This is the last episode of my podcast Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance. I’ll be taking a few months off to write a new book, and then my plan is to host and produce a second series based on Cold Case Vancouver. If you’re not already, please subscribe and I’ll let you know when the next series is out.
On February 26, 1947 Vancouver Police officers Charles Boyes and Oliver Ledingham were murdered in a shootout at False Creek Flats.
This story is from Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance
Fats Robertson:
On February 26, 1947, three teenagers planned to rob the Royal Bank at Renfrew and First Avenue in East Vancouver.
In the early hours of May 2, 1945, 23-year-old Olga Hawryluk was found beaten to death and dumped in the waters of English Bay. A soldier was charged with her murder and defended by scrappy East End lawyer Angelo Branca. Blood, Sweat, and Fear’s Inspector Vance handled the forensics.
Inspector Vance is called to a crime scene at Merritt, B.C. in 1934. Two police officers are missing, believed murdered and the investigation focuses in on an abandoned Model B Ford and members of the Canford Indian band.
The stories for this first series are from my book Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance (Eve Lazarus, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017).
In 1936, Doris Gravlin’s strangled corpse was found on the 7th fairway of the Victoria Golf Course. People soon started reporting sightings of the April ghost. According to local legend, if a couple saw her, they would immediately break up, and her ghost wouldn’t leave until her son was told the truth about her murder.
I’ve been working on a true crime/history podcast for the last couple of months based on my book Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance, Vancouver’s First Forensic Investigator. My original thought was that it would be a great way to reuse some of the research I do for my books, and it is, but it’s become a bit of an obsession, and I plan to do a future series on Cold Case Vancouver, where I can weave in many of the interviews that I conducted with family, friends, and law enforcement over the years.
Last week, Bob Shiell sent me a note telling me that he worked with Rene Castellani at CKNW in the early 1960s, and was a huge force in one of the station’s most visible promotions—the Maharajah of Alleebaba.
From Murder by Milkshake: an astonishing true story of adultery, arsenic, and a charismatic killer
I wrote about Rene the Maharajah in Murder by Milkshake, but Bob added a personal twist.
Glen McDonald was easily Vancouver’s most colourful coroner. He called himself the “Ombudsman of the Dead” and served from 1954 to 1980.
If I was able to go back in time and choose six people to interview, Glen McDonald would be high up on the list. I got to know him while I was researching Murder by Milkshake, and his 1985 book How Come I’m Dead?