Blood, Sweat and Fear Podcast by Eve Lazarus
Walter Pavlukoff stepped out of his hotel room on August 25, 1947 and joined the PNE parade. Then he robbed a bank and murdered the manager.
PNE Parade
On August 25, 1947, 34-year-old Walter Pavlukoff stepped out of his hotel room on East Cordova Street in Vancouver with a luger automatic pistol in his pocket.
On March 9, 1947, Inspector Vance of the Vancouver Police Department was called to an apartment in Kitsilano, Vancouver to check out the suspicious death of Ruth Cooperman. The 17-year-old was found naked and lying dead across her husband’s unconscious body.
Jack Cooperman, Ruth’s 27-year-old husband, had been rushed to Vancouver General Hospital, and police were told that his condition was critical.
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).
Sidney Colbourne lived in Oak Bay, Victoria, and frequently beat up his wife Vera and their five-year-old daughter. One night, the gun that Sid bought to keep Vera in line, went off and shot him in the head. It was 1938. Vera was put on trial for murder, and Inspector Vance was called in to investigate.
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.
By the 1930s, Inspector Vance had become a familiar face at crime scenes and was often called to testify in court because of his knowledge of forensics. In fact, his skills and analytic abilities were so effective that in 1934 there were seven attempts on his life—including a car bomb—and for a time he and his family were under constant police guard from criminals afraid to go up against him in court.
