I've been really interested in reading about local cold cases lately, here in Vancouver, BC. I've read most of the better known ones, like Cindy James & Blair Adams. Today I stumbled upon one I'd never even heard about before. It's one of those eerie, strange cases that I tend to loI've been really interested in reading about local cold cases lately, here in Vancouver, BC. I've read most of the better known ones, like Cindy James & Blair Adams. Today I stumbled upon one I'd never even heard about before. It's one of those eerie, strange cases that I tend to love to read about. One that really makes you wonder. I looked it up on here and couldn't find anything so I thought I'd make a new post.
Muriel Lindsay was a Canada Post Worker here in Vancouver, BC. On February 16th 1996, she was found dead in her home. Her cat was found behind her refrigerator in a strange position. Further along in the investigation, many odd occurrences were found to have happened in the weeks leading up to her death.
" Three weeks before Muriel Lindsay was beaten to death in her West End suite, her mother received a disturbing letter at her home which began with the words "Hi Scum."
The letter referred to Muriel, a quiet, well-liked postal worker who was murdered 10 years ago this month.
"You are now 40 . . . we hope and pray that you start acting like an adult and not like a teenager . . . We also hope you stop smoking. You stink."
Marjorie Lindsay was upset, but decided not to show the bizarre letter to Muriel for fear of upsetting her only daughter, with whom she shared a close relationship.
She regretted that decision when she found Muriel bloodied and dead in the early afternoon of Feb. 17, 1996."
"Muriel, a letter sorter who was on the afternoon shift, had complained to co-workers about a series of strange events that led her to believe she was being stalked in the months before her murder.
First, one of her beloved cats went missing.
Muriel made up a poster with her phone number on it and stuck it up around her Mole Hill neighbourhood. But instead of a call, she got a note slipped under her door saying she would owe money for the cat's vet bill. She was concerned enough about the strange hand-delivered message that she reported the incident to Vancouver police.
But there was more to come.
Someone took out a six-month subscription to The Vancouver Sun in her name. Then two magazines started arriving at her West End apartment and a donation was made on behalf of her to the United Way for $120.
All that was before the bizarre letter arrived at her mom's house.
Her dad Eric Lindsay, a former Vancouver Sun reporter who lives in Elmira, New York, also remembers walking up Denman Street with Muriel a few months before her death on their way back to her place from Stanley Park.
"Suddenly, she burst into a trot," he recalled in an interview. He couldn't keep up with her, but he saw that someone was in pursuit.
"It was a white-haired old guy, older than me, chasing after her, crying out her name."
Lindsay said Muriel shrugged it off when he later asked her about it.
Parslow said police now believe all the strange incidents are somehow linked to her brutal murder.
"We believe there was some sort of stalking going on," she said. "We as investigators believe there is a connection."
Muriel walked home from the main post office with a co-worker when they got off shift at midnight, Thursday, Feb. 15. The two parted company outside St. Paul's -- the hospital where Muriel was born in 1956 -- to head to their separate residences.
Muriel had a second-floor suite in a heritage house in the 1100-block of Comox, less than two blocks from where she last saw her friend.
No one heard from her again and she did not report for work on the Friday.
Many questions remain unanswered questions in the case.
"Was the person inside the apartment waiting for her or did she meet them outside?" Parslow said.
She said there was no 911 call to report a commotion or screaming in the neighbourhood.
Police believe Muriel was killed shortly after she got home in the early hours of Feb. 16.
"She was still wearing the same clothes when she was found inside the apartment," Parslow said.
Muriel's mother, who is now in ill health, knew something was amiss when her daughter did not make her daily call.
Marjorie Lindsay was so concerned, she phoned Eric across the continent, waking him up in the middle of the night.
"I said nothing is wrong, it will be all right, shrugging it off, not thinking," he said.
But when Marjorie explained that Muriel had never missed a call to her mother, he told his ex-wife to get over to the apartment right away.
She went with a friend several hours later and got the landlord to open the door.
"Marjorie had to push the door against the body to get in. And there she was the poor dear. They called me to tell me. It was heart-breaking, I can tell you," Lindsay said. "You don't get over something like that."
He is frustrated that his daughter's death went almost unrecorded in the local media. There was no public outcry or demands for justice.
"I wasn't impressed by the newspapers," said the ex-journalist. "I tried to get some publicity at the time and on the anniversaries."
Lindsay, who also has a 15-year-old daughter he says is the spitting image of Muriel, remembers his first-born as a "beautiful girl," who was so loving he constantly wanted to hug her.
She had battled back from a life-threatening illness that included chemotherapy at St. Paul's, only to have her life snuffed out prematurely by a killer, he said.
"It is a mystery, strange. We didn't realize that she had any connections of a questionable nature."
Lindsay said his ex-wife also mentioned the strange letter to him shortly before the slaying, but he agreed with her at the time that it was probably no big deal and that they should not let Muriel know about it.
He regretted not taking action about it when Muriel was killed a short time later.
His dedication to seeing his daughter's killer behind bars has inspired investigators on the case over the years and he has kept in regular phone contact with police.
Parslow said she is confident the answers are out there and will be found, especially with what police now know about some of the strange events that led up to the murder.
"The killer seemed to know things about Muriel, seemed to have access to some of her personal information," Parslow said.
"These were circumstances that came to light as a result of the investigation. We have been piecing it all together."
Muriel's mother earlier said her daughter had been bothered by two people who lived in the same house, including a man from Mexico.
"She was threatened many times by two people in that crummy house that she lived in," Marjorie said at the time. "She was the loveliest girl and a private person and she did her job at the post office and was just going to move out of her place.''
In fact, Muriel had already found a lovely apartment on Burnaby Street with a view of English Bay. She was so excited about the move that she had already packed several boxes.
Parslow said investigators are aware of the information about others in the house, but it is not their only focus. The Mexican man has returned to his native country, she said.
"He is someone we have to look at, but that is not the only avenue," she said.
A few days after Muriel's body was discovered, investigators were back at the murder scene. They found one of Muriel's adored cats behind the refrigerator in such an unusual position that it had to have been placed there by someone, possibly the killer.
"It was definitely put there," Parslow said.
She said Muriel was not the type of person to stand by and let someone get away with something. She stood up for herself.
"She was feisty. She would have been the one to put up a fight.""
So who wrote the letter? And why was it sent to her mother's home?
How did they know her mother's address?
Who was the grey haired man chasing her and screaming her name when she was with her father? Why didn't he ask her more about him? It seems like a very alarming situation to just shrug off.
Who took her cat and left the letter under her door? If it wasn't connected to the murder, why wouldn't they have just returned the cat to her if they knew it was hers?
Why wasn't it in the papers or in the media?
It's all very creepy and intriguingly.
She also wrote an eerie letter to her dad before she was murdered describing her roommates and that she thought they had stolen her key and copied it. I think I'll be researching this a lot more. Here is the link to that story and a picture of the letter. There is a better image of it on google images.
EDIT: here are the links:
Submitted March 31, 2016 at 06:46AM by booghawkins http://ift.tt/25xtFCk UnresolvedMysteries
No comments:
Post a Comment