# These Cold Cases Were "Solved"… But They Make No Sense | 209

An episode of [Lazy Chill True Crime](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1815534472), 21 Apr 2026, 40 min.

Audio: https://traffic.megaphone.fm/APO7333438918.mp3

Join me for 2 allegedly solved cold cases that make no sense. Episode 209 of the true crime podcast btw. Remember to hit that follow button if you're enjoying my content. 👇 Youtube links: Lazy Chill History Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillHistory Lazy Chill Zone Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@LazyChillZone 👇 Support My Work: 🛍️ Merch: https://lazy-chill-zone-shop.fourthwall.com ❤️ Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/lazychillzone 👇Social Media Links: https://www.instagram.com/lazychillzone/ 👇 Podcast links: ⚡History Video Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/7km5pLWpYWEj1mrPpEfRUr?si=0FHYnZf-Qs2FY1GyLevfig ⚡True Crime Podcast on Spotify⚡: https://open.spotify.com/show/0klIz08pAr7wR4we0Ia4sk?si=68qZxCeAQkysXzMZrHE0Iw 🍏 True Crime Podcast on Apple 🍎: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/lazy-chill-true-crime/id1815534472 unsolved mysteries, true crime, cold cases, unsolved mysteries, missing persons, murder investigation, forensic evidence, serial killers, crime scene analysis, dark history, criminal psychology, real life horror, police investigations, DNA breakthroughs, forensic genealogy, crime documentaries, criminal profiling, mysterious disappearances, solved cases, justice system, law enforcement stories, cold case files, creepy mysteries, true crime storytelling, crime reconstruction, chilling cases, investigative reporting, modern forensics, victim advocacy, unidentified remains, crime scene forensics, disturbing cases, true crime analysis, hidden clues, infamous crimes, real crime stories, forensic evidence, Al Kite, Colorado, UK true crime

## Transcript

[0:00] 15 years is how long Iowa carried the deeply disturbing
[0:03] question who walked into a brand new model townhouse on a sunny
[0:08] Friday afternoon in April and took a life?
[0:11] The answer, when it finally arrived in the spring of 2026,
[0:16] wasn't a name from any of the old theories.
[0:19] It was a 53 year old woman from a quiet town about 40 miles
[0:23] northwest of the scene. A woman with almost no criminal
[0:26] record. This is the story of Ashley
[0:29] Oakland and the unraveling of one of the strangest cold cases
[0:33] Iowa has ever produced. But it's also the story of how
[0:37] this new arrest has led to far more questions than answers, and
[0:41] why, despite these new developments, this cold case
[0:44] mystery still potentially remains unsolved.
[0:50] Ashley Oakland was born on the 30th of December 1983 in Ames,
[0:55] IA. She grew up in Kelly, a speck of
[0:59] a town in central Iowa with a population that hovers around
[1:02] 300 people. She bounced from the University
[1:06] of Northern Iowa to Iowa State, where she picked up a bachelor's
[1:10] degree in Exercise Science in 2006.
[1:14] Ashley started off her career in real estate the following year,
[1:18] joining a real estate agency in Des Moines.
[1:21] She spent a stretch at Century 21 and then in 2010 she signed
[1:27] on with Iowa Realty, the biggest brokerage in the state.
[1:31] Within a year, she had earned the sort of positive reputation
[1:35] that matters in a relationship based business.
[1:38] She was the agent who returned your voicemails and emails,
[1:42] volunteered in the community, and who seemed like a genuinely
[1:46] positive person. She had a long term boyfriend
[1:49] named Eric, and the two of them shared a house in West Des
[1:53] Moines with their scruffy little dog named Indy.
[1:57] People who knew them expected an engagement eventually, maybe
[2:01] within a year, maybe 2. She was 27 years old.
[2:06] She was good at her job, and the worst thing anyone could say
[2:09] about her was that she was a little too eager to succeed.
[2:14] The address at 558 Stone Creek Court was the kind of place
[2:18] you'd drive past without noticing.
[2:21] The developer of the townhomes was a company out of Minnesota
[2:24] called Rotland Homes, a builder that had spent the previous
[2:28] three years watching its sales dry up in the housing crash.
[2:32] One of the tactics brokerages use when new construction isn't
[2:36] moving is to stage a model unit and rotate agents through it on
[2:41] weekends. That way, there's always a
[2:43] smiling face inside when a curious potential buyer wanders
[2:47] in. Off the street on Friday, April
[2:51] 8th, 2011, that smiling face happened to belong to Ashley and
[2:56] she was ready to sell. Her car was parked out front
[3:01] with signs on the corners of the subdivision pointing passing
[3:05] drivers toward the unit. The door was unlocked.
[3:09] Anyone could walk in as they pleased.
[3:11] And that was the point. Shortly before 2:00 in the
[3:15] afternoon, she sent an e-mail. She sent a text to a friend.
[3:20] Neither of them had any whisper of stress or fear in them.
[3:24] She was making small talk with a friend about weekend plans.
[3:28] By every detail investigators later reconstructed, she was
[3:32] doing what she'd done on 100 other open houses, and she was
[3:36] completely alone in the building.
[3:39] At some point not long after 2:00, the front door opened and
[3:45] someone walked in. Whoever it was, Ashley would
[3:49] have greeted them the way she greeted every walk in with a
[3:53] smile and a handshake. She may have asked a polite
[3:57] question about whether they were in the market or just browsing.
[4:01] What she didn't do, and this is one of the few things the scene
[4:05] made absolutely clear, was fight.
[4:07] Back in the townhouse right next door, a woman who shared a wall
[4:13] with the model home heard a pair of noises. 2 heavy thuds, maybe
[4:18] 3 or 4 seconds apart, loud enough to make her stop what she
[4:22] was doing and pull her over to the window of her upstairs
[4:25] bedroom. From up there, she could see the
[4:27] driveway and front walkway of the model unit.
[4:30] What she saw at first was a woman standing near the front
[4:34] door and then that woman walked back to her car and paced beside
[4:39] it with a cell phone pressed to her ear.
[4:42] The call investigators would later determine wasn't to 911,
[4:47] but to a Co worker, another employee of Rotland Homes.
[4:52] The woman then got into her vehicle and backed out of the
[4:54] driveway at speed, driving in a way the witness would describe
[4:58] as erratic. She seemed to be gone for good,
[5:02] but a short time later she came back, returning to the scene the
[5:07] way people sometimes do when they feel like they may have
[5:10] forgotten something major. By then, the neighbor had pieced
[5:14] together that something was wrong next door, and she walked
[5:18] over herself, though the woman she had witnessed was already
[5:22] gone by this point. Inside the stage living room of
[5:26] the empty townhouse, she found Ashley on the floor,
[5:30] unresponsive. Paramedics got there fast and
[5:34] they tried to resuscitate her. They loaded her into an
[5:37] ambulance and raced the 12 or so miles east to Iowa Methodist
[5:41] Medical Center in downtown Des Moines.
[5:43] Sadly, Ashley passed away that very afternoon.
[5:47] Shot twice at close range, once in the chest and once in the
[5:51] face with a small caliber weapon.
[5:55] When officers rolled up to Stone Creek Court, they walked into a
[5:59] scene with almost nothing to work with.
[6:02] There was no broken glass, no overturned furniture, and
[6:05] nothing had been stolen that anyone could identify.
[6:09] The townhouse had been open to the public for an open house, so
[6:13] the usual language of forced entry didn't really apply since
[6:17] anyone could have walked in off the street.
[6:20] But there was also nothing in the scene to suggest that Ashley
[6:23] had fought. She'd been on her feet while it
[6:25] happened, and she'd been close to whoever pulled the trigger.
[6:30] This suggested that it was, in essence, an ambush, and she had
[6:35] been caught completely off guard by the perpetrator.
[6:38] That detail, more than any other, shaped the way her family
[6:42] understood what had happened. Her mother gave an interview to
[6:46] a local station about six weeks later and said the thing she
[6:50] kept coming back to was the quietness of the scene.
[6:54] Ashley, she said, was the kind of person who trusted people on
[6:58] instinct. If someone had walked up and
[7:01] said hello, she'd have flashed that warm real estate smile and
[7:05] welcomed them in. Her mother's best guess was that
[7:09] her daughter had looked up, offered a smile, and it had
[7:12] ended there. The West Des Moines Police
[7:16] Department didn't waste any time putting out a public plea, and
[7:19] within days they had hundreds of tips and dozens of officers
[7:22] working the case full time. In the first several months,
[7:26] detectives contacted more than 400 people and conducted dozens
[7:30] of interviews. By the 10 year anniversary, that
[7:33] number had ballooned to 500 people interviewed, yet none of
[7:37] them ever added up to probable cause.
[7:40] Early on, one witness account pulled the investigation in a
[7:44] particular direction, which, as we will see, appears to be
[7:48] incorrect based on the recent arrest.
[7:52] A person had told police that in the weeks leading up to April
[7:55] 8th, she'd seen a younger, scruffy looking man parked in
[7:59] front of the model for about 20 minutes.
[8:02] The witness had then seen this individual following Ashley's
[8:05] car when she drove off. The vehicle the witness
[8:09] described was a black SUV, possibly a Cadillac Escalade,
[8:14] though it couldn't be said for certain.
[8:17] One cop told reporters he suspected the man might himself
[8:20] be someone inside the real estate industry, and he asked
[8:23] local agents to take a look around the office and help
[8:26] identify him. That thread was chased hard, but
[8:29] it never produced a name or any real leads.
[8:33] While this may seem like an artifact of the early
[8:35] investigation, for reasons that I'll explain in a bit, this
[8:40] unknown man may play a significant role in the defense
[8:42] theory at trial. A different angle emerged 4
[8:47] years later in August of 2015, when an agent at a different
[8:52] brokerage in central Iowa received a mysterious phone call
[8:56] from a stranger. And bear with me here because
[9:00] this sounds like something out of a local news report from the
[9:02] 90s. This real estate agent claimed
[9:05] that the mysterious stranger said her business card had been
[9:08] picked from a hat and some kind of gang initiation.
[9:11] That company cancelled its open houses that day out of an
[9:15] abundance of caution, and no incidents connected to the call
[9:19] were ever reported. Police never publicly connected
[9:22] that call to Ashley's case, but the two stories got braided
[9:26] together in the public imagination, and the gang
[9:30] initiation theory developed a life of its own for years.
[9:34] There were other dead ends, too, though these were more credible.
[9:39] Investigators pulled cell phone tower data from the stretch of
[9:42] street where the crime occurred. They ran the shell casings
[9:46] against state and federal Ballistics databases without a
[9:49] hit. They chased men with local
[9:51] arrest records for violent offenses.
[9:54] And they asked Ashley's Co workers whether she had ever
[9:56] mentioned a difficult client. They even had agents from the
[10:00] Iowa Association of Realtors quietly combed the industry for
[10:04] any hint that a fellow realtor had behaved oddly in the days
[10:08] after the 8th of April. For almost 15 years, the person
[10:14] now allegedly responsible for ending Ashley's life was walking
[10:18] around in plain sight. She wasn't hiding in another
[10:21] state. She wasn't using an alias.
[10:24] She was driving the same streets, attending the same
[10:28] industry functions and showing up for work on Monday mornings.
[10:32] Her name was Kristen Ramsey, and she had joined Rotland Homes
[10:36] Iowa Division in 1997, about 14 years before Ashley's death.
[10:43] By April of 2011, her title at the company was a combination of
[10:48] administrative assistant and sales manager.
[10:52] The model home at 558 Stone Creek Court was part of a
[10:56] subdivision her employer was trying to sell, and she had been
[11:00] in and out of that unit more times than anyone could track.
[11:04] On paper, Ramsey was the last person anyone would have
[11:07] flagged, and I may shock you here, but she most likely wasn't
[11:12] taking part in a gang initiation of any kind.
[11:15] She was married and her husband ran a small concrete and snow
[11:18] removal business in a nearby city.
[11:21] She had no meaningful history with the police beyond a single
[11:25] speeding ticket from 2001, and she fit no meaningful profile of
[11:29] the person who may have done this.
[11:32] And yet, investigators had been looking at her quietly for
[11:35] years. The witness who had heard the
[11:37] two thuds had seen her that afternoon, pacing on a cell
[11:41] phone outside the front door. Police had interviewed Ramsey
[11:45] multiple times across the 15 years.
[11:48] Her account of what she'd been doing on April 8th, 2011
[11:53] reportedly hadn't stayed consistent from one interview to
[11:56] the next. Investigators had executed a
[11:59] search warrant at her home in May of 2011, less than a month
[12:03] after the slaying, and noted weapons, substances, and signs
[12:08] allegedly advocating violence. I wasn't able to confirm what
[12:13] these signs were, but if I had to guess, it was probably
[12:17] something like don't worry about the dog, beware of the owner.
[12:22] They executed a second warrant at her property in the spring of
[12:25] 2026 for reasons the police have not explained publicly.
[12:30] That early warrant and those early interviews didn't produce
[12:33] an arrest in 2011. Court filings years later
[12:38] suggest they had pieces, but not the shape of the whole, since
[12:42] what the witness had actually described seeing that afternoon
[12:45] was plainly extraordinary. A woman at the front door of a
[12:50] crime scene on the phone to a Co worker rather than to 911,
[12:55] tearing away from the scene, then circling back.
[12:59] It would be easy to assume she'd been cleared in 2011 because
[13:03] she'd claimed to be checking on the property in a work capacity.
[13:07] It would be equally easy to assume the investigators simply
[13:10] couldn't close the distance between suspicion and evidence.
[13:15] On the 17th of March 2026, a Dallas County grand jury
[13:20] returned an indictment. Later that same day, West Des
[13:24] Moines officers drove out to Woodward and arrested Kristen
[13:28] Ramsey without incident. What specifically broke the case
[13:32] loose after 15 years? Investigators wouldn't say,
[13:36] citing the need to protect the coming trial.
[13:40] Ramsay has pleaded not guilty, and her defense has begun the
[13:43] slow work of pushing back on the state's case.
[13:47] They claim they will be filing motions alleging that
[13:50] prosecutors cherry picked the evidence they presented to the
[13:53] grand jury. They also claim that some
[13:56] evidence from the 2011 investigation has been lost or
[14:00] destroyed during the long years between the slaying and the
[14:03] arrest. The case is now a new kind of
[14:07] mystery and it remains uncertain if the allegations made against
[14:10] Ramsey will be proven or not. Currently, no theory of why a
[14:15] long tenured Rotland Homes employee would have chosen that
[14:18] afternoon that model home and that young realtor has been
[14:23] offered on the record. The only slight clue offered is
[14:27] that the police have said they don't anticipate additional
[14:30] arrests. Whether the state can prove what
[14:33] it believes about Kristin Ramsey, whether a jury agrees
[14:37] with the indictment, whether a motive is ever named, all of
[14:41] that lies on the other side of a trial.
[14:44] And that's where the story sits now.
[14:46] Somehow, just as much of A mystery now as before the arrest
[14:49] occurred, this case could fall apart in a few very real ways,
[14:55] at least based on the evidence as we currently have it.
[14:58] On paper, Kristen Ramsey being seen outside the model home
[15:02] doesn't look great, but being present isn't the same thing as
[15:07] being involved, and her defense is going to hammer that
[15:10] distinction hard. They'll likely argue that the
[15:14] state has built a narrative that makes Ramsey's actions look
[15:17] unusual, but nothing more. There's also the matter of
[15:21] timing. The 15 year delay is a huge
[15:24] problem, and the longer a case sits, witnesses become less
[15:28] reliable and little inconsistencies start to matter
[15:31] a lot more. If jurors think investigators
[15:35] had their eye on Ramsey early but still couldn't make the case
[15:39] in 2011, that can create real doubt about why they're suddenly
[15:44] confident now. I suspect that the witness who
[15:47] claims to have seen Ramsey outside the site when the attack
[15:50] happened will also face very intensive cross examination.
[15:55] There will be serious questions about how this witness
[15:58] positively identified Ramsey and if this witness wasn't simply
[16:02] confused on the timeline in some way.
[16:05] After all, we know that Ramsay was coming to the site on work
[16:08] duties fairly often, and if the timeline is even slightly off,
[16:12] it could all fall apart under cross examination.
[16:17] That, of course, assumes that there hasn't been any new
[16:20] bombshell evidence found, though I suspect if there was, this may
[16:24] have been publicized. The defense, for its part,
[16:27] already seems ready to attack the investigation itself.
[16:31] If they can show prosecutors cherry picked evidence for the
[16:34] grand jury, or that important evidence was lost or destroyed
[16:37] over the years, that could seriously undermine the state's
[16:41] case. Jurors don't need to believe
[16:44] Ramsey is innocent, they just need to believe that the state
[16:48] hasn't proven the case against her beyond a reasonable doubt.
[16:52] I suspect that's where the initial investigative failure
[16:55] into the man in the SUV who was staking out the site will come
[16:58] into play. Personally, I think there's a
[17:01] lot more to the story here, and something about the initial
[17:05] investigation just doesn't sit right with me.
[17:11] Hey everyone, it's Jimmy here kindly asking you to hit the
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[17:33] I have a 25% off sale running from now until April 25th.
[17:41] She left the office to meet a man only known as Mr. Kipper,
[17:45] and she was never seen again. Susie Lampla was 25 years old in
[17:50] the summer of 1986, and by most reasonable measures, she was
[17:54] doing everything right. She'd grown up in East Sheen in
[17:58] southwest London, the second of four children born to Paul and
[18:02] Diana Lampla. Her father was a respected
[18:05] lawyer, her mother had been a teacher and she had a
[18:09] comfortably upper middle class upbringing.
[18:12] Susie had been privately educated in London and had
[18:15] trained as a beautician after finishing school.
[18:18] She'd then spent a short, rather glamorous stint working aboard
[18:22] the Queen Elizabeth 2 as part of the Ocean Liners beauty salon
[18:25] team. By the summer of 1986 she was
[18:29] sharing an apartment in Putney, just across the river from her
[18:33] parents home in East Sheen. She'd started a job with
[18:37] Sturgis, a chain of real estate agents in the Fulham area of
[18:41] West London. The property market in those
[18:44] years was riding the early Crest of the Thatcher era boom, and a
[18:49] young agent with a friendly manner and a company car could,
[18:52] in theory, do very well indeed. Susie had been at the firm for a
[18:57] relatively short time when she vanished, but she was already
[19:01] well liked and trusted to run her own viewings without
[19:04] supervision. In the summer of 1986, the idea
[19:08] that a 25 year old woman could be sent alone to a strange
[19:12] address to meet a stranger whose name was written in a paper
[19:15] diary was completely routine. Nobody thought twice about it
[19:21] and nobody checked in. It was just part of the job and
[19:25] it was how every real estate agency in the country ran its
[19:29] viewings. Monday the 28th of July 1986 was
[19:35] warm and dry in West London. Susie arrived at the Sturgis
[19:39] office that morning and worked through the first part of the
[19:42] day. As usual, her desk diary was
[19:44] straightforward. She had an appointment just
[19:47] before 1:00 to show a property at 37 Charles Road, a short
[19:52] drive from her office. The client's name was recorded
[19:56] in her own handwriting as Mr. Kipper.
[19:59] Nobody at the office recognized the name, and nobody ever came
[20:03] forward afterwards to claim they were the man.
[20:07] The only thing anyone had about this man was that he'd booked an
[20:11] appointment to view a house and that Susie had taken the booking
[20:15] herself. Whether she'd spoken to him on
[20:18] the telephone earlier that morning, or whether he'd walked
[20:21] into the office to set it up in person has never been
[20:24] established beyond dispute. What's certain is that her diary
[20:29] entry was the only piece of paper in that office with his
[20:32] name on it. She left the office shortly
[20:36] after 12:30 in her white Ford Fiesta, a company car she'd been
[20:40] issued by Sturgis when she started the job.
[20:43] A colleague would later recall her saying she was off to meet
[20:46] her client and might be back a little after the appointment
[20:49] ended. That was the last time anyone
[20:52] connected to her professional life saw her alive.
[20:57] Shorel's Road is a quiet residential St. tucked behind
[21:00] the hustle of a busy shopping area.
[21:03] The property Susie was due to show was an unremarkable house
[21:06] for sale at an unremarkable price.
[21:10] She arrived at roughly 12:45, parked outside, and went through
[21:15] the usual motions of a real estate agent preparing to meet a
[21:18] prospective buyer. Witnesses reported later that
[21:22] they'd seen a young woman matching Susie's description
[21:26] standing near a car on the sidewalk outside the house.
[21:30] Several independent accounts placed a man with her, and
[21:33] descriptions varied, but most agreed he was tall, well
[21:37] dressed, with dark hair and somewhere in his 30s.
[21:42] Some said they'd seen Susie and this man speaking to each other,
[21:45] and one witness thought they'd seen her look briefly angry, or
[21:49] at least uncomfortable. That said, I'm always cautious
[21:53] about these sort of witness reports that are made after the
[21:56] fact. Once a witness is fully aware
[21:59] something sinister happened. Whatever happened on that
[22:03] sidewalk or in that house, it happened quickly and within the
[22:07] hour, Susie and her car were gone.
[22:10] There was no sign of forced entry into the house, and there
[22:13] was no damage to the street. No broken glass, no scattered
[22:18] papers, no trace of any confrontation.
[22:23] Nobody heard a scream. Nobody reported a struggle loud
[22:26] enough to draw attention. The appointment, as far as the
[22:30] evidence can tell us, was brief. When Susie failed to return to
[22:36] the office that afternoon, her colleagues weren't immediately
[22:39] alarmed. Agents often went from one
[22:41] viewing to another, and a late return wasn't unusual.
[22:46] They also act with a great degree of autonomy and a lot of
[22:49] their work is building client relationships, so long meetings
[22:53] weren't unusual at all. But as the hours ticked past and
[22:57] she didn't call in, the worry started to form slowly and then
[23:02] as it got later it sharpened into fear.
[23:05] Her family was contacted and the police were brought in that same
[23:09] night to investigate her. Ford Fiesta was found the
[23:13] following day and it had been abandoned roughly a mile from
[23:16] the shore Olds Rd. address. It was abandoned close to the
[23:20] grounds of Fulham Football Club and within sight of the River
[23:24] Thames. The car had been parked
[23:26] awkwardly, as though in a hurry, and her purse was still inside.
[23:31] According to the accounts that have emerged over the decades,
[23:35] certain details of how the Fiesta had been left didn't
[23:38] match how Susie drove. Most pointedly, the driver's
[23:42] seat position had reportedly been pushed further back than
[23:45] her usual setting. Susie wasn't particularly tall,
[23:50] and the seat had reportedly been adjusted by somebody noticeably
[23:54] larger. As you'll recall, the man she
[23:58] was seen talking with outside the house she was showing was
[24:01] also noted to be quite tall. Those small mismatches reframed
[24:06] the case in the first days since it became clear she hadn't
[24:10] driven that car to where it was abandoned.
[24:13] The Metropolitan Police response in the first days was
[24:16] substantial. Officers interviewed colleagues,
[24:20] neighbors, clients, former boyfriends and more or less
[24:24] anyone who'd interacted with Susie in the weeks leading up to
[24:27] her disappearance. Posters went up across W London
[24:31] and the story became national news quickly, mostly because of
[24:35] the specific profile of the case.
[24:38] A confident, well connected young professional woman
[24:41] disappearing from a quiet residential St. in broad
[24:44] daylight after an appointment with a stranger whose name
[24:47] nobody recognized. It was the kind of case that the
[24:51] media loves to report on, and sometimes this helps with the
[24:55] investigation. But here, despite all the police
[24:59] investigations and the media coverage, nothing meaningful
[25:03] came back, at least not initially.
[25:06] Nobody was recovered, and no credible sighting of Susie after
[25:10] that lunchtime appointment was ever confirmed.
[25:14] Interviews with the residents of Shorel's Road produced the
[25:17] witness descriptions of the man on the street, of course, but
[25:20] those descriptions were general enough to fit many people.
[25:24] The man called Mr. Kipper had left no trace beyond that one
[25:28] handwritten line in a diary. Police even attempted to find
[25:32] unidentified fingerprints in the house to link them to Kipper,
[25:35] but the fact that the house was being shown to so many people
[25:38] complicated this effort. In the present day, London has
[25:43] an extensive system of surveillance cameras, but in
[25:46] 1986 there were almost none, so that wasn't an option.
[25:52] He hadn't, so far as anyone could tell, ever made another
[25:55] call to any real estate agents about any other property.
[25:59] Whoever he was, he'd planned the encounter carefully enough to
[26:02] leave almost nothing behind. Within a few weeks, the active
[26:07] phase of the investigation began to slow, and the case ended up
[26:11] going cold, at least for a time. About a year after Susie
[26:16] vanished, the investigation took on a very different shape
[26:20] indeed, with the arrest of a man named John Cannon.
[26:24] Cannon was convicted in 1989 for the abduction and slaying of a
[26:28] young woman called Shirley Banks in Bristol, for which he
[26:31] received a life sentence. Once the Metropolitan Police
[26:36] began to look closely at the details of his record and his
[26:39] movements, a very uncomfortable pattern began to emerge.
[26:44] Cannon had been released from Wormwood Scrubs prison on the
[26:46] 25th of July 1986, just three days before Susie disappeared.
[26:52] He'd been placed at a halfway house in West London, a short
[26:56] drive from Fulham. He'd previously served time in
[26:59] connection with violent offenses against women, and he was, by
[27:03] every serious assessment of his profile, a dangerous and
[27:07] predatory offender. Notably, he also targeted
[27:11] professional women of a similar demographic to Susie.
[27:14] Reportedly, those who'd known him around the halfway house
[27:17] said he'd picked up a particular nickname there because of his
[27:21] habit of wearing Kipper style neckties.
[27:24] That nickname, according to more than one account, was either
[27:27] Kipper or Mr. Kipper, depending on who you'd ask.
[27:32] The connection was immediately tantalizing, but it wasn't on
[27:36] its own proof of anything. To the officers looking into
[27:40] Susie's disappearance, though, the coincidence was hard to
[27:44] dismiss. Here was a man who, within days
[27:48] of being let out of prison, was staying near Fulham.
[27:52] Here was a man whose offending pattern fit the circumstances of
[27:56] the case almost uncannily, and here was a man whose reported
[28:00] prison nickname matched the one detail in Susie's case that had
[28:04] no other explanation. Reportedly, Cannon had also,
[28:09] around that same period, been seen driving a car that some
[28:13] thought resembled vehicles spotted near the abandoned
[28:16] Fiesta. The police set about building a
[28:20] circumstantial case, and they interviewed Cannon repeatedly.
[28:24] They looked into former associates, girlfriends and
[28:28] witnesses who'd seen him in the days after Susie's
[28:31] disappearance, and what they heard was suggestive rather than
[28:36] conclusive. A former girlfriend of Cannons
[28:39] told officers that, with the benefit of hindsight, he'd made
[28:43] comments to her around that time that could be interpreted as
[28:47] references to a body. Another acquaintance reportedly
[28:51] recalled him gesturing towards an area of the ground and
[28:54] speaking in a way that looking back, felt significant.
[28:59] He didn't outright say that there was a body there, and the
[29:02] acquaintance couldn't pin down where this conversation actually
[29:05] took place. None of it was hard evidence,
[29:08] but a shape was beginning to form on the page that seemed to
[29:11] suggest he was likely responsible.
[29:15] Cannon's record when read End to End was alarming and it really
[29:19] makes me question how he was still on the streets.
[29:22] He'd been in and out of prison since the early 80s for a string
[29:25] of serious violent offenses against women.
[29:29] The crime that finally closed the door on him came in Bristol
[29:32] in the autumn of 1987, when he targeted a young professional
[29:36] called Shirley Banks. Banks was 29 years old, recently
[29:41] married and working as a manager for a textiles company.
[29:45] She was abducted while out shopping in central Bristol on a
[29:49] weekday evening in October, and her body was recovered the
[29:53] following spring in a rural part of southwest England.
[29:58] Cannon was arrested not long after Banks disappeared
[30:01] following a separate attempted abduction in 2216.
[30:07] Years after Susie disappeared, the Metropolitan Police took the
[30:11] unusual step for British police of naming Cannon publicly as
[30:15] their prime suspect. That's not a step police forces
[30:18] take lightly in the United Kingdom, though it seems to
[30:22] happen much more frequently in cases I cover in the United
[30:25] States or Canada. There, it requires a conclusion
[30:30] on the balance of the available evidence that one person is more
[30:34] likely than any other to be responsible for what happened.
[30:38] In Cannon's case, the judgement had been reached that the
[30:41] circumstantial case was too strong to ignore, even without
[30:46] forensic proof to tie him to the scene.
[30:49] Somewhat bizarrely, the Crown Prosecution Service took a
[30:53] different view, suggesting that the two services were poorly
[30:57] coordinated. They concluded that the evidence
[31:00] against Cannon, while compelling in places, wasn't sufficient to
[31:05] secure a conviction in court. Without a body, without forensic
[31:10] material, without a witness who could place him with Susie at
[31:13] the critical moment, a jury couldn't be asked to convict
[31:17] beyond a reasonable doubt. Cannon, for his part, has always
[31:22] denied any involvement in Susie's disappearance.
[31:25] He remains in prison serving the sentence handed down for the
[31:28] Bristol case, and he has never been charged in connection with
[31:32] Susie's disappearance. That's left the case in a
[31:36] peculiar kind of limbo, since there's a very clearly named
[31:39] prime suspect, in fact a suspect to the police themselves believe
[31:45] is guilty. There's a body of circumstantial
[31:48] evidence that seems, to those who've worked the case for
[31:52] decades, quite persuasive. And yet there's no conviction
[31:57] and there's no closure and there's no Susie.
[32:01] There's also no meaningful investigation into other
[32:04] avenues, given that the police have already made their
[32:07] decision, even if prosecutors don't agree.
[32:11] Notably, the decision by the cops to identify Cannon as the
[32:15] prime suspect without the buy in from the prosecution was
[32:19] extremely controversial at the time.
[32:22] Some believe that the decision was taken under the hope that
[32:25] doing so wood forest the hand of the prosecutors to actually
[32:29] bring charges against Cannon. Over the years, the Metropolitan
[32:34] Police have carried out several physical searches at locations
[32:38] thought to be connected to Cannon's movements in the summer
[32:40] of 1986. The most significant of these
[32:44] have been in the English Midlands, particularly in
[32:47] Worcestershire, where Cannon had family ties.
[32:52] Investigators have long suspected that a body might have
[32:55] been concealed based on these connections to the region.
[32:59] In 2018, officers carried out a substantial search at a property
[33:04] in Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands, a site connected to
[33:08] Cannon's family. It was the most significant
[33:11] search effort in years, and teams worked through the land
[33:15] with specialized equipment. Forensic scientists were on
[33:19] hand, and they sifted carefully through the soil, looking for
[33:23] any bit of evidence. Journalists gathered at the
[33:26] perimeter, and Susie's family, now older and having endured
[33:31] decades of false hope, waited at a painful distance.
[33:35] When the search ended, no human remains had been found, and the
[33:40] police were forced to announce once again that the
[33:43] investigation would continue. There have been other searches
[33:47] as well at other sites in other years, and each one has followed
[33:52] roughly the same arc. There's a credible tip or a
[33:56] renewed line of inquiry, then a physical excavation, and then a
[34:01] period of waiting followed by a disappointing result.
[34:06] Officers have dug multiple other locations flagged by informants
[34:10] and former acquaintances. Each search has been an enormous
[34:14] undertaking involving specialist teams, ground penetrating radar
[34:19] and sometimes weeks of careful manual excavation, all with
[34:23] nothing. The impact of Susie's
[34:27] disappearance on British public life was considerable, and in
[34:30] some places it really did change the way things were done.
[34:34] The Susie Lamplow Trust, founded by her parents at the end of
[34:38] 1986, became one of the most influential personal safety
[34:42] organizations in the country. It's work reshaped how employers
[34:46] thought about how solo workers were sent to meet unfamiliar and
[34:50] unconfirmed people. This work done by Susie's
[34:53] parents has likely saved an untold amount of lives over the
[34:56] decades, since workers are generally no longer sent into
[35:00] completely unvetted situations. Real estate agents in particular
[35:05] change their practices far before society in general.
[35:09] Once, a young agent might have been sent out alone to meet a
[35:12] stranger at an unfamiliar address with nothing more than a
[35:16] name in a diary, as was done in Susie's case.
[35:21] After this tragedy, firm started insisting on identification,
[35:25] office check in procedures and policies that required first
[35:29] appointments with unknown clients to take place on office
[35:32] premises. Over the years, there's been an
[35:36] immense amount of analysis of this case and all the theories
[35:39] surrounding what happened to Susie and who was responsible.
[35:43] Now, of course, the dominant theory and the one held by
[35:46] successive teams of Metropolitan Police officers is that Susie
[35:50] was abducted by John Cannon outside the property on Shorel's
[35:53] Road. However, alternative theories of
[35:56] various credibility have periodically surfaced over the
[35:59] years, and I think it's important to keep this in mind.
[36:04] While the case against Canon does appear to be fairly strong,
[36:08] it's entirely circumstantial, and it could legitimately be a
[36:12] case where the police have laser focused on the wrong target.
[36:17] Some have suggested that the true offender was someone closer
[36:20] to Susie's personal or professional life.
[36:23] Under this theory, the name Mr. Kipper and the appointment was a
[36:27] deliberate misdirection set up by somebody who already knew
[36:31] her. Others have raised the
[36:33] possibility that she was targeted by more than one
[36:36] person, or that she was moved across county lines by a
[36:40] criminal network rather than by a lone offender.
[36:44] These ideas have been examined by investigators over the years
[36:48] and in most cases, set aside for a lack of supporting evidence.
[36:52] Which brings me to my personal observations on the
[36:55] investigation. From where I sit, it's hard to
[36:59] shake the feeling that the investigation may have narrowed
[37:02] too quickly and too confidently around a single suspect.
[37:06] The case against John Cannon has always seemed compelling on the
[37:09] surface, but when you strip it back, it rests entirely on
[37:13] circumstantial threads that feel suggestive rather than
[37:16] definitive. A nickname?
[37:19] A pattern of behavior, A geographic coincidence.
[37:24] None of it actually places him with Susie Lampla at the
[37:27] critical moment. What stands out more is what's
[37:30] missing, since there's no forensic evidence and no
[37:34] confirmed witness who can firmly tie him to the scene.
[37:38] I also have to note that the individual who was seen with
[37:41] Susie was described as a tall man, which brings me to a
[37:46] serious problem with the Canon theory.
[37:49] All evidence I can find suggests that John Cannon wasn't tall at
[37:53] all. Quite the contrary.
[37:56] The sources online vary regarding his height, but he's
[37:59] generally reported as being between 56 and 5/8, which puts
[38:04] him on the shorter end of average.
[38:06] Now, it's always possible that the witnesses may have been
[38:09] mistaken, or that he may have been wearing shoes that gave him
[38:12] a significant boost in height, but I find that fact odd.
[38:17] That said, the fact that Canon looks almost exactly like the
[38:22] composite sketch put together with the help of witnesses
[38:25] mitigates this factor somewhat. I also think that the statements
[38:30] from his former girlfriend and his acquaintance could be
[38:33] somewhat problematic as well, and not because he didn't make
[38:36] them. It's possible that Canon, who
[38:40] was clearly seeking to cultivate a reputation as an extremely
[38:44] dangerous person, was casually hinting at crimes he didn't
[38:48] commit. At any rate, over time, it feels
[38:53] like the Canon theory hardened into certainty in the minds of
[38:57] investigators and the public. Once that happened, other
[39:01] possibilities may not have received the same level of
[39:04] scrutiny. That said, even given these
[39:07] issues, I do think the circumstantial case against him
[39:11] is fairly strong, and that's why there's been so much effort to
[39:14] find her body. If her remains were ever
[39:17] recovered, especially in a location with any degree of
[39:20] connection to Cannon, that would almost certainly force the
[39:24] prosecution's hand. As of today, Susie is still
[39:29] formerly a missing person, although she was declared
[39:32] legally deceased in 1993 at her family's request.
[39:36] Exactly 7 years after her disappearance.
[39:39] John Cannon, for his part, remains in prison in England,
[39:43] still denying any involvement, and while he is currently
[39:46] serving life behind bars, he's now technically eligible for
[39:50] parole. Cannon isn't in a situation
[39:54] where he's been locked away with the key thrown away, so he still
[39:57] has an incentive to maintain the facade of innocence if he is
[40:01] indeed guilty.

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