Pam Neufeld runs a YouTube channel called Missing in BC. She came across a photo of Sharon McKenzie-Cramond on the Vancouver Police Department website Vancouver Missing Persons and was surprised when she searched for information and found nothing. Pam did a story on her channel in an attempt to get more information and connected with Sharon’s older brother Patrick Cramond, a now retired UBC instructor and engineer.
I talked to Patrick on the phone today to try and find out more about his sister, who was 38 at the time of her disappearance.
Sharon, Patrick told me, was a charming and stunningly beautiful woman who struggled with alcohol and prescription drug dependency and had left an abusive marriage shortly before she vanished.
Her husband, he says, was violent and narcissistic.
Sharon was close to her mother and when she hadn’t called in a few weeks, the family was concerned. Patrick went to the police station and reported her missing.
There are no newspaper reports of Sharon’s disappearance, no missing posters, and no evidence that the police investigated her disappearance at the time. Patrick says the only suspect was her husband and she had filed a domestic violence report with police on at least one occasion.
I asked Patrick how he would like his sister remembered. “I would want her remembered truthfully,” he said. “There is a fair amount of guilt on my part, and I have had to deal with that. For contributing to her problems and not protecting her when I could have in the way I should have.”
Patrick says their father was a strict disciplinarian and he was out of the house at sixteen, Sharon at seventeen. He went on to university, Sharon became a flight attendant with Pacific Western Airlines when she was twenty-one. He believes that long overseas shifts may have started her dependency on sleeping pills and pills to help wake up.
Patrick says that while he would like to see his sister’s remains found and her murderer convicted, he acknowledges that after 43 years, this is unlikely to happen.
If you have any information on Sharon’s disappearance, please contact the Vancouver Police Department’s Missing Person Unit at 604-717-2530.
- Every six days a woman is killed by her partner in Canada
- Each year, over 40,000 arrests result from domestic violence, that’s about 12% of all violent crime in Canada. Since only 22% of all incidents are reported to the police, the real number is much higher.
- Indigenous women are 3.5 times more likely to be victims of violence compared to other women.
- About 25% of all women who are murdered by their spouse have recently left the relationship.
- The facts about gender-based violence
If you are in an abusive relationship contact:
- Ending Violence
- VictimLinkBC 1-800-563-0808 – open 24 hours a day
- Find Family Violence Resources in your area
© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.