john F.C.B. Vance

S5 E49 Murder at Swan Lake

by Eve Lazarus on April 2, 2025

In January 1943, fifteen-year-old Molly Justice, took the 5:50 pm bus from her job in Victoria, BC to her home near Swan Lake. Because war-time dim-out regulations were in force, there was no lighting along the streets, and that may be why Molly decided to take the short cut home along the unlit tracks by Swan Lake, shaving off almost half-a-kilometre from her walk.

Her body was found a few hours later lying face down in the snow. She had been stabbed more than 20 times and hit on the head with a rock.

What followed was one of the most seriously botched police investigations of the century.

An innocent man was put on trial, a teenage rapist was ignored, evidence was lost, and rumours of a conspiracy that reached right up to the Attorney General’s office wouldn’t be investigated until more than 50 years after the murder.

Ironically, the new headquarters for the Saanich Police Department was built right next door to Molly’s crime scene in the 1960s. It serves as a reminder that this unsolved murder remains officially open, partially solved and most likely, permanently sealed.

Copies of my new book, Beneath Dark Waters: The Legacy of the Empress of Ireland Shipwreck, are available through my publisher Arsenal Pulp Press, or from any independent bookstore across Canada

Show Notes:

Sponsor: Erin Hakin Jewellery

Music: Andreas Schuld ‘Waiting for You’

Intro: Mark Dunn

Interview: Constable Graham Walker, Saanich Police Department; T.W. Paterson, historian and author.

Sources:

Vital Statistics

Coroner’s Inquest for Molly Justice, BC Archives

The personal files of Inspector John F.C.B. Vance.

Newspapers: Daily Colonist, Province, Vancouver Sun

Tags Ada Duke, Graham Walker, john F.C.B. Vance, Molly Justice, T.W. Paterson

Episode 02: The Murder Factory

by Eve Lazarus on April 5, 2019

The murder of Naokichi Watanabe in 1931 exposed an insurance scam, the murder of up to 20 people, a Japanese hitman, and was eventually linked to an assassination ring operating out of a house on East Cordova Street, Vancouver.

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). Vance was one of the first forensic scientists in North America, and during his 42-year-career, helped to solve some of the most sensational murders of the 20th Century. Each episode focuses on one of those cases.

Japantown, Vancouver in 1928 showing the CPR tracks where Watanabe’s body was discovered behind the American Can Company. Courtesy VPL 4269

Credits:

Intro and outro music: Duke Ellington’s St. Louie Toodle
Background track created by Nico Vettese www.wetalkofdreams.com
Intro and voice overs: Mark Dunn

“The Murder Factory” on East Cordova Street, Vancouver. Eve Lazarus photo, 2016

Source materials:

Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance, Vancouver’s First Forensic Investigator, by Eve Lazarus (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2017)
Nikkei National Museum
Stories of My People: A Japanese Canadian Journal, by Roy Ito (Nisei Veterans Association, 1994)
Various clippings from the Vancouver Sun, Province, Daily Colonist, Globe and Mail, Vancouver News Herald
The Inquest into the death of Naokichi Watanabe
The personal files of John F.C.B. Vance located in a grandson’s garage on Gabriola Island in July 2016.

Tags 629 East Cordova Street, American Can Company, john F.C.B. Vance, Naokichi Watanabe

May 1, 1907: A Trip Across Vancouver

by Eve Lazarus on August 20, 2016

I’m writing a book about John F.C.B. Vance, the first forensic scientist in Vancouver, and this week I wrote about his first day of work as the new City Analyst. My book is non-fiction, but sometimes you need some creative license. My challenge was to get to get Vance from his house in Yaletown to Market Hall, a lovely long-gone gothic building on Westminster (Main Street) which doubled as City Hall.

You can read all about Inspector Vance, the murders that he helped to solve, and the history that he passed through in Blood, Sweat, and Fear.

Watch the book trailer here

Main and Hastings Street — Market Hall, 1928 CVA 1376.88

Vance takes the streetcar:

I decided that Vance would take the streetcar. I went to Vancouver Archives website, found a map of 1907, blew up the sections of downtown Vancouver, ran them off, taped them together and stuck them on my wall.

Map 191 1907

Next I played City Reflections. William Harbeck shot the earliest known surviving footage of Vancouver that year by mounting a hand-cranked camera to the front of a streetcar as it rattled through downtown and the West End. Just five years later poor William was dead, a victim of the Titanic, and the film disappeared for decades until it turned up in the home of an Australian film buff who thought he was looking at Hobart, Tasmania.

In 2007, the Vancouver Historical Society reshot the same route and put the two side by side.

You can watch the film here.

The CPR Station dominated the foot of Granville in this 1907 William Harbeck film

Missing heritage:

While it was fascinating to see what’s changed, I was surprised at how much has stayed the same. Back then, as now, construction was everywhere, on every block. The home of the new post office (Sinclair Centre) was going up at Hastings and Granville, as was Fire Hall No. 2 on East Cordova, and the recently defunct Pantages Theatre would soon open as a 1,200 seat vaudeville theatre. Slogans on banners shouted out the benefits of development. As today, Vancouver was attracting investment and visitors from around the world, and property prices were soaring.

Sinclair Centre — Post Office, 1910 CVA Str N117.1

The Vancouver Opera House and the second Hotel Vancouver are long gone, as is the CPR Station, a massive chateau-style building that dominated the foot of Granville Street. But Spencer’s Department store (now SFU) remains, as do several of the buildings between Richards and Homer. The former Royal Bank of Canada is now the film production campus of the Vancouver Film School, the Flack Block built in 1898 from proceeds from the Klondike is still east of Cambie, and what used to be the Central School, is now part of Vancouver Community College. Woods Hotel, just a year old when the film was shot, is now the Pennsylvania Hotel.

Hotel Pennsylvania, 412 Carrall Street, 1931 CVA 99-3895

Three daily newspapers:

In 1907, the Province was one of three daily newspapers. An ad that year boasted that it was read in 90 percent of Vancouver homes, and sold for five cents.

How those times have changed.

I’m not sure how long in real time it would have taken Vance to get to work that day, but it took me most of the week to get him there on paper.

Vancouver Opera House, 765 Granville Street — The Vancouver Opera House at Granville and Georgia in 1891. CVA Bu P509

Tags Central School, City Reflections, CPR Station, Daily Province, Fire Hall No. 2, Flack Block, john F.C.B. Vance, Market Hall, Pantages Theatre, Pennsylvania Hotel, Second Hotel Vancouver, Sinclair Centre, Vancouver City Hall, William Harbeck, Woods Hotel

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