Suzy: Is Shorrolds a Herring?

Why has everyone accepted that an appointment at 37 Shorrolds Road was genuine, yet Mr Kipper was fake? What if the whole entry was fake?

All of the existing documentaries about this case make a significant mistake. In telling us earnestly about an appointment with a Kipper on 37 Shorrolds Road, they doom themselves to confusion. If Kipper is a red herring, then why not the whole diary entry? Perhaps only the time was accurate. Let’s take a look.

We know that Suzy Lamplugh left her office at lunchtime on the day she disappeared. We can be fairly confident that it was between 12:30 and 12:45. She collected her car keys from a colleague who had been using that car (a Ford Fiesta) earlier in the day, checked with that person where he had parked it, and went out. She went without her handbag. It was a busy Monday morning at Sturgis estate agents, as every Monday was. She would not be long: she was not allowed to be long.

There is a possibility, unlikely, that she did not take the car. We rule it out. We assume she drove to her appointment.

Police quickly determined that there was no Mr Kipper known to Sturgis staff. He was not a customer, not a house vendor, and not someone looking to buy a house from them. Nobody thinks Suzy knew a Kipper. What if the entire diary entry was a smoke screen, and only the time was true? This opens up new possibilities.

The image below shows the only place we know that Suzy Lamplugh visited after she left Sturgis. It is a stretch of Stevenage Road, not far from the office, where Stevenage meets Langthorne Street. The yellow rectangle shows where Suzy’s car was found that night. All the doors were closed, but the driver’s door was unlocked. Handbrake was off/down so that it was not anchoring the car in place. Suzy’s purse was in the car, and her straw hat on the back parcel shelf. The car was just slightly across the opening of the brown garage you can see and it was not parallel to the footpath. It looked as though it had been squeezed in behind another car and there was not quite enough room. Everyone finds parallel parking difficult. Perhaps Suzy was running a little late?

The final important detail on this picture is the arrow. No. 123 Stevenage was a Sturgis property at that time and the owner, Wendy, saw Suzy’s car at around 12:45, just a few minutes after Suzy left the office. Lots of other witnesses saw this car at various times throughout the day. Let’s assume Wendy is right and the car never moved.

Google

This version of the day suggests that the entire Shorrolds Road diary entry was fake.

Suzy drove straight to Stevenage Road and arrived on time at 12:40 or 12:45. What was she doing here? Nobody saw her get out of the car but we assume she was still alone because the passenger door was locked.

A witness called Marianna is helpful now. She lived at 139 Stevenage Road, which is beyond Langthorne but on the same side as No. 123. According to a documentary on ITV2, Marianna saw a woman and a man walking along Stevenage Road, smartly dressed. He wore a business suit. The woman wore a straw hat. Suzy loved hats and her straw summer hat, sometimes described as a boater, was found in the Ford Fiesta. Marianna thought they might have been going to a wedding. No mention of any argument or disagreement.

The following information comes from the Andrew Stephen book. Marianna later saw a young woman outside a Sturgis property in Langthorne. The woman was alone, “carrying papers or books” according to Stephen, and appeared to be waiting for someone. Marianna also saw a man in his forties with a dark briefcase. Andrew Stephen does not explicitly say that these two individuals were seen together, but they were both in Stevenage Road at the same time. The descriptions are quite detailed.

It is important to note that there are differences between the Real Crime ITV2 documentary, Crimewatch 2000 and the Andrew Stephen book in the way Marianna’s account is described. In the ITV2 documentary, which you can watch below, Marianna is speaking to the camera herself. I have transcribed the three sources below in case you want to examine them in detail and cross reference yourself. Even understanding this one witness has proven time-consuming. I lean towards Crimewatch 2000 being slightly more careful and thorough than the others.

Marianna Transcriptions 6 Jan 2025

114KB ∙ PDF file

Download

Download

Suzy did not lock the car. Does this indicate she was not expecting to be gone long? She does seem to have been sometimes forgetful as she left items including a cheque book in the pub the night before and had arranged to collect them the evening she went missing. So leaving the car unlocked is explainable, and leaving the purse is unwise but understandable. But if she was seen wearing the hat in Langthorne, when and why did she take it back to the car? Did she ever return to the car?

It is understandable to blame whoever Suzy was meeting for attacking her, but it is possible that this meeting happened normally and then something more random went on later. After the two parted, perhaps someone else spotted a lone female and pounced. This is incredibly unlikely. Far more likely is that Suzy went somewhere voluntarily with someone she knew, otherwise someone would have heard her screams in this quiet residential neighbourhood. How did she leave the area? It was most likely voluntarily because she knew her attacker. If so, did they drive away in his car?

The Crimewatch film from 2000 has a number of other witnesses, including a man in a white van who saw a Fiesta nearly crash into him on Kelvedon Road near Fulham Broadway. There was a taxi customer who witnessed a couple arguing, and a jogger who saw a man and woman in a left-hand drive BMW screech to a halt in Stevenage road with the horn blaring. Could this final witness explain how Suzy and her male friend left the area? This documentary is also linked below.

Without wanting to go all Nick Ross on you, perhaps you or a friend or family member knows more about the comings and goings on Stevenage Road and Langthorne Street in Fulham on 28 July 1986?

There is more to come on this story but first, a coincidence. I decided on the headline for this story quite spontaneously, so I thought. It is 2 years since I seriously looked at the details of this case. But I knew that there was a man sometimes known as Kipper who was somehow linked to Shorrolds Road. I kept looking for his name as I typed up this article. I have now found this man, on p126 of Andrew Stephen’s book. He is none other than John Herring and he lived just 15 houses away from No. 37. John had a BMW. He also had a brother Peter, and Peter Herring was a Sturgis customer. Funny old world. Both Herrings were ruled out.

Next time we will look at the possibility that Suzy went somewhere else straight from the office: the Prince of Wales pub.

Real Crime, ITV2 Documentary

Crimewatch July 2000