Suzy 2: The River (continued)
The previous post was the most successful ever on Crime Guy. Why?
I wanted to follow-up on the river post. This was a breakthrough moment for me. It was the first time I have ever visited a crime scene/area in person, and I am following it up tomorrow with my first ever Crime Guy-related interview with an expert. We are putting together a limited series podcast which I am describing as Uncanny minus ghosts plus crime. The real breakthrough was in the comments. Crime Guy is at its best when it is a discussion, and the river post was designed to spark debate.
The standout result
The biggest result came via Peter Blake and I do not believe he intended it. In sharing a link to Google Streetview, the significance of what he had done hit me like a bolt of lightning. This must be a busy route on match days when Fulham are at home. Imagine the pressure on the wall shown in the right shot when this path is really busy. One false step and you’re in the river. Luckily they have been steadily improving the safety here. The railing changes several times along this stretch of river but imagine how much harder it would be to ‘fall’ or get pushed with the railing as it is today? My hunch is that in 1986 this wall was much lower than it is today, both due to flooding defence work and also health and safety on the footpath. Neither me or Peter could have spotted this without putting our heads together.
The result can be magical. Spot the difference?
How did we start the debate?
I started the debate effectively by binning all the common theories about this case: I specifically set out to avoid any debate around Shorrolds Road or Mr Kipper, or about anything happening in Putney, south of the river. I wanted everyone to focus on this part of the river.
The reason is straightforward: it’s not a part of the story that has been carefully analysed. In Andrew Stephen’s book we find that the Lamplugh parents Diana and Paul did walk some of this footpath the night Suzy vanished. They were warned off and told to go home to rest by the police because their dogs were confusing the police dogs. Could a more careful analysis of this location have yielded results? Were divers ever used?
This is not to say that I necessarily rule out any other narrative, just that it paid to really focus on one aspect of the case. This worked really well on the Sophie article about 2 doors and 3 gates. I learned a lot from writing that.
Other Wins
Check out this comment from Geraldine Comiskey, a friend of Crime Guy from the Sophie case:-
The parallel parking thing has just given me an idea... I find parallel parking easy (just reverse into the space) but I avoid it because I don't want to be blocked in if other drivers park too close to my bumpers. Maybe Suzy went back to the car, found it crammed in between two others, or another obstruction (eg, a parked motorbike) and just decided to walk back to the office...and along the way fell into the river / was pushed in by a mugger. This case reminds me of another missing person, Trevor Deely, in Dublin 20-odd years ago. He probably fell into the canal.
Could this explain anything? Could Suzy have just dumped the car? After all it was a company car and she had plans to meet someone in this area at 6pm. Maybe she figured someone else could collect it later. I never thought of that before, but might it be possible?
Long ago, Crime Guy stopped trying to present ‘solutions’ to these cases. It’s just too difficult. As soon as you publish a story like that, everyone finds flaws in the argument. I’m not trying to present shrink-wrapped solutions but to help us all ask better questions.
I think the whole notion of a documentary or book presenting an ‘investigation’ and a ‘solution’ to be misguided. We are writers or readers, not investigators. We are not the police. The police have more information, statements, evidence and resources than they will ever share publicly. There are leads and angles I am following that are not widely known about. No doubt others are following different paths. Sometimes those paths coincide and other times they are perpendicular to each other. But nothing that is physically possible can be ruled out.
People do the strangest things for no reason at all. Real life does not always have a logical explanation. Have you ever found yourself opening a kitchen cupboard, only to forget what it was you needed? You’re in the wrong cupboard or even the wrong room. None of us can know what Suzy had planned the afternoon she disappeared, but by looking at the thousands of permutations we can narrow down on several plausible explanations.
Let’s face it, if this approach worked we would have found Susannah Lamplugh after 39 years. It is the relentless attention to detail that might just uncover the one clue that breaks open the whole case.
But your friend Geraldine Comiskey is forgetting that in Suze arriving back at her car and not being able to get out of the space, giving up and walking back to the office, would have involved her walking east to her office. Why would she have walked west to the Thames? Also she was diligent and attentive and would not have left her purse and keys in the car.