Tag Archives: Serial Killer

THE BOSTON STRANGLER—WAS IT REALLY ALBERT DESALVO?

The Boston Strangler was America’s first modern serial killer case. From June 1962 until January 1964, someone terrorized the Greater Boston area of Massachusetts with thirteen sexually motivated murders. Single women of all ages were raped, sadistically brutalized, and strangled to death inside their apartments. Apparently, they voluntarily let their killer in.

The slaying string suddenly stopped. No one was apprehended, charged, or convicted. For years, the Boston Strangler serial murders remained unsolved. The files—whatever was left of them—sat shelved with other cold cases. Day-by-day, the trail got icier. That’s until modern forensic science revisited the evidence using cutting-edge, DNA genotyping.

Authorities long debated whether Albert DeSalvo was the Boston Strangler. He was a serial sexual predator and certainly capable of strangling women while raping them. In fact, Albert DeSalvo admitted being the Strangler and claimed responsibility for the thirteen cases, plus other homicides. But, DeSalvo also recanted his confession, blamed others and many pieces implicating him didn’t fit.

Boston area detectives didn’t have Albert DeSalvo on their radar during the early investigation. It wasn’t until late 1965 that DeSalvo surfaced after making a jail-house confession to a cellmate who happened to be represented by high-profile lawyer F. Lee Bailey. Bailey took on DeSalvo’s case and tried to broker a deal with Boston Police and the D.A. It was having Albert DeSalvo ruled criminally insane so he could move from the harsh penitentiary to a comfortable hospital.

The police were very cautious about credibility in DeSalvo’s confession. There was absolutely no physical evidence—at the time—to connect Albert DeSalvo to any of the Strangler scenes. DeSalvo was well known for exaggerating and fabricating stories. Further, DeSalvo seemed wrong about some Strangler scene key facts such as times, mechanisms of death and various evidence points. It seemed to investigators that DeSalvo could have got his information from the news, made some up, or possibly heard it in jail from the real killer.

Albert DeSalvo was written off as a braggart and a pathological attention seeker. He was never charged for the Boston Strangler murders and died in prison in 1973 after being shanked by fellow inmates. The Strangler case sat dormant until 2013 when the Boston PD got special cold case funding from the National Justice Institute. With it, they assembled a team and applied DNA analysis from questioned male biological evidence retrieved at one Strangler death scene and compared it with known DNA extracted from DeSalvo’s exhumed body. The results finally settled the question, “The Boston Strangler—Was it really Albert DeSalvo?”

Boston Strangler Case History

The killings associated with the Boston Strangler serial murder case happened over a 19-month period from the summer of 1962 until the winter of 1964. All victims were females alone in apartments who were killed by manual or ligature strangulation. Some were also stabbed. All were sexually violated in some manner, and most had their nylon stockings cinched around their necks. However, there were marked differences in modus operandi (MO) between the killings. There was also a huge age range. The youngest Strangler-attributed victim was 19. The oldest was 85. Initially, the Strangler case was called the “Silk Stocking Murders”. This label changed when the Boston Sunday Herald ran the July 8, 1962, headline “Mad Strangler Kills Four Women in Boston” after the fourth victim was found. Then, a panic surge swept Boston causing women to arm themselves, buy guard dogs, and rig alarms in their homes.

The print, radio, and TV media industry didn’t help calm peoples’ fears. They sensationalized the Boston Strangler case as Boston’s crime of the century. Interest intensified as the Strangler’s body count grew. Through good investigative journalism and helpful leaks from police officers, much of the Strangler key-fact evidence got published.

Normally, this critical information—only known to the true killer and the principal investigators—would be held back in strictest confidence. Not so with many of the individual Strangler murders. Descriptions of exact ligatures, body posings in lurid sexual positions, and notes allegedly left by the killer appeared in newspapers and on the air.

Another challenge was the multi-jurisdictional overlap in the Greater Boston police departments. Strangler victims surfaced in Cambridge, Salem, Lynn, and Lawrence as well as central Boston. This was the sixties and way before modern communication links in law enforcement. The media had better information channels than the cops and were making case links that seasoned detectives doubted.

The sixties weren’t sophisticated times as forensics and informatics go. But the Boston detectives were no strangers to murders and were well-equipped with gut sense. The wide gap in victim ages, race, social class, crime scene modus operandi and event spacing puzzled the initial investigators. There were so many different patterns that it was hard to believe that, behaviorally, the crimes were committed by one person.

Many officers still believe that today. They feel that more than one killer was at work in the Boston area during that period and to seasoned officers, that makes sense. However, there was one obvious common denominator in all thirteen murders. Not a single scene had any sign of forced entry. Somehow, the killer had to have been let in.

The Boston Strangler Victims

Initially, the Boston Strangler victim list held fifteen names. After a time, two cases were solved and found to be independent perpetrators. The police also proved these assailants were not connected to the unsolved cases they cautiously suspected were the Strangler’s work. Here is the list of victims historically associated with the Boston Strangler.

  1. Anna Slesers – age 56. Found: June 14, 1962, at 77 Gainsborough St., Back Bay, Boston MA. MO: Sexually assaulted with unspecified foreign object. Non-fatally strangled with a belt then fatally strangled with bathrobe cord tied in a bow around neck.
  2. Mary Mullen – age 85. Found: June 28, 1962, at 1435 Commonwealth Ave., Boston MA. MO: Sexual assault in progress but died of heart attack during strangulation attempt.
  3. Nina Nichols – age 68. Found: June 30, 1962, at 1940 Commonwealth Ave., Boston MA. MO: Sexually assaulted with a wine bottle. Fatal ligature strangulation with one nylon stocking. Two more postmortem nylon stockings tied around neck in a bow.
  4. Helen Blake – age 65. Found: June 30, 1962, at 73 Newhall St., Lynn MA. MO: Raped and fatally strangled with nylon stockings. Another nylon and bra tied around neck postmortem.
  5. Ida Irga – age 75. Found: August 19, 1962, at 7 Grove St., Beacon Hill, Boston MA. MO: Raped and manually strangled. Pillowcase around neck postmortem.
  6. Jane Sullivan – age 67. Found: August 21, 1962, at 435 Columbia Rd., Dorchester, South Boston, MA. MO: Raped and fatally strangled with nylon stockings.
  7. Sophie Clark – age 20. Found: December 5, 1962, at 315 Huntington Ave., Back Bay, Boston MA. MO: Raped and fatally strangled with nylon stockings. Petticoat wrapped around neck postmortem.
  8. Patricia Bissette – age 23. Found: December 31, 1962, at 515 Park Drive, Back Bay, Boston MA. MO: Raped and fatally strangled with interwoven nylon stockings. Blouse also tied around neck postmortem.
  9. Mary Brown – age 69. Found: March 6, 1963, at 319 Park Ave., Lawrence MA. MO: Raped, bludgeoned with a pipe, stabbed in breasts with fork, and manually strangled. No ligature involved.
  10. Beverly Samans – age 23. Found: May 6, 1963, at 4 University Rd., Cambridge MA. MO: Raped, stabbed four times in neck, twenty-two times in torso. Two scarves and one nylon stocking tied around neck postmortem.
  11. Evelyn Corben – age 58. Found: September 6, 1963, at 224 Lafayette St., Salem MA. MO: Raped, forced to perform oral sex and fatally strangled with two nylon stockings.
  12. Joann Graff – age 23. Found: November 23, 1963, at 54 Essex St., Lawrence MA. MO: Raped, beaten and fatally strangled with nylon stockings. Black leotard wrapped around neck postmortem.
  13. Mary Sullivan – age 19. Found January 4, 1964, at 44-A Charles St., Boston MA. MO: Sexually assaulted with broom handle, forced to perform oral sex, fatally strangled with nylon stocking. Two scarves tied around neck postmortem. Posed on bed with back against wall, legs spread, and hand-written sign placed at feet reading “Happy New Year”.

How Albert DeSalvo Surfaced

Hindsight is a marvelous thing. Many police and forensic investigators wish they were issued it when they started their careers. Hindsight may be 20/20, but that’s not the real world in active, fluid police and forensic worlds.

Analyzing modus operandi, or method of operation, is also a marvelous thing. In hindsight, the Boston Strangler’s MOs appear glaringly obvious. But it’s just not that clear for field investigators on the ground. These professionals had to do the best with what they had at the time. Usually that’s a name and they didn’t have Albert DeSalvo’s as a murder suspect.

Looking back, Albert DeSalvo was proficiently active across the crime spectrum. DeSalvo was a con-man duping people on scams. He boosted cars and broke into businesses. DeSalvo dealt drugs and fenced goods. But what Albert DeSalvo was really good at was scamming innocent people into letting him enter their homes.

Before the Boston Strangler case started, Boston police were baffled by sexual predators called the “Measuring Man” and the “Green Man”. They appeared to be two different entities because of two different MOs. Both behaviors were far from how the Boston Strangler operated.

The Measuring Man started his Boston business in 1960. He was a clean, well-dressed and cheery man who randomly appeared at single ladies apartment doors, confidently portraying himself as a modeling agency rep. The ruse was the lady had been recommended by her anonymous friend to be a model. The Measuring Man was asked in, took critical bust, waist and hip sizes and was never seen again.

The Green Man was more aggressive. He appeared at single women’s apartments dressed in green work clothes. His ruse was repairs, and he was let in to do his job. That turned out to be raping women but leaving them alive. Most gave a very good description, and one victim later led the police to Albert DeSalvo.

Boston police arrested Albert DeSalvo for the Green Man rapes on October 27, 1964. This was eight months after the last Boston Strangler murder. Based on DeSalvos description and distinct Green Man MO, they charged him with multiple counts of rape and related sexual assaults. DeSalvo was held in custody and remanded for a psychiatric assessment. It was the same place and time holding George Nassar.

Albert DeSalvo Meets George Nassar

George Nassar was a violent Boston area criminal. Nassar was also in psychiatric remand for cold-bloodedly killing a gas station attendant during a robbery. He was already convicted of a previous murder. They wrote the penal code for guys like George Nassar, and he’d already checked off most of the boxes.

Somehow, Albert DeSalvo and George Nassar were cell mates. No one except Nassar knows how the conversation started. He’s still alive, but not talking. However, back then, the increasingly high-profile American defense attorney F. Lee Bailey represented George Nassar. Though Nassar and Bailey—Albert DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler.

F Lee Bailey (front)

This toxic mix of masterful manipulators gave Boston police investigators the willies. Nassar was known as a cruel murderer with sexual deviancy. Bailey was an up-and-coming publicity hound. And Albert DeSalvo had absolutely no priors for anything indicating murder.

Lee Bailey (later famous for clients like Sam Sheppard, Patty Hearst, and OJ Simpson) recorded 50 hours of interviews with DeSalvo producing 20,000 transcript pages. Bailey remained the middleman, and the police never talked to DeSalvo directly.

Boston and other PD detectives carefully analyzed Albert DeSalvo’s statements. They concluded that DeSalvo got may details wrong about the crime scenes, particularly times of death that contradicted autopsy evidence. They also concluded details DeSalvo got right—certain key fact information—could well have come from another capable criminal like George Nassar.

DeSalvo suddenly recanted his confession. Police suspected a ruse between Nassar and DeSalvo to split a reward and get preferred incarceration facilities. DeSalvo was already facing life imprisonment, and Nassar had an appeal shot. Police also mistrusted F. Lee Baily and for a good reason, given Bailey’s track record. Eventually, Bailey goes home. DeSalvo dies. Nassar does life. And the Boston Strangler serial killings go unsolved.

Mary Sullivan and Albert DeSalvo’s Families Join Forces

This might sound like an unlikely joint venture, but the families of Mary Sullivan—13th on the Strangler list—and Albert DeSalvo joined forces to exonerate him. Both families had agendas. DeSalvo’s family wanted his name cleared as the Boston Strangler and Sullivan’s family long suspected a copycat—an associate of Mary Sullivan’s roommate.

The Sullivans and DeSalvos did a private investigation in 2000. The Boston police and other law enforcement agencies weren’t involved. Because both families had next-of-kin and executor powers, they convinced the medical examiner to exhume Mary Sullivan and Albert DeSalvo’s bodies for DNA examination.

Their goal was to isolate the killer’s DNA profile on Mary Sullivan’s remains and a known DNA profile from DeSalvo’s remains. Theoretically, this would link or exonerate the two. This was despite Mary Sullivan decomposing for 36 years and Albert DeSalvo rotting for 27.

They exhumed Mary Sullivan on October 13/14, 2000, from her grave in Hyannis MA. The forensic report of her disinterment and forensic examination is fascinating for the forensically inclined. Foreign DNA signatures developed on what was left of Sullivan’s underwear, pubic hair and head hair. They produced two separate donor profiles through degraded mitochondrial DNA profiling. The question was, “Were they contributed by Albert DeSalvo?”

The DeSalvo family authorized the Medical Examiner to exhume Albert’s body. The private team isolated suitable material and developed a unique DNA profile for Albert DeSalvo. When compared, the foreign DNA on Mary Sullivan clearly wasn’t contributed by Albert DeSalvo. Albert DeSalvo seemed innocent.

For the next 13 years, both families and many others were convinced Albert DeSalvo didn’t murder Mary Sullivan. That wasn’t so with the Boston police who still held the original semen swabs and slides from Mary Sullivan’s autopsy. They were waiting for forensic science to catch up so degraded DNA could be positively processed.

Boston Police Examine Strangler DNA in 2013

Boston and other police departments had no involvement in the 2000 private exhumations and DNA analysis. Neither did the Medical Examiner’s office or District Attorney. They let a privately-funded—and expensive—venture play out and let the private conclusions stand for what they were worth.

The authorities are no fools. They analyzed the private process flaws and waited till technology advanced. By 2013, forensic DNA analysis had three decades under its belt and was far more precise on old, degraded serology swabs and slides like those still retained from Mary Sullivan’s autopsy in 1964.

Two forensic labs worked tandemly to profile mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) from the foreign, or questioned, semen samples taken at Sullivan’s postmortem. They produced a clear biological picture of her killer. Now, the forensic team needed a known sample from suspects.

For years, Albert DeSalvo was the leading Boston Strangler suspect. Certainly, individual investigators had their personal opinions. But the preponderance of evidence pointed to DeSalvo and the overall modus operandi pointed to all thirteen murders being related.

Now the Boston police and the forensic team needed a known sample from their prime suspect—Albert DeSalvo. The problem was, DeSalvo was dead. Unlike the NOK/family loop that allowed exhumation, the cops had to convince a judge to issue a search warrant.

Again, the authorities are no fools. They needed a live link to the dead for an indicative DNA donor. That lay in a living male relative of Albert DeSalvo and, by now, the cooperative ones had dropped off. The closest living DeSalvo was a nephew. He wasn’t cooperating.

So, the Boston PD did a sting where they surveilled the nephew until he discarded a plastic water bottle. From that, the forensics team developed a Y-Chromosome DNA profile that showed that someone from the DeSalvo male lineage was 99.9% likely to be Sullivan’s foreign sperm donor. This powerful biological indicator provided grounds for a second Albert DeSalvo exhumation, authorized by a court warrant. Direct nuclear DNA from Albert DeSalvo was crucial to precisely proving or disproving the connection.

On July 10, 2013, Boston police and their forensic team once again dug up Albert DeSalvo and extracted DNA from his femur and three teeth. Nine days later, the Boston PD chief, the local DA and the Massachusetts Attorney General jointly announced that Albert DeSalvo’s DNA matched Mary Sullivan’s sperm donor with odds of one in 220 billion of being wrong.

It follows that if Albert DeSalvo’s semen DNA match conclusively links him as Sulivan’s killer, then the intricate MO—the nylon stocking nexus—connects DeSalvo to all thirteen killings. That evidence combination is the holy grail in a serial killer investigation, and there is no doubt—no doubt whatsoever—that the Boston Strangler really was Albert DeSalvo.

ROBERT “WILLY” PICKTON — THE PIG-FARMING SERIAL KILLER

From the early 1990s until his arrest in 2002, Robert William Pickton (aka Willy) murdered—to his admission—49 women who he lured from the notorious Downtown East Side of Vancouver, British Columbia, to his pig farm in suburban Port Coquitlam. Willy Pickton’s modus operandi (MO) was to handcuff and rape the women, then shoot or strangle them to death. To dispose of the bodies, he’d butcher them in the same slaughterhouse or abattoir he processed his hogs in, then he fed the severed remains to his live pigs.

The Pickton Case, as it’s well known in Canada, wasn’t just about criminal sensationalism—something as grotesque as feeding human being parts to hungry animals. It’s a sad story of wasted human lives and a misguided mess made by human investigators. Fortunately, some good came from the Pickton Case and the parallel BC Missing Women Investigation / Missing Women Commission of Inquiry. That was better communicative cooperation between police jurisdictions and more efficient file management in missing persons cases.

Before looking at the Pickton Case outcome, let’s review who Willy Pickton was, how he managed to remain criminally active so long, and how he came to now serving the rest of his life in a maximum-security penitentiary.

Robert William Pickton was born on October 24, 1949. He’s now 72. His parents owned the Port Coquitlam pig farm and raised Willy on it, along with his brother, David, and his sister, Linda. Willy Pickton was a reserved boy who dropped out of school at fourteen and remained working the farm after his abusive parents passed on.

Court records show him to be of average intelligence but with a psychological perversion shaped by “Mommy issues”. He was very attached to his mother, regardless of her neglect of him. One notable point in young Pickton’s life was a recorded incident where, as a teen, Willy Pickton bought a calf with his own money and became very enthralled with it.

One day, he returned home to find the calf missing. He asked his mother where the calf was. She told him to go look in the slaughterhouse. He did.

There was his dead, bled, gutted, and skinned pet hanging from a meat hook.

Besides operating a pork processing plant on the farm, Willy and David Pickton ran a side business called “Piggy’s Palace”. They’d registered it as a tax-free, not-for-profit service club that leased the property to community events. Under the surface, it was a free-for-all, illegal booze-can that catered to wild parties filled with underworld characters.

Piggy’s Palace was part of the allure for the Downtown East Side of Vancouver subculture. This drug and disease-infested, civic fester was riddled with addicts and unstables who congregated in a bubble of immediacy and anonymity. These people lived for the moment, not for the day, and were perfect targets for the pig-farming predator.

Pickton would prowl the place—generally boundaried through East Hastings with Powell Street on the north and East Pender on the south. This is right in the heart of Vancouver’s industrial waterfront. It’s only a stone’s throw from the business hub of Downtown Vancouver proper and the uber-wealth of the West End.

Willy Pickton didn’t stand out in the Downtown East Side. He fit right in. At least 49 women thought so as they accepted a ride in his beater truck back to the farm with promises of drugs and cash and fun and an escape from the streets. A permanent escape, as it happened.

A pattern developed in the Downtown East Side. A disproportionate number of women were reported missing. They were all in similar demographics—vulnerable women who lived at-risk due to many societal issues—drug and alcohol addictions, mental illness, homelessness, victims of domestic violence, poverty, poor health, lack of education and skills, unemployable as well as being sex workers and common criminals.

The Downtown East Side law enforcement jurisdiction is owned by the Vancouver Police Department. The VPD noticed their increase in missing women reports and cautiously dealt with the matter by appointing one officer as a missing persons coordinator. Here’s where internal and external politics favored Willy Pickton.

No one in power wanted to say the “SK-Word”—Serial Killer. This would have let an uncorkable genie out of the bottle, and no one in power wanted the workload, budget drain, and social stigma/media pressure of having a serial killer running amuck in the streets of Vancouver.

So, what do good cops do in the face of bad stuff? Downplay it. Better yet, pass it off to another jurisdiction like the Coquitlam Detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police—the RCMP or the Mounties.

Canadian policing structure in BC’s Lower Mainland region is rather convoluted, and this led to why Willy Pickton was hard to identify. Even harder to catch. Especially when competing jurisdictions weren’t playing for the same team.

The RCMP is Canada’s national police force They’re much like the United States FBI where they have federal responsibilities unless called or contracted by state / provincial / municipal (Muni) / civic authorities for help. Vancouver Police Department is its own LE agency, much like NYPD is or how Seattle PD operates independently of the multi-level support services like the DEA, BATF, CIA, ICE, DHLS, and a host of others.

British Columbia’s Greater Vancouver Area (GVA or the Lower Mainland) is a hodgepodge concoction of Mountie and Muni jurisdictions. The Munis have Vancouver, West Vancouver, Delta, Abbotsford, New Westminster, and Port Moody. The Mounties have Burnaby, Surrey, Richmond, North Vancouver, Coquitlam, Langley, Maple Ridge, and Mission. Not to mention Vancouver International Airport (YVR, which is a city of its own) and another sub-city, the University of British Columbia.

Greater Vancouver’s policing is a complex and wide-spread overlay. Vancouver’s Lower Mainland—the Fraser River Valley—population is over 3 million contained in 14,000 square miles for an average density of 214 people per square mile (PSM). That wildly ranges from 25,000 people PSM in Vancouver’s West End to practically zero on the watershed’s mountainsides.

British Columbia’s Lower Mainland has 6 municipal departments and 10 RCMP detachments. In 2002, the Munis and the Mounties had no common communication channel. Independently, they did their own thing.

The cities of Vancouver and Coquitlam-Port Coquitlam are close, distance wise. They’re 16 miles apart, as the crow flies, but Port Coquitlam is about an hour’s easterly drive in Vancouver traffic terms. Women were disappearing in Vancouver, but no bodies were being found. Vancouver women were dying in Port Coquitlam (PoCo), and their bodies weren’t being found either.

The missing persons coordinator at VPD was vigilant in her work. She knew what was going on in the Downtown East Side. But she had no idea what was going down in PoCo. Her list—a computerized spreadsheet of missing person names, dates of disappearances, and personal items associated with each woman—was detailed and available to any LE officer with access to the Canadian Police Information Center (CPIC).

The break came on February 5, 2002, when the RCMP in PoCo got informant information that something crazy was going on at the Pickton pig farm. They executed a search warrant and found items linked to several missing women the VPD coordinator listed on CPIC.

They also found human body parts including detached heads and limbs in Pickton’s freezer. In other places were severed dried skulls. They’d been Saw-zalled in half with mummified hands and feet bound inside.

The Pickton Case became a forensic first. The CSI team spent months processing dried and fresh pig manure looking for microscopic DNA profiles of Pickton’s victims. These women were:

Sereena Abotsway
Mona Lee Wilson
Andrea Joesbury
Brenda Ann Wolfe
Marnie Lee Frey
Georgina Faith Papin
Jacqueline Michelle McDonell
Dianne Rosemary Rock
Heather Kathleen Bottenly
Jennifer Lynn Furminnger
Helen May Hallmark
Patricia Rose Johnson
Heather Choinook
Tanya Holyk
Sherry Irving
Inga Monique Hall
Tiffany Drew
Sarah de Vries
Cynthia Feliks
Angela Rebecca Jardine
Diana Melnick
Debra Lynne Jones
Wendy Crawford
Kerry Koski
Andrea Fay Borthaven
Cara Louise Ellis
Mary Ann Clark
Yvonne Marie Boen
Dawn Teresa Crey

These 29 women are known Pickton victims identified through DNA. There are 13 other human female DNA profiles recovered—mired in pig shit—that haven’t been profiled to once-living women. That’s a victim count of 42. It’s 7 less than Willy Pickton confessed to killing and feeding to his pigs.

—–—

Hindsight is usually in focus. It’s been 20 years since the Pickton investigation. Learning is not just about what went wrong and improving. It’s about changing systems like communication between the Mounties and the Munis.

I was retired by the time the Pickton Case exploded. But I was a Mountie product who worked with first-rate Munis in serious crime investigations, and I have to say a murder cop is a murder cop—no matter what badge you’re wearing. We all wanted the same thing. Solve a case through admissible evidence. Bring closure to the families. And work the best we could through systematic differences.

No one in the Pickton Case investigation deliberately derailed the train. Far from it. The VPD missing persons coordinator saw the SK-Word pattern and reported it upline. Upline responded with, “Where are the bodies?” The coordinator said, “I don’t know. I just know this isn’t right and more women are going to disappear unless we dig into this.” Upline came back with, “Okay. Keep an eye, but don’t say anything to the media. We don’t need the SK-shit.”

———

Pickton was charged with a total of 27 counts of first-degree murder. First degree, in Canada, requires the prosecution prove Pickton acted in a planned and deliberate manner on each count. If the planning point isn’t proven, but the intentional killings are still established, then the charges fall to second-degree which allows the convict an earlier parole eligibility to a mandatory life sentence, regardless of first or second.

The trial judge severed the charges into two groups. Group A were 6 women whose evidence was materially stronger than the other 21 in Group B. The trial went ahead dealing with Group A. Group B was set aside pending the first trial’s outcome. (Note: The Group B trial never proceeded.)

A jury convicted Robert William Pickton of 6 counts of second-degree murder. How 12 jurors could think a pattern of murders was not planned but still deliberate, I can’t fathom. But whether first or second, planned or deliberate, or how many counts, is a mute legal point. Canada doesn’t have the death penalty, so Willy Pickton is going to spend the rest of his natural life in prison. There is no way this guy will ever get parole, although the law allows him to apply after 25 years of incarceration.

In the aftermath of conviction, the Pickton Case led to a lawyer-fest of appeals and inquiries. Some were cash grabs. Some were feel-goods. And some led to necessary improvements in legal and investigation procedures.

Interjurisdictional cooperation and communication were the big ones. It wasn’t just a Muni vs. Mountie thing. Munis weren’t talking to other Munis, and Mounties weren’t talking to other Mounties. In fact, the entire Vancouver Lower Mainland cop shops were acting alone. Automatously, you could say, and this was the result of years—decades—of independent police department growth in overlapping Lower Mainland communities.

Retired BC Supreme Court Justice Wallace Oppal headed the Missing Women’s Commission of Inquiry. Wally Oppal, or Stone Wally as he’s known by the police and the media, was the right man for this job. He was a highly experienced trial judge who went on to be the Attorney General of British Columbia. His 2012 report on the matter ran 1,448 pages and came back with 63 recommendations. The number 1 item, rightfully so, was amalgamating all Lower Mainland police jurisdictions—Mountie and Muni—into one regional police force.

Ten years later, this hasn’t happened. And it shows no sign of happening given the City of Surrey, the fastest growing Lower Mainland area, is forming its own police force and getting rid of the RCMP.

However, one major intercommunication and cooperation change did occur, and it was for the better. That was forming the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) that makes  secondments of select detectives from each department—Muni and Mountie—and has the team take over homicide cases throughout the Lower Mainland. Except for the Vancouver Police Department who still do their own thing.

The Pickton Case was a tragedy of mass proportions. It wasn’t just a fact of police failure to communicate or cooperate. It was a sad situation where a marginalized segment of vulnerable women were victimized by an unchecked demon. Here are some quotes from the Oppal report:

“The police investigation into the missing and murdered women were blatant failures.”

“The critical police failings were manifest in recurring patterns that went unchecked and uncorrected over many years.”

“The underlying causes of these failures were themselves complex and multi-faceted.”

“Those causes include discrimination, a lack of leadership, outdated police procedures and approaches, and a fragmented policing structure in the Greater Vancouver region.”

“While I condemn the police investigations, I also find society at large should bear some responsibility for the women’s tragic lives.”

“I have found that the missing and murdered women were forsaken twice. Once by society at large and again by the police.”

“This was a tragedy of epic proportions.”

Outside of the trial and commission of inquiry, the Vancouver Police Department did an extensive internal review. Honorably, they owned the problem and vowed to change procedures in missing persons cases. Deputy Chief Doug LePard, who headed the probe, had this to say at a public news conference:

 “I wish from the bottom of my heart that we would have caught him sooner. I wish that, the several agencies involved, that we could have done better in so many ways. I wish that all the mistakes that were made, we could undo. And I wish that more lives would have been saved. So, on my behalf and behalf of the Vancouver Police Department and all the men and women that worked on this investigation, I would say to the families how sorry we all are for your losses and sorry because we did not catch this monster sooner.”

IS A SERIAL KILLER LOOSE ON THE HIGHWAY OF TEARS?

There’s a lonely road stretch in remote northwestern British Columbia, Canada having a huge number of unsolved missing and murdered women cases. It spans 450 miles between the small cities of Prince George in the province’s interior and Prince Rupert on the Pacific coast. Over the past 40 years, more than 40 women mysteriously disappeared or died from foul play in that area. Most of their circumstances remain unknown. The road’s geographically known as #16 or the Yellowhead Route but—for good reason—locals call it the Highway of Tears.

The Highway of Tears murders and the women’s suspicious disappearances began in 1969. They continue today with the last case of modus operandi (MO) similarities happening in December 2018. Although police officially remain cautious about confirming links, many in-the-know suspect there may be many more crimes with victims fitting the mold.

In 2005, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) formed a task force called E-Pana to look at the area’s unsolved missing and murdered women cases. The RCMP is Canada’s federal force having jurisdiction across the nation and in the region. The task force initially identified 18 cases but soon expanded their investigation to include similar files eastward along Route 16 to Hinton, Alberta as well as south along Highway 97 to Kamloops, BC and along Highway 5 from Merritt to Clearwater.

Two significant independent government inquiries or investigations into the Highway of Tears and related matters also happened. One was a British Columbia Provincial Symposium held in 2006. The other—a recent, national commission called the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women Inquiry. It’s called that because many victims were of indigenous or First Nations ethnicity.

Despite the massive police and public effort, no one’s been caught for most of the crimes. As well, many of the victim’s bodies remain hidden and undiscovered. That leaves people wondering if there’s a serial killer loose on the Highway of Tears.

The Highway of Tears Victims

Without exception, every victim in the Highway of Tears (HOT) sphere is female. That includes confirmed murders as well as unsolved disappearances. Another harsh fact is many victims originated from aboriginal or First Nations backgrounds. It’s a reality that can’t be overlooked.

Project E-Pana (named so after the Inuit spirit that guides souls to the afterlife) used four criteria to qualify a murder or suspicious disappearance as a Highway of Tears or HOT case. These parameters were sound and valid, as many homicide and missing persons cases in the north have other circumstances that don’t suggest a commonality the HOT files have. Out of great precaution, HOT investigators are very careful about using the “SK-word”—Serial Killer. To be on the HOT list, the E-Pana victim profiles are:

  • Female
  • High-risk lifestyle
  • Known to hitchhike
  • Found or last seen near Highways 16, 97 & 5

Females who hitchhike and practice a high-risk lifestyle around this remote road network are easy prey. Many come from physical, sexual and substance abusive backgrounds. Many are sex workers and drug users as well as having alcoholic tendencies and serious mental/emotional disorders. And, many women victims are from indigenous communities with a host of social problems.

Police investigators feel most, if not all, Highway of Tears cases are stranger-to-stranger relationships. Police don’t like the serial killer term because of public ramifications, but it’s a classic serial killer pattern to pick up strangers and have their way. Most lone-operating killers leave little evidence behind at their crime scenes, take little with them, make sure there are no independent witnesses and they rarely confess. That combination makes these predators so hard to catch.

First Nations women are particularly vulnerable. Along the main Highway of Tears stretch from Prince Rupert to Prince George there are 23 different indigenous communities or reserves. Most of these little places have few facilities like medical services, educational outlets and recreational opportunities. As well, poverty is a gigantic problem in Canada’s First Peoples settlements. They simply can’t afford private transportation.

Combined with personal issues and the need to be mobile, many at-risk women are alone on side of the road with their thumb out. They’re perfect opportunities for men with deviant desire. Here is a list of who fell victim in the deadly web called the Highway of Tears and throughout the entire region.

  • Gloria Moody — 27, Murdered near Williams Lake, October 1969
  • Micheline Pare — 18, Murdered near Hudson’s Hope, July 1970
  • Helen Claire Frost — 15, Missing from Prince George, October 1970
  • Jean Virginia Sampare — 18, Missing from Hazelton, October 1971
  • Gayle Weys — 19, Murdered near Clearwater, October 1973
  • Pamela Darlington — 19, Murdered at Kamloops, November 1973
  • Coleen MacMillan — 16, Murdered near Lac La Hache, August 1974
  • Monica Ignas — 15, Murdered near Terrace, December 1974
  • Mary Jane Hill — 31, Murdered at Prince Rupert, March 1978
  • Monica Jack — 12, Murdered near Merritt, May 1978
  • Maureen Mosie — 33, Murdered near Salmon Arm, May 1981
  • Jean May Kovacs — 36, Murdered at Prince George, October 1981
  • Roswitha Fuchsbichler — 13, Murdered at Prince George, November 1981
  • Nina Marie Joseph — 15, Murdered at Prince George, August 1982
  • Shelley-Anne Bascu — 16, Missing from Hinton, May 1983
  • Alberta Gail Williams — 24, Murdered near Prince Rupert, August  1989
  • Cecilia Anne Nikal — 15, Missing from Smithers, October 1989
  • Delphine Anne Nikal — 15, Missing from Smithers, June 1990
  • Theresa Umphrey — 38, Murdered near Prince George, February 1993
  • Marnie Blanchard — 18, Murdered near Prince George, March 1993
  • Ramona Lisa Wilson — 16, Murdered near Smithers, June 1994
  • Roxanne Thiara — 15, Murdered near Burns Lake, November 1994
  • Alishia Leah Germaine — 15, Murdered at Prince George, November 1994
  • Lana Derrick — 19, Missing from Terrace, October 1995
  • Deena Braem — 16, Murdered near Quesnel, September 1999
  • Monica McKay — 18, Murdered at Prince Rupert, December 1999
  • Nicole Hoar — 24, Missing from Prince George, June 2002
  • Mary Madeline George — 25, Missing from Prince George, July 2005
  • Tamara Lynn Chipman — 22, Missing from Prince Rupert, September 2005
  • Aielah Saric Auger — 14, Murdered at Prince George, February 2006
  • Beverly Warbick — 20, Missing from Prince George, June 2007
  • Bonnie Marie Joseph — 32, Missing from Vanderhoof, September 2007
  • Jill Stacey Stuchenko — 35, Murdered near Prince George, October 2009
  • Emmalee Rose McLean — 16, Murdered at Prince Rupert, April 2010
  • Natasha Lynn Montgomery — 23, Murdered at Prince George, August 2010
  • Cynthia Frances Maas— 35, Murdered near Prince George, September 2010
  • Loren Dawn Leslie — 15, Murdered near Prince George, November 2010
  • Madison “Maddy” Scott — 20, Missing near Vanderhoof, May 2011
  • Immaculate “Mackie” Basil — 26, Missing near Fort St. James, June 2013
  • Anita Florence Thorne — 49, Missing from Prince George, November 2014
  • Roberta Marie Sims — 55, Missing from Prince George, May 2017
  • Frances Brown — 53, Missing near Smithers, October 2017
  • Chantelle Catherine Simpson — 34, Suspicious Death at Terrace, July 2018
  • Jessica Patrick — 18, Murdered near Smithers, September 2018
  • Cynthia Martin — 50, Missing near Hazelton, December 2018

The Case for a Highway of Tears Serial Killer

These 40+ known cases all have a similarity beyond the E-Pana parameters. That’s the peculiar pattern of how they met their fate. Investigators assume most victims did not know their assailant and unsuspectingly fell into a fatal trap. And that trap may have been set by a serial offender.

Before assuming that one or more serial killers have been on the loose in the E-Pana project and the entire cases associated to the general Highway of Tears area, it’s necessary to define what a serial killer is. According to the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), a serial killer is an offender who commits “a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone.” Serial murder is defined as “the unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s), in separate events.”

This is a fairly tight description for a multiple killer. It fits someone on a path or destiny rather than a mass-murderer who goes on one rampage and causes numerous deaths. Most people associate serial killers with notorious Americans like Ted Bundy, Gary Ridgway or Albert DeSalvo. They were particularly nasty people. But, British Columbia had its share of these vicious villains. Noteworthy BC serial killers were Clifford Olson who killed 10 or more children and Robert “Willie” Pickton who did-in 49 women and fed them to his pigs.

Most serial killers operate alone and have a distinctive pattern or modus operandi. Experienced police investigators know to look for crime patterns and identify similarities. One of the main indicators is victim profiling. In almost all of the cases brought under the Highway of Tears investigation umbrella, the victim’s background and vulnerability stand out. Other indicators are the time frame and location.

In missing persons cases, investigators naturally start with where and when the victim was last seen. They also look for abandoned items such as a vehicle, their purse and contents or their phone. Where bodies are found, investigators look for the mechanism or means of death. Most of the Highway of Tears and related victims were strangled—the exact strangulation method being held back as it’s known only to the police and the perpetrator.

In the Highway of Tears periphery—and it is a periphery because what started as an investigation along the Prince George to Prince Rupert road quickly branched off to a much bigger area where a mobile serial killer could have easily traveled within a day. What’s really notable in this overall murder and missing persons combined investigation are the time periods. There are nine distinct activity calendar groups:

  • 1969-1974
  • 1978
  • 1981-1983
  • 1989-1990
  • 1993-1995
  • 1999-2002
  • 2005-2007
  • 2009-2014
  • 2017-2018

This date grouping shows a burst of start-stop, start-stop and start-stop. There could be many reasons for this such as the perpetrator being repeatedly incarcerated, moving out of the geographical area or, in the case of Gary Ridgway—the Green River Killer from Seattle—he nearly got caught and thought he’d give it a rest for a while. But, it seems more likely there are multiple offenders in the overall Highway of Tears file. In fact, police have already caught, convicted or identified five different HOT-profile men.

The Police Catch or Identify Serial Killers in the Highway of Tears Investigation

To be fair, not all the murdered or missing women in the previous list are true Highway of Tears victims from BC Highways 16, 97 & 5. As the investigation grew, it expanded to include a wide net of confirmed or suspected murders across the mid-section of semi-rural British Columbia. That was a natural progression. It’s a logical and competent way of investigating a broad range of offense dates and locations.

Long before the E-Pana probe in 2005, which started as a look at the cases on Highway 16 between Prince George and Prince Rupert, the RCMP knew there was a pattern emerging. In 1981, they held a multi-jurisdictional meeting called The Highway Murders Conference to look at commonalities of historic unsolved murders and missing persons cases. Over 40 detectives from across BC and Alberta met in Kamloops and presented their case facts. This was the original start to a massive investigation that’s still highly-active today.

In the years following the Highway Murder Conference, the RCMP and other law enforcement agencies solved some of the “HOT” killings and disappearances. They were able to profile offenders under the FBI’s serial killer definition. Here are the five serial killers known to have committed murders on the overall HOT list.

1. Cody Alan Legebokoff  — He was convicted of the 2009/2010 Jill Stuchenko, Natasha Montgomery, Loren Leslie and Cynthia Maas murders near Prince George. Legebokoff is serving life in prison.

2. Brian Peter Arp — He was convicted of the 1989 near-Prince George murders of Theresa Umphrey and Marnie Blanchard. Arp is also serving a life sentence.

3. Edward Dennis Issac — He was convicted of the 1981/1892 murders of Nina Joseph, Jean Kovacs and Roswitha Fuchsbichler in Prince George. Issac is still serving out his life sentence

4, Gary Wayne Hanlin — He was convicted of the 1978 Monica Jack murder at Merritt and faces new charges for killing another pre-teen girl. Hanlin got a life sentence, as well.

5. Bobby Jack Fowler — This known serial killer died in an Oregon prison in 1986. Post-death DNA analysis linked Fowler to causing the 1973/1974 Kamloops area murders of Coleen McMillan, Gail Weys and Pamela Darlington. Given the time frame pattern and location, Fowler may also have killed Monica Ignas in Terrace.

Known Highway of Tears Serial Killer Bobby Jack Fowler – MacMillan, Weys & Darlington murders

The Highway of Tears Public Investigations and Inquiries

Over the years, the mass of unsolved murders and missing women’s cases have been front and center in British Columbia and Canadian spectrums. Local, national and international interest spread, and took on a scope much larger than the cases committed along the original roadway called the Highway of Tears. Hundreds of thousands of hours and millions of dollar have been exhausted trying to rectify what went wrong and how future tragedies could be prevented.

In 2006, the British Columbia probe called the Highway of Tears Symposium released a report with an objective look at the entire factors causing victim vulnerability. They made rational and constructive recommendations that, if correctly implemented, could drastically reduce the potential for other women to end up on the HOT list. The symposium divided their solution into these four categories:

  • Victim Prevention
  • Emergency Planning and Team Readiness
  • Victim Family Counselling and Support
  • Community Development and Support

The Highway of Tears Symposium offered 33 separate recommendations on how to reduce victim risk and how to organize a holistic crime prevention program throughout the at-risk region. Most of the recommendations were solid, common-sense steps that could be practically implemented. One of the primary actions was to increase public transit along Highway 16 so the women wouldn’t need to hitchhike.

Other smart points in the action plan were making the police and public officials more responsible for spotting women placing themselves at risk and intervening on the side of the road. The report recommended a network of safe houses and a community watch program be integrated across the area. Many more recommendations addressed education and economic support for vulnerable women.

It’s been 13 years since the Highway of Tears Symposium did its necessary and valuable work. Sadly, very few of their well-thought-out suggestions ever materialized. An example is that it took 11 years before a simple and reliably-scheduled public transit bus service hit the Yellowhead Highway. Some of the risk prevention literature has been well written and promoted, though.

The Canadian Federal Government’s cross-country consortium called the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (IMMIWG) took public problem probing to a whole new level. What started as a Highway of Tears inquiry expanding the plight of First Nations women turned into a f-fest where three of the leading commissioners quit in frustration and disgust. It seemed everyone with a grievance to grind and an agenda to advance hijacked the focus and spun it around. By the time the $53.8 million off-track inquisition ended, the indigenous women core concern expanded to include every fringe interest lumped into a category called 2SLGBTQQIA. That’s an acronym for 2 Spirit, Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, Questioning, Intersex and Asexual.

On June 4, 2019, the Canadian Prime Minister championed the IMMIWG report release with this quote, “Earlier this morning, the national inquiry formally presented their report, in which they found that the tragic violence that Indigenous women and girls have experienced amounts to genocide”. The Prime Minister’s critics were quick to point out the United Nations definition of genocide:

“Any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

What started as a well-intentioned review of what happened to cause the Highway of Tears-related murders and suspicious disappearances totally missed the mark in the Canadian Federal Government’s sights. While the HOT Symposium operated with honorable intentions, the IMMIWG was a farce. It contributed little, if nothing, to the cause and likely did more harm than good. The IMMIWG failed to make positive recommendations for future harm prevention and investigation improvements. Ultimately, the IMMIWG blamed colonialism for oppressive behavior on margins of society. It seems the IMMIWG forgot many of the Highway of Tears victims were white heterosexual women born and raised in mainstream Canada.

Is a Serial Killer Loose on the Highway of Tears?

The answer is yes and no. There isn’t , and never has been, one lone serial killer continually at work on the Highway of Tears or in the surrounding geographical area. The right answer is there are many serial killers out there who’ve traveled those remote highways for years. Without a doubt, at least five separate serial killers contributed to some of the forty-year carnage. It’s highly-likely a large number of the yet-unsolved cases are the work of still-to-be-caught perpetrators. And, it’s also highly-likely some murders and abductions are one-offs.

Will all the Highway of Tears related murders eventually be solved? It’s highly-unlikely that’ll happen given the time gone by and the limited evidence available. However, there’s good reason to be optimistic some old and cold cases will be cleared. Back in the 70s, no one saw how powerful forensic DNA typing would be. We’re only now starting to tap the new familial database mines. Back in the 70s, no one saw how effective the Mister Big undercover sting would work on serial killers. And, back in the 70s, information sharing was nothing like what’s happening today.

So, no one knows what’s to come. Thanks to high-tech science combining with cool cop creative minds, we’re in for an interesting crime-solving drive down the Highway of Tears.