Suzanne Lyall /// Part 1 /// 422 | Forensic Files

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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
many times a young woman is there one minute and the next she is gone Vanishing seemingly without a
trace the devastated families are left to try to cope as best they can living with not having any
answers in some cases there are clues some warning signs or red flags pointing to what could have
happened but in some perplexing cases such as this one there is literally nothing so we are left to
speculate is someone close to her responsible for her disappearance could the young woman have
been the victim of a random crime of opportunity is her case similar to others in the
area or could she have been the victim of one of the most notorious and calculated serial killers of our
time this is true crime garage and this is the case of Suzanne [Music] l [Music]
in 1978 Doug and Mary Lyle already the parents of two children welcomed into this world a sweet little baby girl
Suzanne Lyall was born on April 6th 1978 her parents say she was a surprise baby joining her 12-year-old brother
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
Saratoga County which is an Upstate New York from a very early age it was evident that Susie was very smart she
wanted to read and write especially poetry and do anything with computers as a teen Susie was not
concerned with what other girls her age were doing in fact a high school classmate of hers says Susie didn't
really have any close girlfriends she pretty much kept to herself writing poetry in her spiral
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
down the hall to write down a poem that had come to mind as she bathed yeah that
that happened to me one time the Palm was titled flicky flicky don't touch your sticky all right well something we
can respect Captain is Susie was a big fan of the Canadian band Rush slapp in the Bas as you can see Susie enjoyed
solitary activities her parents fondly recall Susie as a geek but in the best Brainiac way possible Susie was very
successful at school and getting good grades were no trouble and quite successful with computers as well at the
age of 12 she dismantled and reassembled her commodore 64 computer by Middle School she was helping the teachers with
their computer problems and fixing the school's computers as well just like the colonel that's right I take them apart
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
was she was already connecting with people in chat rooms online before this was an actual thing building not before
his actual thing before it was popular there you go and she was working toward learning computer 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 where she met Richard
Condon the computer Club president Susie's computer friend Mike was a neighbor of rich condons and he
introduced the two virtually before they met in person at the Denny's Rich was 17 and he and Susie
were Kindred Spirits Susie's dad was initially impressed with Rich describing him as mature Beyond his years something
we've never been described as uh he's also described as well spoken we strike out there again and very intelligent uh
nope he knew everything about computers nope nope rich and his computer buddies considered themselves quot quote hackers
and they allowed Susie to enter their all male hacker group by proving her abilities to hack into someone else's
computer yeah shout out to the movie hackers that was a great movie Angelina Jolie they shared the hacker Manifesto
that was circulated around in the late 80s they even established their own website provider called Global
2000 Susie rich and their friends dressed in all black and they were seen as somewhat goth in their High School
the two Tech nerds Susie and Rich became an item for the next three years Rich seemed to be Susie's sole emotional
support besides her family and the two developed a codependent relationship in which several say Rich was the dominant
one they attended different high schools but after school spent all of their time
together when they were apart they were on the phone or chatting on their computers when it came time for college
her parents are going to suggest that she goes to the State College in New York well this is the State University
of New York which actually has several locations they're going to encourage her to go to the one in onata which is about
2 hours away instead of the much closer State University of New York in Albany so so so they wanted her out of the
house yes but this is because they felt that she could use a break from her relationship with Rich who was living at
home while attending another College Susie's mother Mary admits that she and Susie budded heads over what Mary viewed
as a somewhat unhealthy relationship between her daughter and Rich right so hey go off learn your stuff but let's do
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
couple hours away maybe it's healthy for her to spread her wings and fly and meet
new people yeah and I think sometimes as a parent of a teenage kid when they're so intense with the relationship you
you're afraid they're going to miss out on opportunities that they would have taken if they weren't in a relationship
right and other than Rich she doesn't have much of a social life right right she works she goes to school she gets
good grades and then she spends all of her time with Rich but when you have a daughter that seems very independent and
maybe a loner the worst case scenario is her for her to get into a relationship where she's then codependent well Susie
did enroll at onata for her freshman year but she found the computer curricul curriculum was not challenging her she
told her mom that basically she could teach the class herself and she wanted to transfer but you have to wonder this may
have been really just an excuse to hide what was really going on right yeah or a
lot of teenagers think they know everything well suie did not have any friends at college but that was because
it doesn't look like she ever really gave it a chance her parents discovered that Susie was leaving the school every
weekend and going to Rich's house house and staying at Rich's house every weekend Rich's parents facilitated this
by doing all of the driving because Susie did not have a driver's license Mary and Doug Susie's parents
were not happy when they found out about this but the pattern continued anyway for the entirety of Susie's freshman
year and into her sophomore year when she then transferred to the State University of New York Albany
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
friends would constantly stop by the computer store where Susie worked so once again the two were inseparable
Susie's family was not happy about this they found Rich to be cold hard to get to know not really friendly and lacking
in social graces he was all about computers and he was very opinionated Susie seemed to be growing to be more
and more like him as their relationship progressed taking on his opinions and taking up the activities that he
preferred Susie did break up with Rich at least one time that we are aware of her cousin later related that Susie told
her rich 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 together Susie and her mom argued a lot about this decision at the time one of the things
that I don't like about this relationship either is rich is the gateway to the other friends so if
there's no Rich there's no other friends right the only thing though just from someone who look we
don't know either of these individuals and we weren't there present for any of this from the outside looking in it
appears to me that rich may be a little more outgoing than Susie is and that Susie's fine with just having the one
friend Rich and having her family at Albany Susie found the computer cours workk to be much more rigorous than she
had expected in fact she was struggling at school and she was stressed and was afraid that she was failing some of her
classes organizational skills were not Susie's strength and and she was paying for it in her academic life Plus in
addition to her full-time course load she was working to jobs she worked in Troy which is about 10 miles away
transcribing medical textbooks into cdrom that sounds like a fun job yeah and she worked at babes a software and
Tech chain store located in the local Crossgates Mall in Guilderland sounds like a real snoozer Susie was very
conscientious and she was a very reliable person she liked routine and predictability she was in touch with her
parents every day and as we have already seen she was also in touch with her boyfriend Rich multiple times a day
either by phone or on the computer Susie was not someone who would just run away
or go off the grid she was not a partyer or someone who acted spontaneously she was a cre of habit and
her family and Rich generally had an idea where she was at all times she had a circle of people that she chatted with
at work and in the computer 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 living in a large dorm complex on the State University of New York
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
had some female sweetmates who she shared her residential space with but her roommate had left school after the
first semester so it doesn't seem that she shared an actual room with anyone Susie was about to enter midterm exams
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
it's like a video game store that would eventually become GameStop as we know it
today right this was a store in the mall not far from the actual campus over the
weekend she told her boss his name is Garland Nelson that she was anxious about a big midterm that was coming up
on Monday it was her hardest test that week and she was concerned that she would not do well Garland knew her
pretty well and described her as friendly and helpful confident in who she was someone who enjoyed chatting
with customers about the products that the store carried so nothing but good things to say about Susie on Monday
March 2nd Susie took her midterm exam as scheduled then in the afternoon she took
a Capital District Transit Authority CDTA bus from the bus stop on campus right near her dorm to the mall to head
to work this was su's routine and lots of students took the bus around Albany when she arrived for her 4:00
shift at bages she told garland that her exam had gone okay she set to work unboxing merchandise and placing sales
tags on items her boss says she seemed 100 % normal on this day Susie clocked out of her job that Monday night at 900
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
campus this exit was closer to the bus stop than the busy main exit to the mall and all indications are that Susie did
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
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
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
manner or some form right but we don't have any indicator my guess is that it was something that was paid for per
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
that would have electronically recorded that she got on the bus yeah we don't have confirmation that she got on the
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
the next day Mary ly's home phone rings the caller is Susie's boyfriend rich rich says quote did you know Susie is
missing and Mary and Doug Lyall their nightmare began at that moment right as we said Susie always checked in with
Rich multiple times a day but more specifically when she got home from work each night the two would often chat on
the computer or played video games into the night that night her sweetmates never heard her come in they did however
hear hear su's phone ring over and over again that night as March 2nd turned into March 3rd and Rich grew more and
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
times at night this was confirmed both by Rich and by the phone records there was never any answer he
accessed her computer remotely but could not find any indication of where she could have gone by morning time he was
frantic he and his mother reported suie missing to the campus police when Rich phoned the ly to let
them know that he could not reach suie everyone immediately knew that this was very bad as we said she was a person of
routine she was easy to get a hold of she was always in contact with her parents and with Rich now they probably
have the phone records of when he started calling her phone yes they do and and as said he called nine times
that night that has been confirmed I'm guessing around 9:30 9:45 is probably when the first call is coming in because
she would have been back to her her dorm by then well Mary calls su's brother stepen and her sister
Sandy and wanted to see if either of them have heard anything and they had not heard from Susie either Doug L
called the campus police Doug and Mary waited while the campus officers located the resident advisor on su's dorm floor
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
she showed up but Susie was not there either so Doug decides her father to drive over to the campus security office
this is a 30-minute drive from the family's home Mary stays at home with her other daughter Sandy by the phone
they are calling friends and family and even checking with area hospitals and really waiting to see if Susie herself
would call we will say right off the bat that the way that the case was handled by the
campus police has been resoundingly criticized and in fact laws have been passed to change the way these things
are addressed well but in their defense though there's probably several times uh
a week where a student thinks another student is missing and they just aren't and within a couple calls or reaching
out to other contacts they're able to find the individual pretty quickly right but it doesn't appear that they did much
in the early stages of this because at first the campus police told the ls that this kind of thing happens all of the
time you know the college students right they they disappear they fall out of contact for a while especially during
the exam times the ls insisted that their daughter did not leave on her own it was purely because of Doug and Mary's
persistence that the case was actually taken seriously Doug says he refused to leave
and sat in the security office and waited while he was assured that security Personnel would scour the
campus looking for his daughter meanwhile Rich went down to the Crossgates Mall to try to retrace suie
steps okay so we have Dad working with the security Personnel we have the boyfriend who is now going to go to the
mall where she worked and try to retrace her steps so Captain let's see using the
witnesses if we can retrace suie steps with Rich so Susie's boss at babag consulted with the night supervisor who
was on duty when Susie left on Monday night he said that he did not see Susie actually leave the mall but added that
many employees including Susie usually went out the back way that was a shortcut to the bus stop which we would
believe her to be heading to eventually the state police were able to determined
that suie had almost certainly made it onto the bus so what they did was they tracked down the number 12 bus driver
and he said that he remembered Susie who was often on his bus he was fairly certain that she got onto the bus that
night but unfortunately he could not recall where she got off what stop she got off of the bus all he knew was that
she was no longer on the bus when it got to the last stop someone else saw suie that night
this was a Floor Mate of su who was very familiar with her they regularly cross paths on their daily schedules this
young woman who was interviewed multiple times and never ever wavered in her certainty that she saw Susie
disembarking the bus at the stop right near her dorm this would be Susie's regular stop the Collins Circle stop
after work this woman was getting on the bus and the two passed as Susie got off
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
followed according to her normal routine the walk to su's dorm building from the
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
generally stated that Susie did not make it into her dorm that night the swipe machine that allowed students to access
did not register her entering the building however as anyone who has lived in a dorm knows often students will just
hold the door for one another so she could have gotten into the building without technically using her card right
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
it really appears that the last person who believes that they saw Suzy as the reports go is this this
woman who young woman who shared a dorm lived in the dorm building with her shared a floor with her so knew her face
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
that we're talking about some other indicators that Susie likely never returned to her room that night her
glasses were still sitting on the bed where she had left them she wore contacts to work that day the backpack
that she always carried in her wallet were never found and she never checked in with Rich As we said and no one in
the entire dorm could recall seeing her that night most signs are pointing toward the theory that suie l
disappeared somewhere in the 300 ft between the bus and her [Music] dorm this show is sponsored Ed by better
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now while poor Mary ly was at home calling everyone she knew to try to find her daughter Susie she had a stroke a
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
she spoke to a representative who looked up her daughter's bank account information she noted that Susie had
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
for her and she had about $120 in her account but what was strange was that there were two transactions on
that Monday both for the amount of $20 one was at the Key Bank ATM across from the Collins Circle bus stop this is
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
the Cross Gates mall after she would have gotten off the bus this seemed very strange to Mary she could not imagine
why her daughter would have taken out money twice in such a short amount of time even more significant while Mary
was on the phone with the bank representative the woman said to her oh wait I think the card was just used and
sure enough someone used Susie's card to take out another $2 this was at 3:50 p.m. on March 3rd
when Susie had not heard she's not been heard from for about 18 hours by this point and even more chilling the pin
number was entered correctly on the very first attempt the woman on the phone could not tell where the cash machine
that had just been used was located this was 1998 and that kind of information would take hours to register on their
system she promised to call Mary back the next day with the location and when she did Mary learned that the card was
used at Stewart's convenience store at the corner of Central Avenue and Manning Boulevard in Albany this is about 2 and2
miles from campus so they're wondering at the time captain could this have been Suzie using
her card or do we have somebody else that's taken possession of this card and for some reason they know the pin number
well and just to be clear you said there's a eyewitness that saw or thinks they saw Susie getting off the bus while
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
and maybe got off the bus at a different exit if this eyewitness is correct then
Susie disappeared somewhere between that bus stop and her dorm door MH it's a 300
ft between the bus stop and the door leading to the dorm Mary and Doug they decided to sit down with Rich and his
parents Richard and Donna kundan to brainstorm now Mary was a little surprised when she told them about the
ATM card usage and the pin being correct Rich volunteered that besides Susie he was the only one who knew her pen Mary
found this to be very strange this was around the first time that she started to question whether Rich could have been
involved in The Disappearance of her daughter she recalled how intertwined he was with his with her daughter's life
they each had full access to each other's information it would have been easy for
him to manipulate things to make incriminating evidence go away right and Mary and Doug began to feel that rich
was not as emotional about Susie's disappearance as they would expect them to be well they both had access to each
other's laptops but they also had access to access those laptops remotely correct
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
license so it's a very simple situation of they're going somewhere together he's
the driver you pull up to the drive up ATM she hands him the card my pin number is 1 2 34 get me
$20 I think you should come up with a better passcode on Wednesday March 3rd in the mail at the Lyall house was a
birthday card for Mary from Susie it was mailed on Monday the 1st the day after Mary's actual birthday it said quote see
you Thursday Susie of course this card has taken on all the more poignancy in Mary's mind
since it was the last contact she would ever have with her daughter after two days of fruitless
searches and pressure from the family the campus police finally called in the New York State Police they took the case
seriously from the outset they conducted shoulder Tosh shoulder searches of the campus and surrounding areas this was a
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
driver who was the one that told them that he believed Susie was in fact on the bus that night they were the ones
that found the Floor Mate who saw her getting off of the bus they tracked down her old roommate who had left school she
had nothing enlightening to say well one of the problems with somebody going missing on campus is all the that they
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
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
in a fairly short 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 accounted for you know she comes home from work work she would have
been thought to checking in with her boyfriend or seen 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 the with the birthday card it seems a little more ominous than
what it actually is the the card was mailed before she went missing it just happened that it took 2 days for it to
be delivered and by the time it's delivered to her mother she is in fact missing now by this time right some
people question the date of 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 if Susie slipped up and forgot to drop it in the mail on Saturday this thing
wouldn't be registered as mailed until Monday one of the things that the stadies were able to do was to get a
lead on that ATM car card usage they subpoena the surveillance footage from the Stewart's convenience store where
the ATM card was used but in a disappointing blow to everyone the video camera that the store used did not show
the ATM machine at all it showed only the register and the customers who were paying police were able to put together
a list of the transactions on the ATM machine that were made that day and tracked down all but one user they
contacted each of these people and interviewed them and ruled them out as having used Susie's card the one final
ATM user who they could not find they believed may have withdrawn cash from the ATM and then purchased a cup of
coffee a newspaper and a lottery ticket at the register this meant that they had
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
police put together a sketch of the Man scene on the grainy video and circulated
it the kundan family paid to have Billboards all over town featuring suie and the image of Nike man eventually
Nike man contacted the state police and spoke with them this guy's name has never been released to the public there
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
convicted of a violent rape in the Troy area in the 1980s police interviewed Nike man seven
different times they watched the tape with him at the convenience store according to Mary ly this man paid for
his coffee and lottery ticket with a wad of ones so there is no indication that he had used the ATM machine right that
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
some ATMs that will spit out ones I would like to withdraw $7 please I won't tell you where those are located though
so there's no indication that this man used the ATM machine and in his fence he was the one that contacted police when
he's seeing his picture on the Billboards right yeah and eventually police came to the conclusion that he
had not used the machine he did not have Susie's ATM Cod after his pictures everywhere and he had an alibi for the
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
his face out there what they're doing is they are track in those ATM transactions
and then they're going okay well within minutes of someone using this ATM then we see a person at the register buying
something right they're finding out they're going okay this person did this transaction this person did this
transaction this person did this one they have all of them accounted for except for the one with su's card and
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
again like you said the camera never picks up the ATM machine so 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 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 still this way today but very uncommon I
would guess for threey olds and 5-year-olds listening yeah the ones that have bank accounts right but the uh the
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
and services with your card or use it at an ATM machine right that makes a lot of
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
was a debit card then she might have not actually withdrew money from that location and might have just made made a
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
somewhere but if we knew what the purchase was we could line that up with her to see if those purchases made sense
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
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
do the withdrawal they would have just made a purchase and then based on what the purchase item was would be able to
kind of connect the dots does that go back to something that she would purchase right right and the for that
scenario to go down in that manner the I mean the purchase would be have been made elsewhere not at this store right
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
Susie at all that day and Susie's family did a televised plea for information on
their daughter and offered up a $115,000 reward for information but nothing really came of any of this now two
months later so what we have here Captain we got two excruciating months that go by as the ly coped with this
nightmare situation their daughter is missing they have no leads and no answers by this point Mary spent days in
her night gown and robe she says she was not even functional during this time Doug went the opposite he went 100%
full-on quest to find his daughter with everything he had he worked with police he searched the mall and campus areas
over and over and over again he kept a Running Blog of obser ations and developments in the case he worked with
all the psychics who contacted the family he helped organize uh searches for his daughter all in all he poured
his heart and soul into the search for his youngest child now it was much to everyone's
surprise and really to their dismay as well when two students turned something into the campus police in May two months
after Susie vanished they were walking on the street right near the bus stop where Susie was last
seen in the visitor parking lot that was heavily used and there sticking out of a small
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
it can be pinned to someone's shirt or clothing right and it read Suzy L it looked a little weatherbe and and the
pin on the back was rusted this discovery was a big deal because after the ATM machine it was the
only clue that the investigation yielded this was the 1997 bagages employee ID in the New Year
the company had replaced the pin style card with lanyard cards so this was not Susie's current work ID and more
importantly what is it doing on the ground in this you know visitor parking area near the bus stop where she gets
off the bus yeah very strange so this is 300 yard in the opposite direction of the path that Susie would use to walk
directly to her dorm now Mary did not believe that Susie got off the bus that night and headed away from her dorm she
said she would have gone to her room if she was planning to meet up with someone
they were were unable to determine who it didn't nobody knows if she had any plans that would be different than any
other day than than her normal routine Rich told the police that he sometimes 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 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 searches
before some believe that there was one possibility so and I think this makes a good deal of sense here the area had a
big snowfall in the day or so after suie vanished some have wondered is it possible that the card maybe got pushed
by snow plows or trucks into a pile of snow in the visitor's lot and only emerged once you know all the snow
melted away MH others wondered if it was planted by somebody police were not able
to obtain any usable prints or DNA off of the card to help them come to any conclusions now it's worth noting that
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
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
students got out of night classes or got rides from friends to go out it seemed very unlikely that Susie was abducted
from here at 9:45 p.m. without anyone seeing or hearing anything nobody reports hearing a scream or seeing some
kind of scuffle right or or a young woman being pulled into a vehicle her mother Mary is convinced that she would
screamed if someone had tried anything she says that she knew that Susie knew to yell fire to attract assistance from
people nearby she could have been abducted as she walked the path through a small wooded area between the bus stop
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
most people won't come help you you have to yell fire her and thousands of other
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
strange because if somebody yelled fire to me I'm like run fire means run but if
somebody said help to me that would be run towards you know so well Rich the boyfriend as we know they were dating
for about 3 years before suie vanished what's his Alibi he is believed to have been playing video games so we have we
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
actually reported Susie missing they reported her missing and then contacted her parents when asked where he was on
the night of uh that she went missing he said that he was at home at his parents
playing video games online with his friend Justin right but doesn't that seem a little odd 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 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
he was at his parents house playing video games online with his friend Justin Justin confirms this for police
and his parents Rich's parents say that he was at home that night as well now we
do have phone records that confirmed that the calls from his phone went to Susie's dorm that night uhuh and later
that night according to Mary ly rich took the time to upload some music to Susie's computer that he knew she liked
rich and his parents appeared to be fully cooperative and super concerned about the search for Susie still so odd
that so he uploaded music to her computer remotely yes yeah that's still a little
strange to me that I don't find strange if they both had access to each other's computers this might have been something
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
to do for your girlfriend but a little strange to give access to to your computer to your significant other
senior investigator James Horton well he's got something different to say he was at the time the head of the major
crimes Juden in lenville he said that police believe Susie fell victim to a crime quote we felt immediately that she
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
more strongly end quote Jim Horton said on the upstate unsolved podcast which did a long form coverage of this case
and a damn good job of with that too Jim said that it is his opinion that the condens the boyfriend and his parents
did not really cooperate with police as much as they try to stay close to the investigation they wanted to in his
opinion stay on top of what the police knew and he says some of their behavior was odd there are examples of rich and
his parents acting strange so are you know are they just we people or are they possibly hiding something right here are
some examples of things that came to light involving Rich that at least raised the question of whether he should
be considered a suspect or not we'll call this segment things that may Hugo right investigator Jim Horton told
Upstate unsolved that Rich's mother Donna tried to paint a picture in which she was super close with suie h that she
knew her better than her own parents did and that suie didn't really care for her
own parents Jim determined based on the evidence that this was in fact not true and when meeting with Donna and Susie's
parents together he said that Donna 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 the point that Jim says he had to ask her to stop doing this further as the
investigation progressed Donna would not allow Jim to speak with her son Rich alone even though Rich was technically
an adult at this time right Jim Unearthed that Donna and Richard kundan Richard's dad lived separate existences
in the household with the dad living in the basement the grandparents lived on a
recliner in the living room that sounds comfortable Rich had a room but they lived like they couldn't like the floor
was lava and they couldn't move around they had to stay on the recliner Rich had a room but when Susie visited each
weekend he would give Susie his room and sleep in the bed with his mom that's oh
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
sniffing her in May su's cousin organized a volunteer search for her that gathered at the campus and radiated
outward five miles Donna and Rich showed up as well okay so Mom and boyfriend well boyfriend and boyfriend's mom are
at this search right now when the search leader instructed The Searchers to bring
anything found back to him now we have boyfriend's mom Donna who interjected that said that these items should be
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
because su's family were all in attendance for this search as well well you can't believe his parents as his
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
playing these games at home now these he still got his friend and he's got the uh
phone records that his but hold on real quick because nowadays when you play video games online which I'm not much of
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
and we know who you are and we know and we're watching you right now no but video games now they're pretty
interactive you have headphones you talk to each other back in the day you could
be playing somebody online that doesn't mean necessarily that you were talking to them it could have been his father
playing a game with his friend that is correct in the situation so we don't know exactly how his friend knows it was
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
his house that just proves that the calls were made coming from his house I don't think
that proves that he made the calls that's correct you could have somebody Aid in for both the video game
playing playing and the phone calls right and this just seems like a pretty strange family so I like this Jim Horton
investigator uh and what he wanted to do was throughout the months he wanted to try to maintain a rapport with Rich and
with his parents and so what he did was he would just stop by their home fairly often in
the first few months of this investigation and he would he would take a nap with the mom yeah he would sleep
with the grandparents on the recliner yeah he lived in the same town so this was convenient for him to do but I you
know I appreciate someone going above and beyond especially when we're looking for a missing young woman here so at one
point over that summer rich said something very strange Richard is again uh Rich's father to be clear okay so
Richard and Jim were talking about Richard and Jim were talking and Richard mentioned that he recently saw
Suzy 45 minutes to an hour west of Albany while driving on his Trucking route he says that he he did not report
this 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 very good question that makes zero sense the next week when he spoke to
Jim he said that he saw her again this time Jim gave Richard his cell phone number and said you know call me right
away when you see her again well why wouldn't you stop and talk to her well listen to what Jim did Jim put
undercover cops on surveillance of Richard and they followed him around so sure enough in a few days Richard called
into Jim and said hey I want this to be clear so they're going to put surveillance on the boyfriend's father
Yes okay yes so sure enough in the few days and a few days afterwards Richard called Jim and said I can see her
meaning Susan Susie she's sitting on a park bench the undercover cops saw this woman too and estimated that her age
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
with these so-called sightings that Richard reported to Jim about suszie there's that there's your red flag right
there so that is all the information you need as a detective to say something's not right
here and we need to figure this out well and how bizarre if if in fact rich is responsible for for su's disappearance
then it appears that his parents know something or are trying to cover something up at the same time yeah
they're both trying to cover up tracks it's um it's very telling um besides the the bizarre
behavior that we just discussed there are a few pieces of circumstantial evidence that do point to
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
out he could have been the one to use that the pin number was entered correctly the first time two he admitted
that he usually picked her up from the visitors lot where her old id work ID card was later found right when the ID
card was found his mother volunteered that she had told Susie if she were ever abducted to drop items on the ground you
know maybe maybe she's trying to point out that maybe this really did 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 involved he was at home she was following my
advice and this is proof that she was abducted right further Rich never spoke to the
police alone as we already stated and after a few months he stopped talking to investigators all together another thing
of note is that Mary Lyle was present when about two weeks before she vanished before Susie vanished Susie stopped by
Rich's house and handed him an 8 and a half by 11 envelope apparently this contains some
kind of letter Now Rich her boyfriend has never produced this letter and has refused to discuss its contents so we do
not know what was in that envelope Susie's mother wonders if it was something important or has to do with
why she cannot find her daughter of course if this guy's not one going to produce that
information or explain the information that's just ridiculous on Upstate unsolved there are some pieces
of information about the condons that are damning the family owned a boat and a car that were sold shortly after
Susie's disappearance they also owned a property in Gans fort with a trailer and
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
this is really bizarre he was asked to leave the college where he was enrolled when suie disappeared and it is not
known why it could be something very simple but it is not known why he was asked to leave and the whole family wed
up in the fall of 1998 none have agreed to be interviewed by the [Music] media if you're looking for any of our
old episodes download the Stitcher app they're on there for free and we also have a bonus show called off theere
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
the record this week all right join us back here in the garage tomorrow until then be good be kind and don't
litter [Music] you can live out your Master Chef dreams when you find a professional on Angie to
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Suzanne Lyall /// Part 1 /// 422

Part 1 of 2

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Brief Summary

Suzanne Lyall vanished in 1998, raising suspicions about her boyfriend Rich Condon amid a complex investigation.

Key points

Susie's Routine Disrupted. On March 2, 1998, Susie's normal day takes a dark turn when she goes missing.
The Disappearance of Suzanne Lyall. A young woman vanishes without a trace, leaving her family in turmoil.
The Last Sightings of Susie. Eyewitnesses confirm they saw Susie getting off the bus near her dorm.
ATM Card Usage Raises Questions. Susie's ATM card was used after she went missing, raising suspicions.
The Discovery of Susie's ID Card. An ID card belonging to Susie is found near the bus stop, raising concerns.
The Boyfriend's Alibi. Rich claims he was playing video games at home when Susie went missing.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

She was not someone who would just run away.

Describing Susie's character and habits.

16:21WatchNov 16, 2023

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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