Suzy Lamplugh - The Truth is Out There

 Suzy Lamplugh - Time For The Truth

Estate agent Suzy Lamplugh vanished after leaving her office on July 28th 1986

Welcome back to my study of the case of missing Suzy Lamplugh, who disappeared after leaving the estate agency where she worked in Fulham, London. Despite huge searches and the passing of time no trace of her has ever been found.

Over the past weeks, my team and I have begun to really look carefully at the whole story from scratch, identify the failings of the enquiries that have spanned the years and try to make sense of the case.

Before I go any further I want to say that I feel this case has long since ceased to be about getting justice for Suzy and her family and has become a free-for-all by authors of books, desperate to sell their stories and people worried about the truth coming to the surface so they work doubly hard to put one name in the frame and keep a man in prison, in hope that will suffice.

That just makes me angry and disappointed, a twenty-five-year-old woman can be allowed to disappear and her case left to go cold because real evidence is ignored.

I will also say that I am in no way a conspiracy theorist or anything similar, so please don't sit there thinking that I am going to tell you that I believe the missing estate agent was abducted by aliens or something similar. I also will not be suggesting that famous serial killers were responsible for her disappearance either.

Sturgis estate agents office where Suzy worked

Okay, let's just look at the narrative that is in the public domain and has remained the same since July 1986.

Susannah Lamplugh left her office at Sturgis estate agents in Fulham London at approximately 12.40pm on Monday 28th July 1986 supposedly to meet a male client, named Mr Kipper at 37 Shorrolds Road, Fulham in order to show him around the house, she never returned.

Suzy drove a white Ford Fiesta, which was a company car it was not seen in Shorrolds Road on Monday 28th July, because it was already parked in Stevenage Road before 12.40pm with no sign of Suzy. It was seen parked there by several people including a resident, how come? Were the witnesses all mistaken including the lady who lived directly opposite where the Fiesta was parked? Hardly likely.

Suzy Lamplugh's actual car parked in Stevenage Road

The Ford Fiesta registration B396 GAN had Suzy's straw hat on the rear parcel shelf and her purse was in the driver's door pocket when the car was discovered by police at 10.01pm. The car was unlocked, the handbrake was off, the driver's seat was pushed well back in a position where Suzy could not have driven and the car was slightly covering the driveway access to a garage. 

Now I have to ask some important questions here: 

1.If Suzy's car was parked in Stevenage Road as early as 12.40pm then how did Suzy travel to Shorrolds Road? 

Answer: She never went to Shorrolds Road, the appointment was made up, created in her diary in order for her to have a reason to leave the office during a time when they were busy and short of staff

2. If Suzy's car was parked in Stevenage Road as early as 12.40pm, how did a personal friend of Suzy's see her driving the Fiesta at 2.45pm some streets away headed out of the area?

Answer: There is a very real possibility that a duplicate car used as a decoy to deliberately confuse the investigation. Crazy idea? Really? Not if the abduction was meticulously planned in advance no.

3. Was Suzy's friend Barbara mistaken when she saw her at around 2.30 - 2.45pm? No, unlikely as they were personal friends and knew each other well. Barbara also described Suzy's straw hat as being in the back of the car on the parcel shelf.

4. Police found the car in Stevenage Road at 10.01pm, the seat had been moved to a position as if a taller person had driven and Suzy at 5ft 6 could not have done so, but there is one thing which has been ignored and not placed before public scrutiny and this is very important. 

There was NO evidence of fingerprints of anyone or indeed gloves having been worn by a person to drive the car, so this indicates;

a) Either Suzy drove the car there and deliberately moved the seat to mislead an investigation, extremely unlikely and this does not match the timeline that the car was there before Suzy left Sturgis office or

b) The car was parked in Stevenage Road by someone known to Suzy whose fingerprints were able to be eliminated, this seems to have been overlooked for some reason by the investigators.

Just on this point as I will mention later the police claim to have a "serious suspect" in the case but, think about this. That "suspect" is currently in prison serving life for another killing, so why were his fingerprints and other identifying marks not found in the Fiesta?

Before you quickly say, "maybe he never went in the Fiesta" then how do we explain the taller person parking it and the fact that Suzy's friend Barbara saw her with a male in the passenger seat of the car at 2.30-2.45pm? 

Although white Ford Fiestas were very common in the 1980s, the straw hat on the parcel shelf is a key identifying factor in this case

Going back slightly, the narrative in media reports suggests that Suzy left Sturgis estate agents office carrying the keys to 37 Shorrolds Road, Fulham, but this has now been clarified to be inaccurate. When the police went to the house to try to locate Suzy they first went to Sturgis office to collect the keys.

The owner of the house that was selling (the vendor) was a helicopter pilot and he confirms that he only gave ONE set of keys to Sturgis when the house was put on the market for sale, which incidentally was just a week before Suzy disappeared. There was no evidence of a second set being cut and the policy at Sturgis was to put all keys to a property on ONE tag so all keys would have been with Suzy if she had taken them.

So this derails the appointment at Shorrolds Road and thus the whole Mr Kipper narrative is meaningless. Clearly, Suzy had somewhere to be on that Monday lunchtime and so she created an appointment for a viewing and left her office.

Now the story really starts to look sketchy and we can see the whole route that the police's investigation has followed for so long falls apart. You see for quite a number of years there has been a line followed by many that literally makes no sense at all

News article featuring the artist impression ID of the now infamous Mr Kipper

Okay, so Suzy left her office to make a personal errand that was very important to her. She did not turn left as she went out of the office, and head for Shorrolds Road, she headed off in the opposite direction having turned right. 

She left her handbag and other personal possessions in the office as if she planned to return relatively quickly and I do in some ways believe that was her intention but, investigations are still underway in that regard so I cannot be absolutely certain of that yet. All I will remind you on that score is that Suzy put a fake appointment in her work diary, Suzy did not take the keys to 37 Shorrolds Road with her when she left and she was seen at around 2.30pm-2.45pm driving away from the area. Her friend said, "I am absolutely certain it was Suzy, but I can't say it was definitely the same car, there were so many white small cars on the road". Think carefully about that. 

Now, the widely known narrative indicates that Suzy had lost some items of value to her from her handbag whilst she was out with her 'more regular' boyfriend Adam Leegood on the evening of Friday 25th July 1986. They had apparently been out for a meal in Fulham then gone on for drinks at a public house 'The Prince of Wales' in Upper Richmond Road, Putney. 

Have a good look at this picture, particularly the area highlighted 

Whilst at the pub it is said that a chequebook, a postcard and a personal diary were either taken or somehow mislaid from Suzy's handbag.  

According to the narrative known in the media, the acting landlord of the Prince of Wales "Found" the missing items on the doorstep of the pub just after closing time, around midnight when he was locking up. He took the items and put them behind the bar for safekeeping. He did not attempt to contact Suzy, despite her being a local and seemingly quite well known in the pub. Bear in mind that he had her diary which would more than likely have held her name and address in, as well as her work details.

Anyway, he did contact Suzy's bank on Monday morning 28th July and in turn when she contacted them from work they informed her of the find. She then rang the pub and arranged to collect the goods at 6pm that evening.

1. Suzy went to work on Saturday morning (26th July 1986), from there to the hairdressers where she had blonde highlights put in her hair and then went home before being collected to go to a 21st birthday party that evening. There are no reports of Suzy mentioning the missing items.

2. Suzy travelled to Worthing on the East Sussex coast on Sunday  (27th July 1986) and spent the day with friends windsurfing, then travelled home and visited her parents in the early evening. She wanted to have a catch-up for her mum's birthday and took the opportunity to take some laundry with her to be done. Once again Suzy did not mention the missing items and did not seem concerned or distracted about anything.

3. Suzy turned up for work on Monday morning (28th July1986) and was, in the words of fellow office staff "preoccupied with concerns for her missing chequebook". This suggests to me that actually she probably lost them on Sunday evening. Does this change the issue that she disappeared? No of course not, but it could well have affected her actions on Monday morning. If she wanted to get the items back quickly, then she may well have put an appointment for viewing in her diary and used the time for her personal errands.

4. There is one other point that doesn't quite make sense here, which I feel is very relevant. Suzy was described by her office manager as being very good at timekeeping and was always five minutes early for appointments. Yet she apparently arranged to collect her lost property from the Prince of Wales pub at 6pm despite having a viewing appointment in her diary for 6pm which was in the opposite direction to the pub. So this suggests that she actually made a more discreet plan to get them before.

On that same point, just before Suzy left the office she spoke on the telephone with a lady called Julie, who was the pub landlord's partner. Did she arrange then to pop round and get the lost items? There is no statement about this.

Let's just go back to the missing items and how they were apparently found;  The acting landlord of the Prince of Wales said that he found them on the doorstep of the pub at around midnight on Friday night/Saturday morning. I do not believe that story at all. 

I stand by my gut feeling that if those items, particularly a chequebook were on a pub doorstep then

a) A punter would have fallen over them and handed them in or, as is more likely

b) There is a very real chance that the items would have been stolen. In the 1980s a chequebook was as valuable, if not more so than a credit card is in the modern-day.  You could take a cheque to a bank and many local shops/bars and in effect use it to withdraw cash, this happened an awful lot. Bearing in mind that Suzy's personal diary was with the items so there would probably have been personal information in there to help a would-be thief.

Right, let’s move on to other parts of the narrative that just do not add up.

There has been a lot of witness statements made, particularly later in time after appeals from shows such as BBC Crimewatch, many made much later in time which I will come to.

Among these apparent witness recollections, a story came out of a young woman with a male in a black BMW car that appeared to be fighting with the woman pressing the horn in a consistent fashion. Once again there are points here that make no sense and that have led to a completely foolish presumption of a suspect.

Firstly, let me raise an obvious point, consider this carefully; 

If you were walking down the street and saw a couple in a car, the man driving in a rough and unsafe manner, the couple seemingly fighting and the woman trying hard to attract attention would you not take action there and then? Would you not call the police? I know I would. Yet the witnesses concerned came forward some 14 years after the event to say that they had witnessed this exact scenario.

Enter John Cannan, the police's "only suspect"

Interestingly, in the years between the original investigation and the case review, a man had been convicted of murder and other serious sexual crime in Bristol, he was John Cannan owner of a black BMW car. 

The fact that he did not own a car in 1986 and only purchased the BMW in mid-1987 does not seem to have stopped the two cases from becoming mixed and confused. John Cannan had access to a red Ford Sierra which he borrowed from the cook of the probation service hostel where he stayed during the six months prior to Suzy's disappearance. 

The point that MUST be made absolutely clear here is John Cannan did NOT own or have access to a BMW in 1986 so he could NOT have abducted Suzy in such a vehicle.

Secondly, the person who identified the BMW from 28th July 1986 was what was known as a 'petrol head' and he identified a completely different model of BMW than the one owned by Cannan in 1987. 

So, the facts speak for themselves; 

1) It is almost definite that Suzy created the 1pm appointment at Shorrolds Road on Monday 28th July 1986 and used the fake client name of Mr Kipper. This is backed up by the fact that there was no record of the call to arrange the appointment and no client record for Mr Kipper at Sturgis estate agents, despite it being company policy for agents to complete a client record card including their telephone number.

2) If Mr Kipper was created by Suzy and actually did not exist then the description of a man who looked a little similar to Cannan at 37 Shorrolds Road holds no base either. 

Artist impression of a man seen at 37 Shorrolds Road, said to look like Mr Kipper

The neighbour at Shorrolds Road claimed to have seen a man outside the house in question and he helped a police artist to create the picture above. The only problem is the witness in question has since been discredited for a few reasons including;

He originally gave a statement saying that he had seen Suzy being bundled into a van outside 37 Shorrolds Road, then retracted it and said that he saw the man outside the house. His family have been spoken to and they have also said that they do not believe the witness ever saw this male. As this was the police's only credible witness 

Now, we are looking very carefully at this case and at Suzy's life and have discovered many things that are not so obvious in the public domain but, when it comes to witnesses seeing people at 37 Shorrolds Road, I am able to say that the police seem to have completely ignored a couple who it seems Suzy was very 'special friends' with and the male looked very similar to a second artist impression created by a man who said that he recalled seeing a very smartly dressed male standing near a parked car in Shorrolds Road at around 1pm.

Artist impression of a man seen waiting close to 37 Shorrolds Road

In my opinion, this picture does not match the police's "only suspect", John Cannan at all, but it does match with another person whom we have in our sights. I am unable to say more on this part of things at present but all will be revealed as our cold case review goes along.

I know many of you will not necessarily want to agree with our findings and that does not really concern me, the only reason that we got involved in this case was to get the truth and get justice for Suzy and loved ones left behind who deserve to know what happened to this young and talented woman who had an amazingly bright future ahead of her.

We are not here to sell books and thus twist the narrative to make pieces of the puzzle fit, we are only interested in the truth and I have to say that my team and I are absolutely satisfied that John Cannan has no connection whatsoever with Suzy Lamplugh's disappearance.

It is quite upsetting really that I see so-called "professionals" clutching at straws, putting out narratives that they know really cannot make sense in order to keep a man in prison and to sell books but in this case, this is what is happening.

I agree wholeheartedly that John Cannan has committed some heinous crimes and I do not say that he has not deserved his prison sentence but if he does not get parole in 2023 then let that be because he does not satisfy the parole board that he is remorseful for the crimes that he has committed, not be held on the whim that he has been made a scapegoat for the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh.

The bigger point way above this and the most important of all is that whilst all this targeting and keeping 'in the frame' of Cannan goes on the original perpetrator of Suzy's abduction and demise remains at large and potentially connected to other unsolved crimes. Suzy's family and friends deserve the right to give her the proper send off that she deserves.

She may have been a bit promiscuous perhaps and that may have lead her to danger but Suzy Lamplugh still deserves justice

There is much more to this story and much more still to be uncovered and I will bring it to you as and when I can but please consider what I have given you and if you have anything you would like to discuss with me then get in touch.

I will be back with another case very soon, so I will see you then. If you would like to discuss this or any true crime case with me then please make contact

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lolly.adams@lollytruecrimeworld.co.uk

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