In January 1943, fifteen-year-old Molly Justice took the 5:50 pm bus from her job in Victoria, BC and got off at Swan Lake near her Saanich home. Her body was found a few hours later lying face down in the snow. She had been stabbed more than 20 times and hit on the head with a rock. What followed was one of the most seriously botched police investigations of last century.

This episode is based on a chapter from my book Cold Case BC: The Stories Behind the Province's Most Intriguing Murder and Missing Person Cases. For more information, please visit my website: evelazarus.com or join us on the Facebook group page Cold Case Canada.

Photo of Molly Justice (right) with her best friend, Ada Duke and Ada's Dog Mickey in 1943. Courtesy T.W. Paterson

On April 1 1992, 19-year-old Aimee Beaulieu was killed in her home just outside of Nelson, British Columbia. Her twin babies David and Samantha, died in the fire that was lit to cover up her murder.

For more information, please visit my website: evelazarus.com or join us on the Facebook group page Cold Case Canada.

On Saturday July 12, 1997, four 20-year-olds were gun downed at a campsite in Kitimat, British Columbia. The shooter was 42-year-old Kevin Vermette. After killing three of the four young men, Vermette returned to his motel room, grabbed his dog and his shotgun - and disappeared into the bush. Vermette is still at large, and as I quickly learned, nothing about this story is as it first seemed.

For more information, please visit my website: evelazarus.com or join us on the Facebook group page Cold Case Canada.

Seven-year-old Terri Lynn Scalf disappeared from Aldergrove, BC on July 24, 1983. She was last seen in the company of a 55-year-old convicted child molester and another 10-year-old girl from her townhouse complex. Police initially linked her disappearance with that of Joanne Pedersen, 10, from Chilliwack who had vanished six months earlier. Both girls are still missing.

For more information, please visit my website: evelazarus.com or join us on the Facebook group page Cold Case Canada.

Ten-year-old Joanne Pedersen was last seen in a Chilliwack, BC phone booth at 8:20 pm on Saturday February 19, 1983. She had been calling her mother to tell her that she had been locked out of her house and asked if she could pick her up from the Penny Pincher general store. Just as her mother went to talk to Joanne, a young man got on the phone and told her that if she wasn’t there in half-an-hour he would call the police. Her mother was there within 20-minutes, but both Joanne and the man were gone.

For more information, please join us on the Facebook group page Cold Case Canada, or visit my website: evelazarus.com 

Cold Case Canada is up for a Webby Award - the only Canadian nominee in the category! This is a very big deal – and I need your help! Please vote for Cold Case Canada at The Webby Awards or post this link into your browser https://vote.webbyawards.com/PublicVoting#/2024/podcasts/individual-episodes/crime-justice

Thank you!

Eve

evelazarus.com 

In this last episode of Season 4, I'm delighted to be joined by four local storytellers. We'll hear about the murder of iconic architect Francis Rattenbury, visit a haunted firehall, a spooky house in New Westminster from the 1860s, and a character house in East Vancouver that's home to three ghosts: a man, a little girl and a charcoal grey cat.

For more information visit evelazarus.com or join us on the Facebook group page Cold Case Canada.

Michael Smith, 17 is RCMP case #2014003272 and one of 233 missing kids on the Canada’s Missing website. Mike was last seen on December 30, 1967 when he left his North Vancouver home after a fight with his family when he was caught with some weed. If Mike is alive, he’d be 73 years old, and may have no idea that his family has searched for him for over four decades.

The second part of the episode is about Lucy Johnson, a 25-year old mother of two. Lucy went missing from her home in 1961. For over 50 years she was listed as “missing, foul play suspected” by the Surrey RCMP. And, then in 2013, Lucy's story got an ending. 

For more information, please join us on the Facebook group page Cold Case Canada, or visit my website: evelazarus.com 

On November 6, 1967, sometime before 6:00 pm, seven-year-old Nancy Johnsen went missing from her Cloverdale BC farmhouse. Nancy, one of ten children ranging in age from six months to 16 years, was found on the property the next morning. She had been strangled. No one reported seeing a stranger around the house that night and Nancy was not known to wander outside alone in the dark. The case went cold. A few years after the Johnsens' moved to nearby Aldergrove, their neighbour, 15-year-old Theresa Hildebrandt disappeared. Her remains would not be found for another four years.

This episode is based on original research and interviews from a chapter in my book Cold Case Vancouver: the city's most baffling unsolved murders

Between April 1988 and August 1990, a serial killer murdered six sex trade workers and dumped their bodies in the laneways of Vancouver. Officially, the murders are unsolved and two were added to the Vancouver Police Department’s cold case website just last year. But two retired detectives who worked on a joint RCMP/VPD task force called E-Alley, say they know who killed these women, and he died in 2007.

The Alley Murders is a Webby Award finalist

For more information, please join us on the Facebook group page Cold Case Canada, or visit my website: evelazarus.com