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