Suzy: The River

Why is the most obvious feature on the Suzy Lamplugh crime scene always ignored?

I was in Fulham last week to take photographs of key locations relating to the disappearance of Suzy Lamplugh in July 1986. I’m planning to return in the spring with a couple of Crime Guy members who have been following the case for longer and in more detail than me. I’m looking forward to it and confident it will challenge all of us on what we think happened that day.

River Thames at Stevenage Road / Langthorne Street, 200m wide

A glance at Google Maps shows the Thames bisecting the Suzy Lamplugh area of investigation. On the south bank, her flat and local pub, the Prince of Wales. On the north bank, her office and a couple of properties she either planned to visit or did visit that day. The two halves of her life, which was just revving up for a brilliant year. She was selling her own flat, and making a lot of money for customers who were investing in property just as the stock market was being deregulated. In 1986 alone, local property prices shot up 20%. This was a great time to be an estate agent.

What isn’t clear from the map is how enormous the river is here. It is around 200m wide and laps up against the high wall topped with railings. This indicates how high the river can come at high tide, when it would be a very ominous presence, as it was on a very cold and windy February day last week.

The river is never mentioned in the Crimewatch reconstructions. It is not mentioned in any of the Suzy studies or books I have seen. Suzy drove her Fiesta back and forth across Putney Bridge every day, crisscrossing the river where, we must consider, she might still rest.

The map below shows 123 Stevenage Road, the house opposite the location where Suzy’s Fiesta was found around 22:00 on the day she disappeared. 654 Fulham Road is her office. Across the bridge at the bottom is her flat, just off the bottom of the map.

As soon as you discount, as I do, the Mr Kipper visit at 37 Shorrolds Road, and you discount the possibility that Suzy crossed Putney Bridge after she left work at lunchtime, the whole case simplifies. You discount all the nonsense about the left-hand drive BMW with the arguing couple that might have been owned by a Dutch national called Mr Kiper (one ‘p’ this time), and everything clarifies.

All that happened on 28th July is that Suzy collected the keys to the company car, a Fiesta, that she normally used. She left the Shorrolds Road keys in the office, and drove directly to 123 Stevenage Road where she parked the car a little haphazardly. Was she late? Many people find parallel parking a challenge. Was there a car in front, so she didn’t have enough space to park neatly without obstructing the garage? We cannot know.

We know nothing from the moment the Fiesta was parked until it was found at 22:00 except that it did not move an inch. Several witnesses including workmen who were in the area all day, noticed the car for various reasons, some of them due to the awkward angle and obstruction of the garage.

However it seems logical that if the car did not move, Suzy did not return to it. Why did she not lock it? Why is the driver’s seat pushed so far back? If she was rushing, or only intended to be 20 minutes, perhaps this explains it.

My belief, using only logic and reason, is that Suzy was meeting someone in that area. And indeed at least two witnesses saw someone fitting her description talking to a man and looking at properties with Sturgis sale boards. Someone said the woman they saw was wearing a straw hat. A straw hat, Suzy’s hat, was found on the back parcel shelf of the Fiesta.

If she did meet a man then there are surely only two possible outcomes: either they stayed in the area and she died close by, or she was driven away from the scene in another car and killed elsewhere. The latter seems improbable. And there are no credible eyewitnesses for it.

Why does nobody consider the river? When you stand at the cross roads made by Stevenage Road, Langthorne Street and Millshott Close you can easily see the heads of dog walkers bobbing as they walk along the Thames path. Note this: on Stevenage Road, you are half as far from the north bank of the Thames as the width of the river itself. You are 100m from the river. The river feels very close when you stand there.

The Thames is very close to the crossroads in the centre of this map, around 100m

On a warm summer day, I can’t resist a quick look at a river, especially one where there is a wide, flat paved pathway to walk on. Even on a sleety windy February morning there were countless joggers and dog walkers on the path, once you get nearer to Putney Bridge. But at this point it was much quieter, and there were many times when we stood alone.

How easy, if angry and provoked, to knock a person unconscious and tip them over the railings. A strong, angry man could have overpowered Suzy Lamplugh in less than a minute. There would not have been any witnesses.

My own research, including the excellent book What Lies Beneath by Peter Faulding, an expert on this topic, indicates that unweighted bodies can sink quickly. Faulding was involved in the search for David Entwistle who fell into a tidal river near Great Yarmouth in 2003. He explains that the speed of the river, the height of the tides and other currents can dramatically affect where the body ends up. A body might be washed to sea or caught in the tide and washed up and down the same stretch of river. There are so many variables that it is not possible to say where Suzy would be today if she had been dropped into the river. The search for Daniel began 48 hours after his disappearance, leading Faulding to anticipate that the body had already been taken out to sea. Daniel Entwistle has never been found.

Anyway, the most convenient disposal site in the whole of Fulham and Putney is staring us in the face.

I find this resource very useful on this case: 1980s Actual. My thanks to Crime Guy member Peter James for suggesting Peter Faulding and leading me to his excellent book.