UKTrueCrime

40 years on from the abduction of my wonderful, sparkling, brilliant, thoughtful friend Susannah 'Suzy' Lamplugh it still causes me heartache. Today I'm thinking of her siblings and other loved ones on this tragic anniversary. We were good friends for nearly five years before this horror started. She was an incredibly positive and dynamic young woman who lit up every room with her fabulous smile. She had such enthusiasm for everything she threw herself into, she had a real zest for life. All this time later I can still hear her voice, it was a unique combination of clarity with underlying huskiness. And her laughter was simply contagious. I'll never forget that Tuesday, July 29th, 1986, the day after her abduction. We were due to have lunch at Crocodile Tears, a wine bar, near her workplace in Fulham. I'd gone to the hairdresser mid-morning for a haircut but my hairdresser was running late so I used their phone to ring Sturgis, the estate agents where Susannah worked. Obviously we didn't have mobiles in 1986. A man answered and when I asked to speak to Susannah he asked me who I was. I said: I'm her friend Pamela and my hairdresser's behind so I wanted to let her know I'll be late to meet her for lunch later. And he asked again, who are you? I thought this was weird. And I said: I'm her friend Pamela and I need to let her know I'm going to be late. Then in a rather flustered tone he said: We haven't seen her since yesterday afternoon, have you heard from her? And I said: No, but what do you mean you haven't seen her since yesterday afternoon? And he said that she'd left the office for an appointment and never came back. I remember exactly how my heart skipped a beat and immediately I started wondering what on earth is happening? The man then said he needed to keep the line clear and said: If you hear from her please let us know immediately. I was bewildered and after my haircut I went home to where I lived at the time near Victoria Station. Later that day I turned on the evening news and there it was that Susannah had failed to return from showing a house the day before. The rest is an absolutely dire history. As with many grown-up friendships, I'd never met her siblings or her parents at that point. We simply hung out together as young adults do. It was only once the search intensified that I got in touch with her parents because Susannah had previously told me where they lived. The late Diana and Paul Lamplugh were quite extraordinary people. It was utterly tragic that we got to know each other in this ongoing nightmare. It's unbelievably sad that they both passed away not knowing what had happened to their beloved daughter. I often think of the incredible young woman she was - and what a wonderful life she had ahead of her - before an unspeakably evil man took her from her loved ones. I think about what could've been - Susannah had so many ideas and dreams - and we'd even chatted about opening a business together. Here's a photo of us together about a year before her abduction when she had popped over to see the dress I was wearing to a big charity do. As with all her friends - I gave lengthy interviews to the detectives trying to discover what had happened to her - I went over every detail of our last conversations - and everything about our friendship and what we talked about when we'd meet up. In the phone chat we had about a week before our lunch date, Susannah said she had "some news to tell me but she'd leave it to our lunch date." The detectives and I went over and over what this could possibly be but to no avail. The conspiracy theories that flourished after her abduction caused such enormous pain for her family and for her friends. Anyone who knew Susannah knew that she'd never run off with a "wealthy foreigner", or any such nonsense, as she absolutely cherished her family. ❤️🙏❤️ (I always called her Susannah, and she always called me Pamela, it was an inside joke of ours)