Disappearance of Suzanne Lyall

In the first two weeks of the investigation, police looked into 270 leads and searched 300 acres (120 ha) near Collins Circle, including the wooded area and Rensselaer Lake in the eastern end of the Albany Pine Bush just across Interstate 90 from that part of the campus.[9] The ATM withdrawal drew particular attention. The Stewart's where it was located had a security camera but it focused on the area around the cashier and did not show the ATM, so it could not be determined who was using it at that time. A man who may have used the card at that time wore a Nike baseball cap[15] and was sought as a possible witness or person of interest.[11]

Whoever had used the card knew the correct PIN. Condon said that only he and Suzanne knew it. She also always withdrew exactly $20 anytime she went to the ATM, according to her parents.[16]

Lyall's parents said that Stewart's, at the intersection of Central Avenue and Manning Boulevard 2 miles (3.2 km) southeast of the campus,[17] was not in a part of the city that Suzanne frequented. The clerk on duty at the time did not recognize her.[14] Police eventually located the man with the Nike cap and came to believe he had nothing to do with the case, although they could not completely exclude him.[2]

The bank also told the Lyalls and police that their records showed that Suzanne's card was used to make two withdrawals from different ATMs on the day she disappeared. One had been in the morning at a machine near the Collins Circle bus stop, and the other was in the mall at about the time she would have arrived there for work. Both had been for $20, so it seemed likely that she had made them. Mary Lyall, however, could not imagine why her daughter would have made two withdrawals in one day.[16]

A convicted rapist who had violated parole and left the area around the time Suzanne disappeared was briefly considered a suspect, but police interviewed him after he was returned to New York from Illinois and excluded him.[9] Based on the bus driver's uncertainty as to whether Suzanne had indeed disembarked at Collins Circle, police also began considering the possibility that she might never have returned to campus that night. Some investigators even theorized that she might not even have gotten on the bus at all. In May, her Babbage's name tag was found about 90 feet (27 m) away from the bus stop, in the parking lot, opposite from the direction she would have walked if returning to her dorm. But it could not be determined how long it had been there, and police could recover no forensic evidence from it.[15][18]

Another possibility came from a coworker of Suzanne's at the store. She told investigators that Suzanne had told her about a month before she disappeared that she believed she was being stalked by someone she did not know. However, the coworker also said Suzanne did not appear to be afraid of this person.[15]

Police have never been able entirely to rule out Condon, Suzanne's boyfriend, as a suspect in the disappearance. Mary Lyall later told CBS News that her daughter had on several occasions tried to end the relationship, but after Condon became emotional she would stay with him. After the disappearance, he told police that Suzanne was his fiancée, a development in their relationship the Lyalls said Suzanne, who called or emailed them almost daily, had not informed them of.[2]

Two weeks before Suzanne disappeared, Mary recalled, she and her daughter had been on a trip to see Mary's mother when Suzanne asked if they could stop at Condon's house, which was along their way. Suzanne said she wanted to give Condon a Valentine's Day card. While nothing unusual happened during the brief stop, Mary said in 2012 that she wondered if her daughter had in fact given Condon a "Dear John letter" ending the relationship. Due to the increased tension she seemed to see in her daughter's life, she began wondering if Suzanne might have become involved with someone else; police have never found any evidence that she was.[19]

Condon had an alibi for the time Suzanne disappeared: he was playing video games with a friend, and the friend confirmed this when asked by police.[19] But after his initial conversations with police, Condon refused to take a lie detector test and told them he would be interviewed again only if his lawyer was present. He refused to answer questions from the media about the case in later years; his mother told CBS in 2010 that he had married and moved on with his life.[2]

In 2005 a man named John Regan, who was facing trial for a 1993 kidnapping in Connecticut, was arrested after trying to abduct a female student at Saratoga Springs High School by pulling her into his van from the street near the school.[20] Since Saratoga Springs is a short distance from Ballston Spa, the Lyalls' hometown, police and the family wondered if he might have been responsible for Suzanne's disappearance. Even after Regan was convicted of the attempted kidnapping in Saratoga, however, he refused to discuss the Lyall case with investigators.[21]

Investigators pondered a connection to a similar disappearance of another SUNY Albany undergraduate, Karen Louise Wilson, who had disappeared 13 years earlier near where Lyall had last been seen.[22][23] On March 27, 1985, around 7:20 p.m., Wilson was last seen in the 1600 block of Central Avenue in Colonie, New York. For an impending vacation to Fort Lauderdale, Florida for spring break, she went to the Colonie Center and bought a red and a blue t-shirt. She had made an appointment at the Tanning Hut, but no one there recalls seeing her there. She may or may not have received a tan there. Wilson could not have boarded a bus, and instead most likely walked to Fuller Avenue, contrary to what investigators initially thought she did. Wilson was last seen getting on a bus at the Butcher Block restaurant on Central Avenue. Authorities were informed by witnesses that she was there shortly after that. Wilson has never been heard from again.

She was last seen carrying a grey fabric pocketbook, a blue nylon wallet with a velcro closure, a green and white plastic bag from Ups N Down, and possibly a blue backpack with a yellow dress. Investigators have been unable to find her personal items. Wilson, a senior political science major at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Albany, is thought to have walked south on Fuller Avenue, according to the authorities. They believe she was kidnapped somewhere close to Six-mile Waterworks, the Northway, and the ramp for Interstate 90 westbound. Because of how dark the night was and how little traffic was on the road, it would have taken only a few seconds for a man to get her into a car without being seen. A weird man was spotted in the vicinity around the time Wilson vanished. He has not been identified and is being sought for questioning as a witness, if not a suspect, in the case. Her disappearance remains unsolved. Authorities have not found anything to find a connection between Wilson and Lyall, but they stated the circumstances of the women's disappearances were similar.[23]

The case remains open, and the state police continue to follow up on any leads that come in.[24] In 2012 the Investigation Discovery cable channel devoted an episode of Disappeared, its series on missing person cases, to Suzanne's disappearance.[25][26] "Her story struck us as compelling", executive producer Elizabeth Fischer said. "This is the story of a wholesome life of a college student who vanished".[25]

Doug Lyall died in 2015; his wife continues both their activism and their search. Over the years, 75 psychics have contacted the Lyalls with tips. Many of them have involved water, suggesting that Suzanne is dead and her body has been submerged somewhere. While Mary Lyall has dismissed them, noting that there are so many bodies of water in the Capital District as to make that information too vague to be useful, she nevertheless told Schenectady's Daily Gazette in 2016 that she has persistently experienced "an odd feeling" any time she has driven across the Crescent Bridge, along U.S. Route 9 over the Mohawk River, between Albany and Ballston Spa. In June of that year, a reporter from the newspaper went along with her as a local firm that does high-tech mapping applied its technology to the river's bottom in that area; it has not been reported whether anything significant was found.[24]

In 2018, New York State Police Senior Investigator John Camp said, "We believe it's a homicide. Is there a chance she moved away? It's a possibility, but the reality is she's probably been a victim of a homicide."[27]