Imagine that any time a young female goes missing, like the recent case in Vermont, and the story is splashed across every newspaper and television, your heart skips a beat and the coverage is a harbinger of an endless cascade of pain. You’re swallowed up by it. You had been doing well. Your daughter had been abducted almost a decade ago and you’ve managed to carve out somewhat of an existence: living day to day, managing your emotion best you could, coming to terms with—possibly—the death of your child.

And then, another story Somewhere, in America, brings it all back with a vengeance, as if those feelings of despair had never gone away.

Every time Doug and Mary Lyall see a case of a missing college student—even that of a missing person—they face not knowing what happened to their 19-year-old daughter, Suzanne “Suzy” Lyall, and the cycle begins all over again.

There’s been a few updates in Suzanne’s case since my last entry (see all CR stories about Suzy by going to the post category, What Happened to Suzanne Lyall). For one, the recent tragedy in Burlington, Vermont, of Michelle Gardner-Quinn’s body found on a construction site, brought the Lyall family another thumping round of raw emotion. Feelings that were perhaps suppressed and buried long ago (it’s been eight and half years since Suzanne failed to show up at her dorm on the night of March 2, 1998, after getting off a city bus) rise to the surface and become much more pronounced than they once were.

“Something like Vermont brings back a lot of stuff,” says Doug Lyall. “Such similar circumstances ….”

Part of it, Doug admits, is guilt.

“What could we have done? Should we have done something differently? A lot of anger, a lot of negative emotions.”

In their minds, they go through that day Suzanne disappeared. Over and over, they question themselves. What if … what if … we … had invited Suzanne over for dinner. It becomes easy to blame yourself. Driven her home.

None of this is any good for the human spirit. It’s all poison to the soul, in fact. Yet part of having a daughter out there still missing. That monster who took Suzanne is still destroying lives. Still making the Lyalls feel like they’ve done something wrong, or could be doing more.

“It never, ever ends,” both Doug and Mary Lyall agree.

Some people think they have problems with bills, fighting with family members, bitter divorces, a break up with a girlfriend. But when you have child missing and the never ending well of emotional turmoil follows you around, those issues seem ordinary. Don’t ask the Lyalls to feel sorry for people in those situations. The Lyalls wake up and still don’t know. They go to bed at night and there is Suzanne’s photograph bedside. At a party maybe, they’ll be laughing one minute with friends, and then head over to the buffet table filling their plates and it comes on, a memory of Suzanne.

Then the result: no closure. Where is she? Damnit. Why hasn’t anyone found her?

The Burlington P.D. called the Lyalls and asked if they’d be available for Michelle’s family. They absolutely would, they promised.

Since Michelle went missing, the Lyalls have fielded media requests to comment on “what it’s like.” Imagine that. The Lyalls are the go-to family for the missing and exploited. What a brand to have to live with.

They take every media opportunity, says Doug, because you never know what information that one appearance on television might generate. Like, for example, last week, when a woman who had been following the Lyall case for the past eight years saw them on TV and sent in a tip of an unidentified deceased person found near the Catskills.

It seemed promising. Could it be Suzanne? 

A skull had been found. Far away from where Suzanne had disappeared in Albany, but who knew. Maybe her abductor(s) had murdered her locally and dumped her body in the mountains.

“Every letter, e-mail and phone call has to be taken seriously,” says Doug.

DNA and dental records turned out negative on the skull. It wasn’t Suzanne. Which, Doug adds, is both disheartening and hopeful, part of a boundless roller coaster ride they’ve been on for eight and a half years.

“Until we know for sure that Suzanne’s deceased, we’ll always hold out hope that she’s alive and out there somewhere. There’s no getting away from that for us. Even if on the surface people in our situation might say we’ve given up and there’s no way she’s alive, there’s still that little cell way back in the consciousness that says she could be. You see a story on TV where a woman has been held captive in some underground bunker for ten years and you think, ‘Is Suzanne being held against her will somewhere?’”

It’s seems unlikely. But it’s a possibility, as long as Suzanne is still missing.

There’s been no shortage of psychics, either, Doug says with a genial laugh. The last one, just recently, told the Lyalls she knew exactly where Suzanne was buried.

“We get those quite often.”

No matter how foolish they seem, each psychic tip gets checked out.

Still, not one psychic has produced anything positive.

“We can’t turn down any information because you never know where it might lead.”

The Lyalls’ one crowning moment in quite some time came a few weeks back when Doug and Mary watched a missing persons monument they had been championing for about five or six years dedicated at the Empire State Plaza in downtown Albany. The media was there. The Lyalls were interviewed. The monument is among several others dedicated to fallen firemen and cops killed in the line of duty.

“It’s something,” says Doug. He sounded proud of the accomplishment. And he should be. It is something.

Another new development comes in the form of a ring Suzanne possibly had in her possession on the day she disappeared. Mary Lyall had explained to police when Suzanne went missing that she was likely wearing a gold and diamond ring they had given to her as a gift.

“Suzanne was born in April,” Mary says, forcing a comforting chuckle, “so she loved diamonds.”

The Lyalls had spent about $100 on the ring. Suzanne adored it. She wore it all the time. There’s no reason why she wouldn’t have been wearing it on the night she disappeared.

Just a month ago, Mary was looking for something in a drawer at home.

“I was looking in this desk for a card … and there it was.”

No, not the ring. But a clipping from a Montgomery Ward catalogue Mary had torn out long ago. Staring back at Mary as she searched for the card was a photograph of the exact ring she had tried so hard to describe to police back in the day.

She scanned the image, enhanced it, and sent it off to the police.

The photograph above is that ring. We need anyone with information about this ring—Have you seen it? Do you know someone who owns it? Have you found it? Seen it at a pawn shop? Etc.—or any information whatsoever regarding Suzanne Lyall’s disappearance to contact Mary and Doug Lyall at Jdlmary@aol.com or the New York State Police at (518) 783-3211 or 1-(800) 920-4150 or (518) 442-3131.

I reiterate: This case can be solved.

Somebody knows something. Cowboy up and get that information to the Lyalls so they can have a bit of peace in their lives.

There has been some discussion on Crime Rant about the similarities between the Karen Wilson missing person case in 1985 and the disappearance of Suzanne Lyall. The two cases are likely unrelated — joined only by the vicinity in which both girls were last seen. In fact, there’s a good chance, Crime Rant was told, convicted serial rapist/killer Jeffrey Williams (Matt wrote about him briefly in EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE) is responsible for Wilson’s disappearance. Yet Williams was in prison 13 years later when Suzanne disappeared.

“There’s enough similarities,” Doug Lyall, Suzanne’s father, says, “but … I just don’t know. Karen and Suzanne lived in the same dorm complex. That’s about it. Who knows.”

Serial rapists/killers are not known to strike in the same location a decade or more apart. Doesn’t fit the profile.

A lot of you have written to Crime Rant via e-mail and posted comments about Suzanne’s case. Crime Rant, along with Mr. and Mrs. Lyall, appreiciate your tips, observations, questions, compassion and thoughts. This is an important case, as all missing person cases are. Just talking about it again and stirring things up is a step in the right direction.

The Lyalls are a bit frustrated. Not so much with the state police’s investigation—or lack there of—but the fact that Suzanne’s case seems frozen at this point.

“We need someone to come forward,” says Doug Lyall, “who has been sitting out there. It happens periodically—someone comes forward and changes everything.”

Mr. Lyall believes there’s someone sitting on relevant information, even if it appears insignificant, who can break the case with a phone call.

“The person with the information shouldn’t decide whether it’s important,” Mr. Lyall adds. “Let law enforcement make that call. Even if the information seems foolish or far out, it may not be! If you know something—anything—do not sit on it. Let the police know and they can decide what to do with it.”

The question becomes, then—IS there someone out there hoarding a piece of important information?

“I think so,” says Mr. Lyall. “Putting the obvious suspect(s) aside, there’s likely a perpetrator, relative, friend or someone that knows what happened, and perhaps this person knows something but wasn’t directly involved, but is afraid to come forward because of whatever: personal connection, loyalty and friendship, fear of being arrested, concern for their own personal safety.”

He or she needs to step up.

With the advent of the Internet, it’s easy for someone in that position to speak. Send that tip anonymously, if you must. Send it to the police or someone who can forward it to us. Invent a new e-mail address. Make an anonymous phone call from a payphone.

Just do it.

Look, solid information is already coming in to us everyday. Keep it coming. Don’t let up on this.

Doug Lyall doubts that the jewelry pictured here and worn by his daughter Suzanne when she disappeared will ever be found. But though the chances are slim, Mr. Lyall says, “it’s all we have left right now.”

Crime Rant believes someone may have purchased one of these items at a pawn shop, online, found one somewhere and thought it was insignificant, or knows someone who owns one. Thus, we feel it is important to put it out there and see what happens.

From left, a polished, 14K, fluted bow ring; a silver ring in the shape of a frog; and a necklace with a silver medallion inscribed with a runic character that looks like the letter S.

We also want to thank all of you who have written  in privately with information (which we will discuss at a later time). EVERY single “tip” and/or idea is substantial, no matter how big or small.

In the coming weeks, Part Two of our exclusive interview with Suzanne’s family will be published.Until then, we want all of you to push this case forward.

TC blogger Steve Huff pointed out that Suzanne’s ex-fiancé runs his own Website—http://www.darklight.com/main.php—on which you can find the following quotation: “So you have ventured into the land of the Dark and the realm of the Light, and found yourself at the feet of one man. A man, who in this world is known as Psionic Alpha, and in another world, Infynite Darklyte, and yet in another world, Rich Condon. A man who has seen the truth in both the Dark and the Light.”

Steve will also be blogging about Suzanne’s disappearance on his new Web blog www.crimeblog.us This is what Crime Rant wants to see: people taking matters into their own hands and furthering the search for Suzanne.

Nothing is more emotionally consuming than what the family of a missing child goes through. Their lives are put on hold. Left in limbo. People talk about hell and purgatory: what is it? does it exist? Having a child turn up missing is no doubt as close as one can get here on earth to either one of these pious dwellings. On the one hand, some of these families know their loved-one is dead; on the other, if your loved-one’s body hasn’t been found, there’s a faint rustling of hope.

As crime aficionados and journalists, watching the Natalee Holloway case suck the life out of so many other missing person cases has forced us to discuss how we want to proceed with similar cases on Crime Rant. There’s a fine line between overexposure and not enough. For Beth Holloway Twitty, it’s a safe bet 24/7 wouldn’t be enough. For us, we’ve had it with the crime shows rehashing old news about Natalee, and Beth Twitty blabbering about the same things over and over again, making accusations against people without substantiating any of it.

Enough already.

We want to say upfront that this first post on the subject of missing young females will be longer than usual. Our goal here on Crime Rant (Gregg has often scolded Matt for not following the guidelines) is to keep posts succinct and pithy (Gregg’s word). Yet, because this first case is several years old, laying the groundwork will take up some space.

Forgive us for that.

Over the years, Matt has been on the outside (looking in) of the Suzanne Lyall case. Some readers have written to him about it. He’s kept up with news accounts of the case. And now, this past Monday morning, Crime Rant spoke with Suzanne’s dad, Doug Lyall, in an exclusive interview. With any luck, we can reignite media interest.

Based on what Crime Rant has learned, Suzanne’s disappearance has the potential to be solved. With the help of just one person who knows something (maybe even if the information seems insignificant), the case can, at the least, heat up again. There are details we cannot discuss because it is an open investigation—but facts, our cyber-sleuth friends, which, without question, point to a suspect or two.

Let’s start with some background (and we know some of you are familiar with the case—but there are new details here, so slog your way through it).

On Monday, March 2, 1998, about a month before her 20th birthday, Suzanne Lyall spent a normal day at the University of Albany: going to class, hanging with friends, lunch, etc. Near 4:00 p.m., she got ready for work (blue jeans, black T-shirt, long black denim coat). On the way to the bus stop sometime later, Suzanne withdrew $20.00 from an ATM machine (important fact).

Babbages, a computer software company where she worked, confirmed her arrival at around 5:00 p.m. At a time when the Internet was just beginning to bubble, Suzanne understood its power. She was a whiz; people gazed over her shoulders as she showed them how to navigate through cyberspace, even eight years ago.

Her boss left the store at 7:30 p.m. Soon after, Suzanne took a short break and walked to Mrs. Field’s Cookie in the same Guilderland, NY, Crossgates Mall where Babbages was located.

When Suzanne left work to catch her bus, she took one of two separate paths. There was a service entrance close to Babbages, which led “to a dimly lit loading ramp containing massive industrial dumpsters.” And “a much longer route…to an exit near Ruby Tuesday’s restaurant.”

Suzanne’s fiancé, Richard Condon, a man she met online and, according to Mr. Lyall, was having “problems” with at the time of her disappearance, told reporters “she sometimes left the mall by the service entrance, despite his firm objections.” An off-duty Babbages employee said he saw Suzanne hanging around the bus stop around 9:30 p.m.

The bus driver, who had driven the same route on and off for 12 years, pulled up to the mall bus stop and approximately 20 passengers got on, “including a woman with light brown hair,” he said, that he “knew as a regular fare.”

At 9:35 p.m., the bus exited the mall. A few minutes later, the bus made a stop near Walmart fairly close by. Though the driver had a tough time recalling if he picked up additional passengers at Walmart, he was sure “no one got off the bus.”

The next stop was the University of Albany campus at Collins Circle—Suzanne’s dorm.

The bus arrived at 9:45 p.m. Nearly half the passengers got off, according to the driver. He told reporters “he can’t remember if Suzanne got off the bus or not.” One of her dorm mates, however, waiting for another bus nearby, watched Suzanne get off the bus. The student caught a “glimpse” of a woman “getting off the bus … [and] said she was, without question, Suzanne Lyall.”

The rest of Suzanne’s life is where the mystery lies. From the bus stop, the speculation is that she started on a 200-yard journey toward her dorm. Doug Lyall told reporters at the time that his daughter generally “took a shortcut to her dorm; but that route is partially obscured by a clump of trees.”

It is unknown which path Suzanne chose. Or, Crime Rant asks, if she even made it that far? Perpendicular to the bus stop was a well lit visitor’s parking lot. Could someone Suzanne knew waited for her in the parking lot? A beep of the horn, “Hey, Suzy, over here! You need a ride?” There were scores of people in the visitor’s lot at the time, yet cops found Suzanne’s work ID badge on the ground in the north end of the lot. So if she was abducted there, she must have willfully walked up to her abductor.

In any event, Suzanne vanished some time after the last sighting of her getting off the bus.

Richard Condon, Suzanne’s “fiancé,” called Doug and Mary Lyall the following morning. He said “he couldn’t reach her.” Campus and local police were called in. NY State Police joined the investigation 24 hours later.

Crime Rant has been told by Mr. Lyall that from the moment the State Police became involved, the known facts of the case have puzzled everyone. Richard Condon and his family, who were willing to help early on in the investigation, suddenly stopped one day after a meeting the two families were supposed to have at the Loudonville, NY, State Police barracks. Only Mrs. Condon showed up for the meeting. And after that day, the family disengaged entirely.

Some spoke of a guy who had been e-mailing Suzanne weeks before her disappearance, threatening and stalking her online, but the lead never materialized. Crime Rant sources claim the lead “was blown up by the media.” 
 
“We don’t understand why Suzanne’s ‘fiancé’ would not do everything in his power to help solve this mystery,” Doug Lyall told Crime Rant. “We’re very confused at this point [eight years later] that they [the entire Condon family] are not cooperating with the police.”

Suzanne’s engagement to Richard was news to Mary and Doug Lyall. “Yeah, we didn’t find out Suzanne was engaged until after she disappeared. A friend of Suzanne’s reported to us that he saw Richard with another woman at the Crossgates Mall fewer than two weeks after Suzanne vanished.”

These facts obviously pose a problem—because, as Mr. Lyall put it, “Investigators haven’t been able to really get by [the fiancé] to figure out definitely no or definitely yes. So what he knows or doesn’t know is just kind of sitting there.”

Suzanne’s ATM card was used at an Albany, New York, Central Avenue Stewart’s convenience store at 3:56 p.m. on March 3—the day after she disappeared. Someone used Suzanne’s four-digit personal identification number to withdraw $20.00. (Mr. Lyall said Suzanne had about $100.00 in her account at the time.)

Crime Rant has been told that there were only two people who knew Suzanne’s personal ID: Suzanne and her fiancé. One has to ask: If a predator grabbed Suzanne, or she was forced, say, at gunpoint, to give up her pin number, wouldn’t that person withdraw the $100.00? In addition, Crime Rant has learned Suzanne had several credit cards on her: Why weren’t they ever used? One better: Suzanne used her ATM card all over the Capital Region as if money were free for the taking—but had never used the ATM at that Stewarts’ location.

It all makes little sense.

Or does it?

There is a lot more evidence we need to lay out. Mr. Lyall is baffled. He feels Richard Condon and his family may have information that could help move the case forward. The problem is that the Condon family refuse to cooperate at this point and have hired a lawyer.