The Mammoth Book of Killers at Large (51 page)

Retired RCMP officer Fred Maile, who helped crack the Clifford Olson serial killer case in British Columbia by getting Olson to confess to 11 murders, told the
Vancouver Sun
: “I am 100-per-cent certain that there’s a serial killer there. I went up there twice to look at the cases of Delphine Nikal and Ramona Wilson. We felt the same individual had grabbed them.”

He had been asked by the Calgary-based Missing Children Society to investigate these two Highway 16 cases and found too many similarities.

“They were both native, both about the same age and they were hitch-hiking in opposite directions,” Maile recalls. “The whole situation smacks of someone driving that highway and living there.”

The unusual thing about serial killers, he said, is that they can sometimes go years between murders.

“They look for an opportunity,” he said. “There’s usually not two or three individuals in the same area that do this.”

He also points out that a serial killer can appear normal and go undetected.

“They don’t stand out as monsters. They blend in with the rest of us. Look at the Green River killer.”

Arlene Roberts, a volunteer fire-fighter who lives on Highway 16 just west of Terrace, agrees that there is a killer who preys on young women at work. She often sees people hitch-hiking along the highway.

“It’s male and female, young and old,” she says. “But it’s only the young women who are going missing.”

Highway 16 also runs east to Edmonton, where the police have the unsolved murders of 12 prostitutes on their hands. In that case, RCMP have offered a reward of $100,000 and released a profile that suggests the killer or killers drive a truck or SUV which is cleaned at unusual hours. It is thought that the killer may be a hunter, fisherman or camper, who is comfortable driving on unmetalled roads, and is probably connected to towns south of Edmonton.

Some 175 miles south of Edmonton is Calgary where, in a 19-month period in the early 1990s, five women – four of whom were prostitutes – disappeared. Their bodies later appeared, dumped around the outskirts of the city.

The first woman to disappear was 16-year-old street urchin Jennifer Janz, who disappeared in July 1991. Her badly beaten body was discovered in a shallow grave on 13 August 1991 in the Valley Ridge district of northwest Calgary. Reported missing on 30 August 1991, the body of 17-year-old Jennifer Joyes was found in a shallow grave on 6 October 1991, just a mile south of where Janz had been buried. Both had reportedly been attempting to escape life on the streets. Keely Pincott, who disappeared three months later, was found nearby.

Tracey Maunder went missing in October 1992 and 20-year-old Rebecca Boutelier disappeared in February 1993. She was found stabbed to death on 11 March. Their bodies were found in fields east of the city rather than to the west like those of Jennifer Janz, Jennifer Joyes and Keely Pincott.

Then the killings stopped. Police believe that the perpetrator might have been jailed for another murder. During the same time period these five women were murdered city officials also have unsolved murder files on six other women.

Later Barry Thomas Neidermier became a suspect in the murders of Jennifer Janz and Rebecca Boutelier. A convicted pimp, he had become “a person of interest” in the case of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside’s missing prostitutes after being arrested in Lethbridge, Alberta, a hundred miles south of Calgary. Forty-three-year-old Barry Thomas Niedermier was charged with brutal sexual assaults from 1995 to 1997 against seven prostitutes working in downtown Vancouver, where he had been living. He was also questioned by police in Edmonton and Calgary in their own missing prostitute cases, including those who had gone missing in the late 1970s and 1980s. In 1990 Neidermier had been sentenced to 14 months imprisonment for pimping a 14-year-old girl whom he brought from Calgary to Vancouver.

As if RCMP did not have enough unsolved cases on their hands, according to Amnesty International Canada, Tamara Chipman’s disappearance bought the number of missing or murdered women along the highway to 33 – all but one were Aboriginal. This was based on information gathered for a report Amnesty released in October 2004 called
Stolen Sisters: Discrimination and Violence Against Indigenous Women in Canada
. This cited a 1996 federal government statistic that native women between 25 and 44 are five times more likely to die as the result of violence than other women in the same age group.

The report also included a figure gathered by the Native Women’s Association of Canada, which estimates that more than 500 native women may have been murdered or gone missing over a 20-year period prior to 2004.

The Amnesty International report also cited nine cases of violence against native women, including the murder of Helen Betty Osborne, a 19-year-old Cree student from northern Manitoba who dreamed of becoming a teacher but was abducted from the street of The Pas, Manitoba by four men, raped and killed on the night of 12 November 1971. Her naked body was found later by the police.

It took more than 15 years to bring one of the four men to justice. The Aboriginal Justice Implementation Commission conducted an investigation into the length of time involved in resolving the case and concluded that the most significant factor was racism. The Commission found that police had long been aware of white men sexually preying on native women and girls in the town of The Pas but “did not feel that the practice necessitated any particular vigilance.”

A formal apology from the Manitoba government was issued by Manitoba’s Minister of Justice in 2000 and a scholarship was created in Osborne’s name for aboriginal women.

But at least the case of Helen Osborne was resolved. Many more have not been – like that of 16-year-old Deena Lynn Braem of Quesnel, BC. She was last seen alive at around 4 a.m. on 25 September 1999, just two days before her 17th birthday. She was later reported as missing and the police immediately suspected foul play.

On 10 December 1999, human remains were found near Pinnacles Park, just west of Quesnel. A post mortem identified the body as that of Deena Braem. She had been murdered.

On Friday, 24 September, she had attended Correlieu Secondary in Quesnel, where she was just beginning her final year. She lived in Bouchie Lake, some six miles to the west of Quesnel, but her parents had given her permission to stay the weekend with a friend in the city to celebrate her birthday. Together they went to an outdoor party in the Quesnel area. It was well part midnight when they left. Deena had been drinking alcohol, but according to friends was not drunk. They got a lift back to Quesnel and were dropped off at a residence on English Avenue at around 2.30. But then, at Deena’s urging, they went out again.

Deena had decided she wanted to go home to her Mom and Dad instead of staying in town with friends. The two girls walked the short distance to the intersection of North Fraser Drive and Edkins Street, then up North Fraser Drive to Fuller, while they tried to hitch a ride. It was cold and Deena’s girlfriend went home, leaving Deena to hitchhike alone. Witnesses saw two males in their teens or early twenties in North Fraser Drive around that time and the case remains unsolved. But then in Quesnel there are a remarkable number of unsolved cases.

On 26 November 2004, the family of Barbara Anne Lanes, aged 57, reported her missing. She had not been seen for a week. The sightings were investigated but none were confirmed, and police have no clues about where she is or how she disappeared. Laurie Joseph Blanchard was last seen in Quesnel on 2 July 1972, when he was preparing to move to New Brunswick. His body was found on 13 August 1972. He had been murdered. Mary Agnes Thomas disappeared under suspicious circumstances near Quesnel on or about 10 September 1971. Her body has never been recovered. Herman Alec disappeared under suspicious circumstances near the Nazko Indian Reserve on 14 October 1977. His body has never been found. Santokh Kaur Johal disappeared under suspicious circumstances near Quesnel on or about 1 April 1978. Her body has never been recovered. Janice Ellisabeth Hackh disappeared under suspicious circumstances near Quesnel on or about 24 August 1979. Her body has never been found. Wayne Albert Taylor disappeared under suspicious circumstances near Quesnel in or around January 1976. His body has never been recovered. Mary Jane Jimmie was found murdered on the banks of the nearby Fraser River on or about 26 June 1987. Duncan Harris was found on a sidewalk in Quesnel on 6 July 1988, apparently the victim of an assault. He later died in hospital from these injuries. William Henry Terrico was found murdered in his home on 12 December 1989. Brian Mirl Chaffee was reported missing on 22 September 1990. He was last seen at his home on 18 September 1990. His body was found on 24 September 1990. Dale Melvin Johnson disappeared under suspicious circumstances on August 15, 1996. His body has never been recovered. Not bad for a city of around 10,000 people.

Thirty-one-year-old Melanie Dawn Brown, another First-Nations woman, was found deceased in a basement suite located in the 400 block of Olgivie Street in Prince George at around 4 p.m. on 8 December 2004. A post mortem confirmed that she had been murdered. Police have not released the exact cause of death. She is considered a candidate for a Highway 16 killing.

Nineteen-year-old Corrine Cunningham of the Katzie Reserve near Pitt Meadows, outside Vancouver, disappeared at 3 p.m. on 24 November 2005 after she left “New Transitions” in the Pitt Meadows Industrial Park. She had the mental capacity of a 12-year-old and a tendency to befriend older men. Her new black BMX bicycle was also missing.

Seventy-one-year-old Helena Jack, a member of the Cheslatta Carrier Nation, was murdered on 29 July 2004 in the garage beside her cabin in Burns Lake, which is in the 600-block of Highway 16. Police believe a man named Vincent Sam followed her into the garage on the night of the assault. Sam was arrested in August 2004, shortly after Burns Lake Fire and Rescue discovered the severely beaten body of Helena Jack in a burnt-out garage beside a cabin on the 600-block of highway 16. Evidence found in the garage directed the police search to a local motel room. They believe their suspect tried to wash his body of evidence linking him to the crime, before returning to his residence later that night. But investigators found DNA in the motel room that matched DNA found at the crime scene. It belonged to Vincent Sam. Sam was charged with Helena Jack’s murder on 4 September 2004. He was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.

Belinda Ann Cameron – aka Belinda Ann Engen – disappeared in early May 2005, from Esquimalt near Victoria. She was a schizophrenic and needed daily medication to keep the condition in check. She was also a drug user thought to be involved in the sex trade. Foul play is suspected. She could have been the victim of Robert Pickton, like Victoria resident Nancy Creek, if he had not already been in custody.

Another possible victim of a second Low Track slayer is 24-year-old Doras Gail Shorson, who was last seen on 2 April 2005 when she left the family home on Larner Road, Surrey. She was a drug-user who worked in the sex trade in Surrey or Vancouver. And 14-year-old Lorna Ulmer-Billy was last seen home in the 15100 block of 86 Avenue in Surrey, BC, at around 9 p.m. on 7 January 2005 when her stepfather looked in to check she was still asleep. It was thought that she left home early the next morning to meet some friends. However, she has run away before to Squamish and Vancouver.

Twenty-year-old Rene Gunning has been missing since 19 February 2005 when she left Edmonton for her home in Fort St John in the company of another female from Dawson Creek. The pair were thought to be hitch-hiking.

Seventeen-year-old Lisa Paul disappeared from her home on 4 August 2005. Lisa was known to frequent the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Twenty-nine-year-old Charlene Kerr was found dead in a pool of blood in the Gastown Hotel in 1990. She was a prostitute and drug user.

Fourteen-year-old Tawyna Megan Lisk called a friend on 18 July 2004 and said that she was going to Calgary, Alberta. It is thought she planned to hitch-hike.

Sarah Strachan, aged 16, was last seen on 7 February 2004 from Coquitlam, just a few miles from Pickton’s pig farm. Also missing is her Caucasian friend Leah Nestegarde, aged 14.

Then there is the case of 39-year-old Ada Brown of Prince George who died three weeks after suffering a serious head injury during a beating. Her family said that she sought medical attention on three different occasions following the beating and was turned away.

“When she died, and we went to the funeral home, my sister and I didn’t recognize her,” said sister Terri Brown. “It was obvious she had been badly beaten several times yet the authorities had ruled she died of ‘natural causes’.”

Chelsea Acorn, aged 14, disappeared from Abbottsford, BC, late in the afternoon of 10 June 2005. It is believed that Chelsea has run away and could be in the Surrey area 25 miles away.

This is just a small sample of the mayhem in British Columbia. But the “Highway of Tears” seems to stretch right across Canada. There are countless unsolved cases out there and numerous killers at large. One even exploits Native Americans’ low tolerance for alcohol, takes First-Nations women to his hotel room and pours vodka down their throats until they die. He is still at large.

Costa Rica’s Psychopath

A serial killer known as
El Psicópata
– “The Psychopath” – has been stalking Costa Rica. Between 1986 and 1996 he has killed at least 19 people, though the police say that number could exceed 31, but then there are other killers at large in the small Central America state.

The Psychopath preys on young couples in the secluded wooded area to the south of the capital San José. He always attacks at night. It is thought that he is a hunter who plans his attacks, waiting and watching until a couple arrive. He usually waits until the couples start making love before shooting them with a 45-calibre weapon, thought to be an M3 machine gun, then mutilates the breasts and sexual organs of his female victims with a US Army knife. It is believed that he follows his potential victims for several days before killing them, leaving no tracks.