In August 1994, Nick and Lisa Masee disappeared from their North Vancouver home. Their case is with the RCMP, filed as missing persons with suspicious circumstances. Are they intentionally missing or murdered? You decide.
I worked for the Vancouver Stock Exchange in the late 1980s—the same time that Forbes Magazine published a cover story calling it the “Scam Capital of the World.” While I never met Nick Masee, the mysterious disappearance of he and his wife Lisa in August 1994 has always intrigued me. This podcast is from a chapter in Cold Case Vancouver: The City’s Most Baffling Unsolved Murders
Before Nick Masee retired from his job as head of private banking with the Bank of Montreal, he worked for some of the Vancouver Stock Exchange’s most colourful stock promoters, regularly socializing with high-rollers such as Murray Pezim, Harry Moll, Nelson Skalbania and Herb Capozzi.
Lavish Lifestyle:
Nick ate with them at Hy’s, Il Giardino and Chardonnays. He went on weekend fishing trips to Sonora Lodge. He flew in private jets to boxing matches in Las Vegas, and stayed at their Scottsdale mansions. He was a guest at one of Pezim’s weddings on a luxury yacht.
But while the Masees may have associated with the rich and powerful, they were living way beyond their means.
As a banker, Nick pulled in around $85,000 a year. Their modest North Vancouver home was heavily mortgaged and they owed $70,000 on their credit cards, Lisa worked at a hair salon six days a week and took private clients in their home. Unlike their jet-setting contemporaries, Nick and Lisa’s getaway was a time-share in Maui.
Nick was banking that his new venture as a director of a sketchy VSE start-up called Turbodyne Technologies would propel him into the big leagues.
Dead or alive?
Nick and Lisa Masee went missing from their home in 1994. Their case is with the North Vancouver RCMP and listed as missing with suspicious circumstances. In 2019, Nick’s two children Nick Junior and Tanya doubled the reward money to $50,000 for any information that could help solve the mystery of their father’s disappearance or murder.
“It’s a head scratcher,” Corporal Gord Reid told me. “I’ve got missing people that I assume are murdered because they are not the kind of people who would be able to disappear. But Masee could. He was a sophisticated guy. They both had passports from other countries, they had lived around the world, he understood international banking, and they had some money stashed aside.”
For more about this case and other unsolved murders and mysteries in B.C. join the Facebook group page Cold Case Canada
SHOW NOTES:
If you have any information about these murders please call North Vancouver RCMP at 604-985-3311, or if you wish to remain anonymous, call crime stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or visit the website solvecrime.ca
Music: Keep on Going by thedarkpiano.com
Intro: Mark Dunn
Spider: Voiced by Max the cat
Interview: Corporal Gord Reid, North Vancouver RCMP
PSA: Metro Vancouver Crime Stoppers
Promo: Blood, Sweat, and Fear: the story of Inspector Vance, a true crime podcast
With special thanks to CTV news for permission to use the audio from a story from August 2019
© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.
8 comments on “Missing or Murdered? The Mysterious Disappearance of Nick and Lisa Masee”
Eve, very good podcast. Time passes, people pass, and I dont think we will every know the truth about what happened. This is bad news for the family who will probably never know what happened.
Thanks so much Brad! Really appreciate you listening.
Oh I remember them well from IL Giardino. A sad fact of this town is “ trying to keep up with the Harold A. Jones” . If alive most likely Costa Rica with its .00358 exchange rate.
Harry Moll! When I worked at Christines on Blackcomb( for the uninformed then one of the best places to eat with Saide a chef from the Thai royal kitchens and had a view of Body Bag Bowl 7tg Heaven addition. We would hear the ohhs and look to see if thet survived or its the Chopper Coroner for them. Mouton Rothschild on the wine list where one h. ) he was a regular giving slips of paper with stock tips. Never did they lose money.
I believe hes at Diva in the Met as hang out. Yes the Stock Jokers. Immortalized in a wall painting in a bar inside the former Exchange. The poor kids.
Very interesting! I think this one is beyond solving … no bodies is so strange!
Thanks so much for additional info on this story, Eve. You’ve provided some clues in trying to imagine who would benefit from their deaths/disappearances. My only guess as to why they would have also murdered Lisa is that perhaps, in Nick’s fear for his life, he tried to ensure she was nearly always by his side…so “they” (or that Hit Man guy….had forgotten all about the rumours about him!!) eventually had to get rid of both of them. The VSE has always been a very sleazy place…and yet some of the old Rounders (as we called them) of that era are still alive!
My ILWU husband took me in 89 to his working buddy’s house on Marine Drive in Vancouver, Murry Pezim bought it for a wedding present let them use his Yacht for their honeymoon, she was his assistant, dressed him,did everything. I also knew Fat Robinson from my Dad’s old school friends the Palmer brothers, they were involved in the biggest heroin connection in Vancouver, at the Waldorf Hotel, including the Montreal Mafia. Two or 3 books about it the Polynesian Excursions etc. My GF at West Georgia Medical in Xray where I worked was also doing part time at VGH,told ne she walked in when the two Suckly Brothers were trying to murder Freddy Ford, because the bombed car didn’t do the job previously. I’m told there’s many bo*dys up Seymour Mountain. Crazy stuff.My ILWU husband was Aaron Pritchetts father,he’s a Country and Western singer from Langley, he use to do line dancing there, went to Nashville in 92,and still going strong,his Dad passed two yrs ago.
I remember their disappearance , 1994 as to what and where????? very interesting story
This makes me wonder if some of the unidentified body parts that have regularly washed up on beaches might be traced back with DNA.