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?
This episode is based on a chapter from my book Cold Case Vancouver: the city’s most baffling unsolved murders
Muriel:
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
Sponsored by Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours.
Music: Andreas Schuld – ‘Waiting for You’ and break music ‘Growl of Some Young Pups’
Intro: Mark Dunn
Voiceovers: Mark Dunn, Megan Dunn
Buy me a coffee promo: McBride Communications and Media
Sources:
- Cold Case Vancouver: The City’s Most Baffling Unsolved Murders, Eve Lazarus, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2015
- Coroner’s Inquest
- Vital Statistics (Death Registration)
- Vancouver Sun: February 20, 1996, February 9, 1997, February 3, 2006
- Vancouver Police Museum and Archives
- Annual Report of the Vancouver Police Department 1915
- Interviews with family and friends
Promo: Blood, Sweat and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance
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