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.
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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
Buy me a coffee promo: McBride Communications and Media
Promo: Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance
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