Thursday, July 28, 2022
Back In The News: UK’s Suzy Lamplugh Case, Maybe Most Obsessed-Over Anywhere
Posted by Peter Quennell
The History
Suzy Lamplugh disappeared in West London exactly thirty-six years ago today.
A real-estate broker, she had headed out alone to show a “Mr Kipper” a house, and she has never been seen since. No body. No hard proof of murder. Articles still pour out ceaselessly. There are so many YouTubes that it seems best that you take your pick.
The national frustration in England in part results from the fact that there are TWO suspects, both serial killers, the probable John Cannan whose car showed traces of Suzy’s DNA; and the possible Steve Wright, the Ipswich Killer, who Suzy’s family want interviewed - his own father labels him a possibility.
They have each spent years in prison and have divulged details of other crimes. So if either is guilty, why not do the same for this one?
Especially the one called John Cannan, locked up in Yorkshire, who is said to be on the point of dying. On 31 October 2018 our main poster James Raper kindly posted this tip about him.
I see that the police have started excavating the back garden of John Cannan’s mother’s back garden in the hope of, at long last, finding the remains of Suzy Lamplugh. Suzy was an attractive young estate agent who disappeared some 32 years ago after she had gone to meet a certain Mr Kipper at one of the properties on the agency’s books.
I rather doubt that they will find her there but if they do it will bring closure to Suzy’s remaining family. Her parents died a few years ago. Cannan can also then be charged with her murder.
The police never had anyone else in the frame. At the time of her disappearance Cannon was staying at a bail hostel nearby where he was called Mr Kipper because of his love of fishing and always being asleep. He was, it has to be said, rather a handsome man (though with rather strange, staring eyes) but he was also a sexual predator whose MOD with women was to portray himself as a successful businessman.
I bring this up because I was practicing law in Bristol when he was arrested and convicted for the murder of the newly-wed Shirley Banks. He had tried to abduct another woman only the day before Shirley disappeared. He is currently doing life.
It also transpired that he was having an affair with a Bristol solicitor whom I remember from my days there. IIRC she was representing him on some marital issue. She was married to a Bristol barrister though I never did work out who that was. Anyway, a narrow escape for her, and I didn’t see her around after that.
Comments
The Suzy Lamplugh Trust is linked-to in the first para above. We share a similar aim: keep law-enforcement attention and public interest alive until justice is done, in part by exploring which systems work and which could use some help.
Do this for a few cases, and in a sense we all get some training as detectives and systems enhancers, and this becomes an asset of hard-pressed and far-from-optimal justice systems themselves.
Keeping the main media honest and responsible as well. How main media misread Knox, Amber Heard, and Danielle Redlick, and then misled on a grand scale, needs to be stood up against.
They didn’t have too much to work with on that Suzy Lamplugh site as the known facts about Suzy’s disappearance have long remained essentially unchanged.
But they did find two ways to make that site worthwhile: (1) run the British stalking victims hotline (remember the Kercher family were stalked, not least by Knox herself); and (2) raise money for the foundation to “reduce the risk of violence and aggression through campaigning, education and support.”
Whether they see it this way or not, both of these are “adjunct public safety systems” and the “campaigning, education and support” really means building systems at the individuals level to try to keep people safe.
Good work. The Gabby Petito family are trying to do this as well. Maybe we should devote a page to the best of the internet-driven “true crime” systems enhancement efforts like this.
At first glance this article seemed somewhat tin-eared - why to a psychologist the prospects of Cannan (or any serial killer) confessing are dim. But the explanation is actually quite good. A “delight in remaining relevant” thing.
One of the very few remaining Knox-grovelers on YouTube is someone who calls himself Francisco, maybe trying to make out that he himself is Italian and thus gets it right. We just had this exchange, and he seems to have called it quits.
Francisco
2 hours ago
@Peter Quennell Nonsense? What part of what I wrote was nonsense? They went before Matteini on 9 Nov, three days after their arrest. They first met their lawyers on 9 Nov, at the hearing. They had ZERO opportunity to discuss the case with their lawyers, so their lawyers had no idea what their side of the story was. The result of that hearing was a year of prison custody. They remained in jail for a full year before their first trial.Yes, they were denied bail or even house arrest because Matteini ruled they might try to alter evidence or offend again. Of course, there was nothing to base these concerns on. In fact the Matteini hearing was nothing but speculation and innuendo, virtually all of it false, but it had it’s desired effect. That you find this appropriate speaks volumes about you.
So what did I say that was nonsense?
Peter Quennell
2 hours ago
@Francisco “So what did I say that was nonsense?” All of it. The pathetic smear “speaks volumes about you” for one thing. This is highly biased cherrypicking. In your anti-Italy mania you miss out that murder suspects all over the world are not given house arrest or bail. You miss out that Magistrate Matteini held MANY hearings, and that a top Rome lawyer walked off the job believing Knox guilty. You miss out that under zero stress Knox had again and again placed herself at the crime-scene. You miss out Sollecito’s “I never want to see her again” memo to Matteini. You miss out that the body of evidence became ENORMOUS, that the SUPREME COURT enumerated it, that there was psychological testing, that Knox was considered a flight risk, that Mignini gave Knox a huge gift on 17 December, a hearing to explain her way out of it - and she burst into tears and failed it. You miss out that Judge Micheli could have let them walk, but for many damning reasons he brilliantly enumerated did not do so. You miss out the enormous and horrific PR. This was a very very well proven case, and they were treated VERY fairly. Three courts were bent via Rocco Sollecito. End of story.
Thanks for fighting the good fight on YouTube comments. Yes I do wonder if ‘Francisco’ is really Italian or not.
I had never heard of the aforementioned UK case, it’s a bit before my time, but it sounds relatively conclusive if traces of dna were found, well completely conclusive if true, a little like the Knox case, only unclear in legal terms but clear to anyone with half a brain and crucially the correct information on the case, here for anyone you wants to seek it out on this very website 😊
Hi Hotair. I imagine there are some in the UK police who would like to pick up the Crown Prosecutors and shake them! This case was unknown in the US before October 2018, when the police excavation of Cannan’s mother’s backyard on the fringes of Birmingham became huge via news helicopters above.
Gosh, sounds like something out of a detective movie!
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