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[Music] [Applause] [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thank you
00:01:48
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man who recently placed a wager on a horse fight here is
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out at true Crim garage.com all right that's enough of the business everybody gather around
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grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true [Music] crime [Music] he we've heard these terrifying Tales so
00:04:37
many times a young woman is there one minute and the next she is gone Vanishing seemingly without a
00:04:48
trace the devastated families are left to try to cope as best they can living with not having any
00:04:58
answers in some cases there are clues some warning signs or red flags pointing to what could have
00:05:07
happened but in some perplexing cases such as this one there is literally nothing so we are left to
00:05:18
speculate is someone close to her responsible for her disappearance could the young woman have
00:05:25
been the victim of a random crime of opportunity is her case similar to others in the
00:05:34
area or could she have been the victim of one of the most notorious and calculated serial killers of our
00:05:42
time this is true crime garage and this is the case of Suzanne [Music] l [Music]
00:06:07
in 1978 Doug and Mary Lyle already the parents of two children welcomed into this world a sweet little baby girl
00:06:16
Suzanne Lyall was born on April 6th 1978 her parents say she was a surprise baby joining her 12-year-old brother
00:06:26
Steven and 9-year-old sister Sandy in their home in Boston spa this is a small town of just 5,000 people located in
00:06:35
Saratoga County which is an Upstate New York from a very early age it was evident that Susie was very smart she
00:06:44
wanted to read and write especially poetry and do anything with computers as a teen Susie was not
00:06:53
concerned with what other girls her age were doing in fact a high school classmate of hers says Susie didn't
00:07:00
really have any close girlfriends she pretty much kept to herself writing poetry in her spiral
00:07:07
notebook her mom tells a story of one day when Susie was in the shower and she jumped out with soap in her hair and ran
00:07:15
down the hall to write down a poem that had come to mind as she bathed yeah that
00:07:20
that happened to me one time the Palm was titled flicky flicky don't touch your sticky all right well something we
00:07:28
can respect Captain is Susie was a big fan of the Canadian band Rush slapp in the Bas as you can see Susie enjoyed
00:07:37
solitary activities her parents fondly recall Susie as a geek but in the best Brainiac way possible Susie was very
00:07:47
successful at school and getting good grades were no trouble and quite successful with computers as well at the
00:07:54
age of 12 she dismantled and reassembled her commodore 64 computer by Middle School she was helping the teachers with
00:08:04
their computer problems and fixing the school's computers as well just like the colonel that's right I take them apart
00:08:11
and and I put them back together gum and then there's a few extra pieces left over in High School in the 1990s this
00:08:20
was she was already connecting with people in chat rooms online before this was an actual thing building not before
00:08:29
his actual thing before it was popular there you go and she was working toward learning computer programming at that
00:08:37
time as well at the age of 16 she joined a computer club that met at a local Denny's this is where she met Richard
00:08:45
Condon the computer Club president Susie's computer friend Mike was a neighbor of rich condons and he
00:08:55
introduced the two virtually before they met in person at the Denny's Rich was 17 and he and Susie
00:09:04
were Kindred Spirits Susie's dad was initially impressed with Rich describing him as mature Beyond his years something
00:09:12
we've never been described as uh he's also described as well spoken we strike out there again and very intelligent uh
00:09:21
nope he knew everything about computers nope nope rich and his computer buddies considered themselves quot quote hackers
00:09:30
and they allowed Susie to enter their all male hacker group by proving her abilities to hack into someone else's
00:09:38
computer yeah shout out to the movie hackers that was a great movie Angelina Jolie they shared the hacker Manifesto
00:09:48
that was circulated around in the late 80s they even established their own website provider called Global
00:09:56
2000 Susie rich and their friends dressed in all black and they were seen as somewhat goth in their High School
00:10:06
the two Tech nerds Susie and Rich became an item for the next three years Rich seemed to be Susie's sole emotional
00:10:16
support besides her family and the two developed a codependent relationship in which several say Rich was the dominant
00:10:24
one they attended different high schools but after school spent all of their time
00:10:31
together when they were apart they were on the phone or chatting on their computers when it came time for college
00:10:38
her parents are going to suggest that she goes to the State College in New York well this is the State University
00:10:45
of New York which actually has several locations they're going to encourage her to go to the one in onata which is about
00:10:52
2 hours away instead of the much closer State University of New York in Albany so so so they wanted her out of the
00:11:00
house yes but this is because they felt that she could use a break from her relationship with Rich who was living at
00:11:08
home while attending another College Susie's mother Mary admits that she and Susie budded heads over what Mary viewed
00:11:17
as a somewhat unhealthy relationship between her daughter and Rich right so hey go off learn your stuff but let's do
00:11:27
it you know let's do it at Arms length you're you're not too far away from Mom and Dad in the family you're just a
00:11:33
couple hours away maybe it's healthy for her to spread her wings and fly and meet
00:11:38
new people yeah and I think sometimes as a parent of a teenage kid when they're so intense with the relationship you
00:11:46
you're afraid they're going to miss out on opportunities that they would have taken if they weren't in a relationship
00:11:52
right and other than Rich she doesn't have much of a social life right right she works she goes to school she gets
00:12:00
good grades and then she spends all of her time with Rich but when you have a daughter that seems very independent and
00:12:07
maybe a loner the worst case scenario is her for her to get into a relationship where she's then codependent well Susie
00:12:16
did enroll at onata for her freshman year but she found the computer curricul curriculum was not challenging her she
00:12:25
told her mom that basically she could teach the class herself and she wanted to transfer but you have to wonder this may
00:12:35
have been really just an excuse to hide what was really going on right yeah or a
00:12:40
lot of teenagers think they know everything well suie did not have any friends at college but that was because
00:12:49
it doesn't look like she ever really gave it a chance her parents discovered that Susie was leaving the school every
00:12:56
weekend and going to Rich's house house and staying at Rich's house every weekend Rich's parents facilitated this
00:13:03
by doing all of the driving because Susie did not have a driver's license Mary and Doug Susie's parents
00:13:12
were not happy when they found out about this but the pattern continued anyway for the entirety of Susie's freshman
00:13:20
year and into her sophomore year when she then transferred to the State University of New York Albany
00:13:29
just minutes away from Rich's home when she was on campus Rich was often in her room or with her and he and his computer
00:13:38
friends would constantly stop by the computer store where Susie worked so once again the two were inseparable
00:13:46
Susie's family was not happy about this they found Rich to be cold hard to get to know not really friendly and lacking
00:13:55
in social graces he was all about computers and he was very opinionated Susie seemed to be growing to be more
00:14:05
and more like him as their relationship progressed taking on his opinions and taking up the activities that he
00:14:13
preferred Susie did break up with Rich at least one time that we are aware of her cousin later related that Susie told
00:14:22
her rich was too possessive and she didn't like it so they broke it off but just for a little bit
00:14:29
because they did get back together Susie and her mom argued a lot about this decision at the time one of the things
00:14:37
that I don't like about this relationship either is rich is the gateway to the other friends so if
00:14:44
there's no Rich there's no other friends right the only thing though just from someone who look we
00:14:53
don't know either of these individuals and we weren't there present for any of this from the outside looking in it
00:15:00
appears to me that rich may be a little more outgoing than Susie is and that Susie's fine with just having the one
00:15:07
friend Rich and having her family at Albany Susie found the computer cours workk to be much more rigorous than she
00:15:16
had expected in fact she was struggling at school and she was stressed and was afraid that she was failing some of her
00:15:24
classes organizational skills were not Susie's strength and and she was paying for it in her academic life Plus in
00:15:32
addition to her full-time course load she was working to jobs she worked in Troy which is about 10 miles away
00:15:40
transcribing medical textbooks into cdrom that sounds like a fun job yeah and she worked at babes a software and
00:15:51
Tech chain store located in the local Crossgates Mall in Guilderland sounds like a real snoozer Susie was very
00:15:59
conscientious and she was a very reliable person she liked routine and predictability she was in touch with her
00:16:07
parents every day and as we have already seen she was also in touch with her boyfriend Rich multiple times a day
00:16:14
either by phone or on the computer Susie was not someone who would just run away
00:16:21
or go off the grid she was not a partyer or someone who acted spontaneously she was a cre of habit and
00:16:29
her family and Rich generally had an idea where she was at all times she had a circle of people that she chatted with
00:16:39
at work and in the computer clubs that she was a member of now let's get to the events of March 2nd
00:16:49
1998 in the beginning of March 1998 Susie was living in a large dorm complex on the State University of New York
00:16:57
we're going to just start calling that sunny cuz it's getting too long for me to say that in Albany uptown campus she
00:17:04
had some female sweetmates who she shared her residential space with but her roommate had left school after the
00:17:13
first semester so it doesn't seem that she shared an actual room with anyone Susie was about to enter midterm exams
00:17:23
and she was stressed out about this while in school as we mentioned she held down a part-time job at babes that's a
00:17:32
it's like a video game store that would eventually become GameStop as we know it
00:17:38
today right this was a store in the mall not far from the actual campus over the
00:17:44
weekend she told her boss his name is Garland Nelson that she was anxious about a big midterm that was coming up
00:17:53
on Monday it was her hardest test that week and she was concerned that she would not do well Garland knew her
00:18:02
pretty well and described her as friendly and helpful confident in who she was someone who enjoyed chatting
00:18:09
with customers about the products that the store carried so nothing but good things to say about Susie on Monday
00:18:17
March 2nd Susie took her midterm exam as scheduled then in the afternoon she took
00:18:24
a Capital District Transit Authority CDTA bus from the bus stop on campus right near her dorm to the mall to head
00:18:34
to work this was su's routine and lots of students took the bus around Albany when she arrived for her 4:00
00:18:44
shift at bages she told garland that her exam had gone okay she set to work unboxing merchandise and placing sales
00:18:54
tags on items her boss says she seemed 100 % normal on this day Susie clocked out of her job that Monday night at 900
00:19:06
p.m. a mall security person saw her head out a back exit of the mall toward the bus stop to take the CDTA bus back to
00:19:15
campus this exit was closer to the bus stop than the busy main exit to the mall and all indications are that Susie did
00:19:24
board the number 12 bus that night but she never made made it to her dorm and Susie ly has never been seen again so
00:19:32
this Campus bus was it something that they had to use a student ID or did they have to pay for did they have a pass
00:19:40
that's a good question I do not know the answer to that question it seems like you would have to pay for it in some
00:19:47
manner or some form right but we don't have any indicator my guess is that it was something that was paid for per
00:19:55
person that you didn't pay using an actual ual pass because a pass with her name on it or any type of swipe card
00:20:03
that would have electronically recorded that she got on the bus yeah we don't have confirmation that she got on the
00:20:10
bus right there's no record of that for us to cite here now if that is the case the police may know that we just don't
00:20:20
the next day Mary ly's home phone rings the caller is Susie's boyfriend rich rich says quote did you know Susie is
00:20:31
missing and Mary and Doug Lyall their nightmare began at that moment right as we said Susie always checked in with
00:20:41
Rich multiple times a day but more specifically when she got home from work each night the two would often chat on
00:20:48
the computer or played video games into the night that night her sweetmates never heard her come in they did however
00:20:57
hear hear su's phone ring over and over again that night as March 2nd turned into March 3rd and Rich grew more and
00:21:07
more concerned he was trying to call Susie's dorm trying to get a hold of her in fact he called her dorm room nine
00:21:15
times at night this was confirmed both by Rich and by the phone records there was never any answer he
00:21:26
accessed her computer remotely but could not find any indication of where she could have gone by morning time he was
00:21:34
frantic he and his mother reported suie missing to the campus police when Rich phoned the ly to let
00:21:42
them know that he could not reach suie everyone immediately knew that this was very bad as we said she was a person of
00:21:50
routine she was easy to get a hold of she was always in contact with her parents and with Rich now they probably
00:21:58
have the phone records of when he started calling her phone yes they do and and as said he called nine times
00:22:07
that night that has been confirmed I'm guessing around 9:30 9:45 is probably when the first call is coming in because
00:22:15
she would have been back to her her dorm by then well Mary calls su's brother stepen and her sister
00:22:23
Sandy and wanted to see if either of them have heard anything and they had not heard from Susie either Doug L
00:22:31
called the campus police Doug and Mary waited while the campus officers located the resident advisor on su's dorm floor
00:22:40
who opened up her room and said that nothing appeared to be out of place an officer went to her next class to see if
00:22:49
she showed up but Susie was not there either so Doug decides her father to drive over to the campus security office
00:22:59
this is a 30-minute drive from the family's home Mary stays at home with her other daughter Sandy by the phone
00:23:07
they are calling friends and family and even checking with area hospitals and really waiting to see if Susie herself
00:23:15
would call we will say right off the bat that the way that the case was handled by the
00:23:21
campus police has been resoundingly criticized and in fact laws have been passed to change the way these things
00:23:29
are addressed well but in their defense though there's probably several times uh
00:23:35
a week where a student thinks another student is missing and they just aren't and within a couple calls or reaching
00:23:43
out to other contacts they're able to find the individual pretty quickly right but it doesn't appear that they did much
00:23:50
in the early stages of this because at first the campus police told the ls that this kind of thing happens all of the
00:23:57
time you know the college students right they they disappear they fall out of contact for a while especially during
00:24:05
the exam times the ls insisted that their daughter did not leave on her own it was purely because of Doug and Mary's
00:24:15
persistence that the case was actually taken seriously Doug says he refused to leave
00:24:22
and sat in the security office and waited while he was assured that security Personnel would scour the
00:24:29
campus looking for his daughter meanwhile Rich went down to the Crossgates Mall to try to retrace suie
00:24:38
steps okay so we have Dad working with the security Personnel we have the boyfriend who is now going to go to the
00:24:45
mall where she worked and try to retrace her steps so Captain let's see using the
00:24:52
witnesses if we can retrace suie steps with Rich so Susie's boss at babag consulted with the night supervisor who
00:25:03
was on duty when Susie left on Monday night he said that he did not see Susie actually leave the mall but added that
00:25:12
many employees including Susie usually went out the back way that was a shortcut to the bus stop which we would
00:25:21
believe her to be heading to eventually the state police were able to determined
00:25:28
that suie had almost certainly made it onto the bus so what they did was they tracked down the number 12 bus driver
00:25:36
and he said that he remembered Susie who was often on his bus he was fairly certain that she got onto the bus that
00:25:45
night but unfortunately he could not recall where she got off what stop she got off of the bus all he knew was that
00:25:54
she was no longer on the bus when it got to the last stop someone else saw suie that night
00:26:03
this was a Floor Mate of su who was very familiar with her they regularly cross paths on their daily schedules this
00:26:12
young woman who was interviewed multiple times and never ever wavered in her certainty that she saw Susie
00:26:20
disembarking the bus at the stop right near her dorm this would be Susie's regular stop the Collins Circle stop
00:26:28
after work this woman was getting on the bus and the two passed as Susie got off
00:26:35
and she got on this was around 9:40 to 9:45 p.m. which actually fits exactly with the timeline that Susie would have
00:26:45
followed according to her normal routine the walk to su's dorm building from the
00:26:51
bus stop was just a matter of 100 yard along a path that led through some trees St straight to the dormatory door it is
00:27:00
generally stated that Susie did not make it into her dorm that night the swipe machine that allowed students to access
00:27:10
did not register her entering the building however as anyone who has lived in a dorm knows often students will just
00:27:19
hold the door for one another so she could have gotten into the building without technically using her card right
00:27:25
but nobody saw her in there we have no eyewitness we don't have any of our sweet mates saying they saw her no it it
00:27:32
it really appears that the last person who believes that they saw Suzy as the reports go is this this
00:27:41
woman who young woman who shared a dorm lived in the dorm building with her shared a floor with her so knew her face
00:27:48
well knew her name well sees her getting off the bus while she's getting on and again this fits with the the time frame
00:27:57
that we're talking about some other indicators that Susie likely never returned to her room that night her
00:28:04
glasses were still sitting on the bed where she had left them she wore contacts to work that day the backpack
00:28:11
that she always carried in her wallet were never found and she never checked in with Rich As we said and no one in
00:28:19
the entire dorm could recall seeing her that night most signs are pointing toward the theory that suie l
00:28:27
disappeared somewhere in the 300 ft between the bus and her [Music] dorm this show is sponsored Ed by better
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00:31:13
now while poor Mary ly was at home calling everyone she knew to try to find her daughter Susie she had a stroke a
00:31:22
genius she decided to call su's Bank to check her bank transaction s this was around 3:45 p.m. on Tuesday March 3rd
00:31:32
she spoke to a representative who looked up her daughter's bank account information she noted that Susie had
00:31:39
used her ATM card twice the day before Mary knew that it was su's Mo to only take out $20 at a time this was normal
00:31:51
for her and she had about $120 in her account but what was strange was that there were two transactions on
00:32:00
that Monday both for the amount of $20 one was at the Key Bank ATM across from the Collins Circle bus stop this is
00:32:11
where she would have got on the bus to go to work that day and then the next one was another withdrawal for $20 at
00:32:20
the Cross Gates mall after she would have gotten off the bus this seemed very strange to Mary she could not imagine
00:32:29
why her daughter would have taken out money twice in such a short amount of time even more significant while Mary
00:32:36
was on the phone with the bank representative the woman said to her oh wait I think the card was just used and
00:32:46
sure enough someone used Susie's card to take out another $2 this was at 3:50 p.m. on March 3rd
00:32:56
when Susie had not heard she's not been heard from for about 18 hours by this point and even more chilling the pin
00:33:05
number was entered correctly on the very first attempt the woman on the phone could not tell where the cash machine
00:33:13
that had just been used was located this was 1998 and that kind of information would take hours to register on their
00:33:22
system she promised to call Mary back the next day with the location and when she did Mary learned that the card was
00:33:30
used at Stewart's convenience store at the corner of Central Avenue and Manning Boulevard in Albany this is about 2 and2
00:33:39
miles from campus so they're wondering at the time captain could this have been Suzie using
00:33:45
her card or do we have somebody else that's taken possession of this card and for some reason they know the pin number
00:33:53
well and just to be clear you said there's a eyewitness that saw or thinks they saw Susie getting off the bus while
00:34:00
she was getting on the bus mhm now was that at the stop of their dorm yes okay so it's not like Susie stayed on the bus
00:34:10
and maybe got off the bus at a different exit if this eyewitness is correct then
00:34:17
Susie disappeared somewhere between that bus stop and her dorm door MH it's a 300
00:34:24
ft between the bus stop and the door leading to the dorm Mary and Doug they decided to sit down with Rich and his
00:34:33
parents Richard and Donna kundan to brainstorm now Mary was a little surprised when she told them about the
00:34:41
ATM card usage and the pin being correct Rich volunteered that besides Susie he was the only one who knew her pen Mary
00:34:52
found this to be very strange this was around the first time that she started to question whether Rich could have been
00:34:59
involved in The Disappearance of her daughter she recalled how intertwined he was with his with her daughter's life
00:35:08
they each had full access to each other's information it would have been easy for
00:35:13
him to manipulate things to make incriminating evidence go away right and Mary and Doug began to feel that rich
00:35:22
was not as emotional about Susie's disappearance as they would expect them to be well they both had access to each
00:35:29
other's laptops but they also had access to access those laptops remotely correct
00:35:37
now we should make a a note here you know he knew her pin because he always drove Susie did not have a driver's
00:35:47
license so it's a very simple situation of they're going somewhere together he's
00:35:52
the driver you pull up to the drive up ATM she hands him the card my pin number is 1 2 34 get me
00:36:01
$20 I think you should come up with a better passcode on Wednesday March 3rd in the mail at the Lyall house was a
00:36:11
birthday card for Mary from Susie it was mailed on Monday the 1st the day after Mary's actual birthday it said quote see
00:36:22
you Thursday Susie of course this card has taken on all the more poignancy in Mary's mind
00:36:30
since it was the last contact she would ever have with her daughter after two days of fruitless
00:36:38
searches and pressure from the family the campus police finally called in the New York State Police they took the case
00:36:46
seriously from the outset they conducted shoulder Tosh shoulder searches of the campus and surrounding areas this was a
00:36:55
total of 300 AC ERS in all they brought in divers They seized su's computer but didn't find anything they found the bus
00:37:04
driver who was the one that told them that he believed Susie was in fact on the bus that night they were the ones
00:37:11
that found the Floor Mate who saw her getting off of the bus they tracked down her old roommate who had left school she
00:37:19
had nothing enlightening to say well one of the problems with somebody going missing on campus is all the that they
00:37:27
could have gone to I mean you have a very small radius um but you have a lot of people within that radius that's true
00:37:37
the the other thing too is we seem to have a situation where yes she could have gone in any number of places in a
00:37:45
in a fairly short amount of time walking there I would imagine but we also have a
00:37:51
short amount of time that she is all of a sudden not accounted for you know she comes home from work work she would have
00:37:58
been thought to checking in with her boyfriend or seen by people that live in the dorm with her right and that doesn't
00:38:06
seem to be the case we also just to be clear too with the with the birthday card it seems a little more ominous than
00:38:17
what it actually is the the card was mailed before she went missing it just happened that it took 2 days for it to
00:38:24
be delivered and by the time it's delivered to her mother she is in fact missing now by this time right some
00:38:32
people question the date of it they're like you know it was mailed the day after her mother's birthday well her
00:38:38
mother's birthday was on Sunday so if Susie slipped up and forgot to drop it in the mail on Saturday this thing
00:38:47
wouldn't be registered as mailed until Monday one of the things that the stadies were able to do was to get a
00:38:54
lead on that ATM car card usage they subpoena the surveillance footage from the Stewart's convenience store where
00:39:03
the ATM card was used but in a disappointing blow to everyone the video camera that the store used did not show
00:39:12
the ATM machine at all it showed only the register and the customers who were paying police were able to put together
00:39:22
a list of the transactions on the ATM machine that were made that day and tracked down all but one user they
00:39:31
contacted each of these people and interviewed them and ruled them out as having used Susie's card the one final
00:39:39
ATM user who they could not find they believed may have withdrawn cash from the ATM and then purchased a cup of
00:39:47
coffee a newspaper and a lottery ticket at the register this meant that they had
00:39:54
his image on camera and there he was this guy became known as Nike man he was a black man wearing a Nike baseball hat
00:40:06
police put together a sketch of the Man scene on the grainy video and circulated
00:40:11
it the kundan family paid to have Billboards all over town featuring suie and the image of Nike man eventually
00:40:22
Nike man contacted the state police and spoke with them this guy's name has never been released to the public there
00:40:30
were two red flags regarding this man one he was a cook in the kitchen where suie went to school two he was a felon
00:40:39
convicted of a violent rape in the Troy area in the 1980s police interviewed Nike man seven
00:40:48
different times they watched the tape with him at the convenience store according to Mary ly this man paid for
00:40:55
his coffee and lottery ticket with a wad of ones so there is no indication that he had used the ATM machine right that
00:41:05
wouldn't make any sense you don't get depend depending on what ATM you go to yeah I I would be shocked there are
00:41:14
some ATMs that will spit out ones I would like to withdraw $7 please I won't tell you where those are located though
00:41:22
so there's no indication that this man used the ATM machine and in his fence he was the one that contacted police when
00:41:28
he's seeing his picture on the Billboards right yeah and eventually police came to the conclusion that he
00:41:35
had not used the machine he did not have Susie's ATM Cod after his pictures everywhere and he had an alibi for the
00:41:43
night of her disappearance but so we got to keep in mind it I don't think they did anything wrong there uh with putting
00:41:51
his face out there what they're doing is they are track in those ATM transactions
00:41:59
and then they're going okay well within minutes of someone using this ATM then we see a person at the register buying
00:42:08
something right they're finding out they're going okay this person did this transaction this person did this
00:42:14
transaction this person did this one they have all of them accounted for except for the one with su's card and
00:42:21
Suzie's not seen on the camera but we have this man who's seen on camera short around the time of that transaction but
00:42:28
again like you said the camera never picks up the ATM machine so we can't rule out the fact that Susie could have
00:42:34
used her own card correct we have no idea who used that card at that ATM that day and the thing that we have to keep
00:42:43
in mind too for for the younger listeners and I'm sure it's probably still this way today but very uncommon I
00:42:49
would guess for threey olds and 5-year-olds listening yeah the ones that have bank accounts right but the uh the
00:42:57
deal would be back then an ATM card was just that an ATM card it wasn't like a debit card where you can pay for goods
00:43:05
and services with your card or use it at an ATM machine right that makes a lot of
00:43:10
sense so it somebody would have to go in there uh to get money but but that's also another problem too because if it
00:43:18
was a debit card then she might have not actually withdrew money from that location and might have just made made a
00:43:26
purchase so we would know what that money was for or we'd know um because maybe we don't see her on video footage
00:43:35
somewhere but if we knew what the purchase was we could line that up with her to see if those purchases made sense
00:43:43
but she didn't make a purchase at the store I know that what I'm saying is if if it was technology that we use today a
00:43:52
debit card right right then then she wouldn't have went to that ATM to do a withdrawal or whoever went to the ATM to
00:43:59
do the withdrawal they would have just made a purchase and then based on what the purchase item was would be able to
00:44:07
kind of connect the dots does that go back to something that she would purchase right right and the for that
00:44:16
scenario to go down in that manner the I mean the purchase would be have been made elsewhere not at this store right
00:44:23
so the police showed her photo to the store clerk who was on duty that day he didn't recall seeing her at all seeing
00:44:31
Susie at all that day and Susie's family did a televised plea for information on
00:44:36
their daughter and offered up a $115,000 reward for information but nothing really came of any of this now two
00:44:46
months later so what we have here Captain we got two excruciating months that go by as the ly coped with this
00:44:54
nightmare situation their daughter is missing they have no leads and no answers by this point Mary spent days in
00:45:02
her night gown and robe she says she was not even functional during this time Doug went the opposite he went 100%
00:45:12
full-on quest to find his daughter with everything he had he worked with police he searched the mall and campus areas
00:45:20
over and over and over again he kept a Running Blog of obser ations and developments in the case he worked with
00:45:30
all the psychics who contacted the family he helped organize uh searches for his daughter all in all he poured
00:45:38
his heart and soul into the search for his youngest child now it was much to everyone's
00:45:45
surprise and really to their dismay as well when two students turned something into the campus police in May two months
00:45:54
after Susie vanished they were walking on the street right near the bus stop where Susie was last
00:46:01
seen in the visitor parking lot that was heavily used and there sticking out of a small
00:46:08
pile of sand was an ID card it was a babbage's employee card the kind with the you know the pin on the back so that
00:46:16
it can be pinned to someone's shirt or clothing right and it read Suzy L it looked a little weatherbe and and the
00:46:26
pin on the back was rusted this discovery was a big deal because after the ATM machine it was the
00:46:34
only clue that the investigation yielded this was the 1997 bagages employee ID in the New Year
00:46:44
the company had replaced the pin style card with lanyard cards so this was not Susie's current work ID and more
00:46:54
importantly what is it doing on the ground in this you know visitor parking area near the bus stop where she gets
00:47:01
off the bus yeah very strange so this is 300 yard in the opposite direction of the path that Susie would use to walk
00:47:10
directly to her dorm now Mary did not believe that Susie got off the bus that night and headed away from her dorm she
00:47:20
said she would have gone to her room if she was planning to meet up with someone
00:47:25
they were were unable to determine who it didn't nobody knows if she had any plans that would be different than any
00:47:32
other day than than her normal routine Rich told the police that he sometimes parked in this visitor's lot
00:47:41
to meet Susie when she got off the bus after work but he says that that night he did not now no one could figure out
00:47:49
how her old card ended up where it did and how it had not been found in all of the searches
00:47:58
before some believe that there was one possibility so and I think this makes a good deal of sense here the area had a
00:48:07
big snowfall in the day or so after suie vanished some have wondered is it possible that the card maybe got pushed
00:48:17
by snow plows or trucks into a pile of snow in the visitor's lot and only emerged once you know all the snow
00:48:25
melted away MH others wondered if it was planted by somebody police were not able
00:48:32
to obtain any usable prints or DNA off of the card to help them come to any conclusions now it's worth noting that
00:48:41
the visitor parking lot was in a very well lit and again it's a very busy area the lot itself is very busy with traffic
00:48:50
the street is very busy and it's on a very busy campus it it would have been busy even at the time of night as
00:48:58
students got out of night classes or got rides from friends to go out it seemed very unlikely that Susie was abducted
00:49:07
from here at 9:45 p.m. without anyone seeing or hearing anything nobody reports hearing a scream or seeing some
00:49:17
kind of scuffle right or or a young woman being pulled into a vehicle her mother Mary is convinced that she would
00:49:25
screamed if someone had tried anything she says that she knew that Susie knew to yell fire to attract assistance from
00:49:32
people nearby she could have been abducted as she walked the path through a small wooded area between the bus stop
00:49:40
and her dorm but again this was a busy campus with roughly 177,000 students is she the one that said if you yell help
00:49:49
most people won't come help you you have to yell fire her and thousands of other
00:49:53
people if yeah if you yell fire people were more likely to react than if you yell help or rape or you know which is
00:50:02
strange because if somebody yelled fire to me I'm like run fire means run but if
00:50:08
somebody said help to me that would be run towards you know so well Rich the boyfriend as we know they were dating
00:50:17
for about 3 years before suie vanished what's his Alibi he is believed to have been playing video games so we have we
00:50:27
have the police they did look at Rich pretty hard and he was cooperative let's say he and his mother were the ones who
00:50:35
actually reported Susie missing they reported her missing and then contacted her parents when asked where he was on
00:50:44
the night of uh that she went missing he said that he was at home at his parents
00:50:51
playing video games online with his friend Justin right but doesn't that seem a little odd don't you think you'd
00:50:58
call the parents you've been with her a while don't you think you'd call the parents
00:51:03
before you called the cops um yeah I mean that's what I would do yeah so he's at home playing video games yes he says
00:51:12
he was at his parents house playing video games online with his friend Justin Justin confirms this for police
00:51:21
and his parents Rich's parents say that he was at home that night as well now we
00:51:25
do have phone records that confirmed that the calls from his phone went to Susie's dorm that night uhuh and later
00:51:34
that night according to Mary ly rich took the time to upload some music to Susie's computer that he knew she liked
00:51:43
rich and his parents appeared to be fully cooperative and super concerned about the search for Susie still so odd
00:51:51
that so he uploaded music to her computer remotely yes yeah that's still a little
00:51:59
strange to me that I don't find strange if they both had access to each other's computers this might have been something
00:52:06
that she had asked him to do right right in advance no I don't find the ACT I think it's a a very you know sweet thing
00:52:13
to do for your girlfriend but a little strange to give access to to your computer to your significant other
00:52:20
senior investigator James Horton well he's got something different to say he was at the time the head of the major
00:52:28
crimes Juden in lenville he said that police believe Susie fell victim to a crime quote we felt immediately that she
00:52:36
was most probably a victim of Foul Play and time has not helped to change our mind in fact it has made us feel even
00:52:44
more strongly end quote Jim Horton said on the upstate unsolved podcast which did a long form coverage of this case
00:52:54
and a damn good job of with that too Jim said that it is his opinion that the condens the boyfriend and his parents
00:53:02
did not really cooperate with police as much as they try to stay close to the investigation they wanted to in his
00:53:12
opinion stay on top of what the police knew and he says some of their behavior was odd there are examples of rich and
00:53:20
his parents acting strange so are you know are they just we people or are they possibly hiding something right here are
00:53:30
some examples of things that came to light involving Rich that at least raised the question of whether he should
00:53:37
be considered a suspect or not we'll call this segment things that may Hugo right investigator Jim Horton told
00:53:45
Upstate unsolved that Rich's mother Donna tried to paint a picture in which she was super close with suie h that she
00:53:56
knew her better than her own parents did and that suie didn't really care for her
00:54:01
own parents Jim determined based on the evidence that this was in fact not true and when meeting with Donna and Susie's
00:54:11
parents together he said that Donna would jump in to answer all of Jim's questions even the ones that he directed
00:54:19
at Mary and Doug at Susie's parents to the point that Jim says he had to ask her to stop doing this further as the
00:54:28
investigation progressed Donna would not allow Jim to speak with her son Rich alone even though Rich was technically
00:54:37
an adult at this time right Jim Unearthed that Donna and Richard kundan Richard's dad lived separate existences
00:54:46
in the household with the dad living in the basement the grandparents lived on a
00:54:53
recliner in the living room that sounds comfortable Rich had a room but they lived like they couldn't like the floor
00:55:01
was lava and they couldn't move around they had to stay on the recliner Rich had a room but when Susie visited each
00:55:08
weekend he would give Susie his room and sleep in the bed with his mom that's oh
00:55:15
right hey you hold on red flag I'm going to be nice take my bed I'll be in the other room sleeping with my mom yeah
00:55:22
sniffing her in May su's cousin organized a volunteer search for her that gathered at the campus and radiated
00:55:32
outward five miles Donna and Rich showed up as well okay so Mom and boyfriend well boyfriend and boyfriend's mom are
00:55:42
at this search right now when the search leader instructed The Searchers to bring
00:55:48
anything found back to him now we have boyfriend's mom Donna who interjected that said that these items should be
00:55:57
brought to her instead because she knew suie best W so one that's weird on its own but two let's times that by 10
00:56:07
because su's family were all in attendance for this search as well well you can't believe his parents as his
00:56:17
Alibi it just doesn't work for me they have reasons to lie so right we're going to throw that one out but okay so he's
00:56:25
playing these games at home now these he still got his friend and he's got the uh
00:56:31
phone records that his but hold on real quick because nowadays when you play video games online which I'm not much of
00:56:39
a gamer but shout out to the there's a gamer right now listening to us you know you know who you are shout out to you
00:56:47
and we know who you are and we know and we're watching you right now no but video games now they're pretty
00:56:53
interactive you have headphones you talk to each other back in the day you could
00:56:59
be playing somebody online that doesn't mean necessarily that you were talking to them it could have been his father
00:57:07
playing a game with his friend that is correct in the situation so we don't know exactly how his friend knows it was
00:57:16
his you know uh it was the boyfriend the other thing too is the calls that were going to her dorm room were coming from
00:57:24
his house that just proves that the calls were made coming from his house I don't think
00:57:30
that proves that he made the calls that's correct you could have somebody Aid in for both the video game
00:57:38
playing playing and the phone calls right and this just seems like a pretty strange family so I like this Jim Horton
00:57:47
investigator uh and what he wanted to do was throughout the months he wanted to try to maintain a rapport with Rich and
00:57:56
with his parents and so what he did was he would just stop by their home fairly often in
00:58:03
the first few months of this investigation and he would he would take a nap with the mom yeah he would sleep
00:58:10
with the grandparents on the recliner yeah he lived in the same town so this was convenient for him to do but I you
00:58:16
know I appreciate someone going above and beyond especially when we're looking for a missing young woman here so at one
00:58:23
point over that summer rich said something very strange Richard is again uh Rich's father to be clear okay so
00:58:35
Richard and Jim were talking about Richard and Jim were talking and Richard mentioned that he recently saw
00:58:44
Suzy 45 minutes to an hour west of Albany while driving on his Trucking route he says that he he did not report
00:58:55
this sighting but he was certain that's his words certain it was her didn't report it why didn't he report this
00:59:03
that's a very good question that makes zero sense the next week when he spoke to
00:59:10
Jim he said that he saw her again this time Jim gave Richard his cell phone number and said you know call me right
00:59:20
away when you see her again well why wouldn't you stop and talk to her well listen to what Jim did Jim put
00:59:29
undercover cops on surveillance of Richard and they followed him around so sure enough in a few days Richard called
00:59:38
into Jim and said hey I want this to be clear so they're going to put surveillance on the boyfriend's father
00:59:45
Yes okay yes so sure enough in the few days and a few days afterwards Richard called Jim and said I can see her
00:59:54
meaning Susan Susie she's sitting on a park bench the undercover cops saw this woman too and estimated that her age
01:00:04
would be about 80 years old so it was not oh wow Susie no one could ever figure out what the heck was going on
01:00:13
with these so-called sightings that Richard reported to Jim about suszie there's that there's your red flag right
01:00:23
there so that is all the information you need as a detective to say something's not right
01:00:32
here and we need to figure this out well and how bizarre if if in fact rich is responsible for for su's disappearance
01:00:42
then it appears that his parents know something or are trying to cover something up at the same time yeah
01:00:50
they're both trying to cover up tracks it's um it's very telling um besides the the bizarre
01:01:02
behavior that we just discussed there are a few pieces of circumstantial evidence that do point to
01:01:09
riches more than just an Ecentric dude from a Bizarro family one we know that he knew su's ATM card pin as we pointed
01:01:20
out he could have been the one to use that the pin number was entered correctly the first time two he admitted
01:01:29
that he usually picked her up from the visitors lot where her old id work ID card was later found right when the ID
01:01:39
card was found his mother volunteered that she had told Susie if she were ever abducted to drop items on the ground you
01:01:50
know maybe maybe she's trying to point out that maybe this really did happen maybe she did tell this young woman to
01:01:56
do this or maybe she's trying to point out my son couldn't have been involved he was at home she was following my
01:02:03
advice and this is proof that she was abducted right further Rich never spoke to the
01:02:10
police alone as we already stated and after a few months he stopped talking to investigators all together another thing
01:02:19
of note is that Mary Lyle was present when about two weeks before she vanished before Susie vanished Susie stopped by
01:02:28
Rich's house and handed him an 8 and a half by 11 envelope apparently this contains some
01:02:35
kind of letter Now Rich her boyfriend has never produced this letter and has refused to discuss its contents so we do
01:02:45
not know what was in that envelope Susie's mother wonders if it was something important or has to do with
01:02:52
why she cannot find her daughter of course if this guy's not one going to produce that
01:02:59
information or explain the information that's just ridiculous on Upstate unsolved there are some pieces
01:03:08
of information about the condons that are damning the family owned a boat and a car that were sold shortly after
01:03:16
Susie's disappearance they also owned a property in Gans fort with a trailer and
01:03:26
a shed on it now it appears that these this has never been searched as far as we know also Rich was asked to leave
01:03:36
this is really bizarre he was asked to leave the college where he was enrolled when suie disappeared and it is not
01:03:45
known why it could be something very simple but it is not known why he was asked to leave and the whole family wed
01:03:54
up in the fall of 1998 none have agreed to be interviewed by the [Music] media if you're looking for any of our
01:04:17
old episodes download the Stitcher app they're on there for free and we also have a bonus show called off theere
01:04:24
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01:04:30
the record this week all right join us back here in the garage tomorrow until then be good be kind and don't
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