Cold Case Canada Podcast by Eve Lazarus
When Pat Lowther was murdered in her East Vancouver home, she had just signed a contract with a major publisher. The 40-year-old mother of four was carving out a new voice in the Canadian literary scene and being recognized for her strong, often violent, feminist poetry.
the lowthers:
The mustard-coloured house where Pat and Roy Lowther lived on East 46th Avenue near Mountain View Cemetery, is a three-storey, classic kit home with a welcoming front porch and stained glass on the front door.
In the months leading up to her murder, Muriel Lindsay had been targeted and harassed. Her cat was stolen, she’d received bizarre anonymous letters, and someone had used her credit card to take out subscriptions and make a donation to the United Way in her name. Who was stalking Muriel and why was this 40-year-old postal worker found beaten to death in her West End apartment?
In 1974, Debbie and Vicky Roe were living their dream. The sister act—Debbie was 22 and Vicky, 17 – had just returned from Nashville where they’d cut a country-and-western album called Soft, Sweet and Country.
“We’d been singing together professionally for about four or five years,” Vicky told me.
At the start of 1985, things looked good for Jimmy and Lily Ming. They had two small children, owned their own home and worked in the family’s thriving Robson Street restaurant. But by the end of January, Jimmy and Lily had been kidnapped from their Vancouver house, the restaurant was closed and the rest of the Ming family lived in fear of their lives.
Rhona Duncan, 16 was murdered in the early hours of July 17, 1976 after walking home from a high school birthday party. She was in sight of her North Vancouver house, when she was intercepted, raped and strangled. Although 45 years has gone by, Rhona’s friends still get together to remember her and to try and solve her murder.
On January 7, 1976 Brenda Young was found murdered at her store the Good Earth in the Lower Lonsdale area of North Vancouver. It was a brazen murder and it felt like a hit, but why would anyone target this much-loved 38-year-old mother of four?
Brenda was an attractive, petite woman with long black curly hair, rosy cheeks and always smiling.
Robert Hopkins was a 48-year-old printer who worked at the Vancouver News Herald, one of three daily newspapers. He was a quiet, friendly man who kept to himself and was liked by his colleagues. None of them knew that Bob was gay and lived a secret life. He had to.
Danny Brent’s body was found on the tenth green at UBC’s golf course on September 15, 1954. An early edition of the newspaper was stuffed inside his shirt soaked with his blood. There was a half-smoked cigarette inside his shirt where it had dropped from his mouth when he was shot—once in the back and twice in the head with .45-calibre bullets.
