The RCMP in Edmonton say they have linked the murders of four young women in the 1970s to a deceased serial killer and sexual offender, and investigators believe he may be responsible for other murders as well.
Police are not releasing any information about the identity of the victims, or their killer, until a press conference on Friday.
While the RCMP have not yet said whether all four cases occurred in the Edmonton area, the city is the locus of dozens of unsolved homicides of women believed to be the work of multiple serial killers over the past five decades.
“I think whenever someone is named, taken off the streets, there’s just a relief. At least society is free from that person. You know that person will not be causing more harm to others,” said Kathy King, whose 22-year-old daughter, Caralyn, was found dead outside Edmonton in 1997. No one has ever been charged in her death.
There were a number of high-profile murders of women and girls in Edmonton in the 1970s that remain unsolved. In 1971, realtor Mary Ann Plett, 29, disappeared after going to show a man a property southeast of the city, and was found the next spring in a rural area hours away. In April, 1975, 11-year-old Karen Ewanciw was sexually assaulted and beaten to death while walking on a park trail in the city with a friend.
And in August, 1976, 17-year-old Marie Judy Goudreau disappeared from a highway in the Leduc area, just outside Edmonton. Children found her body in a swamp about 20 kilometres away the next evening.
At the time of Ms. Goudreau’s death, the RCMP were investigating the unsolved murders of at least 12 women whose bodies had been found along the highway from B.C. to Alberta, many having been sexually assaulted.
A special RCMP squad was formed in 1976 to look for similarities in those deaths, which were sometimes called the “Yellowhead murders.” Sections of the Yellowhead Highway – which runs from B.C. to Manitoba – would later become known as The Highway of Tears.
The RCMP announced in 2021 that officers were working on a review of Ms. Goudreau’s case. It had also been re-examined in 2005, as part of a broader review of unsolved homicides around Edmonton in the wake of the Robert Pickton serial killer case in BC.
“I feel very emotional,” said Kate Quinn, an advocate who worked on issues around Edmonton’s missing and murdered women for three decades. “My first thoughts are for the families. This would mean so much to them.”
The press conference will begin with a 90-minute technical briefing for media, which RCMP spokesman Fraser Logan said in a media release will not be streamed to the public “due to the potentially sensitive and disturbing nature of what may be disclosed.”