UK UK - Suzy Lamplugh, 25, Fulham, 28 Jul 1986 #3

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For the many things I don’t understand about this case the big one is …


If CV did this and he had gotten away with why after a year would he randomly make up those phones calls?

All it does is bring more attention to his door. It raises a lot more questions and why would he do that if he had gotten away with murder?
 
Pinkizzy said:
@Whitehall 1212 can you take a criminsl matter to court without involving the police? I'm referring to a civil case where you pay the legal fees yourself
Click to expand...

Yes, it is possible to make an application to bring a private criminal prosecution. However, it is fraught with difficulty.

In reality it would only really apply to lower level offences that the police may not investigate/progress or bodies corporate who have their own legal department.

Serious offences will be subject to a police investigation and prosecution if the evidence meets the CPS full code test.
 
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asyousay said:
For the many things I don’t understand about this case the big one is …


If CV did this and he had gotten away with why after a year would he randomly make up those phones calls?

All it does is bring more attention to his door. It raises a lot more questions and why would he do that if he had gotten away with murder?
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The point I suggest is that CV was visited by the police perhaps as soon as the same evening as SJL disappeared, or perhaps the next. He is not clear about this, but in conversation with DV, he seems to say it was the Monday night.

At this point, he had no idea what information or leads the police had, and he probably knew next to nothing about SJL personally either. If he really was involved in any way, his best bet on 28/7/86 was to say nothing; she never turned up, that's all, and stick to that.

A year later, the picture has altered radically because he now knows quite a lot about her and about what the police think happened. They think she went to 37SR and met Mr Kipper. He also knows she had a viewing at 6pm because her diary was widely shown in the press and TV. This undermines his previous account that she was expected after work, as with that in the diary she cannot have been. So he emphasises that he himself was at the pub all afternoon. If he was there, taking calls about her, he can't have been in 37SR, nor anywhere near 123SR dumping her car, and she can't have gone there.

The problem is that he said none of this at the time. So he needs to backdate this account and somehow get it accepted that this was his story all along. So he claims to have given the plods who called on him names and phone numbers, so they could check this account at the time. They have no record of being given any such thing. Either his account is believed and the officers simply considered to have been negligent; or it's not, in which case he risks challenge.

What actually happened was that the police did not believe him, but didn't challenge him either. They just assumed he must be mistaken, and decided to continue to believe the original account he gave, and that he had now retracted.

It's certainly possible he was simply mistaken. The supposed call from Chelsea police on Monday to ask when she was coming for the cheque book, for example, could have been a call from Fulham police on the Tuesday to ask if she had ever been for the cheque book.

The bit that is most credible about his account is that he claimed a caller was asking for "Susan". SJL has consistently been called "Suzy" in the press, but nobody in her life called her that. She was Suze or Susanna. If CV made this account up a year later he would surely have said someone had called for "Suzy".
 
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asyousay said:
So a question to start the morning off as I’m intrigued to see where we all fall on this. LE believe the Mr Kipper the appointment was real.


So how many believe on here it was a real/fake?
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Fake.

I'd suggest the timeline went something like this.

Not long after arriving at work SJL gets a call from the bank to say call the pub that has your chequebook.

She calls and arranges to pick it up after work. She has tennis at 7pm so assuming she leaves at about 5.30 or 6 she has time.

At 12.30 she gets a call from someone wanting to do a second viewing of a property at 6pm. This is a sign of a bid inbound meaning commission so she agrees to 6pm. She now can't go to the PoW after work, so she rearranges to go now. Two calls were made and there are witness accounts by the callers. She needs a reason to be the one who gets to go out, so she puts in a fake viewing in the road that ole Kipper, John Herring, lived in.

She leaves the office. We don't know where she went, but it was intended to be a short errand, as she took only her purse.

By mid-afternoon MG is puzzled that she's not back. He checks her diary and finds the Kipper entry. He goes to 37SR with SF, who is blonde, but they see no signs of anyone. They knock at the door and step back onto the pavement trying to see in. HR notices the man but not the woman.

Around this time someone dumps SJL's car opposite 123SR. We don't know where it has been, but it has been only 2 hours since she left the office, so it cannot have gone far. Wherever it was during that time points to a likely crime scene so it had to be moved.

MG goes back to the office and does other stuff. Still no SJL; he returns to 37SR with a male colleagues and the keys, and looks inside. No sign of SJL. He encounters HR and asks him if he has seen anyone. HR describes MG and SF to MG.

When SJL fails to attend the 6pm viewing MG alerts the police.

The male and female seen outside 37SR were MG and SF. HR, wanting to helpful, made stuff up, such as the time he saw them, and the detail that he saw the woman being bundled into a white van. He later retracts this.

The police search the house using keys whose origin is never established. They can only have got them from Sturgis. nobody asked whether it was likely that Sturgis would have two sets.

The next day the police asserted that SJL had been seen at 37SR and appealed for witnesses. None came forward, so a week later they made and had broadcast a "reconstruction" based on HR's account. Influenced and coached by this, two more unemployed witnesses came forward with accounts. One claimed to have seen man with a broken nose in a scruffy suit. Another saw a man with champagne. The discrepancies with HR's tale were overlooked and these were all deemed to be corroborative of the Mr Kipper tale.

Another witness claimed to have seen two men sitting doing nothing in a car. Another who actually knew SJL claimed to have seen her at 2.45, which was possibly after her car was dumped. These were discounted, as they were at odds with the Mr Kipper narrative.

The police insisted on their Mr Kipper story and concluded he must have been someone she knew who was in Fulham that day. They eliminated everyone and eventually gave up.
 
Why would MG not come forward and say it eas him that afternoon?

He would of known of if he had checked out out the property that afternoon and not like he would need to lie about.

A concerned college worried about his female co-worker who hadn’t come back from a viewing. There is zero reason to not tell the police it was him that was spotted by a witness.


MOO
 
asyousay said:
Why would MG not come forward and say it eas him that afternoon?

He would of known of if he had checked out out the property that afternoon and not like he would need to lie about.

A concerned college worried about his female co-worker who hadn’t come back from a viewing. There is zero reason to not tell the police it was him that was spotted by a witness.


MOO
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Can I suggest the obvious answer? Because he wasn't there!

I he had deliberately lied in his police witness statement he would have been committing a criminal offence.

What tangible reason do you believe he would have to lie?
 
MG would have had no way to know that HR was describing his own earlier visit.

The reason nobody came forward to say that they were the male and female seen outside 37SR was thus that they had already done so. MG and SF would have given an account of their movements that related how he went there with her first. Then later he went back with a male colleague. So the police knew of a male and female who went there together.

When the Crimewatch reconstruction was screened, a number of calls were received from the public at the time, noting the resemblance between MG and "Mr Kipper". The police seem to have thought these people were alleging that MG was the suppositious abductor. All they were pointing out was that given the resemblance, HR might well have been describing MG.
 
WestLondoner said:
MG would have had no way to know that HR was describing his own earlier visit.

The reason nobody came forward to say that they were the male and female seen outside 37SR was thus that they had already done so. MG and SF would have given an account of their movements that related how he went there with her first. Then later he went back with a male colleague. So the police knew of a male and female who went there together.

When the Crimewatch reconstruction was screened, a number of calls were received from the public at the time, noting the resemblance between MG and "Mr Kipper". The police seem to have thought these people were alleging that MG was the suppositious abductor. All they were pointing out was that given the resemblance, HR might well have been describing MG.
Click to expand...



This literally makes no sense to me sorry. Why would MG not know the time he went by that afternoon?

If he had been to the property that afternoon and evening that would of been in his witness statement. Why would he omit in a murder enquiry that he had gone to check on the property that afternoon , he wasn’t doing anything wrong?
 
asyousay said:
This literally makes no sense to me sorry. Why would MG not know the time he went by that afternoon?

If he had been to the property that afternoon and evening that would of been in his witness statement. Why would he omit in a murder enquiry that he had gone to check on the property that afternoon , he wasn’t doing anything wrong?
Click to expand...

He omitted nothing. MG would have given the police an honest, full and accurate account of his movements. The problem is with HR's account. MG goes to the house twice, once with SF and later with a male colleague. The second time he speaks to HR. HR claimed to have seen a man and woman outside 37SR. Well, we know that; MG and SF were there.

But this sighting, supposedly at 1pm, became the entire basis of the theory that SJL ever went there.

When Crimewatch goes out a number of people call in to point out that MG doesn't half look like that Mr Kipper sketch. This should have raised the question right away of whether HR was simply describing a brief glimpse of a legitimate visit.

To put it the other way around, if you think SJL was seen outside 37SR, it means you think HR is reliable. Given his retracted claims and mistaking the podgy 44-year-old DR for Mr Kipper, I don't think he is. I think he saw MG and SF, mis-stated the times, and SJL never went there. All it takes for this interpretation to be correct is for the epically unreliable HR to have been wrong about the time as well as several other things.

It is sometimes claimed that as nobody else came forward to say they were the mystery couple, this must have been SJL with Mr Kipper. This is not so; MG and SF identified themselves as a male and female who went to 37SR together. Unfortunately nobody made the connection that they were the male and female who HR had seen.
 
asyousay said:
This literally makes no sense to me sorry. Why would MG not know the time he went by that afternoon?

If he had been to the property that afternoon and evening that would of been in his witness statement. Why would he omit in a murder enquiry that he had gone to check on the property that afternoon , he wasn’t doing anything wrong?
Click to expand...

Of course it doesn't make any sense. The investigating officer's will have been quite pedantic about establishing as comprehensive and accurate a timeline as possible.

The timeline will show:

1. Who was where and when
2. Who saw what, where and when

As the timeline fleshes out so the relationship between individual events will become clearer and help to build a picture of what happened. This is considerably easier with modern investigation methods and tools.

It is important to note that when taking witness statements police officers generally, and in particular experienced detectives, ensure they include certain information, borne out of the Court of Appeal case of R v Turnbull 1976, in relation to eye-witness testimony. This is summed up in the mnemonic ADVOKATE:

A - Amount of time under observation (whole event and any specific act)
D - Distance from suspect/person/situation being observed
V - Visibility (night/day/weather/lighting)
O - Obstructions to the view of the witness
K - Known or seen before? When and where? (suspect/person under observation)
A - Any special reason for remembering the suspect/person/situation being observed
T - Time-lapse (how long has it been since witness observed suspect/person/situation
E - Error or material discrepancy between the first description given and any subsequent accounts by the witness

It should also be noted that when a witness provides the time (often given as 'approximately HH:MM') that they first saw a suspect/person/situation, they will be asked "what reason do you have for recalling the time you have given"? It could be "I checked my watch" or "The BBC lunchtime national news had just finished" etc. This clarification is essential to produce the most accurate timeline possible.

SJL noted in her diary that she was meeting a Mr Kipper O/S 37 Shorrolds Road at 12:45. Witness testimony from at least three independent witness in Shorrolds Road, provides us with not only sightings to support SJL's diary entry but both a sketch and a photofit of the male seen with the female, who it is entirely reasonable to assert was SJL.

MG and SF will have been interviewed, separately. They will have provided witness statements and asked if they have discussed what happened with other staff, to establish if one is leading the other, or if they have created a composite.

Their statements will have included their movements that day and the relevant/approximate times. These would have been added to the timeline and the possibility that they could have been mistaken for SJL and male, will have jumped out a mile.

@WestLondoner would have us dismiss the only evidence we do have (the diary entry) and as a result of it, witness statements, artists impression and a photofit from Shorrolds Road, in favour of an entirely suppositional tale which is the very antithesis of Occam's Razor.

<modsnip - addressing a poster rather than the post>

This consistent need for vindication, is pursued relentlessly in spite of the police having reviewed the whole case, having significantly more evidence than we a privy to, the CPS acknowledging that the police had left 'no stone unturned' in finding all the available evidence in the review from 2000 AND the police review under JD being a gold standard investigation team.

It is also important to note that whilst the original investigation made errors, they were by no means incompetent criminal investigators.

I am not an intransigent 'JC did it' theorist. I am a reasoned investigator, who follows all 'reasonable' lines of enquiry with a unbiased intent to either rule them out or to develop them further. If there were any other legitimate, NOT fanciful, lines of investigation, based on tangible evidence, then I would not rule them out, without good reason.

The reality here is that direct evidence in the diary led to a location, witness statements, an artists impression and a photofit. The significant circumstantial evidence supports that SJL met JC at Shorrolds Road and that they were likely already acquainted. We know of JC's very disturbing MO and his victim type.

I wholly agree with the conclusion of the Met under JD, because no other credible evidence for an alternative has been advanced. Additionally, JD is a superb investigator, who even though now retired from the police is still fully committed to finding SJL.
 
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Whitehall 1212 said:
Of course it doesn't make any sense. The investigating officer's will have been quite pedantic about establishing as comprehensive and accurate a timeline as possible.

The timeline will show:

1. Who was where and when
2. Who saw what, where and when

As the timeline fleshes out so the relationship between individual events will become clearer and help to build a picture of what happened. This is considerably easier with modern investigation methods and tools.

It is important to note that when taking witness statements police officers generally, and in particular experienced detectives, ensure they include certain information, borne out of the Court of Appeal case of R v Turnbull 1976, in relation to eye-witness testimony. This is summed up in the mnemonic ADVOKATE:

A - Amount of time under observation (whole event and any specific act)
D - Distance from suspect/person/situation being observed
V - Visibility (night/day/weather/lighting)
O - Obstructions to the view of the witness
K - Known or seen before? When and where? (suspect/person under observation)
A - Any special reason for remembering the suspect/person/situation being observed
T - Time-lapse (how long has it been since witness observed suspect/person/situation
E - Error or material discrepancy between the first description given and any subsequent accounts by the witness

It should also be noted that when a witness provides the time (often given as 'approximately HH:MM') that they first saw a suspect/person/situation, they will be asked "what reason do you have for recalling the time you have given"? It could be "I checked my watch" or "The BBC lunchtime national news had just finished" etc. This clarification is essential to produce the most accurate timeline possible.

SJL noted in her diary that she was meeting a Mr Kipper O/S 37 Shorrolds Road at 12:45. Witness testimony from at least three independent witness in Shorrolds Road, provides us with not only sightings to support SJL's diary entry but both a sketch and a photofit of the male seen with the female, who it is entirely reasonable to assert was SJL.

MG and SF will have been interviewed, separately. They will have provided witness statements and asked if they have discussed what happened with other staff, to establish if one is leading the other, or if they have created a composite.

Their statements will have included their movements that day and the relevant/approximate times. These would have been added to the timeline and the possibility that they could have been mistaken for SJL and male, will have jumped out a mile.

<modsnip - addressing a poster rather than the post>

It is also important to note that whilst the original investigation made errors, they were by no means incompetent criminal investigators.

I am not an intransigent 'JC did it' theorist. I am a reasoned investigator, who follows all 'reasonable' lines of enquiry with a unbiased intent to either rule them out or to develop them further. If there were any other legitimate, NOT fanciful, lines of investigation, based on tangible evidence, then I would not rule them out, without good reason.

The reality here is that direct evidence in the diary led to a location, witness statements, an artists impression and a photofit. The significant circumstantial evidence supports that SJL met JC at Shorrolds Road and that they were likely already acquainted. We know of JC's very disturbing MO and his victim type.

I wholly agree with the conclusion of the Met under JD, because no other credible evidence for an alternative has been advanced. Additionally, JD is a superb investigator, who even though now retired from the police is still fully committed to finding SJL.
Click to expand...
This is what’s wrong with the enquiry, when the only bit of evidence you reference may actually be wrong, the police are so set in their ways and they are not prepared to look at anything else.
The police were not back in 1986 prepared to accept that SJL’s diary entry was a lie. They’d gone out to the media with the Mr Kipper narrative and from that day forward not prepared to accept it might just be wrong.
An entry in a desk diary is not evidence that SJL actually made it to SR, the fact that HR is an unreliable witness compounds this fact.
He didn’t actually see the female, only the male and then later changed his story say he’d seen SJL bundled into a vehicle, this was later retracted.
He would not have been a witness that would stand up to cross examination in court.
As you’ve outlined you do not have access to the police evidence, so you can’t know exactly what MG & SF said in their statements.
Also as you’ve pointed out within this thread the only concrete evidence we have is that SJL left the office at approximately 12.40pm and her car was found in Stevenage Road at 10.03pm. There are no other 100% accurate witness sightings of her between these times.
 
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Correct me if I’m wrong, but most of those watching and contributing to this thread are interesting I what might have happened and why.
They are probably aware that in over 30 years the case had not been solved and that inevitably the police are in some way at fault for this.
I’ve always had the attitude that when investigating anything you need to believe nothing, question everything and check what you’ve been told for yourself.
If you don’t do this someone else will and this will make you look like an idiot.
The last thing you want if this happens in court, an expensive case goes down the tube.
I just can’t fall in with the attitude that the police must have got everything right, when a case is not solved you simply must question everything and look for alternatives.
Which is what we do on this thread.
 
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Terryb808 said:
This is what’s wrong with the enquiry, when the only bit of evidence you reference may actually be wrong, the police are so set in their ways and they are not prepared to look at anything else.
The police were not back in 1986 prepared to accept that SJL’s diary entry was a lie. They’d gone out to the media with the Mr Kipper narrative and from that day forward not prepared to accept it might just be wrong.
Click to expand...

This is what is definitely NOT wrong with the investigation....in that the only identified
line of enquiry, i.e. SJL's diary, which led to witness evidence from Shorrolds Road, is progressed.

We have an entry in a diary, that there is no reason to doubt is in SLJ's handwriting.

However, what happens is that without ANY compelling reason to doubt it is a genuine entry in every way, some choose to dismiss it in favour of theories that are not based on any evidence, whatsoever.

Such a methodology could be extended to any criminal investigation with chaotic results!

We could choose to dismiss where the evidence takes us, not on the basis of something else undermining that evidence, but on the basis that we want to dismiss it out of hand because we can.......and substitute it with a whole range of random theories, which have nothing to support them.

This approach is blatantly ridiculous and does not represent evidence led investigation.

Whilst I don't have access to the investigation, what I do have is affirmation from the CPS that the full review in 2000 'left no stone unturned'. This gives me complete confidence that there was no reason to question the conclusions of the police and the breadth and depth of the review. For me this is reinforced by the knowledge that JD led that review.

Of course someone will turn around and without any basis, say "but the CPS were wrong"......ahh but that unedifying game has been played already, hasn't it?
 
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Suzy had Worked for Sturgis awhile so how often did she make false diary entries then run off and do errands?
 
<modsinp - quoted post removed>

You may not like the text book, which has empirical weight, because it doesn't scratch the itch.

However, the alternative that is being championed is to discard everything in a legitimate line of investigation and replace it with theories, as yet, that no one has been able to provide any supporting evidence for.

So who are the investigator's and who are the stooges?
 
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asyousay said:
Suzy had Worked for Sturgis awhile so how often did she make false diary entries then run off and do errands?
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Would you be surprised to hear that there are no other reported instances of SJL doing this?

And yet others choose to discount the veracity of the entry, with nothing to support their supposition.

This is their first key error of judgement, because it is the catalyst for any number of wild and unevidenced theories.

The reality is that investigation is painstaking, not sexy, and it requires a methodical approach.
 
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Whitehall 1212 said:
Would you be surprised to hear that there are no other reported instances of SJL doing this?

And yet others choose to discount the veracity of the entry, with nothing to support their supposition.

This is their first error of judgement.
Click to expand...


Yes I did assume as such which the police would weigh up as well when looking at evidence. She simply wasn’t a person to make up false entries and run off to do errands.

Also this was a cut throat business from what I can gather so if she had tried such behaviour in the past it would of been reported.


IMO
 
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