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.
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.”
