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. She liked to dress in the clothes that she sourced from Guatemala and Mexico—long flowing denim skirts that she wore with big dangling earrings. She was well-known and much loved in North Vancouver, especially Deep Cove and the adjoining Dollarton area where she lived. Neighbours described her as a beautiful person, warm, generous and kind.
The Good Earth:
Bruce Young dropped his wife off at her store on January 7, 1976, The morning was uneventful. Brenda talked to a few regulars and served several customers. Bruce tried to phone her several times that afternoon. When he failed to get through, he phoned their friend Harry O’Day who operated the bookstore next door. Harry went to check on Brenda, but found the front door locked. He broke in through the bookstore and found Brenda’s body.
The Brenda Young murder was the last case Staff Sgt. Fred Bodnaruk worked on before his retirement in July 1976. Bodnaruk thought that Brenda’s murder was so rapid and risky that it smacked of professionalism. As it turns out, he was probably right. After Brenda’s story came out in Cold Case Vancouver a retired detective contacted me. He told me that RCMP had pursued the theory that a hit had been put out on a female police informant—who ran a store right across the road from the Good Earth. It made more sense to me than anything else I’d heard.
17 Unsolved murders:
Brenda Young’s murder is one of 17 unsolved cases currently with the North Vancouver RCMP that date between 1964 and 2003. Episode 17 looks at another murder in North Vancouver that happened six months after Brenda Young was killed. Rhona Duncan was a 16-year-old Carson Graham student murdered after walking home from a party.
This podcast is based on original research and interviews and a story from my book Cold Case Vancouver: the city’s most baffling unsolved murders.
SHOW NOTES
If you have any information about this murder please call North Vancouver RCMP at 604-985-1311, or if you wish to remain anonymous, call crime stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or visit the website solvecrime.ca
Sponsor: Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours
Music: Andreas Schuld – ‘Waiting for You’
Intro & voiceovers: Mark Dunn
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Promo: Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance
All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus
9 comments on “Brenda Young Murdered at the Good Earth”
Very interesting store Eve. Must have been a case of mistaken identity. I found it fascinating that the story continued on for a number of years. A murder like that would have devastated me, but others may feel differently. This was close to home and how quickly people forget and move on. There is a cold case I believe regarding a London Drugs employee here from the 1970s or 80s, maybe you could check on this cold case. I never forgot, as I still remember her face.
Thanks for listening Brad!
The London Drugs Employee was named Lynn Duggan.
https://globalnews.ca/news/646854/20-years-later-lynn-duggans-family-reflects-on-her-murder/
Oy vey! The Keystone Killers. Wrong address , wrong woman, hope they did not get paid. So the intended victim saw that and fled? What became of her?
The family my heart goes out to.
Actually she went on to run a very successful pet food company and may still be alive. Thanks for listening!
Yes i remember the story and I am sad that nobody was caught I knew her son very weird indeed I live on west 3rd street so it was very close to my house
I knew of two people that were convicted of rape and served lengthy prison terms. Both lived in North Van in those days.
I grew up in North Van and it was a much smaller place in those days.
Many of us suspected that it could have been either one of them.
One of them is dead now and the other has been out of prison for several years after serving 20 years as the notorious balcony rapist who terrorized women in Toronto in the 1990″s
So interesting and sad. That must have been difficult for her son to keep the shop going in the same place his mother was murdered– but more good memories there than bad. The shop sounds very familiar– I think I was there in the early 90s. It sounds like a place I would have hung out in if I’d been around in the 1970s.
I was a kid and I knew Brenda quite well back then, as a customer and neighbourhood friend. We were all horrified as she was so lovely. I still have things I bought from that store. Not surprised it’s still a cold Case given the north Vancouver RCMP. I’ve never heard the targeted hit Theory. Tragedy. Things were pretty wild in lower Lonsdale back then. Several people were killed.