Teri-Lyn remembered

The man in the white van pulled up while Merle Goertz was repairing the small memorial near the place where police found Teri-Lyn Williams.
Someone had removed Teri-Lyn’s photo from the small cross Goertz made and taken some of the potted daffodils he left on on the north side of 104A Avenue off Whalley Boulevard.
The van driver said he was the passerby who called police about someone lying in the bushes early in the morning of June 9.
“Was there blood?” Goertz asked, hesitantly.
“I couldn’t see any,” the man in the van said.
“But I didn’t go in [for a close look]. She was lying on her back. It looked like she was sleeping.”
Goertz thanked him and explained that he used to know Teri-Lyn.
It had been 12 years since he’d seen or heard from her.
He was shocked by her haggard appearance in a police-issued photo released shortly after her murder.
“That’s not how I remember her,” Goertz said.
“She was the most beautiful, sweet, charming girl.”
They met more than 20 years ago in Edmonton.
She was 19, working as an exotic dancer at a club where Goertz was friends with two other dancers.
He was outside having a cigarette when she walked by, smiled a brilliant smile and said hi.
They were friends for about a year-and-a-half before the relationship became romantic.
She told him about being a street prostitute and drug abuser before he met her.
A pimp inflicted the scar that ran along the right side of her jaw.
She was an adopted child who knew nothing about her birth parents except that one of them was likely dark-skinned.
Her birth mother was probably drinking through the pregnancy because Teri-Lyn had all the symptoms of fetal alcohol syndrome, Goertz said.
But she seemed to have overcome her troubled past.
She was a superbly fit amateur bodybuilder and a hard worker who ran her own one-woman cleaning company.
Still, there were ups and downs.
Without warning, Teri-Lyn’s moods could suddenly shift from warm and loving into a wild anger at everything, even the man she loved.
The relationship with Goertz ended badly, with harsh words and hurt feelings, but Goertz never moved out of the building they shared in Vancouver’s West End. Part of him, he said, always hoped that she would come back.

Goertz now knows that Teri-Lyn returned to Alberta, where she built a life with another supportive friend, Calgary resident Dan Swainston.
In a telephone interview with The Leader, Swainston said he never crossed the line from a friendship to a romantic relationship with Teri-Lyn.
He remembers her as a warm, hardworking woman who could be moody, but otherwise was doing fine.
But when she turned 40, Teri-Lyn started to fall apart, Swainston said.
She walked away from her business, drifting into debt and back into drug use and street prostitution.
A grieving Swainston said he did everything he could to help, but it wasn’t enough.
“I could always pull a rabbit out of the hat for her [with loans of money and other assistance], but not this time.”
The last time he heard from her was June 2, when she phoned asking for money to help with her rent.
Swainston didn’t have the money to give, and she got angry.
Swainston said he was “devastated” to learn about her murder and he wants people to know that his friend was more than a mere street prostitute.
“She wasn’t a nobody.”
Her adoptive father, Edmonton resident Mel Williams, suspected his daughter’s emotional problems were the result of drug or alcohol abuse by her birth mother, who a social worker told him was a hooker on Edmonton’s infamous stroll.
Williams feared for Teri-Lyn’s life after learning she had gone back to the street.
“Unfortunately, I’d been kind of expecting something like this ...but nothing prepares you.”
He prefers to remember the often-happy child who did cartwheels down the halls of her home and would ask her father to sing “Delta Dawn” all the time.
“It was her song” he said.
The other day, he heard it playing.
It was the part about “she’s 41 and her daddy still calls her baby,” and it hurt to hear it.
Anyone with information about Teri-Lyn’s movements before her death is asked to call the IHIT TIP Line at 1-877-551-IHIT or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.
dferguson@surreyleader.com
By Dan Ferguson - Surrey North Delta Leader
Published: June 25, 2010 6:00 AM
http://www.bclocalnews.com/news/97089204.html

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Accused killer of two women faces new murder count

Davey Butorac of Langley charged in death of woman found in Aldergrove

By KIM BOLAN, Vancouver Sun

March 3, 2010

A Langley man charged in 2008 with killing two women now faces a third count of second-degree murder. Davey Mato Butorac is depicted here in January, 2008, in court on two charges of murder in connection with the killing of two drug-addicted sex trade workers.

Photograph by: Felicity Don, Special to the Sun

TO VIEW A PHOTO GALLERY, CLICK HERE.

=======

A Langley man charged in 2008 with killing two women now faces a third count of second-degree murder.

Davey Mato Butorac, 31, has yet to make his first court appearance on the additional charge, which was approved Monday afternoon, in the 2006 slaying of Margaret Redford.

Redford, 47, was found floating in Aldergrove’s Bertrand Creek in the 27300 block of Fraser Highway on May 20, 2006 by a resident out walking on a community trail.

At the time, Butorac was living in a condo a short distance away.

Butorac has been held in pretrial custody since being charged in January 2008 with the murders of 50-year-old Sheryl Lynn Koroll of Langley, and Gwendolyn Jo Lawton, 46, of Abbotsford.

His trial in those two slayings is set for May of this year in New Westminster Supreme Court.

At the time of the other two charges, police confirmed Butorac was a suspect in the Redford murder.

Cpl. Dale Carr, of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, said the break in the four-year-old case “demonstrates the continued effort that investigators put into an investigation no matter how old it is.”

“Investigators will scale all obstacles placed in their path in order to advocate for the murder victim, no matter how long it takes,” Carr said.

He said Redford’s family was informed Tuesday about the charge and had asked for privacy.

“They appreciate and thank the media for their assistance throughout this investigation and would like to take this opportunity to begin to privately move forward with the healing process.”

Carr said he lives in the same community and has been approached about the Redford investigation “by a variety of people in the community on a regular basis.”

“I am very pleased to be able to tell the community that a charge has been laid. Perhaps they can have a sense of relief now that they know someone is being held accountable for Margaret’s murder,” he said.

All three victims had struggled with drug addiction and worked in the sex trade to support their habits.

Lawton’s body was found March 13, 2007 by City of Abbotsford employees off a gravel road in the Pemberton Hill area.

Four months later, on July 7, 2007, workers in an industrial building off Mufford Crescent in Langley City discovered Koroll’s body.

kbolan@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

The VANCOUVER SUN

http://bit.ly/dwd97e

Police hope billboard will generate clues to killer’s identity

Body of the sex-trade worker was found in the Fraser River in July

By Kelly Sinoski, Vancouver Sun

December 3, 2009

Vancouver police billboard asks for information regarding the death of Lisa Francis in July.

Photograph by: Bill Keay, Vancouver Sun, Vancouver Sun

Police are hoping a billboard featuring slain sex-trade worker Lisa Francis will help generate clues and help them find her killer.

Francis's body was dumped in the Fraser River on July 23.

Vancouver police homicide investigators hope the billboard, along with a $10,000 reward authorized by the Vancouver police board, will help them establish a timeline of Francis's activities and whereabouts leading up to her death.

The billboard is at 700 East Cordova in the Downtown Eastside. This is only the second time police have used a billboard to generate tips; in the other instance they used a billboard to solve the murder of Tracy Guthrie.

Guthrie's body was found under a rhododendron bush at Vancouver city hall in January 2007 after she checked herself out of Vancouver General Hospital, where she was being treated for tuberculosis.

Anyone with information is asked to call 604-717-2500 or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222 8477.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Moralizing no safety net for prostitutes

By ANDREW HANON

Edmonton Sun

Last Updated: 16th November 2009, 1:22am

Amber O'Hara doesn't mind having prostitutes working the sidewalk outside her apartment building.

"Sex trade workers should have the right to choose where he and she wants to work," the wheelchair-bound great- grandmother said. "It's not prostitution that's killing the women. It's the violence."

O'Hara, who was in Edmonton recently, lives in a seedy Toronto neighborhood she describes as "Crack Central," the Dundas and Sherbourne area.

It's a district in transition. There's lots of poverty, but it's slowly being gentrified and the well-to-do newcomers are pressuring local police to run the prostitutes out.

"Some of the people are outright hateful," she said.

O'Hara doesn't think that will solve anything, other than to push the prostitutes into back alleys, poorly lit industrial areas and other spots that put them at risk.

"It's so different than it was when I worked," the 58-year-old said. "They're so desperate now. It's so much more dangerous and they're so afraid they're going to get busted. There's a different energy out there on the streets than when I was there."

O'Hara, an activist who runs the website missingnativewomen.org, used to call for decriminalization of the sex trade. Nowadays, she's calling for it to be outright legalized.

"It's the only way to ensure their safety," she argues. "They shouldn't be forced to work in an unsafe environment."

The website lists hundreds of women who've gone missing across the country. The Alberta page alone has 70 names.

O'Hara, who has her master's degree in social work, quit the sex trade in 1983 after working the streets across Canada and in some U.S. cities.

"I had other jobs," she said, listing a few off. "I was a waitress. I did medical transcription. I was in social work. But I had mouths to feed so I'd do this too. It's how I put myself through university."

She admits to forming a drug habit when she was young, but has been clean and sober for 27 years.

In 1990 she was diagnosed with HIV, which has since developed into full-blown AIDS.

O'Hara knows from getting tested regularly when she contracted the virus that it was the result of a rape.

She says she was attacked while helping bring supplies to the Mohawk protesters at Oka, Quebec.

But despite it all, O'Hara continues to work on behalf of disadvantaged women, especially those in the sex trade. There's no bitterness over the cards life has dealt her.

"I'm at the end stage of my life," she says evenly, without a trace of sentimentality.

She's perfectly happy to co-exist with street prostitution.

"People were complaining about needles and condoms on the sidewalks," she said.

"They didn't have anywhere to put them. I went out and gave them garbage bags and asked them to please use them and they were perfectly happy to."

She takes them soup and offers condoms if they need it.

O'Hara has often opened her home to prostitutes seeking shelter from the cold or trying to get away from a bad date or vindictive pimp.

Sometimes they come to her looking for a way out of the life but see no way out because they're mired in drug addiction. O'Hara helps them get into detox and rehab.

"They're people, like you or me," she says simply. "If I was healthy, I'd go back to it again."

You probably don't agree with O'Hara. But how can you not admire her compassion?

ANDREW.HANON@SUNMEDIA.CA

Hope remains

By Florence Loyie, Edmonton Journal

October 21, 2009

Delores Dawn Brower told people she had a plan to get off the streets she had worked on for close to 15 years. The 33-year-old woman disappeared in May 2004. Her family reported her missing in October 2005, and since then they have waited for news.

Photograph by: Edmonton Journal, Canwest News Service

EDMONTON — Hope. It is the only thing the families of Edmonton's missing women have left.

Hope that their missing loved ones simply decided to leave their former lives behind and start new ones somewhere else, without telling anyone of their plans.

Hope that one day they will return, even though the chances of that happening are remote.

Delores Dawn Brower told people she had a plan to get off the streets she had worked on for close to 15 years. The 33-year-old woman disappeared in May 2004. Her family reported her missing in October 2005, and since then they have waited for news.

Brower is one of three Edmonton sex-trade workers listed as missing with the RCMP's Project Kare. There are at least eight other women listed as missing with the Edmonton Police Service, nine if you count seven-year-old Tania Murrell, who disappeared on Jan. 20, 1983, while walking home from her elementary school for lunch.

Those listed with Project Kare lived high-risk lifestyles. Brower was the third sex-trade worker to go missing in 2004. Corrie Renee Ottenbreit, 27, went missing on May 9 and Maggie Lee Burke, 23, disappeared on Dec. 4.

"We are still hopeful that Miss Ottenbreit has chosen to make a change in her lifestyle and, after seeing this in the media, will pick up the phone and call investigators," Cpl. Wayne Oakes, spokesman for RCMP K-Division, said at the time of her disappearance.

"We also have to, however, face reality and investigate other avenues along with this."

One year after Burke was listed as missing, there were rumours she had been seen walking along a street in Vancouver. There was hope the five-foot-seven woman with a marijuana leaf tattoo on her upper left arm might be found, although Project Kare investigators have long believed foul play led to her disappearance.

Although Sangeet Khanna is listed with the EPS missing persons unit, investigators think the 41-year-old single mother was killed and her body dumped somewhere along the highway between Edmonton and Meadow Lake, Sask.

Khanna disappeared on April 17, 2006. That evening she told her 15-year-old son she was going to the bank and would bring some ice cream when she returned. Police found her vehicle in a bank parking lot after her son notified them of her disappearance the next morning.

Michelle Louise Mercer, 46, was a street person with no fixed address whose life was written up in articles by Alberta Vue Magazine and Reader's Digest. Both articles were published within days of her disappearance on Feb. 6, 2009.

Police have no idea what happened to her.

"I haven't seen Michelle Mercer in the downtown inner city in a long while," a friend posted on the Unsolved Murders/Missing Persons Canada website. "I hope she has taken off somewhere, and living a better life."

Annette Margaret Holywhiteman was reported missing to police last March by a social service agency. The 41-year-old was known to lead a high-risk lifestyle and has not been seen since Aug. 25, 2008.

Downtown resident Diana Gregory, 44, never showed up at her sister's home as planned on Feb. 26, 2006 and has had no contact with family since. Foul play is not suspected in her disappearance, but the woman who also went by the nickname Daya did require medication for an illness.

Rene Lynn Gunning, 19, and 16-year-old Krystle Ann Julia Knott were not from Edmonton, but the teenagers are believed to have last been seen together at West Edmonton Mall on Feb. 18, 2005. They told friends they were hitchhiking back to British Columbia. The teens are not believed to be involved in prostitution, but the files of both girls were added to Project Kare's caseload in July 2007.

Kamloops mother Glendene Grant has not given up hope she will find her missing daughter, although she admits that after more than three years she is "not one step closer to finding Jessie."

Jessica Foster was 21 when she disappeared in March 2006, four months after moving to Las Vegas. Jessie told her parents she was engaged to a man who was a "trust-fund baby," but Grant later found out Jessie was working as prostitute for an escort agency and the "fiance" was actually a pimp. Foster, who was born and raised in Calgary, is currently listed by the FBI as a missing person.

Grant has created a website dedicated to Jessie, a Facebook page and done numerous media interviews. She has posted YouTube videos and montages, made countless calls to police investigators and armed herself with as much information as she can find on the issue of human trafficking, because she is convinced Jessie was a victim.

"I have decided that if I can't find her, I can at least tell the world about her. If I can't do anything more for Jessie, I can keep her name alive," said Grant.

Grant said she will never give hope that Jessie will be found. "I don't want to ever give up on getting her back. Even if she is not alive, we want her back home."

Edmonton Journal

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

Maggie Lee Burke

Everywhere on Internet, but still missing

By Sherri Zickefoose, Calgary Herald

October 21, 2009

Calgary-born Jessie Foster was 21 when she disappeared in March 2006, four months after moving to Las Vegas.

Photograph by: Calgary Herald, Canwest News Service

CALGARY — Glendene Grant's days begin around 3:30 a.m. by typing her daughter's name into online search engines and monitoring dozens of websites devoted to missing women.

Daughter Jessie Foster may have vanished in the underbelly of Las Vegas in 2006, but her presence on the Internet is inescapable.

"She's to me the most well-known, unknown missing person in the world," said Grant, who has created nearly a dozen websites in her daughter's name. She adds Foster's photograph and story to every missing persons list and forum she can find.

Calgary-born Foster was 21 when she disappeared in March 2006, four months after moving to Las Vegas.

Grant believes her daughter is caught up in a human trafficking ring, lured to glamorous Las Vegas by a recruiter who helped turn Foster into a sex slave.

Before her abrupt disappearance, Foster painted a picture of happiness to her parents. She told them she was engaged to a wealthy man, Peter Todd, who drove fast cars and lived in a fancy house in north Vegas. She phoned often and came back to Canada for visits.

Grant eventually learned her daughter's so-called fiance was a pimp with a prior conviction for spousal assault, and that Foster was working as prostitute for an escort agency.

Foster had twice been arrested for solicitation in 2005.

Prior to her disappearance Foster travelled to Nevada, New York and Florida with high school friend Donald Vaz. She called home and said he asked her to earn funds turning tricks because he gambled his money away.

Despite her work in the prostitution trade, Foster kept in touch with family unfailingly, Grant says.

In March 2006, Foster called home to announce she was coming to Kamloops for a visit in a few days and on to Calgary for her stepsister's wedding.

She never arrived.

March 28, 2006, was the last day Foster was seen alive. Since then, Foster's credit cards and bank accounts haven't been touched.

Her frequently used cellphone hasn't been used.

All of these clues are leading Grant to the same horrible conclusion and she is doing everything she can to keep Foster's story alive.

"I want her to be Canada's poster child for human trafficking. It's a symbol of the whole thing. Human trafficking needs to take on a face so people will remember," says Grant.

"Whether she's back or still missing, whether she's alive or not alive, she's already helped a lot of other people start talking about this."

Her website, www.jessiefoster.ca, and YouTube montages offer a $50,000 reward for information about Foster's whereabouts.

She spends hours every day trying to track down leads.

"We're slowly getting Jessie's case saturated around the world. I write enough stories and tag her enough that her name is alive out there."

Grant says she doesn't want to think about her daughter's death, because she wants to focus on finding her alive.

"I think the absolute worst is knowing you're never going to see your child again. But I think I will see Jessie again. I know I will."

Calgary detectives have an average case load of 3,200 missing person reports each year, but "99 per cent of those people are found or find their way home," said Det. John Hebert of the Calgary Police Service major crimes unit.

Calgary simply doesn't have a number of unsolved high-profile cases of local women disappearing under sinister circumstances.

"We're certainly not seeing them. In terms of missing persons we're seeing resolutions of the vast majority of cases as opposed to having a great number of outstanding ones," said Hebert.

"The vast majority of our outstanding missing persons that are reported are resolved in one way or another in a reasonably timely manner."

szickefoose@theherald.canwest.com

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

Bright Lights: Katrin Pacey

Lawyer, Pivot Legal Society

When was the last time you met a member of the legal profession who claimed to be an activist first and a lawyer second? If that sounds a bit odd, it’s because you’ve never met Katrina Pacey.

Pacey, 35, is a staff member with the Pivot Legal Society, a nonprofit legal-advocacy organization that tackles social-justice issues plaguing Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. It’s not a glamorous gig, but it’s rewarding for her. In some ways, she’s a walking contradiction. Pacey is a self-described feminist who fights for sex workers’ rights. She said she comes from a privileged background, yet she spends her working days dealing with some of the most vulnerable women in the city.

She said she was intrigued when Vancouver East NDP MP Libby Davies brought a motion forward in Parliament in 2002 to review prostitution laws after so many women went missing from the Downtown Eastside. Pacey said the sex-trade workers were saying: “We need something different; we need to have safety in our lives.”

“I thought, ‘How do I get these women’s voices and stories to Parliament?’ ” she recalled.

As a student, Pacey knew that the corporate environment of law school would challenge her ideals as a human-rights activist, but she said she wanted to gain the tools and knowledge to use the legal system to advance the interests of marginalized people. After receiving her undergrad degree in political science and earning a master’s degree in women’s studies from UBC, she attended law school and began working with Pivot in her first term.

“I feel like it [Pivot] was a huge part of my education and kept me from deviating from being focused on human-rights issues,” she said, sitting in a modest boardroom at Pivot’s office on East Hastings Street. “I feel like it kept me grounded and real.”

Pacey’s work involves advocating for changes to Canada’s prostitution laws, but she admits that she didn’t always have such conviction about the subject. She had seen how it had divided the feminist community. “I really didn’t want to go there by any personal inclination,” she said, “but when I realized that’s what the demand was—and that it was the most pressing issue for them [women of the DTES]—I felt like I didn’t have a choice.”

When she became involved with sex workers’ rights, she expected a backlash from the feminist legal community. Ultimately, she hopes that her objective will become clear to even her fiercest critics. “What I’m really about is creating a safe and dignified working condition for people involved in sex work, and honouring those people who say this is their choice,” she said emphatically.

Despite some people’s objection to Pacey’s endeavours, her contribution to the field and, specifically, her work with sex workers is undeniable. In a phone interview with the Georgia Straight, Pacey’s long-time coworker and Pivot Legal Society executive director, John Richardson, sang her praises: “She’s definitely someone you want fighting in your corner.”

It’s hard to believe that Pacey graduated from law school only five years ago. Already she has been awarded the YWCA Women of Distinction Award; she routinely speaks about human-rights issues at universities and local colleges; and she is one of the partners at Pivot’s most recent venture as a law firm—Pivot Legal Society LLP.

The firm, an idea developed by Pacey and Richardson, came to fruition in 2006 and has been growing ever since. “I’m really passionate about this because it can help strengthen Pivot as a nonprofit while giving access to affordable legal services to those people who need it most,” she said.

Not surprisingly, even her venture in creating a business model for Pivot leads her down a people-before-profit path. It’s an often thankless cause she has taken upon herself, but it’s never been about her.

Mobile Access Project played a role in crimes

Vancouver Sun
June 20, 2009


Your lead editorial of June 17 was absolutely bang-on in terms of why the provincial government's decision to cut funding to the Mobile Access Project -- a van that offers street workers condoms, needles, protection, information and refreshments -- is utterly unconscionable.

Vulnerable women working in the sex trade continue to be targets for violence, and many of them don't trust the police to handle adequately any information or intelligence they provide.

The MAP van staff were the recipients of hundreds of tips and bad date reports, which found their way to police.

These often provided the missing pieces to investigative puzzles, helping to get violent, sadistic men off the low track.

If we've learned anything from the last decade of carnage on the Downtown Eastside, it's that drug-addicted sex trade workers will not go to police if they believe that will affect their access to drugs or their safety, but they will talk to outreach workers they come to know.

The incredibly short-sighted decision to cut this program will result in increased sexual assaults and other serious assaults on these women.

Once again, the cost of solving these crimes will far outweigh the minuscule investment in programs like the van.

Lori Shenher

Vancouver
© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Lori Shenher is the former lead detective on the Vancouver Missing Women case.

http://www.vancouversun.com/news/Mobile+Access+Project+played+role+solving+crimes/1715616/story.html

On Lori Shenher

http://www.missingpeople.net/news_articles_with_former_lead_d.htm

Victoria cuts off funds to service that protects sex-trade workers

BY REBECCA TEBRAKE, VANCOUVER SUN JUNE 3, 2009

VANCOUVER — An advocate for Vancouver sex-trade workers says they will soon be at greater risk because the B.C. government has cut off funding for a van that cruises the streets at night, watching out for the women.

Losing the van means a greater risk of violence and less access to harm-reduction supplies, first aid, and bad-date reports in the overnight hours when sex workers are most active, said Kate Gibson, executive director of the WISH Drop-in Centre.

The van, which supplies the only overnight services to sex workers, is stocked with condoms, first-aid supplies, a needle exchange, coffee, fruit juice, water, referrals to support services, and posters showing missing women and dangerous johns.

It stops along the most popular strolls or at specific locations requested by sex workers. Each night, 40 to 50 women show up for supplies, support or companionship over a cup of coffee. The van’s last run will be on June 12.

The province, citing financial pressure, has not renewed the $250,000 needed to keep the van for the summer.

The solicitor-general’s ministry said the project’s funding request is under review.

“The provincial government, like other jurisdictions around the world, is facing challenging and unprecedented economic times, requiring some difficult decisions,” the ministry said in a statement Wednesday to The Vancouver Sun.

Laurel Irons, who has staffed the van since 2004, said sex workers “are already very upset, concerned and feel just really left out in the cold, wondering why such an important service to them is being taken away.”

Irons said she has intervened at times when sex workers were stalked, pepper-sprayed and assaulted.

“I don’t know what a lot of women are going to do without having somewhere to turn in those desperate moments,” she said.

Kate Shannon, a research scientist at the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, said services that keep sex work above-ground are essential for ensuring women’s health.

“We need to scale up mobile services to sex workers. The closure of the mobile access-point van is a huge step backwards,” Shannon said.

The City of Vancouver is considering how it can help restore funding, Coun. Kerry Jang said.

rtebrake@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun