March 2nd 1998: Suzanne Lyall

 

Suzanne Lyall left her job at a video game store in Crossgate's Mall and took a City Bus back towards her university dorm room in the Uptown Campus. It is believed she exited the bus at Collin's Circus as a classmate believes she seen Lyall walking there withing the time frame. This would be the last sighting of Suzanne Lyall, for the next morning her boyfriend would report her missing. 

Suzanne was born the youngest of three children in 1978 and was described as a quiet by her family. She was 9 years younger than her next oldest sibling and this made her "the darling of the family". She grew up in Saratoga Springs and was a creative but shy child with a warm smile. She struggled with socialising and didn't really have a large group of friends. She took an interest in computers and even started building them from scratch. She joined a computer club that met once a month. When Suzanne finished high-school she enrolled in a computer programming course at The State University of New York at Oneonta. After one year at the college she requested to transfer to a more challenging course to The State University of New York at Albany. Suzanne was noted as a very bright girl and at this stage Suzanne had years of experience working with computer and claimed that the course was so easy she could have been teaching the classes herself. While her decision to transfer was to enrolled in a more advanced college course, the transfer would also bring her closer to her boyfriend, Richard Condon. 

Suzanne and Richard had been in a long-term relationship, meeting when they were both still in high-school as members of the computer club. Richard had originally pursued Suzanne before they finally started dating and Richard was described as being very mature for his age, he was one year older than Suzanne. There was occasions over the years when Suzanne would attempt to break up with Richard but the couple would always work things out and remain together. Mary Lyall, describes Richard as being very controlling, this is displayed by the fact that Richard had set up Suzanne's computer so that he could control it remotely. There was one occasion where Suzanne was sleeping in her room and Richard logged into her computer and started opening and closing the CD tray. While some people seem to think this was an invasion of privacy, as a couple who had originally bonded over their love of computers, without knowing the couple personally, it seems that it could have been an inside joke or prank that the couple may have laughed about together. 

Suzanne was a creature of habit. Every day she would contact her parents either by phone or email and let them know what she was up to. Every night when she got back safely to her dorm room, she would let Richard know that she was home safe. 

Suzanne had chatted to her mother by phone on March 1st, the day before she went missing and said she was waiting on her next pay check and struggling financially. She declined her mother's offer for the loan of money until she got paid. Suzanne had been working two jobs to fund her way through college and living away from home. Suzanne's manager at the store claimed that Suzanne had been stressed leading up to the disappearance, she had an exam which she claimed to be the root of her stress. On March 2nd, Suzanne done the exam and attended college classes until that evening. She withdrew $20 and left the college campus, caught the bus to work, withdrew another $20 and started her shift. She told her boss that she had done the exam and felt it had gone ok, her boss said she was noticeably in a better mood having done the exam compared to the previous couple of weeks. At about 9.20 pm that evening she got onto a City Bus which would leave her close to her college dorm. Richard did not receive an email that evening from Suzanne to let him know she was safe. 

The $20 dollar transactions have been flagged by Mary Lyall as unusual. She said that Suzanne was very responsible with money and only ever withdrew $20 at a time as this let her keep track of how much she was spending. Suzanne taking $20 out in two transactions quite close in time may seem unusual but she may have forgotten about an expense and had to withdraw extra. Mary Lyall has maintained that it was unusual for her daughter to have taken out money twice in one day.

By the next morning, when Richard still had not heard from Suzanne he contacted her parents to ask them if they knew that Suzanne had not come back to the college campus the previous night. Suzanne's parents were surprised as this was unusual behavior for their daughter. They contacted the college and Suzanne had not shown up to her classes that morning and her housemates had not heard her come in that night. Her access card was checked by security and it had not been used at all on the evening of her disappearance. 

Doug Lyall decides to make the trip to Albany to look for his daughter. He was greeted by campus security who tried to reassure him that students disappear briefly all the time and that there was nothing to be concerned about. "Suzie was not a risk-taker. She didn't party or use alcohol or drugs." Her parents knew how reliable their daughter was and they knew something was not right. Mary Lyall contacted the bank to see if there had been any activity from her daughter's account. The bank told them that Suzanne's debit card had been used in a convenience store at 4 pm on March 3rd to withdraw $20. This transaction was made after Suzanne had disappeared and the bank were able to confirm that the pin had been entered correctly the first time. To Mary, this was a sign that Suzanne was safe as the $20 transaction was very typical of her daughter. The convenience store was located less than 3 miles from the campus. 

At this stage campus police were still not concerned but her parents couldn't shake the feeling that something terrible was happening. It wasn't until Suzanne missed a midterm and had still not shown up for classes that the finally agreed to ask state police for assistance in tracking Suzanne Lyall. A $15,000 reward was offered to anybody with information that would lead to the location of Suzanne.

At 9.45 pm a student that knew Suzanne seen her at The Collin's Circus, close to where the bus would have dropped her off. Suzanne was alone at the time and was walking in the direction of her dorm. She had a long black coat and blue jeans and carrying a tote bag. This is the last confirmed sighting of Suzanne. 

Police decided to pay a visit to the convenience store where Suzanne's debit card had been used to take out the final $20. Unfortunately the CCTV from the sore only pointed above the cashier drawer and it could not seen seen if Suzanne herself had taken out the money. The staff did not recognise Suzanne as a 

customer. The police decided to use receipts to track down customers who purchased items in the store around the time the ATM was accessed by Suzanne's bank card. Miraculously, police managed to track down every single person with the exception of one. A composite sketch artist was used and he was identified as a person of interest but not a suspect. The man would become known as "Nike Man" due to the Nike branded baseball cap he was wearing. The image that the composite artist had drawn up was circulated on flyer and was even hung on billboards with the missing poster of Suzanne Lyall.  Eventually the "Nike Man" was questioned after numerous people phoned to say they recognised him. He was ultimately ruled out as a suspect. 

Mary Lyall was suspicious of Richard, claiming that he showed very little of the kind of emotion that one would expect from a boyfriend after his long term girlfriend goes missing, he did not seem overly upset. While the partner of a victim is always near the top of any suspect list, Richard was intensely questioned by The New York State Police when they took over the case. Richard was cooperative with police in the beginning but after questioning continued he got a lawyer and also refused a polygraph test.

Richard did provide an alibi for his whereabouts on the evening of Suzanne's disappearance. He was at home playing video games with his friend Justin online. Police decided to question Justin to verify the alibi provided by Richard and while Justin cannot say with absolute certainty that he was in fact playing with Richard, he said the style of play was what he had come to expect from playing games with Richard over the years. Richard did mention that he was the only person that knew the pin code for Suzanne's bank card while he was being questioned by State Police. Another revelation that Richard revealed during the questioning was that he and Suzanne were now engaged, this came as a shock to the Lyall family as the spoke to their daughter every single day and this would have been news that she would have shared with them.  

One coworker during question mentioned that Suzanne felt she was being stalked by a man prior to March 1998. Police could not find any more information about this. The coworker said that Suzanne did not seem afraid of this person even though she claimed not to know who he was. 

Until May there was no further leads on the Suzanne Lyall case when a group of students were walking through Collin's Circle, the area which Suzanne was last seen. The noticed an old ID badge which was scuffed and the pin was rusting on it but the name was legible, Suzanne Lyall. Interestingly, the shop where Suzanne worked had swapped ID badges in December of 1997, 3 months before Suzanne went missing, from the pin stick on type badge to a lanyard worn around the neck. This ID badge that the students had found would not have been the ID that Suzanne was wearing in work the day she disappeared. Mary Lyall questioned why this badge was never found during any of the number of searches that had been done in the area. The obvious answer in my mind is that there was snow on the ground when Suzanne disappeared, it could easily have been covered over in the snow and not picked up until that May when it was found. The area where the ID badge was found was not en route to Suzanne's dorm room which after 2 months it may have blown a slight bit away from the area where it was originally dropped or could it have been dropped by mistake prior to the disappearance and as Suzanne no longer needed the ID for work, she never noticed it had been missing. 

Again, left facing another dead end police began to dig up old cases and found the case of Karen Wilson

who had disappeared 13 years prior in march 1985. She had attended SUNY Albany as a student also at was 22 years of age at the time of her disappearance. In terms of links between the two, Karen is still a missing person so the link between the two draws to a close as the two women are still missing. 

Over 300 acres were covered in the search for Suzanne but nothing more ever emerged. 

An aged photo of what Suzanne would possibly look like now in order to see if anybody even over 2 decades after the disappearance might recognise her. 

Suzanne's Law was passed in 2003 which stated that the police should notify the National Crime Information Centre when a person under the age of 21. Prior to this it was only if a person was under 18 that it would be reported. The Lyall's felt that the investigation was seriouuslt hindered by the fact their daughter's disappearance was not taken seriously when they first noticed she had not gone home. It took 3 days before police were willing to admit that it was more serious than they might have though but the laws at the time verify that their actions were correct.