Rhona Duncan died years before I moved to North Vancouver, but whenever I drive up Larson and cross Bewicke I think of her. And, 40 years later, her murder still haunts my friends and neighbours who either knew her or of her. This is a short excerpt from a chapter in Cold Case Vancouver: the city’s most baffling unsolved murders.
Rhona Duncan, her boyfriend Shawn Mapoles, and their friends Owen Parry and Marion Bogues left the party on East Queens Road in the early hours of July 17, 1976. It was a warm summer night and they took their time walking in the direction of their homes. The teens, who were to enter Grade 12 at Carson Graham in the fall, stopped at the municipal hall on West Queens. Owen and Shawn lived up the hill, and Rhona and Marion lived in the Hamilton area. The girls wanted to be by themselves to talk about the night; it was an easy walk down Jones Avenue.
Rhona and Marion stopped and talked for a while and then parted company near Marion’s home at the corner of Larson Road and Wolfe Avenue. Rhona disappeared into the darkness of Larson Road, turned south on Bewicke Avenue, and was at the intersection at West 15th, the quiet residential street where she lived, when someone stopped her. She was in sight of the safety of her home.
By 4:00 a.m. Rhona, the oldest of four girls, was dead. She had been raped and strangled.
Shawn found out about his girlfriend’s murder the next day from one of his friends. Later that morning the RCMP arrived, bagged his clothes and interviewed him. He voluntarily took a polygraph, and when DNA came on the scene two decades later, he volunteered his as well.
Shawn, who still lives in North Vancouver, told me: “I felt guilty. Normally, I would walk a woman home, but Rhona didn’t want me to walk her home that night.”
Police asked Shawn if he remembered anyone paying a lot of attention to Rhona at the party. He told them that while he knew a lot of the kids there that night, he couldn’t remember anything that seemed strange or out of place. “We were just getting to know each other, so I was focusing my attention on Rhona, not on my surroundings.”
On July 22, five days after the murder, the RCMP announced that they had formed a special squad to check for similarities in the unsolved sex slayings of at least 12 women since January 1975.
Police say they’ve interviewed hundreds of witnesses and suspects in the Rhona Duncan case, performed polygraphs on the higher priority suspects, and tested DNA. The case remains inside eight boxes of evidence in the cold file room, where every now and then it’s taken out, dusted off, and re-examined.
The last update I have is from a 2003 interview in the Outlook with Sergeant Gerry Webb. He told a reporter: “The present focus of the investigation is to continue with DNA collection from outstanding suspects.”
The problem is of course, that police can only take DNA voluntarily, and guilty people are unlikely to comply.
Cold Case Canada is a public group page on Facebook dedicated to bringing unsolved murders to light.
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