On the evening of March 2nd, 1998, 19-year-old Suzy Lyall stepped off the bus just a short distance from her dorm room and vanished. The initial investigation into her disappearance would recover neither Suzy nor many clues as to what happened to her.
Notably, her ATM card was used the day after she went missing. While investigators did not believe that she was the one who made this withdrawal, they were ultimately unable to prove who did.
Two months later, her work tag was discovered in a parking lot roughly 30 yards away from where she was last seen. No one was sure how it’d gotten there or how long it might have been there. No other sign of the missing student was ever found.
What happened to Suzy Lyall?
Suzanne Gloria Lyall
The youngest of three children, Suzanne “Suzy” Gloria Lyall was born on April 6th, 1978, in Saratoga Springs, New York, to parents Doug and Mary. She grew up in Ballston Spa.
Quiet, shy and highly intelligent, Suzy showed an early interest in computers, even assembling a few on her own from scratch.
Additionally, the introverted Suzy was an avid writer of poetry, something she used as an outlet for expressing herself.
“I think it was a therapeutic way of dealing with some of the problems she was facing with her day-to-day social relationships,” explained Doug Lyall.
When she was still in high school she joined a computer club, which is how she would meet a young man named Richard Condon, the leader of the group. The two soon began dating.
Suzy got along well with her family and was especially close to her older brother Steven. She and Steven were said to have very similar personalities, making it easy for them to relate to each other.
After graduating with honors from Ballston Spa High School in 1996, Suzy left home to study computer science at State University of New York (SUNY) at Oneonta.
However, Suzy wanted to challenge herself and found the curriculum at SUNY Oneonta too easy. Because of this, she made the decision to transfer to SUNY Albany just one year later.
To support herself while attending college, she had two part-time jobs: one at Babbage’s, a software store in the Crossgates Mall two miles west of campus, and another at a computer company in Troy.
Last Confirmed Sighting of Suzy
Suzy kept in frequent contact with her parents as well as Richard, her boyfriend of three years, either calling or emailing them almost daily.
In March 1998, Suzy had midterm exams coming up. According to her manager at Babbage’s, she was especially nervous about one test in particular, stating that she needed to not only pass it, but ace it in order to maintain her high grade point average.
She spoke to her mother on March 1st and mentioned that she was low on cash and waiting for her next paycheck. Mary offered to loan her some money, but Suzy declined.
She took the exam that was the source of her stress on March 2nd and felt that she had done all right on it, if not great. When she arrived at work later that day, her coworker found Suzy more subdued than usual, but fine otherwise.
As always, she took the bus after her shift was over. The bus driver would remember picking her up that evening, but he couldn’t recall exactly when she exited the bus. He was only certain that she was no longer on board when he reached the end of the route.
The last credible reported sighting of Suzy was when she got off the bus at the Collins Circle bus stop—a short walk away from the Colonial Quad dorm, where she resided—at approximately 9:45 p.m. The witness was a fellow student familiar with Suzy and was getting on the bus just as she was leaving it.
Suzanne Lyall has never been seen or heard from again.
What Happened to Suzy?
The following morning, on March 3rd, the Lyalls received a call from Richard. Mary picked up the phone and was taken aback by what he had to say.
“Did you know Suzy didn’t come back to campus last night?”
He went on to explain that she hadn’t responded to either his calls or his emails the previous night, which was highly unusual for her.
Mary and Doug notified campus security immediately and asked them to take a look inside Suzy’s dorm room to see if she was there or if anything seemed strange.
Though they were somewhat dismissive of her parents’ concerns, stating that it wasn’t at all odd for a college student to leave unannounced, they complied with Doug and Mary’s request and examined the room.
Nothing seemed amiss in Suzy’s dorm room, aside from the fact that she wasn’t in it.
“When the dorm was looked at later, it looked as if she was coming back. Her hair dryer was on the bed, all her personal items were still there. She had money on top of her desk, change,” said Mary Lyall.
They soon found out that no one could remember seeing Suzy return to campus on the evening of March 2nd, and that the last confirmed sighting of her took place at the nearby bus stop that night.
So what happened to her after that? Was she picked up by someone before she made it back to her building? These are questions that remain unanswered to this day, decades later.
Campus police still believed that there was nothing to worry about and that Suzy would return on her own.
However, when she missed a midterm exam as well as her classes—unheard of behavior from the reliable and level-headed Suzy—in the days which followed, they finally agreed to investigate and called in the New York State Police to aid in the search.
The Lyalls and SUNY Albany put up a $15,000 reward for information.
Vanished Without a Trace
In the days between the last known sighting of Suzy and the official start of the investigation into her disappearance, there was a snowstorm, which could have potentially obscured evidence.
Her key card hadn’t been used to gain access to any buildings, including her dormitory, on campus since the afternoon of March 2nd.
Mary and Doug had the idea to contact her bank to see if any withdrawals had been made from her bank account recently. They learned that a total of three withdrawals had been made from March 2–3, two of which took place before she went missing and were for $20 both times.
While this was the same amount of money that Suzy was known to always take out, her mother found it odd that she would make two withdrawals in the same day—something she never did. This has never been explained.
Chillingly, the third withdrawal was made on March 3rd—the day after she vanished—from an ATM at a Stewart’s Shops in Albany, once again for $20. However, law enforcement did not believe that she was the one to make the withdrawal this time.
But who else had her PIN number? According to Richard, he and Suzy were the only two people who knew it. (Side note: Why Richard had it at all is unknown.)
An individual who would come to be known as “Nike man”—a nickname derived from the hat he was wearing—was in the store right around the same time the withdrawal was made and was sought by police for questioning.
He was eventually found and interrogated. Authorities concluded that his presence there that day was merely a coincidence and that he likely had no involvement in Suzy’s disappearance, although they couldn’t definitively rule him out as a suspect.
The identity of the person who made that third withdrawal—and why they did it—remains a mystery.
The Lyall family feared the worst. They knew that Suzy was a creature of habit and that she wouldn’t make the impulsive choice to leave for an extended period of time, much less without notifying them.
Furthermore, she was very close to her family and, as previously mentioned, kept in touch with them on a nearly daily basis. It would also be highly uncharacteristic for her to skip out on her classes and exams, they pointed out.
“I knew something awful had happened. Suzy was not a risk taker. She didn’t party or use drugs or alcohol,” Doug would later say.
She didn’t possess a vehicle or a driver’s license either, and she had always used public transportation.
Two months later, an unsettling discovery was made: Suzy’s Babbage’s name tag was found in the parking lot, around 30 yards away from the bus stop.
Interestingly, it was found on the opposite side of the parking lot, leading away from her dorm room. Adding to the strangeness is the fact that it was an older name tag and not the one she’d been using at the time she went missing.
It’s unclear how long it might have been sitting there or how it had gotten there in the first place.
All told, 270 leads were looked into and approximately 300 acres were searched, including wooded areas and nearby Rensselaer Lake, in the weeks following her disappearance.
The investigation soon hit a standstill for lack of evidence.
Mysterious Stalker
One of Suzy’s coworkers from Babbage’s came forward to report that Suzy had spoken about being stalked by an unknown man in the weeks leading up to her disappearance. However, for whatever reason, she didn’t appear to fear this person.
To this day, he’s never been identified.
Was Richard Somehow Involved?
To some, most notably Mary Lyall, Richard seemed like a logical suspect, not just because he was the only other person known to have her PIN number, but also because he and Suzy reportedly had a rocky relationship.
He was allegedly controlling and manipulative.
According to Mary, her daughter was unhappy in the relationship and had tried to end it multiple times, each time writing Richard a letter to let him know. This would apparently play out the same way every time—he would become very emotional after reading it and immediately contact her and manage to convince her to stay with him.
Additionally, despite living roughly only 10 minutes away from Suzy’s campus, he didn’t go to her dorm room and check on her when he didn’t hear from her, nor did he contact police.
It was also said that he had remote access to her computer, though for what purpose is unknown.
In February, Mary and Suzy went to visit Suzy’s grandmother. During the drive, Suzy wanted to make a quick stop to see Richard, since he lived nearby, and give him a Valentine’s Day card.
However, Mary has speculated that the card may have actually been a letter informing Richard that their relationship was over. This has never been confirmed, though, and the exact contents of the card are now known only to Richard. She also wondered if her daughter had been seeing someone else, but there is no evidence to support this either.
For his part, Richard claimed that their relationship had been doing well. So well, in fact, that they had recently become engaged. This piece of information shocked Suzy’s friends and family, because, if true, she had never told any of them about it.
Richard cooperated initially with law enforcement, telling them that he had been playing an online game with a friend while at home on the night Suzy vanished. The friend later confirmed his story. Shortly thereafter, he hired a lawyer, refused to take a polygraph exam, and has never spoken to investigators again.
While they were fairly satisfied with his alibi, the police have never felt they could conclusively rule out Richard Condon as a suspect.
Yet it must be noted that no evidence of any involvement in his girlfriend’s
Suspect: John Regan
In 2005, investigators began considering a man named John Regan as a person of interest in Suzy’s case. Regan was arrested that year for an attempted abduction of a female student at Saratoga Springs High School, near Suzy’s hometown of Ballston Spa. He had also been charged and had an upcoming trial for a 1993 kidnapping in Connecticut.
Regan refused to discuss Suzy’s case with the police. His connection to her disappearance, if one exists, has yet to be established as nothing to indicate his guilt has been found.
American Serial Killer Israel Keyes
In recent years, many have theorized that the notorious American serial killer Israel Keyes may have been responsible for Suzy’s disappearance.
In 1998, Keyes lived in Constable, New York, approximately 3.5 hours away from Suzy’s college. Later that same year, he would enlist in the army in Albany.
Some aspects of Suzy’s case appear to be consistent with Keyes’ modus operandi. For example, he was known to have asked one victim for her PIN number and made withdrawals using her debit card. Furthermore, he frequented places like parking lots when looking for potential victims.
Could he have been the mysterious man stalking Suzy? Perhaps.
Keyes, who was finally arrested in 2012, committed suicide in prison in December of that year, at the age of 34. While it’s a verifiable fact that he killed three people, it’s believed (and was even hinted at in his own suicide note) that he may have murdered at least 11.
However, he refused to give any specifics about their identities and whatever information he had relating to his other victims died with him.
Proponents of this theory also point to the “NAMUS-45,” a list of missing persons (one of whom was Suzy) that showed up in Keyes’ computer searches, as supporting evidence.
However, this is of negligible value as a piece of evidence on its own, since while some names on the list likely were his victims, others can be either conclusively or reasonably ruled out. Yet when considered along with the circumstantial details laid out above, it becomes a bit more compelling.
Regardless, there is still nothing solid that ties Israel Keyes to Suzy’s case.
Later Developments
Doug and Mary Lyall successfully lobbied for “Suzanne’s Law,” which was signed by President George W. Bush in 2003. The law requires police to immediately notify the National Crime Information Center (NCIC) any time someone between the ages of 18 and 21 is reported missing—something that hadn’t been done in Suzy’s case.
They also founded The Center For Hope, an organization that aims to give support to the loved ones of missing persons.
The Lyall family has never given up hope of one day finding the daughter and sister whom they miss so much so they can give her a proper resting place.
Sadly, Doug Lyall passed away in 2015, never having found the closure or answers he so desperately needed.
Mary Lyall remains committed to finding those answers.
“You can never get over it. There’s always that hole in your heart. It’ll never heal. It’s the worst thing that could ever happen to a parent.”
Richard still refuses to discuss Suzy’s disappearance. His family has since stated that he’s married now and has moved on.
When asked about the current state of her case in 2018, former lead investigator John Camp had this to say:
“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.”
There have been no recent developments in the case, though it’s still being actively investigated.
The circumstances which led to 19-year-old Suzy vanishing without a trace on that cold evening in March 1998 remain a mystery.
If you have any information regarding the disappearance of Suzanne Lyall, you are encouraged to contact the New York State Police at (519) 783-3211 or the SUNY Albany Police Department at (518) 442-3131.