Real Crime Stories/Paranormal Hauntings

The Disappearance of Suzanne Lyall

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.

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.

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.

Two weeks before Suzanne disappeared, Mary recalled, she and her daughter had been on a trip to see her own 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, 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.

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. 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.

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. 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.

Later efforts

The case remains open, and the state police continue to follow up on any leads that come in. In 2012 the Investigation Discovery cable channel devoted an episode of Disappeared, its series on missing person cases, to Suzanne's disappearance. "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".

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.

Parents' activism

Within a year of their daughter's disappearance, Doug and Mary Lyall had begun lobbying for changes in New York law to address what they saw as shortcomings of the original investigation. From a victims' support group, they learned of a California couple who had successfully lobbied legislators to make similar changes after their daughter had gone missing in 1996 from a college campus in that state. They reached out to state legislators, who sponsored a bill, formally known as the Campus Safety Act but referred to as "Suzanne's Law", that required colleges and universities in the state to have detailed plans for the investigation of violent felonies and missing persons cases that occurred on campus, as well as reporting the latter promptly to the state. It passed, and on April 6, 1999, Suzanne's 21st birthday, Governor George Pataki signed it into law, with institutions of higher learning required to be in compliance by the beginning of 2000.

The Lyalls then focused their efforts on getting federal law changed to increase the age at which local police must report missing persons to the National Crime Information Center from 17 to 21. In 2003, President George W. Bush signed into law the PROTECT Act of 2003, an omnibus bill of measures meant to protect children from various types of harm, in which had been included another "Suzanne's Law", making that change. It also allowed police departments to report those cases to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children as well, from which they could receive additional services like flyer and poster creation as well as age progression technology applied to images of the missing.

That same year the Lyalls were attending a conference at which other families of missing persons spoke. They were particularly struck by one woman's speech, and when they talked to her afterwards she told them "I could have lain in bed with a cover over my head for years but I decided to really get out there and talk about this". The couple decided to follow that example. Mary Lyall began speaking publicly about her experience, and she and Doug founded the Center for Hope, which in addition to disseminating information about missing persons and educating law enforcement about its increased responsibilities under the new laws provides support to the families of the missing.

The Lyalls continued their lobbying efforts, which in 2008 resulted in another federal law named for their daughter. The Suzanne Lyall Campus Safety Act enacted nationwide provisions similar to those in the 1999 New York state law. It also required that colleges and universities have in place policies that clearly delineate the role of campus, local and state police agencies in investigating a violent crime or disappearance on campus, in order to reduce the sort of "confusion and delays" that the Lyalls believed had hindered the investigation of Suzanne's disappearance during the days immediately afterward. Like the 2003 legislation, it was passed by being incorporated into a larger, related bill, the Higher Education Opportunity Act.

Another "Suzanne's Law" in the state legislature has not yet passed. State senator James Tedisco has, since he was a member of the Assembly in 1999, introduced a bill that would increase penalties for violent felonies that are committed on the premises of, or within 1,000 feet (300 m) of, any educational facility in the state, from day care centers to colleges. Companion bills in the State Senate, introduced by then-majority leader Joseph Bruno, passed that house every session until 2007, but Tedisco's bill never reached the floor of the Assembly even when he was that body's minority leader. He continues to work for the bill's passage.