Debbie Roe was murdered on February 22, 1975. The following excerpt is from Cold Case Vancouver
In 1974, Debbie and Vicky Roe were living the dream. The sister act—Debbie was 22, and Vicky, 17, had just returned from Nashville where they’d cut a country-and-western album called Soft, Sweet and Country. The record cover shows two beautiful young women—Vicky the brunette, Debbie the blonde—dressed in flowing dresses and holding floppy hats. Life did indeed look sweet.
“We’d been singing together professionally for about four or five years,” says Vicky. “We used to do talent contests around town, and we used to sing at the nightclubs before we could legally get in.”
A local songwriter and family friend sent a demo tape to Cherish Records. The record label liked the demo, and Debbie and Vicky flew to Nashville to record. Their back-up musicians included some of the best talent in country music at the time—Bobbe Seymour, Steve Gibson, Buddy Emmons, and Charlie McCoy.
“It was big for us,” says Vicky, “That’s why it was just so tragic when it happened.”
A family out for a walk in a rural area of Langley, BC, on February 22, 1975 found Debbie’s body just off a road. She had been sexually assaulted, beaten, strangled, and left to drown in six inches of water. Coroner Doug Jack described the killing as “an enraged frustrated attack.”
Debbie grew up in Aldergrove and was one of five children. At the time of her murder, she lived in Langley. She worked as cocktail waitresses at the OK Corral in New Westminster, a bar that featured live country music acts. On the night that she died, Debbie was driving home after her shift around 2:00 a.m. Her three-year-old blue Chevrolet Nova, was found parked and locked on a desolate section of the Fraser Highway called Fry’s Corner. Her body was found seven kilometres away.
Over the years, dozens of police officers have been assigned to Debbie’s case. “Every couple of years there would be a new detective on it, and it’s almost like starting from scratch again,” says Vicky.
The family won’t get closure until Debbie’s murder is solved. The worst part, they say, is always wondering who did it. They’ve wondered about an older family friend who was infatuated with Debbie. They wondered if it was a current or an old boyfriend. They wondered if it was a stranger who followed Debbie from the bar. They even wondered if it was one of the two police officers that had sometimes stopped Debbie on her way home to ask her out.
“If they ever had any suspects, they never told us,” says Marianne Roe, Debbie’s mother.
© All rights reserved. Unless otherwise indicated, all blog content copyright Eve Lazarus.