Brenda Young, a 38-year-old North Vancouver mother of four, was murdered 40 years ago this month in her store at the bottom of Lonsdale. Her unsolved murder is a chapter in Cold Case Vancouver, and this post is a little about the research that went into that chapter.
My neighbour Arleene first told me about Brenda Young. She was stabbed and strangled in her store in the middle of the day on January 7, 1976—long before the Internet and the ubiquitous databases brought news to our fingertips. And, like most people who are touched by murder, it has affected Arleene profoundly, even four decades later. My neighbour grew up on the same street as the Young family. She and her three sisters knew the Young children; she played at their house and her family shopped at Brenda’s store The Good Earth. Arleene remembers Brenda as an attractive, petite woman with long, black curly hair, rosy cheeks–a happy, friendly woman who was always smiling. Brenda dressed in the clothes that she sourced from Guatemala and Mexico and sold in her store—long flowing denim skirts and big dangling earrings.
Once I had a name I was able to track down Brenda’s death certificate. The death record gives the home address, next of kin, cause of death, and most importantly the date of death, because then I could start hunting down the newspaper reports on microfilm at the Vancouver Public Library. One report gave the name of the lead detective, Fred Bodnaruk, a 26-year veteran of the RCMP and who was in charge of the major crimes detail for North Vancouver until his retirement just a few months after Brenda’s murder. Fred walked me through the police investigation and told me: “It was sad as hell because we put a terrific effort into solving her murder and we really didn’t want to get defeated. It was one of these very unfortunate no-break situations.”
Later, I met with Brenda’s son Tom, who was only 16 at the time of his mother’s murder. He told me to his knowledge Brenda’s murder has not been reinvestigated, at least he or his siblings have not been contacted by police. Bruce, a former Vancouver Sun reporter and a freelance writer at the time of his wife’s murder, quite literally fell apart. He refused assistance from his family (his brother was the mayor of Victoria), took off to Mexico, and the kids aged 10 to 18 were largely left to fend for themselves. Tom dropped out of school to run his mother’s store.
“When she died it caused a ripple in the community that never stopped,” Tom told me.
The chapter is a horrifying, fascinating read that goes into details about the investigation and what happens to a family when the person at the core of it is wrenched from their lives.
Please check out Cold Case Canada, a new public FB page that discusses this and other unsolved murders.