UK UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #8

[WestLondoner]

That's really helpful. I'd almost draw the boundary between Fulham and Hammersmith along the edge of that estate.

 

[Lady Stoddart-West]

That's really helpful. I'd almost draw the boundary between Fulham and Hammersmith along the edge of that estate.

Exactly. As the article said ‘the edge of Fulham’ & direction BW saw her heading last.

 

[lee sumner]

Thank you. JD in TMWKSL doc seemingly shows he’s unfamiliar with the 86 case, he gets details wrong. It seems the 86 case wasn’t reviewed in detailed & objective way? Did anyone re-scrutinise SL’s contact book. Why no effort or mention to find key joint purchaser? JD did computerise all early index cards.

JD has said he thinks first investigation poor & exhibits lost. Also there seems to be shock JC not noted as suspect from off & it feels almost as if SB abduction happened in parallel or before SL going missing. There’s a timeline confusion. Ofc JC should have come up as someone of interest from off but not so easy then.

I almost thought on point 2 JD was saying because of all ups first investigation made they couldn’t prosecute JC?

SL parents did not mention deal she had going till months later.

 

[Lady Stoddart-West]

Re: JC being poss responsible, something that puzzles me.

GP meets him at Avon Gorge & they spend night together, he drives her home to Birmingham in hired escort…so far so good.

He starts talking about best way to dispose of bodies in woodland & rivers or concrete…& worse.

He then says that was prob what happened to SL. He drives to service station & puts his hands around her neck and says “you know I’ll never hurt you, you’re far too nice to hurt, but maybe this is the way SL died”. Source: CBD: Prime Suspect.

It’s all very odd & suspicious. The fact she carried on seeing him quite a bit afterwards tells us something about him too.

 

[lee sumner]

In terms of SL being abducted and murdered by a man who feigned wanted to buy a house, and why the police initially tried to form a link between JC and the HFS rapist who run riot through the west midlands, may have been influenced by an earlier case that occurred in the Clifton area of Bristol back in October 1983.

On Monday 17th October, a man giving the name P R Shenley went to an Estate agent in Bristol city centre and took down the addresses of several houses for sale.

Later that day, 49 near old Mrs Adrienne J Hill, was found bludgeoned to death in her attic.

The case that followed was interesting because it was initially linked with the HFS rapist who had been active in the west midlands 3 years earlier in 1980; ergo, the same rapist that the police tried to link JC with.

Here are some of the articles relating to that case; bearing in mind that this case was solved.


Wolverhampton Express and Star; 19th October 1983...

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Interesting that the police assumed that the Bristol case and the HFS rapist were linked.


But here's what really happened...


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The case took an odd turn, when it was discovered that 2 men were involved...

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Long story short, William Wood was convicted and sentenced to life in prison, but Michael Williams was found not guilty of the murder, and sentenced to just 2 and half years for being involved. It all kicked off in court when Woods tried to assault Williams for having got off the hook for murder.



What this case highlights, is that despite their being an initial suggestion of a link to the HFS rapist, it clearly wasn't the same man. The M.O of a man who called at a house and murdered the female occupant, after having visited an estate agent, doesn't automatically mean it's all linked.


The Adrienne Hill murder case was also linked to the unsolved murder of Janice Weston murder on the A1 in Cambridgeshire in 1983; which remains unsolved. The link to Hill and Weston was also quickly dismissed however.

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It's therefore no surprise when the police tried to make a link with JC to the unsolved HFS rapist who had operated in 1980, because when the SL case was added into the mix, it all seemed to fit the narrative that the police had at the time.

Confirmation bias at it's very best.


What the Adrienne Hill case does demonstrate however, is that the idea of a killer going to visit a property and/or contacting an estate agent, and then going on to kill, wasn't an unprecedented occurrence by the time SL was murdered in 1986.

On that basis, did the police make a mistake by THEN dismissing a potential link between JC and the abduction and murder of SL?

DCI Bryan Saunders, who headed the SB murder case in 1987, was very dismissive of any potential link to the SL case.

And so it seems that despite there being an initial suggestion of a link to JC and SL from virtually day 1 of the SB murder case being investigated, the police quickly changed their tune, and the likes of DCI Saunders tried their best to negate any connection with JC to the SL case.

What's interesting about DCI Saunders, is that from his interviews on camera, it's very clear that he's either hiding something, or he is feeding the narrative to the press based on what his own superiors have told him to say. His choice of words and syntax are peculiar to say the least, and in at least 2 interviews, he comes across as a man who knows a lot more than he's letting on. It's not a remark on his integrity as a police officer, but he really needed to improve his acting skills when making interviews to the press.

It seems rather apparent that any potential link with JC to the SL case, was severed quite abruptly and deliberately by the senior officers working the SB case. The Met sent 2 detectives to Bristol, to go and interview JC to question him about the SL case, but it seems that DCI Saunders and his team were eager to not have the Met police steal their thunder from having solved the SB case; of which they did an exceptional job IMO.

A lot of inflated egos in play there.

But at the cost of the SL case being solved?

Possibly.

DCI saunders did not appear confident there was any link between SB and SL.

 

[Lady Stoddart-West]

Procedural errors JD says some reasons why JC couldn’t be charged.

Re: above, GP clearly a good witness with important information. Failure to ‘debrief’ her one reason JC couldn’t be prosecuted.

In ‘police speak’ what does that mean?

 

[Kasparthecat1]

Procedural errors JD says some reasons why JC couldn’t be charged.

Re: above, GP clearly a good witness with important information. Failure to ‘debrief’ her one reason JC couldn’t be prosecuted.

In ‘police speak’ what does that mean?

Iirc she took ages to come forward. Six months or something? Perhaps not taken seriously.

 

[JimmyDurham]

Not seeing any resemblance to Cannan.

The HFS rapist was also around 6ft and "muscular."

Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. The reason being that the human mind doesn't work like a camera taking pictures for posterity. The human mind fills in the blanks based on all sorts of bias and later events.

 

[Lady Stoddart-West]

Iirc she took ages to come forward. Six months or something? Perhaps not taken seriously.

Right, that makes sense. Thanks.

 

[Lady Stoddart-West]

Iirc she took ages to come forward. Six months or something? Perhaps not taken seriously.

Right, that makes sense. Thanks. I think she’s o

Iirc she took ages to come forward. Six months or something? Perhaps not taken seriously.

I recall AR withdrew a statement too which meant other possible evidence couldn’t be used.

 

[Rookie D]

Eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. The reason being that the human mind doesn't work like a camera taking pictures for posterity. The human mind fills in the blanks based on all sorts of bias and later events.

That's indeed true, except that most; if not all the victims of the HFS rapist, stated that their attacker was around 6ft tall, muscular and with light brown hair.

That doesn't fit in with Cannan's physical appearance at all.

So it's clear that the HFS rapist who terrorized the west midlands in 1980, wasn't John Cannan.

Cannan at least fits with the description of Mr Kipper, and is more likely to have been the man who abducted and murdered SL, than he was of being the HFS rapist.