On June 26, 1969, 16-year-old Philip Porter left his home in Townsite, Kimberley to run some errands for his mother. The son of the Cominco boss never came home. A ransom note demanding $100,000 for his safe return arrived instead.
In the late 1960s, Kimberley was a one-company town located in the East Kootenays. The population was around 7,000, and most worked in Cominco’s iron and fertilizer plants or in the Sullivan mine—the biggest lead-zinc mine in the world. Robin Porter was the superintendent of Cominco, and he was in the process of moving his family to Trail, where he would take over an even more impressive role heading up the multi-million dollar Fording Coal Company.
Townsite:
The Porters lived in a large white company house that sat on four acres on Giegerich Road in Townsite, a short walk through a wooded area away from the town centre. At around 1:00 pm on June 26, 1969, Patricia asked Philip to go to the grocery store to pick up some supplies and to collect her airline ticket from the travel agency. Philip was 16 and had an intellectual disability, and when he hadn’t returned by 5:00 pm, Patricia was worried. She called around to his friends to see if he had stopped by for a visit, though it was out of character for Philip not to call if he was going to be even a little bit late. She phoned the police to report him missing and they immediately put out a missing persons bulletin on the local radio station.
Ransom Note:
While police were searching for Philip, Patricia received a strange phone call from a man demanding $100,000 for the safe return of her son. He talked very slowly and she thought he was either drunk or foreign. He said if she told police, her son was dead. He’d be in touch with further instructions.
The search for Philip continued into the next day, with 1,500 volunteers, an RCMP plane, and a tracking dog. It was one of the largest ground and air searches seen in the Interior.
The search for Philip:
“Kimberley was a hundred-year-old mining town, and there are deep tunnels and shafts that can be 1,140 feet deep,” retired Sgt. Fred Bodnaruk told me. “A lot of the locals believe if you want to get rid of somebody, you throw them down a mine shaft. We went through all of them with a camera and a probe.”
And then on July 17, three weeks after Philip was last seen, the Porters received a ransom note in the mail. It was typed on cheap paper in capital letters without punctuation or sentence breaks, like a telegram. It was signed “The Syndicate.”
BOY ALIVE WELL MISSES MOTHER SMARTEN UP IF YOU WANT HIM BACK ALIVE YOU WERE TOLD NOT TO CALL COPS JUNE 26 DUMB PLAY YOUR PART FOLLOW INSTRUCTIONS EXACTLY OR YOU WILL NEVER SEE HIM AGAIN TRUST US AS NO ONE WILL EVER FIND HIM …
Robin raised the $100,000 and waited for the next note to arrive. It came a week later with instructions on where to leave the money. Police had staked out the area and were able to arrest the extortionist—a 52-year-old disgruntled Cominco employee.
There was no trace of Philip.
SHOW NOTES:
Sponsors: Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours and Erin Hakin Jewellery
Music: Andreas Schuld ‘Waiting for You’
Intro : Mark Dunn
Voiceovers: Mark Dunn and Megan Dunn
Interviews: Faye Greenaway; retired RCMP Sgt. Fred Bodnaruk
Buy me a coffee promo: McBride Communications and Media
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Source: Cold Case BC: The Stories Behind the Province’s Most Intriguing Murder and Missing Persons Cases
With thanks to Marie Stang, Kimberley Heritage Museum and the Larix Hotel where we stayed in Kimberley having no idea when I booked it that it was the former headquarters for Cominco and one of the last places Philip was seen before he disappeared.
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