I am thrilled to tell you that Cold Case Canada is up for a Webby Award – the only Canadian nominee in the Crime and Justice podcast category. This is a really big deal. The New York Times called the Webby’s “the Internet’s highest honor.”
There are two parts to the award. The Webby Award is decided by judges from the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences in New York. The Webby People’s Voice Award is decided by you.
I host, produce, research, write, interview, edit and get the word out about Cold Case Canada. In other words, it’s a small indie podcast put together in my home. I’m up against four other shows (three are American and one is based in Qatar). All are network productions with staff and resources.
Episode 41—the Alley Murders has been shortlisted and it was the most difficult and complex case I’ve written about so far.
The Alley Murders
Between April 1988 and August 1990, a serial killer murdered six sex trade workers and dumped their bodies in the laneways of Vancouver. Officially, the murders are unsolved and two (Lisa Gavin and Glenna Sowan) were just added to the Vancouver Police Department’s cold case website in 2022. Although these cases remain officially unsolved, two retired detectives who worked on a joint RCMP/VPD task force called E-Alley, take us through the investigation. They say they know who killed these women, and he died in 2007.
Sharon Tuerlings, Lisa Gavin’s foster sister, talks about the thirty-five heart-breaking years she and her family tried to find answers.
You can listen to the full episode here: The Alley Murders or on Apple, Spotify or wherever you usually listen to your podcasts. Or you can read a summary of the case here: Transcript.
With thanks to Mark Dunn for being script editor on this episode and for his introduction and voiceovers; to Vancouver composer and musician Andrea Schuld for his beautiful music; and to Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours for sponsoring the show.
Please support Cold Case Canada and cast your vote here: The Webby Awards
I just want to know what happened. I want the whole story. I want people to know that she was more than a prostitute, she was more than a dancer, she was our little sister and we loved her with our whole heart. She was with us since she was three or four months old, until they took her away and gave her back to her biological mum. Whenever anything went wrong in her life, Lisa always came back. We were her brothers and sisters. If there was a birthday party, Christmas, anything going on, she was there. She was my sister and no matter what anybody says she was ours, she belonged to us . and the fact that they took her away makes me fucking angry.
That was Sharon Tuerlings. Her foster sister Lisa Gavin was murdered in August 1988.
Between April 1988 and August 1990, a serial killer murdered six sex trade workers and dumped their bodies in the laneways of Vancouver. Officially, the murders are unsolved and three appear on the VPD’s cold case website. But according to two detectives who worked on a joint RCMP/VPD task force called E-Alley, the detectives say they know who killed these women, and he died in 2007.
By the Spring of 1998, at least 400 women were working in the sex trade in the DTES, and over the years, dozens had just vanished. It didn’t help that these women –many of them mothers, and most of them indigenous – were portrayed in the media as prostitutes and drug addicts. These women were a low priority for the Vancouver Police Department, and a lot of the male police officers had dubbed them the “Missing Whores.” But when the numbers became too large to ignore, the VPD struck up a task force. Their assignment was Project Amelia.
This is retired Detective Constable Alex Clarke:
My name is Alex Clarke and I was sworn in as a Vancouver police officer in 1992. From 2006 to 2009 I was succonded to the RCMP and it was a joint task force.
EL: What was it like to work on the task force?
AC: There were no real resources put into it. It was just, find these women basically, prove they are not missing. Let’s face it, most of these people were just expendable human beings. We were basically told to wrap this up, there’s more important things to do.
As well as the huge numbers of missing women from the DTES, there was a disproportionately high number of sex trade workers being murdered. Between April 1988 and August 1990, six women were strangled and dumped like garbage in the back alleys of Vancouver, Mount Pleasant, Shaughnessy, and out at the UBC endowment lands. They were Rose Peters, Lisa Gavin, Glenna Sowan, Tracey Chartrand, Frances Annie Grant; and Karen-Lee Taylor.
Four of the women knew each other well. They stayed in Mount Pleasant and worked the Broadway strip. All four were habitual cocaine users.
Lisa Marie Gavin was found strangled, beaten and raped. Her body was dumped in the lane behind Knight Street and East 49th and discovered by a resident just before 7 in the morning. She was wearing only a black short-sleeved T-Shirt with lace on the sleeves and hem. The blue writing on the T-Shirt said: “Gerry’s Country Inn, Calgary.”
Just over six weeks after Lisa was murdered, her best friend 25-year-old Glenna Sowan, was found strangled, beaten, and dumped behind a house on West 24th Avenue. At the time of her death, had a baby daughter who was four months old and living with her mother in Alberta.
Brian Ball was one of the original investigators
In 1988, I was working as a detective in the homicide office and two of the cases I was assigned to were the murders of Rose Peters and Glenna Sowan. Then in 2007, I was part of a task force that was investigating the alley murder cases which included Peters and Sowan. Glenna Sowan was a sex trade worker. Glenna worked and lived in the Mount Pleasant area. She would stay at different places in the area, usually with her very good friends Lisa Gavin and Tracey Chartrand. Obviously we looked at the murder of Lisa Gavin as well, because there were very strong similarities between the two and everybody agreed that there was a very strong likelihood that the same person killed both women.
The last time Tracey Chartrand was seen was in early October, shortly after Glenna was murdered. Her body was found six months after her murder. There was no cause of death and no DNA.
EL: At what point did you tie Tracey Chartrand into the other two murders?
BB: Tracey went missing in October but as soon as that missing report came up to our office, right away we were thinking yes there’s a strong possibility that Tracey is tied in with Lisa Gavin and Glenna Sowan. The big thing there was that they were very close friends those three women and they usually lived together, crashed at the same places. They shared clothing and things like that, so it just seemed that there had to be a connection.
Thirty-three-year-old Frances Anne Grant, known as Annie, was found in a shed behind a Mount Pleasant rooming house on June 4, 1989.
EL: It must have been a whole game changer when you found Annie Grant’s body in the shed?
BB: Yes. Annie Grant was found one morning at 10th and Carolina. There’s an old rooming house with a few occupants. Behind the house there’s a laneway and there’s an old shed. A fellow was out looking for bottles, and just came onto the property, opened the shed door and got quite a surprise when he found a naked body in there.
The proximity of Annie’s body to the Mount Pleasant house gave police their first big lead, and it led them to one of the residents, a low level drug dealer and drug user, who, we are going to call Dan.
Because of the DNA match to two of the victims, the proximity of one of the victims to the suspect’s house, and the social connection of the fourth victim to the three other women, Brian Ball felt they had a solid case to take to Crown Counsel and charge Dan with the murders. Counsel disagreed, they wanted a confession. But while Crown Counsel was dithering about whether to lay charges; Dan died.
And because Dan died before he could be charged in the murders, Clarke and Ball have asked me not to identify him in the podcast. They believe that should come from the Vancouver Police Department.
EL: How strongly do you feel that he was responsible for at least four of the six murders?
BB: I’m absolutely certain that he was. There is absolutely no doubt in my mind. All of the investigators who I worked with feel exactly the same way. Dan had left his DNA on two of the victims. There’s a third victim who was found at the back of his house and there is the fourth victim, Tracey Chartrand. There’s nothing forensically because she wasn’t found for a number of months but she was taken from the area and killed right at the same timeframe as Lisa Gavin and Glenna Sowan.
Glenna Sowan and Lisa Gavin are featured on the VPD’s cold case website. When Sharon Tuerlings heard that her sister Lisa Gavin was going to be highlighted on the website, it gave her renewed hope that her case may be reopened and the family could finally get some answers.
EL: Did they tell you why they put Lisa’s case on the website?
ST: They just said they wanted to highlight it and bring more attention to it, and that’s really all the information they gave to me. We had all sorts of expectations, it was so frustrating. I will go to my grave trying to find out who did this to her. And even if they’re dead and gone it doesn’t matter she deserves it. She was a good kid who got a really really really shitty deal.
EL So the families, or at least one of the families of the victims, still think their murderer is wandering around. What would you see happen now?
BB: What I think should happen is that the VPD should come out and do a news conference and present the facts on this case. This is a case where at least FOUR people have been murdered by this person named Dan. It’s clear to everybody who worked on the taskforce, that he’s the person responsible. There’s nothing more to investigate in my opinion and I believe that everybody has a right to know his name. The family members have a right to know all of the details about the case and why this is the guy who was responsible for the murder of their loved ones.
Michael Smith, 17 missing since December 30, 1967. Last seen at his North Vancouver home. Canada’s Missing website (National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains) RCMP case #2014003272
Canada’s Missing:
I came across this listing and a grainy photo of North Vancouver’s 17-year-old Michael Smith when I was researching missing person cases on Canada’s Missing website for ColdCase BC. There wasn’t much else in the post. Just that Mike was 5 foot 10 and weighed 161 pounds, and a description of the clothes that he was wearing when he was last seen. It also mentioned that he was despondent over a friend’s death. I put up a post on my Facebook page Cold Case BC, and as I’d hoped, several people got in touch with more information and photos.
Courtesy Sherry Forest
Mike lived at 639 East 3rd Street in North Vancouver. He went to Ridgeway Elementary, Sutherland and onto North Vancouver Senior Secondary.
The 1960s:
Art McKay is Mike’s nephew, although he is one year older—his mother being the oldest of the nine siblings—and Mike the youngest. “I don’t know whether he just walked away or if somebody picked him up. I really don’t know and nobody I know has heard a word since,” says Art. “I don’t think there was any kind of a major police investigation given the times. In the late ‘60s, kids just took off all the time.”
Bob Tribe shown diving of Siwash Rock in Stanley Park, seconds before his death. Matthias Klinner photo, June 1966
Bob Tribe:
Art says that he and Mike were close. There was a group of about 25 kids who hung out at Third Beach in Stanley Park. Mike was there on June 5, the day that his close friend and neighbour, Bob Tribe dove off Siwash Rock into shallow water, and died.
Eve Lazarus photo, June 2023
Mike was clearly upset about Bob’s death, but if the date on Canada’s Missing website is correct, Bob died 18 months before Mike went missing. His leaving home likely had more to do with being caught smoking weed, which especially bothered his older brother Butch who was in the Airforce and had no tolerance for drugs and long hair.
James Howe lived across the lane from Mike and says he was told that Mike was living in Toronto but acknowledges that he has no proof of that. “Mike was very quiet and shy—he didn’t say a lot. He had a lot of close friends. His girlfriend lived across the street and he didn’t even tell her, he just disappeared.”
Mike Smith and girlfriend, 1967 Courtesy Sherry Forest
What I did find out was that even though 55 years had passed, he was still very much missed by his large family, who still search for answers.
Lucy Johnson:
The second part of the episode is about Lucy Johnson, a 25-year-old mother of two. Lucy went missing from her Surrey, BC home in 1961. For 52 years she was listed as “missing, foul play suspected” by the RCMP. And then in 2013, Lucy’s story got an ending.
Lucy Johnson was reported missing May 14, 1965. RCMP handout
Webby Award nominee in the Crime and Justice category.
Between April 1988 and August 1990, a serial killer murdered six sex trade workers and dumped their bodies in the laneways of Vancouver. Officially, the murders are unsolved and two were added to the Vancouver Police Department’s cold case website just last year. But two retired detectives who worked on a joint RCMP/VPD task force called E-Alley, say they know who killed these women, and he died in 2009.
Rose Minnie Peters
Rose Peters was the first of the Alley Murders. She was strangled, beaten and raped. Her body left in a lane behind the 4900 block of St. Catherines on Easter Sunday 1988. Rose was a 28-year-old Indigenous woman from Port Alberni. Ten years before her murder, she was shot in the neck by a police bullet as she walked too close to the scene of a bungled robbery. Rose was left partially paralysed with a slight limp. Shortly after she got out of hospital, she moved to the Downtown Eastside and began using the street drug Talwin—an addictive prescription drug used as a substitute for heroin.
Rose Minnie Peters (1959-1988)
Lisa Marie Gavin
The second woman found dead in an alley, was 21-year-old Lisa Gavin. She was also strangled, beaten and raped. Her body found in the lane behind Knight Street and East 49th on August 13, 1988. Lisa was born in a prison hospital addicted to heroin. She lived with a family in Richmond from the time she was a few months old until just after her ninth birthday. Lisa’s foster sister, Sharon Tuerlings says: “She was a great kid, she was a funny kid, she loved horses. She would walk up to Shadow and hold onto his leg and that old horse would just walk around the corral with that kid on his leg. Lisa had no fear. It was a wonderful happy childhood. We had it all, and then we didn’t.”
Lisa Marie Gavin (1966-1988)
Glenna marie Sowan
Just over six weeks after Lisa was murdered, the body of her best friend Glenna Sowan, 25 was found strangled, beaten, and left behind a house on West 24th Avenue. An Indigenous woman, Glenna was born in High Prairie, and at the time of her death, had a baby daughter who was four months old and living with her mother in Alberta.
Glenna Marie Sowan (1963-1988)
Tracey Leigh Chartrand
Tracey Chartrand, 25 was last seen in early October 1988. Like her friends Lisa and Glenna, she was a habitual cocaine user and resorted to sex work to pay for her drugs. When her body was found six months after her murder, it was in a shallow grave at the UBC Endowment lands. Originally from North Vancouver, Tracey was separated from her husband, and had a son.
Tracey Leigh Chartrand (1963-1988)
Frances “Annie” Grant
Like Tracey, Frances “Annie” Grant, grew up in North Vancouver. She had been off the streets for about a year but was back about a month before her death working the Broadway stroll. Annie knew Lisa, Glenna and Tracey. Her body was found in a shed behind a Mount Pleasant rooming house on June 4, 1989.
Francis “Annie” Grant (1956-1989)
Karen Lee Taylor
The sixth Alley Murder victim was Karen Taylor. She was a bubbly 19-year-old from Ontario. On the night that she died she had been out with friends at the Cecil Hotel on Granville Street and left with a girlfriend to get a pizza. It’s not clear whether a man had followed them from the pub or if she met him there, but she left with him and her body was found in a Shaughnessy lane on August 24, 1990.
Karen Lee Taylor (1970-1990)
At the Missing Women Inquiry in 2012, retired RCMP inspector Don Adam and the officer in charge of the task force said that the E-Alley investigation led to the discovery of the serial killer responsible for the Alley Murders. Because he died during the investigation, he was not charged and his name was not made public.
Retired detectives Alex Clarke and Brian Ball want that changed. Ball was one of the original investigators on Rose Peters and Glenna Sowan’s murders, and he and Clarke worked on the E-Alley task force. Both are convinced that “Dan” was responsible for the murders, and they would like to see the VPD issue a press release with his full name and photo and close these cases.
“I’m certain that he was responsible for these murders, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind,” says Ball. “All of the investigators who I worked with feel exactly the same way.”
On the day that 14-year-old Lindsey Nicholls disappeared, she was last seen walking down Royston Road, outside of Comox on Vancouver Island. It was August 2, 1993—the Monday of the BC Day long weekend, and Lindsey was meeting friends at the annual Comox Nautical Days Festival.
Kim, Lindsey and Judy at Disneyland shortly before LIndsey went missing in 1993. Courtesy Judy Peterson.
Comox:
Lindsey was a slim five foot three with green eyes and long blond hair. The family had relocated to Comox from Delta in the summer of 1992. Lindsey missed her friends and was constantly at odds with her parents. A few months earlier, Lindsey and her dad got into a fight after Martin, an RCMP officer, caught her sneaking out one night. The next morning she pretended to go to school, but instead packed her clothes and Snowflake her teddy bear in a backpack, wrote a note for her mother, and ran away to Delta.
Judy quickly discovered that when a teen runs away and refuses to come home, there is little a parent can do. In the end, she struck a bargain with Lindsey: if Lindsey agreed to come home, she could live in temporary foster care, and the family would attend counselling.
A young Lindsey in Delta. Courtesy Judy Peterson.
Foster Home:
Lindsey was placed with a foster family in Royston, a seaside village located across the bay from Comox. The last time Judy spoke with Lindsey was on the Friday before the long weekend, when Lindsey phoned from the foster home. “I told her how much I loved her and that I missed her.” She sounded fine, but even though it had only been a few days, she was already unhappy in the new home. “And, I thought, ‘Perfect,’ because I wanted her to come home,” says Judy. “It never occurred to me that being out there now, she was in more danger because she was going to hitchhike into town.”
The Nicholls went away for the long weekend. When they arrived back, Judy phoned the foster home and was shocked to learn that Lindsey had not been seen since the previous day, and nobody had reported her missing. Judy phoned the police.
Because Lindsey had run away three months before and had threatened to do so again, police were sure that she’d headed back to Delta. But Judy didn’t think so. “They treated her as a runaway because she had run away before, and there was almost nothing done initially.”
Judy Peterson and Kim Nicholls, Comox Valley, July 2018. Erin Haluschak photo, Black Press Media.
Over the last three decades, police have had received more than 400 tips, administered 15 polygraph examinations, and interviewed over 100 people.
Lindsey’s file is categorized as “missing, foul play suspected.”
If you have any information about Lindsey Nicholl’s disappearance, please call the Comox Valley RCMP at 250-338-1321 or Crime Stoppers 1-800-222-8477.
Show Notes:
Music: Andreas Schuld ‘Waiting for You’
Introand voiceover: Mark Dunn
Buy me a coffee promo: McBride Communications and Media
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?
Muriel Lindsay, 40 recently beat cancer and she was about to move into a new apartment overlooking Vancouver’s English Bay. But before she could finish packing, she was found beaten to death in her room in a West End boarding house.
1120 Comox Street, where Muriel was murdered in 1996. Eve Lazarus photo, 2015
Background:
Muriel grew up with her brother Kent in the exclusive British Properties area of West Vancouver. Her father, Eric Lindsay, was a celebrity photographer with the Vancouver Sun and her mother Marjorie stayed home to look after the family. When Muriel was 12, Eric took a job with CBC’s the National and the family moved to Toronto. Soon after they separated, Marjorie and Kent moved back to Vancouver, and Muriel’s mental health started to unravel.
Kent, Marjorie, Muriel and Eric Lindsay at home in West Vancouver, 1950s. Courtesy Kent LIndsay
Bizarre letters:
Muriel eventually followed her mother back to B.C., and in 1983, moved into a room in a heritage house in the West End’s Mole Hill, where she stayed for the next 13 years. In the months before her death, she received bizarre anonymous letters. One of her much-loved cats was taken and a note was slipped under her door saying she owed a vet bill. Magazines and newspaper subscriptions were taken out in her name using her credit card, and she was being harassed by two men who lived in her rooming house.
Part of a chilling letter Muriel sent to her father shortly before her murder. Courtesy Kent Lindsay
Muriel died on February 16, 1996 from blows to her head and larynx. She had just finished her shift at Canada Post. Her mother found her body the next day.
A young Muriel Lindsay, courtesy Kent Lindsay
Constable Richard Levis:
Eight decades before Muriel’s murder, her great-grandfather Richard Levis, a 28-year-old Vancouver police officer, was shot and killed while hunting down a criminal known as “Mickey the Dago.” His wife Estelle was left to raise their three children—Cyril, Carroll and May (Muriel’s grandmother)—all under the age of five. Estelle was hired as a matron in the women’s division of the Vancouver Police Department and worked there until 1919.
Muriel Lindsay waiting for cancer treatment at St. Paul’s Hospital ca.1990s. Photo courtesy Kent Lindsay
SHOW NOTES
If you have any information about these murders please call Vancouver Police Department at 604-717-3321, or if you wish to remain anonymous, call crime stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or visit the website solvecrime.ca
For my last post of the year, I’ve chosen the top 10 Facebook group pages. This list is highly subjective and based on a loose criteria—they have to deal with some aspect of the history of Greater Vancouver or Victoria, and you have to be able to see the posts without having to join (I’m intrigued by East Vancouver Selfies and Lululemon Barter Wars, but fear either rejection or disappointment).
I’m addicted to this page. I love that people are scanning photos from the family album and posting everything from Mum and Dad outside some long-lost house, to old posters, postcards and clubs. I also love the comments—it’s like time travel. Administrator and North Van resident Michael Arnold started the page about six years ago, and says half his members are ex pats from all over wanting to reconnect with Vancouver. The rest are locals, and a mixture of those who have moved to the ‘burbs and don’t make it into the city too often.
Glen Mofford has amazing knowledge of old pubs and their artifacts. I’m not sure if his recent book Aqua Vitae came out of this page or the page came out of the book, but worth checking out both.
Full disclosure, this is my page, and it evolved from my book Cold Case Vancouver. I wanted to recognize victims of unsolved murders and give people a place to talk about their loved ones; maybe even solve a murder. That hasn’t happened yet, but you never know.
