Disappearance of Suzanne Lyall

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."

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

Lyall's parents have become activists on behalf of the families of other missing persons, founding an organization called the Center for Hope to support those families. They were present when President George W. Bush signed "Suzanne's Law", enacted as part of the PROTECT Act of 2003, which raised the age at which local police must inform the National Crime Information Center of a missing person from 18 to 21. Five years later, he also signed into law the Suzanne Lyall Campus Safety Act, part of the Higher Education Opportunity Act, based on similar legislation the state passed the year after Suzanne disappeared, which requires college police departments to have plans for investigating missing-persons cases and serious crimes on campus. Another "Suzanne's Law", passed by the New York State Senate several times but not yet voted on in the State Assembly, would also increase the penalties for violent crimes on and near educational facilities should it become law.

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.

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, Kristin Smart, 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.

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.

On the night of March 2, 1998, Suzanne Lyall (born April 6, 1978), an undergraduate at the State University of New York at Albany, left her job at the Babbage's in Crossgates Mall in the nearby suburb of Westmere after the store had closed. She is believed to have taken a city bus from the mall back to the university's Uptown Campus, where a classmate has said she saw Lyall get off the bus at Collins Circle, a short walk from her dorm. She has never been seen again.

Suzanne called or emailed her parents, and/or Condon, almost daily. Mary Lyall recalls that the last time she actually spoke to her daughter, on March 1, 1998, Suzanne had complained about being low on cash and waiting for her next paycheck. However, she declined her mother's offer to lend her some money in the interim.

In late February 1998, Suzanne's manager at Babbage's recalled that she had been stressed about an upcoming midterm exam, which she said she needed not only to pass but excel on. She took it the morning of March 2 and attended other classes until 4 p.m. After that, she went from the school's North Campus, where she lived in the Colonial Quad dorm, to her job at Babbage's. According to her manager, she felt she had "done OK" on the exam and was somewhat subdued. She worked there until the store closed at 9 p.m., then boarded a Capital District Transportation Authority bus, returning her to campus around 9:20 p.m.

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. 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.

Suzanne Lyall was born in Saratoga Springs, New York, in 1978, the youngest of Doug and Mary Lyall's three children. The family lived in nearby Ballston Spa; her two older siblings described her as "the darling of the family", a quiet girl who would run out of the shower with her hair still wet to write poetry in her notebook after inspiration struck her, and was a great fan of the Canadian power trio Rush. She showed an early interest in computers, even building some from scratch. After Suzanne graduated from Ballston Spa High School with honors in 1996, she first attended the State University of New York at Oneonta for a year, after which she transferred to SUNY Albany, since she felt the computer science courses at Oneonta were not sufficiently challenging.