A girl between the ages of six and nine with dark hair had on gold earrings made by Jacoby Bros when her body was found on March 11, 1971 near 110th Avenue and 126A Street – what would now be one of the parking lots for Scott Road SkyTrain station.
The girl, according to the post-mortem interval (the time elapsed since a person died and when they were found), was between 10 and 50 years.
The girl is one of five active unidentified human remains cases in Surrey and one of roughly 200 unsolved cases in all of B.C.
The B.C. Coroners Service launched an interactive map Wednesday (March 27) on active unidentified human remains cases in B.C., with an aim to generate new leads that “will assist in closing these investigations.”
“By reaching out and engaging members of the public with the launch of this innovative tool, it’s our hope to gain new investigative leads that will lead to the identification of these unidentified individuals and bring closure to their families,” said Lisa Lapointe, chief coroner.
The markers on the map are coloured by gender; red for female, blue for male or green for “unknown.” The case files include the date found, possible age range and height, which police detachment and the post-mortem interval (PMI). Additional information is sparse, but it can also include hair and eye colour, clothing, scars, tattoos, a sketch of the person and items the body was found with.
In Surrey, there are four other unsolved cases.
The next oldest cold case was a body, between the ages of 30 and 50 years, found at Crescent Beach on Feb. 18, 1979. It is unknown if the body was a man or a woman, but the PMI was between 10 and 50 years. There is no additional information about the body.
Then on Aug. 25, 1979, the body of a baby boy was found with a Vancouver Sun newspaper, dated Aug. 21, 1979, in a forested area that would now be near the South Fraser Perimeter Road and Highway 1. The baby’s PMI, according to the map, was between one and four days.
The body of a man, between the ages of 35 and 50, was found just off of 25th Avenue, east of 188th Street on April 13, 1980. According to the case file, he was six-foot-three. His PMI was between three and five years.
The most recent case was the body of a man found on May 26, 1986, just off Southpark Crescent, between Parkside Place and Boundary Drive South. The man was between the ages of 50 and 75 and between five-foot-seven and five-foot-11. His PMI is between four and five years.
His clothing, according to the case file, is described as a “black suit with string hole type vest; shirt bearing Valentino brand label; dark tie with a triple cherry design.” Other comments include that he had a “Scott family napkin container, manufactured and sold between September and April 1977.” This file includes a sketch of the man.
It looks like one of the oldest unsolved human remains probes in B.C. dates back to 1971 in Terrace, where remains of a male teenager between 13 to 16 y/o was found along the Skeena River. One of ~200 cases charted on a fairly new BC Coroners Service map @BlackPressMedia pic.twitter.com/aCDPXNPHzJ
— Ashley Wadhwani (@ashwadhwani) March 27, 2019
The coroners service works with police and the National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains to input various cases into a federal database.
Anyone with information or questions about any of the investigations displayed on the UHR interactive viewer should contact the Special Investigations Unit using the case number provided in the viewer at: BCCS.SIU@gov.bc.ca
- With a file from Ashley Wadhwani
View the map here:
lauren.collins@surreynowleader.com
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