Suzy Lamplugh: The Unsolved Mystery

It's one of the most enduring mysteries

in British criminal history.

Nearly 35 years ago,

Suzy Lamplugh left her office...

...and never came back.

Suzy had disappeared without a trace.

Her body has never been found.

I do not know what happened to Suzy.

Susannah may have gone off with one or two men that day.

She'd gone to meet a mysterious Mr Kipper.

If you added DNA to the word Kipper, you got "kidnapper".

Or Kipper - rhyming slang for jack the Ripper.

And then there was this most dreadful bloodcurdling scream.

Was it the work of a serial killer?

Women were literally just vanishing, and nobody knew

what had happened to them.

It was called Dead Woman's Ditch.

How did he stay one step ahead of the police?

Significant opportunities were missed. The guy was never put

on a proper identity parade, his alibi was never properly tested.

But can of web of clues...

SLP 386$ - he said, "Yes, Suzy Lamplugh."

...and new evidence...

She said she had important information...

"about a possible deposition site for Suzy's body.

...help to solve the Suzy Lamplugh mystery?

# The Breakfast Show on Radio 1. #

It was a perfectly standard everyday, weekday morning, you know,

got up a bit of a hurry.

I believe she was just in her dressing gown.

We just sort of said good morning to each other and then pushed off

to our respective jobs.

I left at about eight.

Suzy had got a job as an estate agent in Fulham, on the Fulham Road.

She really seemed to enjoy the work.

Suzy had an appointment to show a house to a potential buyer at 12:45.

Her colleague, James Calvert remembers that day.

Suzy, she asked me to get her the keys to Shorrolds Road.

She said she was off to do a quick showing and may go for lunch.

Once we realised that she wasn't back,

we were all very concerned because it was unusual.

Between 3:00 and 4:00,

the manager asked, "Has anyone spoken to Suzy, by the way?"

So I think he phoned her parents.

Suzy had now been missing for four hours.

PHONE RINGS

I got this phone call from my mum saying, "We don't want to worry you,

"but Suze hasn't returned from her work. She was out showing

"a client and she's not returned."

The police searched the house for sale on Shorrolds Road,

but there was no sign of Suzy.

Her father, Paul Lamplugh, went to Fulham Police Station.

I was a Detective Constable at Fulham on that day.

It was about 7:30. Mr Lamplugh was at Fulham Police Station wanting

to know what was going on with his daughter.

It was urgent that he showed me where she lived so we could get

there as soon as we possibly could.

We immediately came to number 49 Disraeli Road,

where Suzy lived. She lived in the top flat.

My urgent concern was to search Suzy's flat,

see if she was in there.

I didn't know what I was going to find inside that flat,

I didn't want Mr Lamplugh to see what I thought I may find,

and that was possibly a dead body or something very gruesome.

My adrenaline was going, my heart was pumping,

my problem was Mr Lamplugh was immediately behind me, wanting

to come into the flat with me.

I had to ask my colleague to restrain him.

I then had to force the door open with my shoulder.

I then went into the flat, searched it.

Suzy was not there.

Keep in mind, you go through... and I was trying to work out

what might have happened to her, why didn't she come home?

Why was she... You know, what was happening?

I was the late duty senior CID officer on call.

PHONE RINGS

And I got a call about nine o'clock at home.

A girl had gone missing who worked in an estate agent.

The diary entry was extremely significant, made by Suzy,

in her writing, which said, "12:45, Mr Kipper, 37 Shorrolds Road."

This was a very conscientious employee who was known for letting

the office know where she was.

So I decided that it was important enough for me to go back to work

and deal with it first-hand.

I called Mike Barley, who was a Detective Sergeant in the office,

and asked him to come in to start setting up an incident room.

That meant pulling in staff, making sure that all the information

in relation to this,

this disappearance, was collated and kept in the right order.

She left the office at 12:40.

She drove this white Fiesta.

I asked my colleagues to organise a street grid search to see

if we could find her car.

And that was get a map, get all the grids, get all the roads, get

all the fields, the parks searched.

Suzy's car wasn't in Shorrolds Road,

the address of the appointment in her diary.

It was one mile away, on Stevenage Road,

opposite a different house that was for sale.

When you're putting a case together, it is all a puzzle.

I noticed the car immediately was parked over garbage.

Today, the two detectives have returned to the scene to show us

what the car revealed.

On the rear parcel shelf, we see there's a white cream straw hat.

The driver's door was unlocked, the passenger's door was locked.

It looked as if Suzy hadn't expected to leave the car for long.

Her credit cards were inside, she hadn't been robbed.

Had she been abducted?

The driver's seat was pushed back.

And strangely, the handbrake was in the off position -

so it was down.

Suzy Lamplugh was 5ft 6 tall.

She could not have driven the car if the driver's seat was pushed

so far back.

Obviously it would indicate that someone else had driven the car.

I think that the circumstances surrounding her disappearance

were becoming more sinister.

Peterjohnstone made the decision that night to deal with this

as a murder inquiry.

I remember my mum...we just sat here and thought,

"What can we do, what CAN we do?"

And they thought, well, what about if we just go from where the car was

found, and go and just look for her and take the dog,

we'll go along the towpath?

And I was just calling out her name, you know, they just wanted to try

and do something.

You sort of feel very helpless

because you think, "l should really be doing something.

"L should try and find my daughter. What can I do?"

At the end of the first day, we knew three things - one, that Suzy

had left her office just after 12:30 that day,

two, her car had been found in Stevenage Road

at 1 minute past 10 that evening,

and, three, she hadn't been seen since.

Suzy HAD disappeared without a trace.

25-year-old Suzy Lamplugh went missing in July 1986.

To find out why, the police needed to understand who she was.

We need to find out everything about Suzy

and that means interviewing her family, her work colleagues,

her friends. Leave no stone unturned.

She's a very strong, very athletic girl.

She does super windsurfing, she's a great tennis player,

she's a very strong swimmer.

Suzy, yes, loved swimming, and she was very good on the water.

She was very much of her time, really,

I mean, she was very busy.

She loved her work.

She was out a lot, she was very sociable - I mean, we were 25,

we were out a lot. We were all very sociable.

Being an estate agent was something she was really excited about.

She had a desk right in the window.

She was very good-looking, and I think that's extremely

significant because that's what the newspapers like -

the press latched on to this narrative that the '80s was bringing

more opportunity, more wealth, albeit to a relatively

small number of people.

And somehow, some way, this was a mixture of that

with a bit of tragedy -

it had all the ingredients that make great press.

My name is Peter Wilson.

In 1986, I was a young crime reporter on the Evening Standard.

I think the story seized the public imagination.

It was about yuppies, it was about Sloane Rangers.

And it was about young women like Suzy Lamplugh making their way,

and for the first time in the world of men's business.

It was quite unusual to have a young, attractive girl

as an estate agent.

Being an estate agent was a really desirable job, you could make

good money and be part of that property boom.

People thought it was trendy and a fashionable occupation,

and...it was cool.

She was reaping the rewards of the professional revolution

that was going on for women, but unfortunately

for Suzy, it wasn't a complete revolution.

I think it's fair to say that she was put in the front

of the window at Sturgis,

because that would attract punters off the street.

The 1980s was a period when women were...more of us were going

to university, going into quite middle-class jobs,

which had previously been done by men,

and one of the things that strikes me now is just how little attention

was paid to how that might make us vulnerable.

I think like a lot of women,

I was really profoundly affected

by the disappearance

of Suzy Lamplugh.

So, right from the beginning, I followed it very closely

with a real sense of horror.

The police appealed for witnesses.

We focused a lot of our inquiries on 37 Shorrolds Road, and a man

who lived next door saw a blonde girl outside the property and a man

coming towards her, and described him as a man,

5ft 8, 5ft 9, very smartly dressed,

clean shaven.

The description was used to create a Photofit picture of the man

mentioned in Suzy's diary, Mr Kipper.

The police issued a Photofit that day, and it was front-page news,

was on the front page of The Sun and many of the papers the next day.

Who had abducted Suzy?

Detectives' attention was focused on the name