Mystery Repeats Itself: November 2018

Wednesday, November 28, 2018

The Boozing Barber, Gilbert Paul Jordan

A string of murders occurred in Vancouver between 1965 and 1988, but at the time, people didn't even realize that they were murders. Gilbert Paul Jordan killed between 8 and 10 women during this time, but rather than a more "traditional" method of killing, Gilbert Paul Jordan, nicknamed "The Boozing Barber", murdered with alcohol.

Born in Vancouver on December 12, 1931, Gilbert was an alcoholic and high school drop out by the age of 16. By 21, he had already been convicted of theft, assault, car theft, and possession of heroin.

Gilbert Paul Jordan had a lengthy criminal record starting in 1952 and included rape, assault, abduction, drunk driving, car theft and eventually, murder. During one of his many incarcerations, Gilbert learned the barber's trade and opened the Slocan Barber Shop in Vancouver's Downtown East Side. He inherited a small sum of money and invested in the stock market and made a lot of money. Enough to open his barber shop, keep him absolutely pickled in alcohol ...and afford a good lawyer.

Reportedly drinking 50oz of vodka per day, in addition to alcohol, Gilbert was also addicted to drunken sex. His targets were most often First Nations women from Vancouver's Downtown East Side. He would find them in bars and buy them drinks, or pay them for sex and invite them to drink with him.

Cody Legebokoff - Canadian Teen Serial Killer

One of Canada's youngest serial killers, Cody Legebokoff was convicted of killing 4 women in the Prince George, BC area. One of his victims, Loren Donn Leslie aged 15 is one of the official Highway of Tears victims.

Originally from Fort St. James, Cody moved to Prince George after he graduated from Fort St. James secondary school. His friends described him as athletic and friendly and were quite shocked to find out about his crimes.

In November of 2010, RCMP officers pulled over a pickup truck suspected of speeding. Two officers approached the vehicle to speak with the driver. That driver was Cody Legebokoff. Immediately the officers noticed that Cody had blood smears on his face and chin, and a quick look into the cab of the truck revealed a pool of blood on the floor.

RCMP detained Cody and searched the vehicle, finding a bloody wrench and multitool, a monkey backpack and a wallet that contained a children's hospital card with the name Loren Leslie on it. When the officers asked Cody about the blood on his face, Cody said that he was hunting deer and had clubbed one to death. Poaching deer would be more accurate.

He had clubbed the deer because, in his words "I'm a redneck, it's what we do for fun".

RCMP called a Wildlife Conservation Officer with tracking skills who was able to track Cody's tire tracks. They made a horrifying discovery when the Wildlife Officer tracked Cody's movements, not to the body of a bleeding deer, but to the body of 15-year-old Loren Donn Leslie.

RCMP were later able to connect Cody Legebokoff to other murders through DNA, making him one of Canada's youngest serial killers.

Cody Legebokoff was convicted in 2014 of murdering Jill Stacey Stuchenko, aged 35, mother of five, found in a gravel pit outside Prince George.

Cynthia Maas, aged 35 found in a park a month after going missing. Cynthia had brutal injuries including a broken jaw and cheekbone as well as injuries consistent with someone ruthlessly stomping on her.

Natasha Montgomery, aged 25, went missing and her body was never found, but her DNA was found in Cody's apartment, and on an axe that Cody owned.

Lastly was Loren Leslie, aged 15, was legally blind, with no vision in one eye and about 50% in the other. She allegedly met Cody online at a social media site Nexopia where Cody went by the handle "1CountryBoy".

Cody was tried for 4 counts of 1st-degree murder. During his trial, Cody said that he was "involved" in the killings but that the actual murders were carried out by a drug dealer and his accomplices that he referred to only as "X, Y, and Z". The court did not believe his version of events and denied his attempt to change the charge to the lesser 2nd-degree murder charge.

On September 11, 2014, Cody Legebokoff was found guilty on all 4 counts of 1st-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years with no parole. The judge also added his name to the National Sex Offender Registry due to the sexual acts and degradation of the bodies he committed as part of the murders.

B.C. Supreme Court Justice Glen Parrett said of Cody Legebokoff, "He lacks any shred of empathy or remorse, he should never be allowed to walk among us again". Court Justice Glen Parett also stated that all four of the murders were committed during a sexual assault or attempted sexual assault.

He added that without the luck of the RCMP officer that had a hunch and pulled Cody over for suspected speeding, they may not have caught Cody for some time, "the grief and horrors we heard from the families may well have been simply a precursor…". Cody was 20 years old when he was caught, with no indication that he would have stopped. His list of victims could have been
substantially longer.

To add insult to injury, Cody Legebokoff could apply for parole through Canada's "Faint Hope Clause" after 15 years in jail. Even though the Clause was amended so that people who commit multiple murders could not apply, Cody's murders occurred before the Clause was changed.

Even after overwhelming evidence including DNA pointing to Cody as the murderer of these 3 women and one girl, Cody never took responsibility for his crimes at trial. He had maintained that Mr "X, Y, and Z" actually murdered those women. He even went so far as to admit that he had hit Loren Leslie "twice at the max" with that bloody pipe wrench found in his car, but that he did not kill her.

Cody appealed his sentence in 2015, but the BC Court of Appeals upheld his original conviction.

Although Cody was 19 at the time of the murders, he is not Canada's youngest serial killer. Peter Woodcock was 17 when he raped and murdered 3 children in Toronto, but he was found not guilty by reason of insanity. Even so, Peter Woodcock spent the rest of his life behind bars and killed another inmate during his incarceration.

I don't think that Cody would have stopped killing. The prosecution in his case alleges that the 3 women were sex trade workers and Cody used them to get cocaine. You don't just all of a sudden stop using cocaine. Eventually, Cody would need another fix and his M.O. was to use prostitutes to get what he wanted. In at least 3 cases Cody murdered those women.

Which makes me wonder, did he murder other women that we don't know about? I'm not a psychologist but in most cases, don't murderers build up to killing? Starting with abuse and assault and eventually graduating to murder. I would not be shocked if he had more victims.

Loren is a bit of an enigma to me. She was much younger than Cody's other victims, and she was not a sex trade worker. Just a kid. Try to imagine that. A nearly blind child that was wearing a monkey backpack.

It is important to remember that Cody's other victims however you feel about sex trade workers are still people. By all accounts, all of his victims were good people and had families who loved them, and children that miss them.

Criminals and murderers often target sex trade workers because they believe that they will not be missed, or at least won't be noticed missing till long after the crime is committed. This is an unfortunate fact, one of the main reason why the infamous pig farmer Robert "Willie" Pickton was able to murder 49 women and not be caught for so long.

Loren Leslie is listed as an official Highway of Tears victim by E-PANA, RCMP`s task force investigating the missing and murdered women on Highway 16 in BC. This makes Cody Legebokoff another serial killer, like Bobby Jack Fowler, that used this highway as his hunting grounds.

How many more are there?

Thanks for reading. See you next time.

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Sunday, November 4, 2018

Bobby Jack Fowler - Highway of Tears Serial Killer?

Born June 12, 1939, Bobby Jack Fowler was a habitual criminal almost right from the womb. Originally from Texas, Bobby would "rabbit around" as he would call it, moving between Florida, Iowa, Louisiana, Texas, Oregon, South Carolina, Arizona, Tennessee, Washington State, and British Columbia.

In Bobby's lifetime, he racked up a long criminal record in the United States including attempted murder, sexual assault, kidnapping, attempted rape, and assault. If Bobby saw something he wanted he would take it, regardless of consequence.

A drug addict and violent criminal, Bobby Jack Fowler was a transient construction worker, often working as a roofer. Moving frequently in old beat up cars he would spend his free time in bars and motels, and often picked up hitchhikers. Bobby believed that women who hitchhiked or women he picked up in bars wanted to be sexually assaulted.

In 1969 he was arrested for murdering a man and woman in Texas but was able to get off with only discharging a firearm within city limits. In '69 he also spent time in a Tennessee prison for attempted murder and sexual assault. In the words of an investigator, "he tied [a woman] up, beat the hell out of her with her own belt, covered her with brush and left her to die.

Although Bobby Jack Fowler was never convicted of murder, he is a suspect or person of interest in approximately 16 murders in the US and Canada.

Bobby Jack Fowler

In 1974 Bobby Jack Fowler worked for a roofing company in Prince George and would often travel Highway 16, the infamous Highway of Tears. RCMP believe he could be responsible for 10 murders along this Highway, while other estimates put it closer to 20. Some of the evidence that point to Bobby is circumstantial at best, but he was in the area at the time of some of the murders and they did follow his M.O.

In June of 1995, Bobby was arrested in Newport, Oregon after a woman jumped out of a second story window in the Tides Inn. Nude, bleeding and with a rope still tied to her ankle, the woman was able to escape from Bobby and get to the police to tell then what Bobby did to her. In January of 1996, he was convicted of Kidnapping in the 1st Degree, Attempted Rape in the 1st Degree, Sexual Abuse in the 1st Degree, Coercion, Assault in the Fourth Degree, and Menacing. He was sentenced to 195 months with the possibility of parole.

In 2006 Bobby Jack Fowler died in Oregon State Penitentiary of lung cancer at the age of 66.

In 2012 RCMP named Bobby Jack Fowler a suspect in a murder on the Highway of Tears in 1974. In August 1974 16-year-old Colleen MacMillen went missing from 100 Mile House, BC. Going out that fateful night, she told her little brother Shawn "Don't tell mom I'm hitchhiking". She was never seen alive again.

Colleen MacMillen

One month later Colleen's body was found around 50 kilometers from her home at 100 Mile House. RCMP also found Colleen's blouse, but DNA technology was non-existent so no tests could be done at that time.

Even though they had been unable to do any DNA testing the RCMP collected and stored Colleen's blouse safely enough that evidence collected years later could still be used in court. In 2007 they looked at the blouse again and were able to find a small sample of DNA from an unknown male, but it was not a match to any sample in RCMP databases.

In 2012, 38 years after Colleen went missing, DNA technology had advanced to the point that smaller and smaller samples could be tested. RCMP were able to get a DNA profile from a small fragment of DNA collected from Colleen's blouse.

They then submitted that sample to Interpol, whose extensive database included samples from multiple countries, in the faint hope that there would be a match. Police were surprised to find that Interpol got a match in their database, and that DNA matched violent US criminal Bobby Jack Fowler.

Although Bobby had an extensive criminal record in the United States, he was unknown to RCMP. There were no criminal records, nor any record that he entered the country. I guess in the 70's security was pretty lax between our two countries. I personally remember being able to enter Alaska from BC and only having to show my BC Drivers Licence to the border guard. Note that is singular, there was only one guard and I don't remember him writing my name down or license number or anything. Post 9/11, things have changed considerably.

After further investigation into Bobby Jack Fowler, RCMP suspect that he was also responsible for the murder of Pamela Darlington and Gale Weys, two other murdered women on the "official" Highway of Tears victim list.

Although the task force formed by the RCMP to investigate the Highway of Tears, named E-PANA, only has 18 people on its official list, some groups have put the number of missing and murdered women along this highway closer to 40, and the list continues to grow.

Jennifer Esson and Kara Leas

Bobby Jack Fowler is also linked to two double homicides in Oregon. Sheila Swanson and Melissa Sanders in Oregon 1992, were last seen making a call from a payphone near the Beverly Beach State Park, their bodies found 6 months later. In January 1995, Jennifer Esson and Kara Leas were last seen walking in Newport, Oregon. Their strangled bodies found a month later. That was 6 months before he kidnapped and sexually assaulted the woman that jumped out the second story motel window, ultimately leading to Bobby Jack Fowler being arrested and convicted.

US Law Enforcement believes that Bobby Jack Fowler may have killed 20 people or more and have compared him to the cold-blooded serial killer Ted Bundy.

It is important to know that while Bobby Jack Fowler is suspected of being a serial killer, he was never actually convicted of murder, but he did operate for a time along the Highway of Tears. He is likely not "The Highway of Tear's serial killer". Bobby was in custody for some of the murders or was known to be in a different area for others. A scary thought is that he may be just ONE of the serial killers that hunt along the Highway of Tears.

But guess what! Next week I'll tell you the story of Cody Legebokoff, who has the distinction of being Canada's youngest serial killer, and guess where he was based out of?

Prince George, BC. The start of the Highway of Tears.

For more information on the Highway of Tears, read "Obstruction of Justice: The Search for Truth on Canada's Highway of Tears" by Ray Michalko. Click the link below to view it at Amazon.

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