Who: Sherry Anne Wallace, 31
What: Homicide
When: July 1, 1984
Where: North Saanich
Why: Unknown.
The murder goes back 24 years, but it's as if it was yesterday for two men linked by one terrible moment of loss.
The father, Sidney Swanton, remembers exactly where he was and what he was doing when he got the news on July 8, 1984.
"I was sitting out there," says the 90-year-old Royal Canadian Air Force veteran, pointing to the immaculate backyard of his home in Victoria. "It was a Sunday afternoon. I was sitting there listening to music that I have piped out there. I was sitting there having a cool beer."
The ex-RCMP officer, Hunter McDonald, remembers the same scene, but in his version he's standing frozen behind Swanton, bracing himself for the unpleasant task ahead.
"He was sitting there peacefully, listening to music, having a beer," McDonald said. "And I thought, 'I am going to destroy this family's life.'"
For eight days, McDonald and a team of up to 16 RCMP investigators had been frantically trying to identify a woman found dead in North Saanich the previous Sunday.
Two women on an evening walk discovered the body on Canada Day in bushes off West Saanich Road a short distance from the Ocean Sciences Institute. An autopsy confirmed that the woman had been strangled to death, but as the crucial early days of the murder investigation ticked by, investigators struggled to put a name to the victim.
Police found no identification or jewelry on the clothed body, and there was none in a nearby canvas sports bag that contained women's clothing, make-up and a blow dryer.
Finally, on the eighth day, a woman contacted North Vancouver RCMP to say she had not seen her friend, Sherry Anne Wallace, for several days. Investigators quickly linked the missing person report to the body on Vancouver Island, and dispatched McDonald to notify the woman's parents, Sid and Vicki Swanton of Victoria.
"The world fell in," Sidney Swanton says, recalling that day.
Sherry, 31, was the youngest of his two girls. Described by her sister, Linda, as generous and nurturing, Sherry lived in North Vancouver with her husband, Paul Wallace, a chartered accountant at Thorne Riddell, and their two daughters, aged one and nearly three.
The RCMP said at the time that Paul Wallace was in England with the couple's daughters, visiting his parents, by the time his wife's body was identified.
Investigators, meanwhile, worked to track Sherry Wallace's movements in the last hours of her life. The autopsy indicated that she was likely killed June 30 or July 1. There were no signs of sexual assault.
A team of officers recruited from Greater Victoria police forces fanned out across the Saanich Peninsula with pictures of Sherry, her husband and two daughters, checking hotels and motels for anyone who might have seen them on the Canada Day long weekend.
Four officers spent the day riding the ferries in hopes of finding someone who might have spotted the Wallace's white 1979 Saab GL hatchback.
But, to this day, one of the things that still puzzles the family is how Sherry ended up in North Saanich.
Former RCMP Staff Sgt. Bruce Brown, now B.C.'s deputy police complaint commissioner, said the case ranks as one of the most frustrating in his career. He and his partner spent weeks on the Lower Mainland retracing Sherry's steps.
"There was a bus strike on at the time that she allegedly walked away from her house, so you figure how did she get to the ferry terminal, how did she get to B.C. Ferries coach line if that's how she got here?" he said. "So we interviewed every taxi driver in the North Shore."
Sidney/North Saanich RCMP Sgt. Wayne Conley said police remain committed to solving the "complex" file, which remains the only open homicide at the detachment.
In the past 18 months alone, lead investigator Const. Steve Foster has done a number of new interviews, and met with Brown, who still has all his notebooks from the early days of the investigation. Foster also consulted with the provincial unsolved homicide unit, and explored whether advances in technology could push the case forward.
Conley said police want to speak with anybody who has information that could assist Foster's ongoing investigation.
"When we talk about going back to 1984, you never know, there may be someone out there who didn't come to the attention of police at the time," Conley said.
Swanton, who said he wished the RCMP provided more regular updates to families, wonders now whether he and his wife will live long enough to see anyone charged in their daughter's death.
He and McDonald, who delivered the awful news 24 years ago, keep in touch to this day, each still troubled that the killer has never been caught.
"You can't forget it," Swanton said. "You can't just write it off and say, 'It happened.' Somebody murdered our daughter and we want to know who."
Lindsay Kines can be reached at 250-381-7890 or [email protected]
