In 1974, Debbie and Vicky Roe were living their dream. The sister act—Debbie was 22 and Vicky, 17 – had just returned from Nashville where they’d cut a country-and-western album called Soft, Sweet and Country.
“We’d been singing together professionally for about four or five years,” Vicky told me. “We used to do talent contests around town, and we used to sing at the nightclubs before we could legally get in.”
Story from Cold Case Vancouver: The City’s Most Baffling Unsolved Murders
A local songwriter and family friend sent a demo tape to Cherish Records. The record label liked the demo, and Debbie and Vicky flew to Nashville to record an album. Their back-up musicians included some of the best talent in country music at the time—Bobbe Seymour, Steve Gibson, Buddy Emmons, and Charlie McCoy.
Body found:
And then on February 22, 1975 the dream came crashing down. A family out for a walk in a rural area of Langley, BC found Debbie’s body just off a road. She had been beaten, strangled, and left to drown in six inches of water. Coroner Doug Jack described the killing as “an enraged frustrated attack.”
Debbie lived in Langley and worked as a cocktail waitress at the OK Corral in New Westminster, a bar that featured live country music. On the night that she died, Debbie left to drive home around 2:00 a.m. The next day her blue Chevrolet Nova was found parked and locked on a desolate section of the Fraser Highway called Fry’s Corner. Her body was found seven kilometres away.
Several Suspects:
The family won’t get closure until Debbie’s murder is solved. The worst part, they say, is always wondering who did it. They’ve wondered about an older family friend who was infatuated with Debbie. They wondered if it was a current or an old boyfriend. They wondered if it was a stranger who followed Debbie from the bar. They even wondered if it was one of the two police officers that had sometimes stopped Debbie on her way home to ask her out.
“If they ever had any suspects, they never told us,” Marianne Roe, Debbie’s mother told me.
SHOW NOTES
If you have any information about Debbie’s murder, please call Langley RCMP at (604) 532-3200, or if you wish to remain anonymous, call crime stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or visit solvecrime.ca
Sponsor: Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours
Intro: Mark Dunn
Theme music: Andreas Schuld Waiting for You & Growl of Some Young Pups
Interviews: Aaron Chapman, historian and author, Kym Neumann and Tony Medway
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
Vancouver After Dark: The Wild History of a City’s Nightlife, Aaron Chapman, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2019
Promo: Blood, Sweat and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance
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