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

[Kasparthecat1]

I wish this doco was available outside the UK I am in Aus.

May be worth a look on YouTube. This particular one is called The Mystery of Suzy Lamplugh.

 

[Klclevi]

May be worth a look on YouTube. This particular one is called The Mystery of Suzy Lamplugh.

Hi thanks Kasparthecat1: yes I always look for new stuff on YT regarding SJL but nothing of the Sky Crime one. There is a couple of very old ones, and someone did post the one that was on Channel 5 in the UK a few years back last year but its gone now.

 

[Klclevi]

I am reading a book on unsolved 1986 cases in the UK (it has a chapter on SJL)

Interestingly it has this paragraph in it

In August 1986 a milkman said that he had seen Suzy Lamplugh's car in an alley next to the Boulevard Restaurant on 28 July 1986, leading to the possibility that she had been there for a lunch date with Mr Kipper.

Never heard anything along this line has anyone else?

 

[Kasparthecat1]

Is there no public information on exactly what JC was doing the three days prior to Monday 28th?
What would have stopped him abducting her on Friday afternoon as she left work? Or for that matter the Saturday lunchtime when she left? To me it seems odd to wait until the Monday if he was that opportunistic - unless he did not have access to a property until the weekend.

I've seen reports that JC was/ could have been in the Prince of Wales on either the Friday evening before SJLs disappearance or the Sunday. Depending on which account you favour, SJL lost her stuff there and some believe that JC was in the pub at the same time, either by coincidence, stalking sjl there or on the lookout for victims. Perhaps he was, and it's one of the bits of info that LE haven't released officially to the public but have hinted at. There's "sightings" of him looking into windows, chatting up women etc but not sure how much water they hold. It's all very well for JD/Clyne to be coming out with this stuff in his review 14 years later.

JC claims he had an alibi.

 

[Kasparthecat1]

I am reading a book on unsolved 1986 cases in the UK (it has a chapter on SJL)

Interestingly it has this paragraph in it

In August 1986 a milkman said that he had seen Suzy Lamplugh's car in an alley next to the Boulevard Restaurant on 28 July 1986, leading to the possibility that she had been there for a lunch date with Mr Kipper.

Never heard anything along this line has anyone else?

I've never heard of this. Maybe there's something in it.

However she left her bag in the office; I can't imagine a woman leaving for a lunch date - especially one that was worth creating a false appointment for - without her handbag containing cosmetics, hairbrush, cigarettes etc. (We know she took her purse). And there'd be witnesses, surely?

 

[rvlvr]

Barley thinks Sjl drove directly to Stevenage to meet "Kipper" to save the hassle of parking at Shorrolds, which was busier. They then both travelled, presumably in Kipper's vehicle, to Shorrolds to be seen by the witnesses there.

Thanks for the write up. I think this is the only way all of the sightings can be made to fit, but it still doesn’t seem quite right - Shorrolds Road might’ve been tricky to park in, but surely not so tricky that it’d necessitate Suzy driving the ‘wrong’ way from the Sturgis office to meet Mr Kipper in Stevenage Road, for them to then drive back up to Shorrolds Road? That’s a 10-15 minute round trip - you’d surely be better off just heading straight to Shorrolds Road (a 3 minute drive from the office) and if necessary doing a couple of trips around the block until you found a space? Also, MG apparently made two trips to 37SR after Suzy hadn’t returned to the office, he can’t have had too much trouble parking there? It feels like a bit of a stretch to me.

 

[Klclevi]

I've never heard of this. Maybe there's something in it.

However she left her bag in the office; I can't imagine a woman leaving for a lunch date - especially one that was worth creating a false appointment for - without her handbag containing cosmetics, hairbrush, cigarettes etc. (We know she took her purse). And there'd be witnesses, surely?

Yep totally agree- you would def be taking your handbag .

 

[tes1984]

Yep totally agree- you would def be taking your handbag .

Perhaps she is expecting a legitimate viewing, but instead is whisked off for lunch, against her better wishes?

Maybe she would have agreed to lunch if there was a 140k sale on the line. If it was JC in businessman guise, then he might have told her he wanted to buy several houses.

The police checked restaurants in Hammersmith, but AFAIK didn't look closer towards central London.

 

[tes1984]

Yep. Cannan told DV he was first questioned by the Met re SL’s disappearance in 1989.

This aspect of the investigation has always intrigued me. In my mind, I'd always assumed that JC MUST have been in the frame as a suspect almost immediately in order for him to be named Prime Suspect later on. But apart from him "looking like Mr Kipper" (same could be said of many men, as has been repeated many times on here) what exactly is there to link him? What exactly makes LE so insistent that he's the perp I wonder?

He was named prime suspect due to circumstantial evidence.

Someone else might have taken Suzy, but police could never rule JC out, hence him remaining top of the suspect list.

The police certainly didn't believe his alibi, and I'm surprised DV seems to have been taken in. JC had a track record of lying and lying again in interview.

 

[Kasparthecat1]

Perhaps she is expecting a legitimate viewing, but instead is whisked off for lunch, against her better wishes?

Maybe she would have agreed to lunch if there was a 140k sale on the line. If it was JC in businessman guise, then he might have told her he wanted to buy several houses.

The police checked restaurants in Hammersmith, but AFAIK didn't look closer towards central London.

If one believes BWs sighting of Sjl and a man on the FPR at 2.45, then she MUST have been doing something between Shorrolds and then. A business lunch with a possible purchaser seems credible enough. I can certainly believe that JC in the guise of businessman would fit the bill. I believe Sjl would've been taken in by him. For me though, given the profile of the investigation, someone would have seen something and come forward.

 

[rvlvr]

He was named prime suspect due to circumstantial evidence.

Someone else might have taken Suzy, but police could never rule JC out, hence him remaining top of the suspect list.

The police certainly didn't believe his alibi, and I'm surprised DV seems to have been taken in. JC had a track record of lying and lying again in interview.

They did believe his alibi though - or at the very least could produce no evidence to undermine it - for many, many years.

Albert explained to us that the evidence that pointed to Cannan being Suzy’s killer was collected by the police in 2000, and that there wasn’t any in the original investigation of 1986 and 1987. But, due to new appeals in the press and on the television in 2000, he said four new eyewitnesses had come forward. All of the eyewitnesses claimed to have seen Cannan in the Fulham area in the days that led up to Suzy’s disappearance.

(Finding Suzy, chapter 51)

Presumably had Cannan gone to trial in the early 2000s the prosecution would’ve argued that his family were lying about him being back in the Midlands at the time of Suzy’s disappearance - helpfully for them his sister and brother in law had both died in the intervening period, which would’ve left just his ageing mother alive to vouch for his whereabouts.

Aside from those relatives dying though, what else had really changed? ‘Albert Clyne’ went over the ‘case’ they’d put together against Cannan and divulged nothing of substance beyond the witness sightings.

All we know for certain is that Diana kept probing away and when the Met looked at the case again in 2000 they apparently, according to Clyne, set some (imo) bizarrely narrow parameters - “Did they know Suzy? Were they in a relationship or previous relationship with her?” - to narrow down the list of suspects. But even on this basis it’s very hard to see what placed Cannan in ‘prime’ position.

 

[SteveH]

Didn't someone, thought to be Cannan, write to a paper (Mirror again, perhaps?) in the aftermath of the Sandra Court murder, claiming that "he didn't mean it - it was an accident" ? (Yet to watch the vid posted above).

There doesn't seem to be any resemblance between the handwriting in the Court letter and John Cannan's writing in his letter to the Mirror to me. The writing slopes in the opposite direction. See my comment of Monday at 12.50 pm for a reproduction of that laughable missive. But he may have used a different hand to write the former, as police surmised. in which case his handwriting might indeed slope the other way and look different.

I linked this interesting analysis of Cannan's "career" in an earlier comment.

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

"At 7:00pm on the evening of May 3, 1986, the body of a young woman was found in a water-filled ditch by the Avon Causeway near Hurn, she had been strangled. The murder victim was identified as 27-year-old Sandra Court, who had the previous evening been attending a farewell party at Steppes nightclub. Court had been working for the Abbey Life Insurance Company in Bournemouth, where she had left at the beginning of May 1986, and was planning on taking up a post as a nanny in Spain.

That night she was last seen alive at around 2:45am on the Saturday morning, walking barefoot in Lansdowne, a suburb of Bournemouth. Investigators believed that neither robbery or sexual assault was the motive. There were no semen stains found on the body, however these might have been washed away by the water in the ditch. Some of her belongings were found strewn about at several spots near-by.

One of her shoes was found alongside the A31 near Picket Post, and police suspected it could have been thrown from a passing car heading towards Southampton. This would indicate she had been given a ride in someone’s car. Ten days after her body was discovered, a letter was sent to Detective Chief Inspector Rose of Dorset CID, who was leading the murder inquiry. The letter had been posted in Bournemouth, and the contents suggested the death of Sandra Court was an accident, and that the killer felt remorse.

Upon examination of the note, police found that the writer, although right-handed, had written the note using their left hand in an effort to disguise their authorship. One of the men questioned in connection with the death of Ms. Court was one John Cannan. After questioning, police declared they were satisfied he was not involved, and was released without charge. The murder case would remain unsolved"

But later:

"He is considered a strong suspect in the murder of Sandra Court, and although he was questioned and discounted by detectives, he was known for his ability to evade the truth and provide convincing alibi’s [sic] for his whereabouts.

He visited Bournemouth on several occasions around the time of the Court murder, and his handwriting is considered similar to that on the note sent to police by her killer. John Cannan preyed on young, beautiful, successful women, and his involvement in other cases is strongly suspected."

<modsnip: Removed personalizing >

FWIW I think it is less likely that Cannan killed Sandra than Suzy. It seems like there are other more probable suspects. The area she was last seen in was on the outskirts of town and it was the middle of the night. She had taken a taxi to her sister's house but walked off when she couldn't get in. Would JC have followed the taxi and then stalked her? In a fairly remote area he would have been unfamiliar with? How would he have known she wouldn't go straight inside the house she would be dropped off at? Why no SA on the victim? But it IS odd that he was in Bournemouth around that time.

The letter could well have been a hoaxer. On the other hand the style, self-pity and lack of self awareness are very typical Cannan traits. So I'm agnostic on this one, as in the Lamplugh case.

 

[rvlvr]

<modsnip: Quoted post was modsnipped>

In full, you can see I was discussing the preposterousness of the Met’s criteria for ruling suspects in and out:

But I think the most important part of this chapter is when Clyne explains on what basis suspects were ruled out:

“Were they in Fulham at the time? Did they know Suzy? Were they in a relationship or previous relationship with her?”

This criteria is oddly narrow but even then Cannan doesn’t tick any boxes - there’s nothing placing him in Fulham on the day of Suzy’s abduction, and no evidence that he knew her, never mind that he’d been in a relationship with her! The whole thing is utterly preposterous.

 

[Officer Dibble]

I am reading a book on unsolved 1986 cases in the UK (it has a chapter on SJL)

Interestingly it has this paragraph in it

In August 1986 a milkman said that he had seen Suzy Lamplugh's car in an alley next to the Boulevard Restaurant on 28 July 1986, leading to the possibility that she had been there for a lunch date with Mr Kipper.

Never heard anything along this line has anyone else?

Do we know where this alley/restaurant is?

 

[Sillybilly]

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[Klclevi]

If one believes BWs sighting of Sjl and a man on the FPR at 2.45, then she MUST have been doing something between Shorrolds and then. A business lunch with a possible purchaser seems credible enough. I can certainly believe that JC in the guise of businessman would fit the bill. I believe Sjl would've been taken in by him. For me though, given the profile of the investigation, someone would have seen something and come forward.

just coming back to the FPR sighting - Wardo avenue runs off FPR - and in her diary on that day was 142 Wardo - bike contract. I cannot see anything that has been investigated into that entry - or any explanation from Sturgis as to rule it out?

 

[Sillybilly]

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