.” But now I have to admit it could be. Face to face, the similarity is amazing. He has the same boyish looks and build and he stands the same way.’ Though the detectives knew without any doubt that Rosengarten was innocent, the press would not easily leave the story alone.

Edit: sp

 

[Kasparthecat1]

The Thames WAS searched at an early stage in the investigation, but to what extent I don't think we know. Iirc it was a neighbour of WJ's who saw the straw-hatted woman - I think there may have been other sightings of a couple looking interested in properties too. Was this Sjl? I don't think the couple ever came forward to rule themselves out.

 

[rvlvr]

He stands by his assertion that Suzy did indeed go to Stevenage Road:

"My belief, using only logic and reason, is that Suzy was meeting someone in that area. And indeed at least two witnesses saw someone fitting her description talking to a man and looking at properties with Sturgis sale boards. Someone said the woman they saw was wearing a straw hat. A straw hat, Suzy’s hat, was found on the back parcel shelf of the Fiesta.

Are the Stevenage Road witnesses any more credible than the Shorrolds Road ones, though? The one property on Stevenage Road that we know for certain was on the market with Sturgis, belonging to WJ, was being sold by MG, not Suzy. WJ maintains Suzy’s car didn’t move all day and two workmen said they saw nothing suspicious, so if Suzy was ‘abducted’ she would’ve surely been taken inconspicuously in another vehicle - how did her hat then end up back in her car, and why was the driver’s seat pushed back as if the vehicle had been driven by a man?

I’m not saying it’s an impossibility, far from it. But there are lots of holes in this theory - as with all of them.