NY NY - Suzanne Lyall, 19, Collins Circle at SUNY, Albany, 2 March 1998

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kemo said:
I researched this a few years ago and concluded that it was probably not a stranger abduction.

The place where the name tag was found was (suggesting the abduction site) exposed to a lot of foot traffic at 9:30 at night. Very high risk.

Stranger abductors rarely conceal their victim"s body; it's a lot of work (particularly if the victim weighs 171LBS).

The only reason I can see for using a ATM to make a small transaction the next day (as opposed to looting the account) is to create the impression that the victim was alive and well at that time.

As I recall, the initial suspect was a Black guy who was in the store around the time the ATM was used. Apparently he held up rather well to intense questioning and there was nothing else to tie him to the crime.

Once that guy was more or less ruled out, attention focused on the boy friend. He denied everything and no evicence was found against him. I got the impression the family suspects him.

The boyfriend apparently knew the victim's PIN, which I found " odd"; just how many college boy/girl friends use each others debit card? I suspect he was the controling type.

Overall, I think the failure of the investigation was the result of tunnel vision. The ATM was located in a conveinience store near campus. There was no video or camera. The withdrawal occurred around 4:00 PM when there must have been many people in and out around that time; mostly young white student types.

The next day, when the clerk was interviewed, the customer he could remember, that the police comsidered "suspicious" was an older black guy. It is not clear why he was singled out over anyone else except "racial profiling". A composite was made and a publicized an all effort was directed at finding him. When he turned several days later, a lot of time had been lost.
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Racial profiling or not, the guy is still listed in Suzanne's Charley page as being unidentified. Is that not correct?

It seems to me he has a pretty strong resemblance to the suspect in Morgan Harrington's murder.
 

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Thank you for bringing that up, I also agree! Despite the time difference, there could always be a connection-at this point, nothing can rule it out and nothing can rule it in.
 
According to http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20006008-504083.html, the "Nike Guy" was identified and was more or less cleared. I don't know why the Charley Project still has his composite. Apparently there was a lot publicity about the so called "Nike Guy" including the composite on a billboard. It took him a while to show up and he had been the primary focus of the investigation. After that, more attention was given to the boyfriend. Apparently he refused to take a poly and has otherwise refused further cooperation with the family or the Police.

We don't know what it was that caused the Nike Guy to become the first suspect. Was he the only person in the store or around the ATM machine or was he the only one the clerk remembered (we the rest just white college students?)

I have more question about the boyfriend. Did he have a car?, did he have an alibi for March 2nd at 9:45?, did the police ask if the clerk recognized the boyfriend? I seems like the family thinks he is involved.
 
kemo said:
According to http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-504083_162-20006008-504083.html, the "Nike Guy" was identified and was more or less cleared. I don't know why the Charley Project still has his composite. Apparently there was a lot publicity about the so called "Nike Guy" including the composite on a billboard. It took him a while to show up and he had been the primary focus of the investigation. After that, more attention was given to the boyfriend. Apparently he refused to take a poly and has otherwise refused further cooperation with the family or the Police.

We don't know what it was that caused the Nike Guy to become the first suspect. Was he the only person in the store or around the ATM machine or was he the only one the clerk remembered (we the rest just white college students?)

I have more question about the boyfriend. Did he have a car?, did he have an alibi for March 2nd at 9:45?, did the police ask if the clerk recognized the boyfriend? I seems like the family thinks he is involved.
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Thank you for that update! As always, I think it's possible the person who took Suzy was someone closest to home, someone she knew. I read somewhere he was quite controlling of her...if he were innocent, wouldn't he want to get a poly done not only to clear himself, but so LE could move on in a different direction? I mean, they already put too much time into the Nike Guy. I def. think he knows something he is not saying. What odd behavior. I would also be interested if anyone knows if he had an alibi for that night?
 
I hate to point the finger at somebody unless there is serious evidence. In this case there really isn't anything we know that points to the boyfriend. Statistically, you have to consider the boyfriend but there were no children, life insurance or other "traditional" motives. College-age men rarely murder their girlfriends but it does happen. A history of abuse or "controlling behavior" is a risk factor. These murders are usually "fit of rage" situations rather than plan out. The cover-up is often pretty inept and the Perps seldom get away with it. In this case, a 171 LBS body was effectively disposed off. That suggest planning, access to a vehicle, and confident execution. Was this guy up to the task?

We don't know much about their relationship. The guy did know her PIN and had used her debit card; something I find a little hickey. Suzanne's father claimed she had been "trying to break up with him". Definitely a red flag; but did he say that before or after the Nike Man lead went south?

Refusal to talk or take a Poly is not all that suspicious. Anyone who thinks he may be "under suspicion" should see a lawyer and that lawyer will probably tell you to have no further contact with the police or the victim's family. CYA is always a good policy, even when you have nothing to hide.

The $20 ATM withdrawal seem to be "staging" in order to convince Law Enforcement that the victim was alive and well at that time. This would seem to work for someone who would have a rock solid alibi after that time (but not for the actual time of the abduction.
 
I agree, I have no desire to point the finger at anybody, and I don't want to stir things up for this guy if he really has been cleared. The whole thing sounds like she ran into a bad, bad man who probably took her hundreds of miles away to hide her. But on the other hand, what if there is something to it?
 
I have been following Suzanne's case for a long time now. I too saw the Disappeared episode recently and until I watched it, never realised that her boyfriend was considered a possible suspect. I was a bit nosy and tried to find info on where he is now but couldn't find a thing.
 
Know this is a longshot but has Suzanne been compared to NAMUS UID 01-5858?

suzy's weight made me think of this UID.

I realize the timeline is off, as well as the height (5'3" vs 5'8").

But if someone took her and kept her for awhile, maybe???

Apparently there is no DNA to compare....
 
:bump: for Suzanne. :please:

YjtbHDn.jpg
 
On Saturday June 15th I did the Walk for Hospice at the Univeristy of Albany. I had never been to the campus before and I couldn't believe how big it actually is. The walk took us around the Indian Pond trail and once I saw the pond the 1st thing that I thought of was Suzanne and how she is still missing after this many years. I looked on the campus map and the place she was last seen is not far from the pond and the wooded/park area. I wonder if they ever drained that pond? I can't get her out of my head since.

I was disappointed to see that some of the emergency call boxes along the route were "out of order".

Also, does anyone know why isn't she listed on America's Most Wanted site anymore? http://www.amw.com/

Uptown Campus Map:
 

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Anthony Collins, 54 was arrested for attempting to abduct 2 women at the SUNY Albany campus today. hopefully police look into the Suzanne Lyall case as well!



http://www.news10.com/story/23636198/attempted-abduction-reported-at-ualbany

There is a YouTube video of Collins as well (I'm pretty sure it is the same guy), he states he is suffering from mental illness. I did not post the link in case it is a different person..
 
Suzy disappeared by a bus stop too...which is where he attempted an abduction of one of the victims. I hope they look into him for Karen & Suzy. Except...why all of a sudden do this now?
 
Well on the video, he mentions he is a diagnosed schizophrenic. If Collins is diagnosed with Schizophrenia, it could be that he is not properly medicated. And 15 years ago maybe he was not yet diagnosed? Of course, he could just be a mentally ill man with no connection at all. I just found it odd that it is the same area of two other abductions.
 
LovingTheChaos said:
Well on the video, he mentions he is a diagnosed schizophrenic. If Collins is diagnosed with Schizophrenia, it could be that he is not properly medicated. And 15 years ago maybe he was not yet diagnosed? Of course, he could just be a mentally ill man with no connection at all. I just found it odd that it is the same area of two other abductions.
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That does make a lot of sense. Let's hope we can get a clear-cut answer whether he was involved or not. I'd like to see these cases get closure!
 
Based on what I saw on the ID show, I reject the idea her b/f was involved. Everything about him is consistent with your typical aspie computer geek. You can read more about aspie love in this NYT article.
Here is why I think her b/f does not seem suspicious:
  • He took a liking to her straightaway. --> She was female at a computer club meeting. *advertiser censored* or Get the F*($ Out (TOGTFO) is an acronym in the online world b/c if you go to a geek chat and say you're female you instantly get attention from the aspie hetero males. They don't mean it as crass as it sounds. They just mean don't say your female just to get attention or to get people to look at your code. The other side of this is the tech b!$ch syndrome. Hetero techie girls have no trouble finding a b/f and are often aspies on top of that, leading some people to see them as shrews. I don't condone all this. I'm just saying this is normal in geek culture.
  • She wanted to break up with him, but he resisted it. --> This guy met girls on BBS in the 90s. There were very very few girls on BBSs and/or using any protocol on the Internet prior to WWW becoming the killer app that led to widespread adoption. It's crazy to think he'd just log on to the BBS and find another g/f or meet one at the computer club. This was all a few years before the time people realized we got stock options and built stuff to sell to companies with deep pockets, which brought out girls that made you long for a geek even more.
  • He didn't express much emotion. --> Did he ever express emotion the way neuro-typicals (NT) do? If he was a typical geek he felt a little detached, as if talking to his contemporaries was not completely different from reading about early experiments with steam engines or even early agriculture? History doesn't repeat, but it really rhymes. When people talked about emotions, it either felt like he was expected to look deeply into strangers eyes as if he were intimate with them OR it felt like people were going through the motions of these platitudes people say, and he thought "spare me the bromides. Of course this hurts like hell. Can we please dispense with this song and dance routine that people do because I don't have strength for it right now."
  • He was controlling. --> I think many parents say this about their kids' b/f's.
  • He wouldn't do the polygraph. --> Techies are more suspicious of polygraph technology than the general public is.
  • He didn't cooperate with police. --> I bet he had all kinds of cracked warez on his machine and some dirty pics and stories. He didn't want a bunch of strangers examining this embarrassing and potentially criminal evidence.
  • They Telnetted into one another machines and had access to each other's drives. --> awww... That sounds sweet.
  • Her father had a premonition something was wrong. --> I wish he had written it down or something. We're all susceptible to post hoc rationalization. I don't discount it completely, but for this to be scientific, he'd have to report his good/bad feelings about people and then compare them all to actual facts. Maybe he has bad feelings about things once or twice a week but it usually turns out to be nothing.
  • He knew her debit PIN. --> By the mid 90s some places took debit cards but not credit. She also frequently hit the Tyme machine for $20 withdrawals. He was with her for over two years. It seems normal that he should have seen her enter it many times.
  • He had a decent alibi of playing an online game at the time with someone who claimed to know his playing style.
Things I don't understand:
  • She handed him that greeting card. --> That did strike me as odd. :confused: She had a habit of sending things late, but I would not expect her to make a special trip just to get something there by Valentine's Day. She could have just sent a message that it was coming. OTOH she disappeared over two weeks later, and police found no evidence she had another relationship going. Moreover, if the note contained bad news, wouldn't she just put it in the mail?
  • The $20 ATM withdrawal. --> Someone said that was staging to delay an investigation, but it seems to me like a lot of risk that someone might see the perp given Tyme machines have cameras on and around them. That's a high price to pay for the possibility that someone will check her bank account, see the transaction, conclude she's alright, and delay investigating. If it were a criminal who made the withdrawal, I'm surprised he/she didn't clean out her account. I don't know what to make of that. Could she have been alive but hiding? Or maybe she did have another romantic relationship going, spent the night with someone, spent an extra $20 (explaining two withdrawals) on entertainment/wine/0.1oz/whatever, and met foul play from him or someone else.
I may be biased b/c I was a student and into computers around that time. But I also have a perspective that makes Suze's life seem typical. Nothing about Suze's and Rich's lives, as presented in the ID show, point to activities related to a murder or kidnapping. By default I tend to think it was a stranger. The duplicate withdrawal, though, make me wonder if it was another b/f.
 
CircuitGuy said:
Based on what I saw on the ID show, I reject the idea her b/f was involved. Everything about him is consistent with your typical aspie computer geek. You can read more about aspie love in this NYT article.
Here is why I think her b/f does not seem suspicious:
  • He took a liking to her straightaway. --> She was female at a computer club meeting. *advertiser censored* or Get the F*($ Out (TOGTFO) is an acronym in the online world b/c if you go to a geek chat and say you're female you instantly get attention from the aspie hetero males. They don't mean it as crass as it sounds. They just mean don't say your female just to get attention or to get people to look at your code. The other side of this is the tech b!$ch syndrome. Hetero techie girls have no trouble finding a b/f and are often aspies on top of that, leading some people to see them as shrews. I don't condone all this. I'm just saying this is normal in geek culture.
  • She wanted to break up with him, but he resisted it. --> This guy met girls on BBS in the 90s. There were very very few girls on BBSs and/or using any protocol on the Internet prior to WWW becoming the killer app that led to widespread adoption. It's crazy to think he'd just log on to the BBS and find another g/f or meet one at the computer club. This was all a few years before the time people realized we got stock options and built stuff to sell to companies with deep pockets, which brought out girls that made you long for a geek even more.
  • He didn't express much emotion. --> Did he ever express emotion the way neuro-typicals (NT) do? If he was a typical geek he felt a little detached, as if talking to his contemporaries was not completely different from reading about early experiments with steam engines or even early agriculture? History doesn't repeat, but it really rhymes. When people talked about emotions, it either felt like he was expected to look deeply into strangers eyes as if he were intimate with them OR it felt like people were going through the motions of these platitudes people say, and he thought "spare me the bromides. Of course this hurts like hell. Can we please dispense with this song and dance routine that people do because I don't have strength for it right now."
  • He was controlling. --> I think many parents say this about their kids' b/f's.
  • He wouldn't do the polygraph. --> Techies are more suspicious of polygraph technology than the general public is.
  • He didn't cooperate with police. --> I bet he had all kinds of cracked warez on his machine and some dirty pics and stories. He didn't want a bunch of strangers examining this embarrassing and potentially criminal evidence.
  • They Telnetted into one another machines and had access to each other's drives. --> awww... That sounds sweet.
  • Her father had a premonition something was wrong. --> I wish he had written it down or something. We're all susceptible to post hoc rationalization. I don't discount it completely, but for this to be scientific, he'd have to report his good/bad feelings about people and then compare them all to actual facts. Maybe he has bad feelings about things once or twice a week but it usually turns out to be nothing.
  • He knew her debit PIN. --> By the mid 90s some places took debit cards but not credit. She also frequently hit the Tyme machine for $20 withdrawals. He was with her for over two years. It seems normal that he should have seen her enter it many times.
  • He had a decent alibi of playing an online game at the time with someone who claimed to know his playing style.
Things I don't understand:
  • She handed him that greeting card. --> That did strike me as odd. :confused: She had a habit of sending things late, but I would not expect her to make a special trip just to get something there by Valentine's Day. She could have just sent a message that it was coming. OTOH she disappeared over two weeks later, and police found no evidence she had another relationship going. Moreover, if the note contained bad news, wouldn't she just put it in the mail?
  • The $20 ATM withdrawal. --> Someone said that was staging to delay an investigation, but it seems to me like a lot of risk that someone might see the perp given Tyme machines have cameras on and around them. That's a high price to pay for the possibility that someone will check her bank account, see the transaction, conclude she's alright, and delay investigating. If it were a criminal who made the withdrawal, I'm surprised he/she didn't clean out her account. I don't know what to make of that. Could she have been alive but hiding? Or maybe she did have another romantic relationship going, spent the night with someone, spent an extra $20 (explaining two withdrawals) on entertainment/wine/0.1oz/whatever, and met foul play from him or someone else.
I may be biased b/c I was a student and into computers around that time. But I also have a perspective that makes Suze's life seem typical. Nothing about Suze's and Rich's lives, as presented in the ID show, point to activities related to a murder or kidnapping. By default I tend to think it was a stranger. The duplicate withdrawal, though, make me wonder if it was another b/f.
Click to expand...

I like your points, and understand how distressing it must be during a time like that to have your personal life examined. Investigators always start with those closest to the victim, and work outwards, so naturally, him being the boyfriend, they had to take a look at him. I only wish he would've have cooperated more so they could rule him out and move onto other suspects. He was selfish in not cooperating, and I wonder how air tight his alibi was for the night she vanished. If he didn't do it, it'd be nice to get past him and find the person who took Suzy.
I also wonder about the ATM withdrawal. If a stranger forced her to give them her debit card & pin number, why wasn't more money withdrawn? Why only take $20 when she had much more in there? It makes me think that was done to throw people off track & help the perp. cover his tracks. It also makes me think who took her may have been someone she knew instead of some perverted stranger or a robbery. Her parents claim only Suzy and her boyfriend knew the pin to her debit card, which is something that also makes me suspicious of him.
 
amber1 said:
If a stranger forced her to give them her debit card & pin number, why wasn't more money withdrawn? Why only take $20 when she had much more in there? It makes me think that was done to throw people off track & help the perp. cover his tracks.
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Do you know of a timeline posted anywhere?

I'm confused as to how the withdrawal helps the perpetrator. The withdraw means maybe the abduction happened later, but probably not. It probably occurred between getting off the bus and when she would normally return to the dorm. So the withdrawal isn't very valuable to the perpetrator.

Making it, though, puts him at risk of getting caught. I thought all Tyme machines had built-in cameras that record every transaction. The one used to make the last withdrawal apparently had a camera nearby but not on the machine.

Does a bogus withdrawal help the perp in any other way? I'm always open to the idea that any perp was stupid, in this case that would mean staging the withdrawal despite the risk/benefit ratio not being in his favor.

I'm curious if there's a timeline for her b/f's alibi vs a timeline of possible abduction times.
 
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