Unfound: The Season 1 Cases, Volume 1

1

Suzanne Lyall

March

2

,

1998

Albany

,

NY

SUMMARY OF

THE

CASE

On March 2, 1998, Suzanne worked at Babbage Software in the Crossgates Mall. She left work around 9:20pm and boarded a public bus that would take her back to the Albany campus of the University of New York. The bus reached campus at about 9:40pm. At that stop, Suzanne exited and had about a five-minute walk to her dorm. Between the bus and her building Suzanne disappeared.

The day after Suzanne disappeared, someone used her ATM card at a local convenience store to extract $20 from the cash machine. However, the store's camera was not in a position to see who used the card. A man wearing a Nike hat was at the counter around the time Suzanne's card was used. Although the search took a few years, he was eventually located and ruled out as a suspect, and had not seen anyone use

the

ATM

.

About two months later after Suzanne's disappearance, her Babbage Software name tag was discovered in the school parking lot near the bus stop. It appeared to have been out in the elements for the entire time, although police could not make an exact determination.

At the time of her disappearance, Suzanne was in a multi-year relationship with Richard Condon. They met through a common interest in computers. Their favorite movie was the 1995 film, Hackers, with Angelina Jolie as a supporting character—this would play a role in the investigation. Richard was found to have an alibi at the time of Suzanne's disappearance—he was playing video games online with a friend.

When Suzanne disappeared, she was wearing an ankle-length trench coat, black shirt, and jeans. She was also carrying a black backpack. Despite a few leads and suspicions, no person has ever been connected to Suzanne's disappearance.

THE INTERVIEW

Mary Lyall, Suzanne's mother

E: On the phone now, I have Mrs. Mary Lyall, the mother of Suzanne. Welcome to the

show

,

Mary

.

M:

Thank

you

.

E: Let’s start with you just talking a little bit about Suzanne. What was going on in her life at the time? Maybe a little bit about her upbringing, her education, her interests.

M: Okay, well, Suzy was born in April of 1978 and right from the beginning we knew she had a lot of intelligence. My husband always said there was, you know, he could see that in her. As she grew up, by the time she was about nine years old, she was writing poetry, and from writing poetry to wanting to — she started to hear about computers, and our first computer was a TX Instrument computer. And she was really fascinated with those. She really got into the computer area and eventually would take computers apart and

rebuild

them

.

E: And how old would she have been at this time? A teenager?

M: Yeah, she was a young teenager, maybe 13-14 years old. She was the only kid in school who actually knew anything about computers. At the time in school they were just getting one into the library. It’s a fairly big school district but the library in the different schools had one computer and if it would break down, nobody knew anything about computers. And they would call Suzy to come and see if she could fix it, which she usually could. She had people around her all the time just fascinated by the fact that she typed so fast and she could bring up all sorts of information on the computer.

E: Where do you think she got

this

from

?

M: I have absolutely no idea. It just seemed to come and, like I said, she was into writing poetry so she was using a typewriter and then, of course, when a computer came around she could type all of that information on the computer and save all of her poetry that way. So, she really had a lot going for her. When she was in high school, she was on the honor society. She was a very

bright

girl

.

E: It’s interesting to me that she seems like she has this dichotomy. On one hand being very technical and on one hand being maybe, if I can say this, artsy-fartsy in poetry. I can say that because I’m artsy-fartsy. Really having a passion for the arts and really having a passion for computers is a really unique combination.

M: Yes, that’s basically what she was and we could never understand, even as a young child, some of the poetry that she would come up with that was just so far beyond her years. I mean, comparing things like when it rains one day, and she wrote a poem about rain, and how the rain sounded like thundering hoofs of a horse coming down the driveway.

Just really far out ideas of how she put it all together. We just don’t know where it came from. One interesting thing was one day she was taking a shower and she jumped out of the shower. She had soap in her hair, towel wrapped around her. I asked, Where are you going? She said she just got the idea for a poem and she had to write it down before she forgot it. So, even doing that would be — poems were just coming into her head all the time. She even wrote poems about the places that she would write a poem. One time, writing a poem on the back of a — I think she has some bunion pads or something was the only paper she had. So, she wrote a poem on the back of that. Just things like that that she could — really came to her that she had to write down. Backs of napkins, it was just constantly coming into her. And after she disappeared my husband and I went through her books, which were tons of paper, and I couldn’t believe all the poems that she wrote. I just could not

believe

it

.

E: She was a young woman who was very in touch with her feelings and could

express

them

.

M:

Oh

yeah

.

E: Not just speaking, but writing them down, which is a particularly unique talent.

M: Yes, that’s where she was coming from and we don’t know where she got it from but it just seemed to happen.

E: Well, having a wide, diverse array of interests like that is usually a sign of good parenting too, you should know. You should be commended for that. I’m sure you’re happy though that she chose to go into computers for school instead of poetry, right?

M: Well, yeah, I always wondered if a poet could make it in this world. I know there was a time when the school would publish art-type things that children had done. Actually, I call it children, but high school children would do art-type work. In order — some of the stuff she wrote, in order to get it published in this booklet, which was a once a year booklet, was kind of on the dark side. For some reason, that’s what kids liked to read. So, some of her poetry then was very dark. When I spoke to people who worked at the school, they said that they would get booklets from all the different schools and most of the booklets were very dark. That’s what kids

were

like

.

E: Teenagers.

M: Yes, teenagers.

E: So, she goes to school. She ends up going to one school. What was that school again? And then she transferred.

M: She went to SUNY at Oneonta, which is about 100 miles from where we live. Kind of down in, kind of mid-New York. When she went there, she took a computer science class and by the end of the year she said she could teach the teachers. They didn’t have the knowledge that she had at that point about computers. So, she decided that she would transfer to a bigger school and that’s when she came up to SUNY at Albany, which is about maybe 35-40 miles from here. So, she moved a little closer. I was kind of against it. I didn’t really want her to move closer, but the classes that she could take at that school were a little more challenging.

E: That’s interesting. You didn’t want her to move back closer to where you live? That’s interesting.

M: I really felt like, and I had two other children that went away to school—one 5 hours away, one 3 hours away. I just really felt like their ability to grow a little bit was to be able to be farther away from home. With her being so close to home, it was not that I didn’t want her but that’s not the point. But with her being so close to home I just felt that she wasn’t going to experience the learning to live out on her own a little better.

E: See, my mom to this day, is still the opposite. If I could have gone to college in my bedroom at home, in 1989, she would have. So, once again, that’s why I had to ask you about that. How did she feel, you know, she’d just be a few years younger than me, I was born in 1970. She would just be — what year was she

born

in

?

M

: ’

78

.

E: ’78, so she was born the same year as my nephew, okay. So, I knew even at the time, computers for women was still in its infancy. How did she feel about having these classes and having an interest in something that was so male-dominated?

M: I don’t know. I think she just felt very good about knowing what she knew and she was very helpful to anybody who asked her. If they could, you know, if she could help them with their problems, and many times, after class, somebody would come up to her and say, Geez, I’m having problems with a certain thing. Can you help me out? So, I think she felt good about that. I know she did, that she was able to help other people with her knowledge.

E: Yeah because, you know, the way I remember it, I think with women going into engineering and computers and math is much more common now. I think at the time a lot of women stayed away from this stuff. They might have had an interest but they didn’t pursue it because it was such a male-dominated industry. So, I think that also, that once again says something very unique about her. How did she do at Albany, you know, switching to a tougher school?

M: The thing I think with being in college, when you go to a college, you make friends in your freshman year and you kind of stay with those friends throughout the whole schooling. When she switched, she had a little more trouble making close acquaintances because you don’t have that orientation that you have when you start out as freshman. She was already a sophomore, so she didn’t really have a lot of close friends. She had friends but nobody she could say, This is my closest friend, I met her last year. So, I think she had a little more trouble when she came up. I’m wondering if she made a mistake coming closer. Of course we know it was a mistake but, you know, just the fact that she

needed

some

—

E: Let’s just put it this way, she was getting passing grades?

M: Oh yes, she was. She didn’t have that problem. The problem was basically the fact that it was harder for her to fit into groups.

E: The socializing.

M

:

Yeah

.

E: The socializing that goes along with college. Sure, I guess that brings us to the man that she eventually did meet through a computer club. Explain to the listeners how that happened--meeting Richard Condon.

M: She actually met him before she went to college. She was in about 11th grade and heard about this computer group that would meet once a week at a local restaurant and convinced my husband to take her to this place. So, my husband would take her down there once a week to meet with these people and some of them were older. That was something that bothered me a lot and there were quite a few male people. So, actually just recently, I became acquainted with somebody I didn’t — I found out about somebody who was the person that actually introduced Suzy to her boyfriend. The one she finally wound up with. And the reason that he did is because Suzy was interested in learning how to do some computer programming.

E: Okay, in like a particular computer language or something

like

that

?

M: Yes, and she did not know how to do that and had heard this guy, who eventually became her boyfriend, was an expert at programming and so he introduced her to — this guy’s name is Rich — introduced her to Rich. That’s how they got acquainted was because he taught Suzy some computer programming. She used — we all used Microsoft Word. Everybody used Microsoft Word. But she and Rich got into using Linux, which is a lot more difficult a program.

E: Right.

M: So that’s how they really got to know each other. He thought, Wow! He was pretty in tune with computers. So to meet up with a girl that knew so much about computers was

just

wow

.

E: So that was the level on which they identified with each other. That’s where they really bonded, I guess you could say was with the computers.

M

:

Yes

.

E: He was how many years older than

she

was

?

M: About a year and a half. When she was in the 11th, he was

in

12

th

.

E: And he was organizing this at this restaurant at this

early

age

?

M

:

Yes

.

E:

Wow

,

okay

.

M: Yes, because he was another guy who was building computers and tearing them apart and making bigger and better computers at the time when they weren’t — I mean our cell phones now have more memory than those

computers

did

.

E

:

Yes

.

M: That many years ago, 18, 19, 20 years ago, we’re talking about top of the line computers that they were putting together.

E: So, how much longer after that did they become a couple? Was it while she went to college? When she went to Albany? Because he ended up going to the same school, right?

M: No, he actually never did go to the same school

she

did

.

E:

Oh

,

okay

.

M: Yeah, he went to a Catholic boy’s school in the area and she, of course, went to a local high school up here in Balsam Spa, where we’re from. When he went off to college, he went to RPI, which is Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Suzy was still in high school. And then, the following year, she went to Oneonta, which like I said, is about 100 miles from here. So, they never went to the same schools together. They just got to know each other, I think, through those meetings at the restaurant. And then, once they had those meetings, that’s

how

they

--

E: That’s how they started dating?

M: That’s how they started dating.

E: And, at the time that Suzanne disappeared, how long had they been a couple? I know there’s some — we’ll get into the particulars of that, but how long had they been a couple?

M: I think they’d been together about 2 ½ years maybe, because she started dating him sometime as a junior in high school. Then she disappeared as a freshman, uh, sophomore in college. About two and a half years

or

so

.

E: Okay, we’re going to come back to her boyfriend in a moment but, before you came on the air, I went through the facts of her disappearance and what she did that day and some of the times and things like that. I just want to clear up a couple of things because, here we are in 2016 and I just want to get straight a couple of facts. First of all, I’m sure if people are familiar with your daughter’s case, they have heard about the man in the baseball hat that appears in the convenience store at the time her ATM card was used the next day. What can you tell — that guy has been exonerated,

hasn’t

he

?

M: Yes, he has. And it took a long time before the police actually located him. But they finally did and pretty much decided — I mean that’s what they told me. What they found out from him didn’t put him in that place or didn’t put him taking Suzanne. So, that’s really all I can tell you about that. I really don’t know any more than what the police

told

me

.

E: Right. And I just want my listeners to get it straight from your mouth because, like I said, there are still some sites out there that haven’t been updated in a while or they don’t know some of the news. That can kind of put people off in maybe the wrong direction. Of course, if the police say that somebody is not being looked at anymore, then we want to make sure that we put that out there. The other point is about her name tag from her job that she was at that night. It wasn’t seen near that bus stop, where she got off, for about two months later? Like it was — she disappeared in March.

M: Yeah, it was late April,

early

May

.

E: Was that name tag, where it was found, would that have been on the way from the bus to her dormitory? Or would it have been in the opposite direction?

M: No, it was found pretty much where the bus let off the passengers that night. It actually, that was a very mild winter. We did not have much snow that winter and any time we had precipitation, it was kind of freezing rain. But right after, there was no snow on the ground when Suzy disappeared. It was very clear. But that week, after she disappeared, there was a small snowstorm and I would say, maybe 4-5 inches, not much. The college plowed that parking lot. It had salt and sand on the parking lot and they pushed that up over the curb. There was like a curb where the bus let the passengers off. And when they pushed the salt, sand, whatever up to the top, it went over the top of the curb. And it was there that the badge was found. Now, from what I gather from the police, they said that right after she disappeared — of course they didn’t go out to look for about 3 or 4 days. So, but they said right after she disappeared, they walked that parking lot pretty much shoulder to shoulder and did not find anything. This is where the confusion

comes

in

.

E

:

Yeah

.

M: They found nothing. Now, I’m saying where this badge was found was on top of this pile of sand or salt or whatever it was . And it wasn’t until, like I said, almost a month and a half to two months after she disappeared when they found it. Could somebody have come by and dropped it? I don’t know. The other thing about this, this particular badge was one, according to the place where she worked, they were not using anymore. They were using hanging tags, where you put it around

your

neck

.

E: Right, a lariat.

M: A lariat-type thing and they had the badge on that. This one was a pin badge. From what we found, the police showed us the back of the badge--the pin was very rusty. I think you could put something out in a day and have

it

rust

.

E: Especially cheap metal

like

that

.

M: Especially cheap metal. They said, Well, it was here for a long while. Well, we can’t decide that it was. It was cracked. I would say that maybe a car drove over it or something, so it was cracked. But, other than that, there wasn’t much else we could find out about that badge other than it was found by two students who were walking through the parking lot and they found it. They first picked it up and thought it was a credit card, the size of a credit card, and threw it down. Then the one girl said, Oh, it’s the girl that’s missing. Let’s look at this. And they looked at it and saw it was

her

name

.

E: Was it Suzanne’s habit to, like, if she left work, would she have just left the name tag on to

go

home

?

M: Yeah, some people do that. I do that all

the

time

.

E: Would you say that was her habit to probably do

that

too

?

M

:

Yeah

.

E: Because some people, they are going to take it off, like I don’t want somebody to know I work at this store.

M: Well, you know, the unusual thing about this, and people always say there’s something that we’re missing along the way, but the unusual thing is that she never liked to wear the clothes that she had to wear to work out of work. So, she would bring a bag of clothes. Like tan-colored pants and certain color shirt. I can’t remember what it was but it was the logo of the company that she worked for. So, she would bring them with her. Change at work. Then, once she got done with work, she would change the clothes back and put them back in a bag and carry them home or back to the dorm. So, if she would do that, she would take the badge off too. So, that’s always been a question. I have my list. I never got any good answers to

that

one

.

E: Do you have any knowledge if she changed clothes that night?

M:

Oh

yeah

.

E: She did? She

absolutely

did

?

M: She absolutely did. The man that she worked for, her boss at the time said that Suzy would come in a little bit early so she could get into her work clothes. And always started a little bit early, which meant she could leave 5 minutes before the bus would come. She’d leave 5 or 10 minutes before the bus would come and change back into her outdoor clothes-- basically jeans or whatever the kids were wearing at the time. She would take those clothes off. She didn’t want to wear those clothes out. I don’t know why but that was her habit.

E: Maybe a fashion statement of some kind. Maybe self-conscious about her fashion or something like that. I think I’ve had one or two jobs like that in my life that maybe had the name of a store or something on there.

M: Like McDonald’s or something. You don’t want to wear your McDonald’s uniform out, you know, advertising the uniform.

E: Yeah, maybe not. But, going back to the name tag, it’s possible that that night, the name tag falls out. It sits there somewhere around the bus stop. She disappears. It sits there for a couple of days. Nobody notices it and then this storm comes and the snow gets pushed away. The name tag gets caught up in the snow and then these months, or 8 weeks later, the snow melts and the name tag appears. That’s possible?

M: It’s possible.

E: Okay, it’s possible. I just wanted to get that on the record. Okay, great. Let’s move on once again, I guess back to the boyfriend. The next day he calls you and tells you that Suzanne has disappeared?

M: Yes, he says — how did he word it? He worded it so that it didn’t sound like, Suzy disappeared. What are we going to do about it? It wasn’t like that. It was like, Did you know Suzy didn’t come back last night? Or something like that. It was like a shock to me. I was getting ready. My husband was reading the newspaper and I was getting ready so that we could go and meet my son, who was going to take me out for my birthday, which was the day before Suzy disappeared. So, he calls and my son says, We’ll go out for lunch. So, I was getting ready. The phone rings and Rich says, Did you know Suzy didn’t come back last night? It was like, What are you talking about? I was in a little bit of shock--Why didn’t you call me last night and why are you saying that? So, I gave the phone to my husband and my husband got the information from him saying that Suzy didn’t come back. He had tried, which he did, and he got into her computer and looked at different emails or whatever.

E: Yeah, we’ll