Louise Wise, 17 was stabbed to death in her home on Lillooet Street in East Vancouver. Two years later 19-year-old Geraldine Forster, a BCIT student was shot four times and killed coming home from the bus stop at Renfrew and Granville Highway. Geraldine’s murder was eventually solved, Louise’s was not.
This podcast is from a chapter in Cold Case Vancouver: The City’s Most Baffling Unsolved Murders and includes interviews with Louise’s friends and two homicide detectives who reopened the case in 1996.
Louise Wise, 17:
Louise Wise turned 17 the week before she was murdered. A Grade 11 student at Windermere Secondary, Louise was the oldest of four children and lived on Lillooet Street in East Vancouver. Her father, Jack Wise, was a constable with the Vancouver Police Department.
A photo that ran in the newspapers shows a serious looking girl with brown hair pulled back off a face hidden behind large round dark-framed glasses.
Louise’s friends knew her as a friendly, hard-working, and deeply religious girl who was a member of the Future Nurses Club, participated in Bible study class, and volunteered at the hospital.
Summer job as flower girl:
In the summer of 1971, Louise was hired as a flower girl for H & T Florists and became one of the ubiquitous teens stationed with flower carts outside liquor stores and hospitals. Louise had convinced her parents to let her stay at home by herself while they took the younger children on a family vacation to Birch Bay, just south of White Rock in Washington state.
The Wises left for their holiday on Saturday, July 7, and Louise worked a 1:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. shift outside the Kingsgate liquor store at Broadway and Main Street.
The following day, Louise became one of the 337 unsolved murders that the Vancouver Police Department has on its books dating between 1970 and 2015.
Geraldine Forster, 19:
A little less than two years after Louise was raped and murdered, 19-year-old Geraldine Forster was shot four times at Renfrew Street and Grandview Highway. She was returning home after walking her friend to the bus stop. She was shot with an RCMP-issued .38 calibre Smith and Wesson stolen from the Sechelt home of Constable Wayne Dingle.
Footprints found at the scene indicated that Geraldine had been running along the west side of Renfrew just before she was shot. Investigators thought that her attacker had jumped out from tall grass in a field next to the railway tracks. Possibly, it was an attempted rape that turned to murder when she fled.
From Fort St. John:
Two bullets hit her in the legs from behind as she ran. The other two shots entered the front of her body. One bullet passed through her red nylon jacket and hit her just above the chest, the other hit her in her lower right shoulder.
Geraldine was originally from Fort St. John, but had been boarding with a family on East Fourteenth Avenue for two years while she studied x-ray technology at the B.C. Institute of Technology in Burnaby. She’d recently graduated with honours and was about to complete her training at Vancouver General Hospital.
Her murder appeared to be random and baffled police for the next three years when it was solved because of a lucky break.
Sponsor: Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours
Show Notes:
If you have any information about Louise Wise’s still unsolved murder please call Vancouver Police 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
This episode is sponsored by Forbidden Vancouver Walking Tours. Save 15% off your booking by using the code COLDCASE
Intro: Mark Dunn
Music: Bittersweet by Myuu, The Dark Piano
Promo: Blood, Sweat, and Fear: The Story of Inspector Vance
Special Guests:
Retired VPD homicide detectives Brian Ball and Brian Honeybourn, Gail Harder and Diane Fisher.
Sources:
Lazarus, Eve. Cold Case Vancouver: the city’s most bizarre unsolved murders, Arsenal Pulp Press, 2015.
© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.