UK UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 July 1986

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DV's reasoning comes from two places I think.

One is that nothing credible in the way of contemporary evidence places SJL at Shorrolds. She didn't take the keys, her car was not seen there, the witness sightings are mutually contradictory, there's no evidence any Mr Kipper existed, the sketches of him disagree, if anything he looks like her boss who did go round there, and her car was probably not dumped at Stevenage Road until 5 o'clock. All the stuff supposedly pointing to Cannan arose 14 years later, after the police started a pointless investigation not to look at who did it, but to prove that Cannan did.

So from there, DV looks at where else she might have gone if it wasn't Shorrolds. She lost her stuff and it was found at the pub. She had also left her tennis stuff at home, 200 yards from the same pub. She needed to retrieve these bits and bobs because she had a tennis game at 7pm, but she also had another house viewing at 6pm.

She could not do the 6pm viewing then run the errands, otherwise she'd be late for tennis. Hence when she left the office at lunchtime, it must have been to run her errands - because per the above reasoning, she sure didn't leave it to show any house to any "Mr Kipper", but we know of two places she did need to go.

Which leaves only the question of where she went first. If she had gone to her flat first, her tennis stuff would not have been found in it, as it was. Thus, she must have gone to the pub first. There, DV infers she was abducted / intercepted and killed. It could have been on the way there; probably it was by someone she knew.

The BW sighting is indeed Barbara Whitfield, a work acquaintance who's sure she saw her that day with a man in her car she can't identify. The implication is that this man directed her somewhere, killed her, dumped her car well away from wherever this was, and himself vanished as mysteriously as she has.

The AS book of 1988 indicates she was involved with a couple in a business deal that turned sour. The female went on to become a sex columnist and self-help author; a minor celebrity who has, rather surprisingly, never wanted to capitalise or cash in on her closeness to SJL. The couple do not feature in DV's book, and nor does BW. The only person who features as associated with the PoW is 'Clive Vole' ('CV'), which is a pseudonym.

All of that last paragraph is missing from DV's book. It's not even acknowledged.

Initially I thought that DV was blaming CV by insinuation. He's the only person who was at the pub that he spoke to for his book. However, if DV actually suspects someone entirely different, then CV had nothing to do with it, and naming him would be libelling him. So he doesn't name him.

I have no idea what was up with AL unless, as we speculated above, the whole thing brought back unpleasant memories. Whenever this case has been re-aired it's always about the family and Cannan, never him, so maybe the whole thing was an unpleasant reminder of a very bad time for him.
 
I'm actually starting to think DV has given CV a pseudonym to protect him not because he's guilty, but because he isn't.

There is much omitted in DV's book, presumably because it pertains to his actual suspect.
I agree with this thought, DV is a smart cookie and knows when he can’t say too much in public.
I wouldn’t be surprised if he had reached the same conclusion mentioned by Crusader21 earlier in this thread.
The business venture would be a much more compelling reason to fake a client viewing than a trip to the PoW.
As I’ve said before, absolutely no one has looked at this possibility and it seems everyone avoids it.
 
DV's reasoning comes from two places I think.

One is that nothing credible in the way of contemporary evidence places SJL at Shorrolds. She didn't take the keys, her car was not seen there, the witness sightings are mutually contradictory, there's no evidence any Mr Kipper existed, the sketches of him disagree, if anything he looks like her boss who did go round there, and her car was probably not dumped at Stevenage Road until 5 o'clock. All the stuff supposedly pointing to Cannan arose 14 years later, after the police started a pointless investigation not to look at who did it, but to prove that Cannan did.

So from there, DV looks at where else she might have gone if it wasn't Shorrolds. She lost her stuff and it was found at the pub. She had also left her tennis stuff at home, 200 yards from the same pub. She needed to retrieve these bits and bobs because she had a tennis game at 7pm, but she also had another house viewing at 6pm.

She could not do the 6pm viewing then run the errands, otherwise she'd be late for tennis. Hence when she left the office at lunchtime, it must have been to run her errands - because per the above reasoning, she sure didn't leave it to show any house to any "Mr Kipper", but we know of two places she did need to go.

Which leaves only the question of where she went first. If she had gone to her flat first, her tennis stuff would not have been found in it, as it was. Thus, she must have gone to the pub first. There, DV infers she was abducted / intercepted and killed. It could have been on the way there; probably it was by someone she knew.

The BW sighting is indeed Barbara Whitfield, a work acquaintance who's sure she saw her that day with a man in her car she can't identify. The implication is that this man directed her somewhere, killed her, dumped her car well away from wherever this was, and himself vanished as mysteriously as she has.

The AS book of 1988 indicates she was involved with a couple in a business deal that turned sour. The female went on to become a sex columnist and self-help author; a minor celebrity who has, rather surprisingly, never wanted to capitalise or cash in on her closeness to SJL. The couple do not feature in DV's book, and nor does BW. The only person who features as associated with the PoW is 'Clive Vole' ('CV'), which is a pseudonym.

All of that last paragraph is missing from DV's book. It's not even acknowledged.

Initially I thought that DV was blaming CV by insinuation. He's the only person who was at the pub that he spoke to for his book. However, if DV actually suspects someone entirely different, then CV had nothing to do with it, and naming him would be libelling him. So he doesn't name him.

I have no idea what was up with AL unless, as we speculated above, the whole thing brought back unpleasant memories. Whenever this case has been re-aired it's always about the family and Cannan, never him, so maybe the whole thing was an unpleasant reminder of a very bad time for him.




Thank You for such a in-depth reply.


The problem is why would anybody at the pub want to harm Suzie - also why ring the bank if you had a ulterior motive to lure her to the pub as that’s alerting more people?


At the moment my theory is CV misremembered the time of one of the phone calls which told them if Suzie arrived to keep her there. Surely that has to be after she is known to be missing and he has just gotten the time wrong due to the length of time that’s passed?!


All I think is whatever happened it was inside as she would of surely of put up a fight from all accounts. So she was lured somewhere by somebody.

I would love to know more about the boyfriend as it seems like he had a lot of reasons to be resentful if he had just been dumped and then add in his outburst in the book. He could of rung her to ask to talk urgently and that’s why she made up the fake appointment.


MOO
 
The problem is why would anybody at the pub want to harm Suzie - also why ring the bank if you had a ulterior motive to lure her to the pub as that’s alerting more people?

Exactly. CV makes no sort of sense whatsoever as a suspect - but just in case anyone mistakenly thinks he is, DV has altered his name to protect him.

I would love to know more about the boyfriend as it seems like he had a lot of reasons to be resentful if he had just been dumped and then add in his outburst in the book.

One of the things we can probably rely on the plod having done properly is eliminate the obvious suspect. AL was the obvious suspect. As an office-based professional guy, though, any number of people could have vouched for where he was all of that day. He clearly wasn't anywhere near Fulham.

Even if this were not so, I think any reasonable person would still eliminate him on other logical grounds. If - and quite out of character - he was homicidally enraged by SJL's decision to cool it with him, he only found this out on Friday night. So he must have decided to kill her, figured out from scratch a way to do it while leaving no evidence, done it, and all in 2.5 days flat. Really, does that ever happen? Literally nothing points to AL and loads says it was not.

So AL is not the man, but inferentially (not explicitly) from AS' 1988 book, SJL seems to have slept around for pleasure, advantage, and because she could. If so, the truism about "it was the boyfriend wot done it" could well still be true. The point was that there wasn't just one boyfriend. If we expand the definition of the word to take in "any man she had ever / recently slept with", then we may be talking dozens or hundreds of "boyfriends". One of them was violent and jealous / angry enough with her to kill.

The clue to finding her killer was probably to identify, back in 1986, everyone who met that description. There was probably only one. It doesn't look like anyone bothered to do so, and her diary was probably pretty cryptic about who all these blokes were.

Anyway, once the investigators had cemented into their and the publics' heads that they were looking for Mr Kipper in a black BMW, there was no point. The whole "investigation" has become a futile quest to frame JC. It fits him to a tee - it's the sort of thing he would do - and if he gets framed, who cares? He's a known sex killer anyway.

For my money, Mr Kipper outside the house, gazing up at it, is a mistimed recollection of MG's visit to look for her.
 
I think DV is actually pointing the finger at CV, his theory is that SJL went to the pub to collect her diary because it contained some very personal stuff that she was anxious to get back, and that is the reason why she dashed off that lunchtime. She could not go on her away home because she had a later appointment with a house viewing client.

If CV is involved then the phone calls he mentions are most likely an attempt by him to divert attention. The calls don't make much sense anyway. If you killed SJL calling the pub would be just a pointless exercise that would possibly draw attention to yourself. If he's not involved he's probably misremembering. He didn't come across as being terribly coherent.

it's a shame the police didn't investigate the obvious place that SJL could have headed toward or the business venture that went sour or her other male friends / boyfriends. Unless this was a random abductor attack in broad daylight it does seem that the clue must lie in something in SJL's life. What was in the diary -- phone numbers and addresses or just her writings about her life?

If the items were lost outside the restaurant how could that happen and why would CV then claim he found them outside the pub? He doesn't deny finding the items.

If he is guilty then hiding her in the pub seems a risky strategy since her bank and colleagues at her work knew the items were waiting for her in the pub, CV would have known about the bank knowing, and would have suspected that she wasn't the only person who knew she was heading there. The pub wasn't searched for her, but he could not have assumed that it would not be.

I was quite taken with DV's hypothesis (as I understood it) but am less and less convinced that it holds water as a theory. It's still better than Mr Kipper though.
 
Stephens wrote that SL lost her items in or on the steps outside Mossops. DV suggests that SL lost her items when making a call from the phone box outside the PoW

Where is/ was Mossops in relation to the pub? CV claims that he remembers finding the items on the (presumably) Sunday night when he went out to get a Chinese takeaway (amazing that he can remember what food he went to get 30 years later but maybe the takeaway was exceptional in some way). Why would someone who found some items outside a restaurant hand them in at a pub? Maybe they put them on the tables outside the pub?

If she lost them making a call maybe she was a bit tipsy or drunk after a night out and managed to spill them out of her bag. Did the diary have phone numbers in it that she'd need to look up to make a call? DIdn't she have a phone at home (just around the corner) to make calls from there? Surely that would be easier than using a callbox unless the call was something she didn't want her lodger to hear?

The police officer who DV spoke to and was dismissive of his claim seemed to suggest that the diary would have had to contain something salacious to make it a flashpoint that could have led to a confrontation that ended in harming SJL, I found this a bit confusing. Was he saying that the diary did NOT contain anything salacious?
 
Two things here ...

Phone calls? I wonder can the phone calls to Sturgis be retrieved, even today? Can the local area BT exchange records be accessed?

If we knew who rang SL phone that morning, and also who did she herself call?

Satellite. The Google earth technology that we take for granted was available to the superpowers in the 80s.

Longshot, but I wonder do the Soviets have any spy satellite footage / images of Fulham, London from that lunchtime?

We may be able to ascertain the movements of the white Fiesta as it left Sturgis and ultimately ended up in Stevenage Rd.
 
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Mossops was next door to the pub. I went there once in 1987. Decent food.

DV thinks JC didn't do it because there's literally no evidence against him. He did similar things later, and may have been in the area. That's it.

The trouble with making the inference that CV thinks DV did it is that there is even less evidence that CV did it! He too was in roughly the right area at the right time, but there's no evidence of criminality.
 
Why would CV hurt her let alone kill her?


The problem is none of it makes any sense. Like Mr Kipper in her diary but surely she would of taken the keys with her to keep up the pretence of the viewing? - also why was there only being one set of keys overlooked for years so that it meant she couldn’t of been showing anybody the property - seriously it’s ridiculously incompetent.



It’s a shame with JC that they have the perfect man for it so they don’t want to investigate any longer.
 
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The parallels with JC / SJL and Rachel Nickell are exact.

In 1992 Rachel Nickell was murdered and police decided to try to fit up the local weirdo, the wholly innocent and uninvolved Colin Stagg, whom the crime suited to a tee. Despite the police's valiant efforts, including organising a honeytrap where an undercover WPC wearing a wire told Stagg she'd sleep with him if he'd admit murdering Rachel, their prosecution failed. The judge branded their approach "“deceptive conduct of the grossest kind", and told the jury to acquit the innocent Stagg. Irritated, the police announced that they weren't looking for anyone else. Stagg got £700,000 damages.

While they weren't looking for anyone else, the actual killer, prolific rapist Robert Napper, raped and murdered another mother and child.

Here, the police have no evidence against JC and have closed the book on looking for anyone else. As nothing indicates JC did it, whoever did is not being looked for, remained at large and may still be out there. JC will get no damages whatever happens because you can't damage the good name of a rapist and murderer, so that's all right then.
 
The parallels with JC / SJL and Rachel Nickell are exact.

In 1992 Rachel Nickell was murdered and police decided to try to fit up the local weirdo, the wholly innocent and uninvolved Colin Stagg, whom the crime suited to a tee. Despite the police's valiant efforts, including organising a honeytrap where an undercover WPC wearing a wire told Stagg she'd sleep with him if he'd admit murdering Rachel, their prosecution failed. The judge branded their approach "“deceptive conduct of the grossest kind", and told the jury to acquit the innocent Stagg. Irritated, the police announced that they weren't looking for anyone else. Stagg got £700,000 damages.

While they weren't looking for anyone else, the actual killer, prolific rapist Robert Napper, raped and murdered another mother and child.

Here, the police have no evidence against JC and have closed the book on looking for anyone else. As nothing indicates JC did it, whoever did is not being looked for, remained at large and may still be out there. JC will get no damages whatever happens because you can't damage the good name of a rapist and murderer, so that's all right then.


My mum was friends with Rachel and so a case that hit very close to home. Thankfully Justice has now been served for the family involved.


It goes to show how corrupt the system can be though when the police botch a case and just want it swept under the carpet to shut everybody up on how bad it was handled.
 
Stagg had nil, zero, no history of violence towards anyone at all. He apparently tried to look into the back windows of houses while he walked on the Common. This was enough for the plod to decide he was the local voyeur and weirdo.

Framing Stagg thus solved two problems. One was that, as he was their local voyeur / weirdo, he was well overdue a pull for something. The other problem was that they needed to solve poor Rachel's murder. Fitting Stagg up with it thus elegantly solved not one problem, but two! Lovely jubbly!

See also Barry Bulsara, the local weirdo who had a Jill Dando shrine in his house. He was framed too, essentially based on that, but like Stagg he had no history or motive for any such attack, no access to firearms and not a chance of whacking someone with one bullet.
 
He apparently tried to look into the back windows of houses while he walked on the Common.

Are you sure about this? I don't recall any evidence that he was a voyeur and, as far as I am aware, he was never arrested or convicted for anything like this. I think that Mr Stagg has suffered enough, if this isn't correct.
 
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What is so unique about this case is the lack of any physical evidence. The only item that had the chance of having anything to link the perpetrator to the crime was SJL’s car.
In other cold cases the police have had items that can be looked at by modern forensic techniques. I’ve seen several cold cases solved by as little as samples from a car seat and a single hair from the perpetrator.
It’s too late now, but her car must have held some clues that would now be found, and not possible back in 1986.
This lack of any evidence is why we may never see this solved, I do, however think DV has a lot more than what he published in his book.
 
What is so unique about this case is the lack of any physical evidence. The only item that had the chance of having anything to link the perpetrator to the crime was SJL’s car.
In other cold cases the police have had items that can be looked at by modern forensic techniques. I’ve seen several cold cases solved by as little as samples from a car seat and a single hair from the perpetrator.
It’s too late now, but her car must have held some clues that would now be found, and not possible back in 1986.
This lack of any evidence is why we may never see this solved, I do, however think DV has a lot more than what he published in his book.
The perpetrator's prints are in the car, along with others and noone can prove he committed a crime.
 
The perpetrator's prints are in the car, along with others and noone can prove he committed a crime.



The person probably wiped down the car.


Also what’s the hammersmith sighting by a friend and timeline of it?
 
So I have nearly finished the book and just wants to post before I forgot.

The problem I have with the pub theory is it would involve complete strangers in a conspiracy theory to cover up a dead body. It simply makes zero sense.

we have pub landlords, stocktaker , then the temporary pub landlords all doing their thing on Monday and what Suzie pops by and gets murdered by chance and yet nobody ever talks.
 
Are you sure about this? I don't recall any evidence that he was a voyeur and, as far as I am aware, he was never arrested or convicted for anything like this. I think that Mr Stagg has suffered enough, if this isn't correct.
First I've heard of this too. The problem with the Stagg case was that the identikit resembled both Stagg and Napper.
 
So I have nearly finished the book and just wants to post before I forgot.

The problem I have with the pub theory is it would involve complete strangers in a conspiracy theory to cover up a dead body. It simply makes zero sense.

we have pub landlords, stocktaker , then the temporary pub landlords all doing their thing on Monday and what Suzie pops by and gets murdered by chance and yet nobody ever talks.

I hear you but the pub landlord and stock taker would have been gone by the lunchtime as DV shows. So we’re left with CV and his partner to contend with.
 
I hear you but the pub landlord and stock taker would have been gone by the lunchtime as DV shows. So we’re left with CV and his partner to contend with.


Are you sure that that the landlords were gone as she said as it was her sisters 3rd baby they would of been in no rush to get away. That’s what made me assume they could of still been around at lunchtime.
 
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