Kelly Cook (Unsolved Murder)

*This episode deals with a crime committed against a child. Please exercise self-care when choosing to listen.

At 8.30pm on Wednesday 22nd April 1981, 15 year old Kelly Cook left her house in the village of Standard, Alberta for the last time. She got into a waiting car driven by a man she had never before met and disappeared into the night. That morning Kelly had received a phone call from a man who said his name was Bill Christensen. He was looking for a babysitter and told Kelly she had been highly recommended. They agreed that he would pick her up later and have her home by midnight. Kelly was never seen alive again. This tragic case is one of Canada's most baffling and disturbing unsolved crimes.

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Newspapers.com
Calgary Herald
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31/03/85
06/04/86
06/06/86
24/11/88
29/01/89
14/04/91
08/10/91
12/05/2001
Red Deer Advocate
27/04/81
30/04/81
27/05/81
02/07/81
03/07/81
22/09/81
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26/11/82
21/04/91
Daily Herald-Tribune
27/04/81
30/06/81
02/07/81
28/10/81
03/02/82
30/04/91
Whitehorse Daily Star
25/11/88
The Gazzette
30/04/81
Edmonton Journal
07/5/81
18/06/81
30/06/81
04/07/81
07/07/81
17/09/81
27/10/81
11/12/81
17/02/82
19/09/82
19/01/83
05/08/84
10/08/84
The Gazette Montreal
29/05/81
The Leader Post
30/06/81
Vancouver Sun
02/02/82

Mediumzeph456.medium.comThe Unsolved Mystery of Kelly Cook: A Tragedy that Shocked a Community

https://globalnews.ca/video/2654301/archive-police-reopen-investigation-into-kelly-cook-murder/

https://globalnews.ca/video/5179739/rcmp-investigators-take-new-look-at-historical-homicide-of-kelly-cook/

Murderpediamurderpedia.orgClifford Olson

https://globalnews.ca/video/5224048/original-target-of-killer-speaks-out-for-first-time-in-hopes-of-helping-solve-alberta-cold-case/

https://globalnews.ca/video/2655015/kelly-cooks-family-searches-for-closure-35-years-after-disappearance/

Promos 

Transcript

Kelly Cook

This episode deals with a crime committed against a child. Please exercise self-care when choosing to listen.

When the Cook household telephone rang at 8.20am on Wednesday April 22nd 1981 it was answered by the family’s eldest child, Kelly. The fifteen year old cheerfully greeted the caller but was met by a stony silence on the other end of the line. The caller then hung up. Slightly perplexed, Kelly placed the receiver down and continued getting ready for her day at school. Kelly attended tenth grade at the local High School in the rural village of Standard in Alberta, Western Canada. It was, and continues to be, a close-knit community built around the agriculture industry and regionally famed for its successful volleyball teams. The population in the early 1980s was around 380, a little more than it is today. The nearest big city, Calgary, lies 80 km to the west.

The Cook family consisted of father Walter, 44, who worked at the Cominco Ltd fertiliser plant, mother Marion, who is described in press reports as a housewife, and the couple’s three children. Kelly had two younger siblings, a sister Marnie, and a brother. The Cooks were originally from Montreal but had moved to Standard in 1977. The early part of 1981 had been difficult for the family. In January Walter's brother had passed away at a relatively young age and only two weeks previously Walter had lost his mother.

As Kelly busied herself collecting what she needed for school, the house phone rang again. It was now 8.25am. Kelly answered and this time a male voice asked for her by name. The man introduced himself as Bill Christensen and said he was looking for someone to babysit his children that evening. The man told her he had been given Kelly's name and she had come highly recommended. Kelly did indeed babysit regularly for friends and acquaintances of her family, but she didn't normally babysit for people she did not know. She told the man she would check with her mother. Marion did not know anyone called Bill Christensen but the surname was common in the small town, similar to Jones or Smith in that particular area of western Canada. The name certainly did not trigger any red flags and Marion agreed her daughter could babysit if she completed her homework before she went. Kelly went back to the phone and told Bill Christensen that she was free to babysit. He did not give his address, instead telling Kelly he would pick her up at 8.30pm that evening and that she would be needed until midnight. Kelly did not need to give the man her address; he already knew where she lived.

During school Kelly told several friends about the babysitting job she had lined up that evening and asked if anyone had heard of Bill Christensen. Some reports say her mother Marion had asked her to do this. No one knew Bill Christensen  but a few people thought the name sounded familiar. 

After returning from school, finishing her homework and eating an evening meal, Kelly spoke on the phone with one of her closest friends Signe Nielsen. Thirty minutes later at 8.30pm a light coloured, American-made car pulled up right outside the Cook property. The driver stayed inside the car and waited for Kelly to come out. Walter and Marion were naturally quite cautious parents but on this occasion they did not come out to the car to meet Mr Christensen. They assumed he must be related to one of the Christensen families in the town. Besides, Kelly had mentioned to her parents that during the phone call that morning with Bill Christensen he had mentioned by name one of the Cook’s neighbours. This obviously helped to reassure them. Kelly said goodbye to her parents, promising to call them as soon as she got to the man's house. Marion and Walter watched through the window as the car started and drove off into the night.

Persons Unknown is a true crime podcast dedicated to unsolved murders and missing persons cases from all over the world.

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Kelly Jane Evelyn Cook was born on June 18th 1965. At 15 years old she was a keen figure skater and member of the school team. Kelly was about to turn 16 and was looking forward to getting her driving licence in a couple of months. When she was older, Kelly hoped to train as a lawyer. A neighbour of the Cooks named Leona told the Red Deer Advocate that Kelly was well liked and would often take time to visit older neighbours if they were unwell. The Gazette Montreal describes Kelly as serious and sharp. A 2001 article in the Calgary Herald by reporter Lynne Koziey calls Kelly, talkative, bright and old before her time. Hearing interviews with her sister Marnie as an adult it is abundantly clear how much Kelly was loved by her whole family. 

After Kelly left in the car Walter and Marion sat down for the evening and waited expectantly for the call from their eldest daughter to say she had arrived at the house. The phone never rang. Perhaps she had got sidetracked by something and it had slipped her mind. Maybe there was even a problem with the man's phone line. 

Three and a half long hours ticked by until the clock finally chimed midnight. Walter and Marion sat huddled together waiting for the sound of a car to signify Kelly’s safe return. When their daughter didn’t come home they began to phone around people in the town asking if anyone knew Bill Christensen. No one did. By 12.30am there was no sign of their daughter and they knew something was very wrong. They contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and explained the situation. The first officer on the scene was Constable Jim Bazant. Kelly's younger sister Marnie remembers waking up in the night and hearing the sound of lots of people moving around in the house. It wasn't long before she learnt of her sister’s predicament.

There was never any indication that Kelly had gone off somewhere of her own volition. In the April 24th edition of the Calgary Herald, Kelly’s best friend, 16 year old Cindy, said Kelly was not a spontaneous character and would never run away. She added that Kelly did not have a boyfriend. While her family hoped there had been some awful misunderstanding or breakdown in communication it was soon clear that Kelly had likely been abducted. The motive at this stage was unknown but it was thought that kidnapping for ransom was unlikely in this case. Everyone clung to the hope that Kelly would be found alive. A student at Standard School told the Calgary Herald that something like this just doesn't happen here.

Kelly’s parents Walter and Marion could not sleep as they were sick with worry. The local pastor came around to the house the morning after the abduction and spent many hours with the family providing emotional and spiritual support. Everyone was trying to keep negative thoughts of what might have happened to Kelly at bay.

RCMP Staff Sergeant Barry Goldberg said they had very little to go on and stressed the point that they would need local residents' help in order to find Kelly. Stanley Rasmussen, the chair of the local Neighbourhood Watch, got straight on the case, organising search parties. Over the next week 600 civilians and forty RCMP officers scoured the surrounding area on motorbikes, on horseback and by air, using light planes.

RCMP Sgt Earl Peters was in overall command of the investigation and he ensured every householder within 1100 square km of Standard was talked with. The outpouring of support from the residents of Standard was clear when, four days after Kelly went missing, a meeting was held in the Standard community hall. 500 people attended, over 100 more than the population of the village, to say prayers for Kelly and the family. 

After eight days the search was re-organised and the whole region was covered again, this time using a more systematic approach. RCMP Corporal Craig Green, who led this operation,  made sure every barn, ditch and ravine was looked into. The search was extended to the neighbouring towns of Rockyford, Nightingale, Gleichen, Hussar and Rosebud. Nonetheless, no sign of Kelly was found. RCMP Inspector Len Jerritt attempted to remain optimistic in his media briefings. There was a chance Kelly was still alive and in their inquiries so far investigators had come across no reason to doubt this assumption. 

While outwardly police were remaining positive a piece of information came in that was cause for worry.  The true crime website Chilling Crimes.com details the following incident.  Bear in mind, as far as I can make out this information was not discussed in contemporary reports and I only have this one source for the story.  

A tip came in from a Calgary-based phone operator which gave investigators cause for concern. The operator said that on the evening Kelly was abducted (22nd April) they received a phone call between 10-10.30pm. When the operator picked up, all they heard was the sound of a girl's scream. This was followed by silence. The call was tracked to a payphone in the town of Hussar. This is a twenty minute drive from Standard. Had Kelly fleetingly managed to escape her abductor to make the call? There was no way of knowing if this was Kelly but if it was not, it was a chilling coninsidence. 

RCMP tried to find out all they could about the man calling himself Bill Christensen. It was determined that, unsurprisingly, this was not his real name. However the choice of this name pointed to a knowledge of the area. He understood that the name Christensen was common within Standard and he had also referenced the Cook’s neighbours by name. Investigators concluded the perpetrator had done this deliberately in order to dispel any concerns or misgivings Kelly or her parents might have had. 

Through inquiries in the community investigators came across several witnesses they believed may have seen “Bill Christensen'' and his vehicle in the lead up to the abduction. A specially trained Staff Sergeant with the Calgary police, Tom Barrow, was brought in to question the witnesses under hypnosis to attempt to glean the maximum amount of information about the unknown suspect. There had been at least three sightings of the man in different locations in Standard and the surrounding area over the previous few days before Kelly was taken. Altogether six local people were interviewed under hypnosis. 

It was believed that the man calling himself Bill Christensen had stopped at a Shell service station on the morning Kelly was abducted. This was on Highway 1, around 20 km east of the  town of Strathmore and 19 km from Standard. The reason RCMP knew the man had been there was because the telephone calls made to the Cook house on Wednesday morning came from that location. The first call, timed at 8.20am, was made from the service station's public payphone. This was the call that Kelly answered and no one talked. Investigators suspected that this was because the payphone required the caller to insert a quarter once the recipient of the call picked up the phone. The man obviously didn't realise this and believed the phone was faulty. 

Instead the man went inside the service station and approached a truck driver, asking if he could use the office phone to make a call. The truck driver directed him to the station manager who acquiesced to the man's request. The manger overheard some of the man's conversation on the phone and confirmed to investigators that he had been asking about babysitting.

Another sighting occurred in the Standard Hotel in the main street of the village. An incident in the hotel bar four days before the abduction provided clarity regarding how and why Kelly was targeted. On Saturday 18th April 1981 at 4.00pm a 17 year old girl was telephoned by a man who gave the name Bill Christensen, from the bar phone in the hotel. Apparently when the man walked into the hotel he went directly to the bar and pretty much demanded to use their phone.  Again the caller asked for the girl by name and requested her services as a babysitter that evening. The girl declined the offer saying she could not do it but gave the man the names of two friends. These were girls from the school figure skating team, of which she was also a member, who also did occasional  babysitting jobs. One of the names given was Kelly Cook. After the call ended the man bought a case of beer and was peeved at the amount of change he was given. He left without saying thank you to the staff. 

Two days after this incident, on Monday April 20th, the man was spotted again in the Co-op store in Standard. Here he asked a shop assistant if they knew Kelly's address.

The man present at these various locations was depicted in a very similar way by the separate witnesses while under hypnosis. The following description of the suspect was put together by investigators. The man was in his mid 30’s to 40’s. He was around 5ft 10 or 180 cm and 180 lbs or 81kg. He had a round rather than oval face. He had a dark complexion which looked tanned or weather beaten, with rugged features, including creases. He had dark hair which covered his ears and dark eyebrows. His nose had a heavy bridge but it did not look like it had been broken. The RCMP description emphasised that he did not look attractive. He was clean shaven and  did not have sideburns. He also wore sunglasses that he sometimes placed propped on top of his head.

He was said to look like an “outdoor type” or a farmer. He was fairly well spoken, though he had what was described as an abrupt, egotistical manner and way of talking. Witnesses at the service station said he came across as rude, nasty and selfish. 

He was last seen wearing what the Calgary Herald describes as casual clothing. A sporty blue jacket or windbreaker with crests on the breast, these were possibly camping patches or badges, blue trousers and a dark shirt (not black). Based on the fact that none of the witnesses recognised the man as a local it was believed he was not from Standard. However, they still believed he knew the area and probably lived relatively close by. 

A description of the vehicle the man was driving was also released by RCMP.  It was a late modelled, full-sized, American-made, light-coloured car. One report notes it as a 1975 model,  possibly cream in colour with four doors. At least one source says the licence plate was from Alberta.

The RCMP were sure that the key to finding Kelly’s abductor lay with the 17 year old girl who had been telephoned by “Bill Christensen” on Saturday afternoon. They believed this girl had been the perpetrator’s original target. After being rebuffed, the man had been forced to alter his plans and refocused his attention on Kelly. 

The 17 year old was questioned  numerous times but could not think of anyone she had come across who could be Kelly's abductor. She did not remember seeing or speaking to a man  fitting the description of the suspect. However, the RCMP were sure she had been the original target and that the perpetrator had been planning this abduction for two months.

Again, at the time investigators would not make public how they came to this conclusion. I have since read in more than one newspaper that a phone call was made to the principal of Standard High School in early March 1981, by a man who wanted to know the contact details of this 17 year old girl. This girl’s name and photograph had been featured in a local newspaper article about the school figure skating team. The theory was that the would be abductor had read the article and decided to target her. The principal refused to divulge any personal information to the man. It is not known exactly how he obtained the 17 year old girl's telephone number. 

At the beginning of May, RCMP Inspector Jerrit told the press there were factors in the case that he was not at liberty to divulge, which made the RCMP believe that Kelly was still alive. A reward fund was set up by residents of Standard for Kelly’s safe return. By the end of the month the search for Kelly had extended right across the country. A pamphlet was distributed throughout  the provinces and territories with details about the case. It included a photograph and physical details about Kelly. She was 5 ft 4 or 1.62cm. She had brown hair. In the photo her hair is reasonably short in length. Kelly was last seen wearing brown slacks, a cream coloured v-neck jumper, a caramel kangaroo jacket and a brown and beige vest. 

Members of the Cook family even took it on themselves to instigate searches. Walter's brother Donald Cook lived in Montreal and believed there was a possibility that Kelly had been trafficked into the sex trade. He talked to over 30 sex workers and drug dealers in the city with the hope of tracking down his niece. Walter himself doubted his brother's theory. Family and friends in the city of Halifax did the same there. Altogether, 3000 flyers were handed out in major cities across the country. Walter organised the printing himself just ten days after his daughter's abduction. 

It was a desperate period for the Cook family. With no news they feared the worst but at the same time they clung to the hope that Kelly was alive. But any light at the end of the tunnel was extinguished on Sunday 28th June 1981.

At 4.00 that afternoon a group of six motorcyclists were riding along the north shore of Chin Lakes, a natural reservoir for an irrigation canal, 16 km south of Taber. At points the lake is only a few hundred metres wide but it stretches for 30 km in length. This location is 50 km east of the city of Lethbridge and 170 km southeast of the Cook family home in Standard. 

The bikers were about 180m east of the Chin bridge when one of them spotted something lying on the rocky sand about 3m from the water line. It was the badly decomposed body of a teenage girl. One of the motorcyclists, 18 year old Gerry, managed to get the attention of a passing boat who were able to contact the RCMP.  Gerry talked to The Daily Herald Tribune on July 7th 1981. He explained that when he found the body it was partially clothed. It's worth noting that the vast majority of subsequent reports state the body was found fully clothed. The ankles were tied together and there was a rope around the waist holding the arms by the side. I have also read a report that there was a third rope tied around the shoulders. Two concrete cinder blocks had been attached to the ropes to help weigh the body down in the water, showing that the killer had attempted to hide the body for as long as possible. Recently there had been an increased demand for water and the level of the lake had dropped significantly. RCMP positively identified the body using dental charts the following day. It was Kelly Cook. Over the next few days x-rays held on file were also used to further solidify the identification. 

An autopsy was held the day after the body was found. According to numerous newspaper reports, including the Leader Post on June 30th 1981, the cause and time of death could not be determined. The length of time the body had been in the water could not be accurately ascertained. The RCMP stated there was no sign of sexual assault, however, when questioned on this point some RCMP spokespersons have refused to confirm whether or not Kelly was sexually assaulted. Over the years there has been speculation that Kelly died of asphyxia. The Calgary Herald stated this in an article on January 29th 1989. There is little doubt that investigators have understandably decided to hold back certain information about the crime scene.

The location where Kelly's body was found was deemed to be highly significant. The lengths to which the killer had gone to ensure the body would sink to the bottom of the lake showed the disposal was not a haphazard operation but a carefully executed plan. Investigators theorised the killer may have dropped the body into the water from a 300m long bridge which crossed the long narrow lake in the middle. The lake was dragged and the surrounding area was searched for further clues. Particular attention was given to any abandoned farm buildings and motels that the killer may have used to carry out the murder. Chin Lake was not chosen at random and it has been speculated that the killer likely lived in or near the town of  Taber.  Inquiries were made in communities within a 5000 square km radius of Chin Lake.

Kelly’s funeral took place on Friday 3rd July 1981 at Standard’s Lutheran church. 200 local people were in attendance with an overflow room being used in the basement. Pastor Christine Lund led the service. Amongst the crying and heartache they attempted to celebrate Kelly’s young life. Mourners heard stories about Kelly’s love of figure skating and her kind and hospitable character. 

Walter Cook asked for donations to be made in lieu of flowers to a new rape crisis centre that had been opened in Calgary. Individuals and businesses gave generously and five people even offered to volunteer at the centre. Walter told the media that they didn't know if Kelly had been sexually assaulted but he intimated that he believed the motive behind his daughter's murder was sexual. Kelly was buried in the small cemetery in Standard. The headstone reads “A beautiful memory lingers”. 

In their grief there was no closure for the Cook family. They wanted to know who had done this evil deed and why they had chosen Kelly. The sense of injustice and a desire to prevent this happening to other families led the Cook’s to call for the reintroduction of the death penalty. It had been abolished for the crime of murder in 1976. Local residents also felt spurred into action. The reward fund established by the people of Standard to find Kelly alive was now offered for information to catch her killer. It stood at $40,000 Canadian dollars.

In August 1981, the media began to propose possible links between the murder of Kelly Cook and other unsolved murders of girls and young women in Western Canada. The Calgary Herald reported on August 11th 1981 that Calgary RCMP were speaking to investigators in British Columbia about almost a dozen disappearances and murders of young people in and around the city of Vancouver. Law enforcement authorities involved were keen to emphasise there was no evidence to suggest a connection to Kelly’s case. They just wanted to be thorough and explore every possible avenue. 

A day after this information appeared in the press 41 year old contractor Clifford Robert Olsen was arrested for the attempted abduction of two girls in late July. By the end of the month, Olsen was charged with the murder of 14 year old Judy Kozma on July 12th 1981. Shortly afterwards he was charged with a further 10 murders of children and young people, seven girls and three boys aged between 9 and 18.  His offences are some of the worst I have read since starting this podcast. He murdered his victims using a variety of methods including stabbing with a knife, hitting with a hammer and strangulation. He carried out tortuous experiments on some of the victims similar to those perpetrated by the Nazis at Auschwitz.

Olsen eventually pled guilty to all eleven murders and agreed to show investigators where the missing victims were buried. From what I have read, only three of the bodies had been previously found. Olen did not do this out of any sense of remorse or empathy for the families. Olsen was a psychopath, he scored 38 out of 40 on the psychopathy checklist during prison interviews with a forensic psychiatrist. His move to plead guilty was a way of manipulating the authorities and getting something that he wanted. Controversially, he was able to persuade the RCMP to pay $10 000 into a trust fund for his wife and child for every body he gave them. By the time the RCMP had finished the investigation the fund amounted to $100,000. The 11th body Olsen gave as a “freebie”. Eventually authorities put a stop to this extortion, though Olsen promised he could take them to another 20 hidden murder victims. 

It later came out that Vancouver police had been suspicious of Olsen for some time and had placed him under surveillance. After believing him to be clean, attention was focused elsewhere and during that time he murdered his last three victims.

As soon as Olsen was arrested investigators considered him in reference to Kelly’s murder. Calgary RCMP sergeant Ray Forsythe told the media that while no evidence had yet been found to connect Olsen to Kelly Cook, they were keen to speak to him. After several months of investigating Olsen, RCMP came to the conclusion that he was not involved in Kelly’s abduction and murder. In January 1982 Calgary RCMP Corporal Craig Green confirmed to the media that while they continued to check other suspects, Clifford Olsen was not one of them. 

In early September 1981 RCMP believed that Kelly Cook’s abductor may be back and attempting to lure away another young girl. Eleven teenage and pre-teen girls from Canmore, Alberta (Canmore is west of Calgary and a 2 hour drive from Standard) came forward with similar stories of a stranger calling them out of the blue to request babysitting duties. The man gave the name Peter but none of the girls could remember the man's surname or whether he gave one at all. Along with these reports came sightings in the area of a suspicious man driving a car with a Manitoba licence plate. Letters were sent out in schools throughout the region warning children and parents to be vigilant. 

Thankfully this turned out to be a misunderstanding as a man called Peter came forward to say he thought he was the man in the news reports. As it turned out his family was new to the area and he really was looking for babysitters as the one the family usually used was unavailable. Apparently he said he had given his surname to the girls but it was quite an unusual name and people often had trouble remembering it. 

That same month another incident occurred which was not a false alarm. 2 year old Summer Wright was abducted from her bedroom at her family home in Crossfield. Crossfield is an hour and ten minutes drive north west of Standard. Summer’s terrified 8 year old sister, Spring, was in the room as a man in a baseball cap broke into the house and kidnapped the toddler. Spring raised the alarm and the RCMP and fire fighters flooded the area searching for the missing girl. 

After a phone call from a member of the public, a couple of hours later Summer was found outside a post office in nearby Carstairs. When Summer's father Gerry Wright was reunited with his daughter he couldn't help but think of what had happened to Kelly Cook just months before. 24 year old David John Hummel was arrested and charged with indecent assault, abduction and kidnapping. He was later sent to prison for these offences. Hummel had a history of breaking into people's homes and of sexual crimes. While I'm sure the RCMP must have considered him in connection with Kelly’s case, I cannot see any evidence that Hummel ever became a suspect. 

A documentary on the case had aired in October 1981. It was put together with support of the Cook family and had produced 350 calls from the public. Three suspects came from these tips. Two were eliminated fairly quickly. I believe another man from Ontario was cleared after Calgary RCMP consulted with their east Canadian counterparts. At this point the RCMP said they had 150 potential suspects on file.

This really was a terrifying period for parents in this region of Canada, as December 1981 saw yet another abduction that had eerie similarities with Kellys case. On Tuesday December 8th the Stanton family from north-west Calgary opened their front door to a man who had answered their advert saying they were looking to buy second hand clothes. During the course of the conversation the man mentioned that he was moving house and his wife would like some help to pack boxes. He wondered if the Stantons’s 11 year old daughter, Roberta, had a few hours to spare and would like to earn some pocket money. The man seemed nice and Roberta’s parents agreed. The following day at 4.30pm the man arrived at the house to pick Roberta up. He promised she would be home at 9.30pm. Roberta was never seen alive again. 

When their daughter didn't arrive home at 9.30pm, Roberta’s parents phoned the number the man had left with them. They spoke to the man's girlfriend (she was not his wife) who said she knew nothing about anyone helping her with packing boxes.

Roberta’s body was found the following day in woods near Lake Minnewanka in Banff National Park. Roberta had been strangled and police believed she had been sexually assaulted. The abductor had not tried particularly hard to cover his tracks as he had left his actual home phone number with the family. 39 year old Joseph William Francis Zimmer, also known as John Wayne Nielson, was arrested and charged with the crime soon after. He pled guilty to the murder but denied the charge of sexual assault.

The way that Zimmer went about Roberta’s abduction meant that investigators were keen to question him about Kelly Cook's unsolved murder. In total he was questioned about a further 33 murders of girls and young women  in Alberta and British Columbia. Robert Stanton, Roberta's father, told the Edmonton Journal that when he heard the news his daughter had been murdered he immediately thought about Kelly Cook’s murder. However, he said that Zimmer looked nothing like the sketch and description of the man who abducted Kelly.

Two further murders  in late 1981  and the early part of 1982 around the Calgary area were tentatively connected to Kelly’s case for a period of time. 23 year old Debbie Stevens’s burned body was found in a snow covered valley south east of Calgary on December 15th. She had been sexually assaulted and murdered four days previously. She was last seen leaving a Christmas party. 16 year old Laurie Boyd was abducted from her place of work, a convenience store, in January 1982. She was sexually assaulted and stabbed to death with a screwdriver. Her body was then set alight.

There were initially disagreements amongst investigators about whether the two murders were carried out by the same perpetrator. It turned out that they were. James Edwards Peters, 29, and Robert Edwards Brown, 32, were arrested for the crimes after a woman hitchhiker reported their odd and frightening behaviour. The pair were found guilty of both murders.

During interviews with the RCMP, Brown teased detectives that he had been involved in many other violent crimes between 1964 and 1981. Shortly after Laurie Boyd’s body was found at the end of January 1982, a Canadian TV channel broadcast a news feature in which they suggested a link between Debbie Stevens, Laurie Boyd and Kelly Cook. In response, an unidentified man claiming to be a close friend of the killer phoned a CFCN television reporter to say Kelly's murder was not related. 

Despite this, following the arrests of Brown and Peters a question mark remained over their involvement in Kelly’s murder. Brown continued to boast that he was responsible for a further seven murders. Both Brown and Peters were looked into, but in January 1983 Sgt Ray Forsythe definitively told the media that Brown was not involved in the murder of Kelly Cook. The RCMP did concede Brown may be guilty of other murders. Peters was not deemed to be responsible for Kelly's or any other murders.

Brown died by suicide, three years into a life sentence. Peters is still behind bars and was denied parole in 2018.

Ten months on from Kelly’s abduction the RCMP continued to receive daily phone calls from members of the public about the case. Investigators continued to hunt out prospective suspects. Labourers and drifters were specifically targeted as a demographic and many were questioned. By this time people all over Canada had been interviewed regarding the case and investigators had eliminated over 1000 suspects. Three RCMP officers were still exclusively working on the case full time and the operation had cost half a million dollars by this point. The lack of any tangible leads made some in the RCMP believe there was a reasonable chance that the killer may be in prison for another offence, or may even be dead. They considered this type of offender at a high risk of suicide. Without any clear answers, people in Standard were feeling jittery. Emer Jensen, Mayor of Standard, told the Calgary Herald on April 4th 1982 that the community was feeling discouraged because of the lack of answers in the case.

As the anniversary of Kelly’s abduction approached, media coverage picked up and there was a genuine fear amongst locals that the killer may see it as an opportunity to return and strike again. The town was on tenterhooks and things were heightened when there was a report of the attempted abduction of an 11 year old girl. A man pulled up outside a house and tried to persuade the girl to get into the car. Investigators were never sure if this was a genuine abduction attempt. The man was never caught but reports note he did not match the description of Kelly’s killer.

The RCMP used the anniversary to make a new plea to the public concerning the case. They shared a piece of evidence that it appeared they had been sitting on for some time, waiting for the right time to share it publicly.

Investigators were looking to trace a man who visited the Calgary funeral home where Kelly's body was taken following the autopsy. The unidentified man turned up at the funeral home at 7.30pm on the evening of July 2nd 1981. This was just days after Kelly's body had been found. The man said he was a friend of the family and requested to view the body. He was instructed by staff that this was not permissible and so he left. This man was not known to the Cook family and has not been traced. At the time the fact that Kelly’s body was at the funeral home was not public knowledge. Investigators suspected this man was Kelly's killer. The description of the man matched that given by other witnesses at the Service Station, Hotel bar, and Co-op in Standard. The man was in his late 30s, around 5ft 11 or 180cm, weighed 165-170 or 75 kg  with a heavy set build and had a dark complexion.

The RCMP also said they were trying to uncover the identity of a man who had visited the Standard Hotel bar maybe six times around 5 weeks before Kelly's abduction. The man never mentioned his name or said where he was from. He avoided talking to people, though he would drink a few glasses of beer and play pool with one of the women who worked at the bar. The RCMP believe this was the only person they had been unable to track down who had been in the town of Standard in the period leading up to Kelly’s abduction and murder. This man was said to be in his late 30’s, around 5ft 10 or 178 cm and 165 lbs, 74kg. He was clean shaven and sometimes wore sunglasses. Again this description chimed with the suspect sketch and the man seen at the funeral home. 

Now that twelve months had passed it was felt the investigation would benefit from fresh eyes. Four new RCMP officers were drafted in who had not previously worked on the case. One of the existing officers on the case had been transferred to the Debbie Stevens and Laurie Boyd case earlier in the year, so the new six-strong task force started again from scratch. They went back through all the case notes looking to see if anything had been missed. The files had recently been computerised to aid cross referencing and increase efficiency.

Over the next year and a half the case continued to be worked hard. In December 1983 four officers returned to the Taber area where Kelly's body was discovered. The RCMP were taking a further look at some people who had resurfaced in the investigation. They stressed that this wasn't due to any new leads but rather from going over existing information. Two hundred houses within an 18 km radius of where the body had been found were visited. Investigators were sure that the killer was very familiar with the Taber region and suspected the key to solving the case lay in this region.

1985 saw Henry Lee Lucas linked to some of the unsolved murders of girls and young women along the Trans Canada highway. Lucas was arrested in 1983 for the murder of two women, Katherine Rich and his own niece, Becky Powell. He had previously spent ten years in prison for the murder of his mother. After his arrest he claimed that he and his companion Ottis Toole had murdered hundreds more victims across America and even some in Canada. In January 1985 the RCMP confirmed that they would be questioning Lucas about the murder of Kelly Cook, although they did say a link was unlikely. This did not materialise into a meaningful lead in the case. Lucas went on to be convicted for a total of 11 murders. He is suspected in a handful more unsolved murders but most of his confessions have been debunked. 

 In 1986 another child abduction and murder, this time on the other side of the country, had investigators pondering connections to Kelly Cook. In July 1986, eleven year old Alison Parrott disappeared in Toronto after receiving a phone call from a man claiming to be a photographer. Alison was a track athlete and the man made an appointment to meet her near Toronto University in order to take photographs of her. In the weeks prior to the abduction the Parrott's babysitter reported that a man had phoned the house on a previous occasion saying he was interested in taking photographs of the upcoming track star. Two days after Alison went missing her body was found under a bridge in Toronto’s west end. At the time Metropolitan Toronto police confirmed they were looking into a possible link with Kelly Cook’s murder. The telephone ruse the killer had used and the well thought-out plan for the abduction bore striking similarities. Alison’s murder remained unsolved for over a decade but in April 1999 Francis Carl Roy was found guilty of Alison's murder using DNA evidence. Roy used to run at the track where Alison trained. Roy does not seem to have been pursued in conjunction with Kelly's murder. 

Yet another killer was investigated regarding Kelly’s unsolved murder when in 1988 35 year old Joseph Arlin Shepherd was arrested in Ontario. In 1978 Shepherd had escaped jail in Tennessee while awaiting trial for the murder of Roxanne Woodson, 15, in 1976 and Cathy Clowers, 16, in 1978. He was finally caught when someone recognised his face after Shepherd was featured on the TV show Unsolved Mysteries. Shepherd bore a striking resemblance to the Kelly Cook suspect sketch. He had lived in  London, Ontario since 1984 and may have been in Canada before that.  The media pushed hard that Kelly’s case could at last be solved. Members of the Cook family were even forced to respond to the media frenzy surrounding Shepherd. 79 year old Ernest Nixon, Kelly's grandfather, told the Calgary Herald that he was wary of Shepherd being connected to the case. This circumspect approach proved to be correct as Shepherd was never charged in connection with Kelly’s murder. He died in prison in 2010.

Kelly’s case was re-examined in 1991 by Constable Barb Adams who was now leading the investigation. She had worked on the case as a rookie officer back in 1981. Over the previous decade, 30 investigators had worked on the case with over 30,000 staff hours having been expended. The total cost for the operation was in excess of $1 million Canadian dollars. 19 cardboard boxes of files had accumulated and yet Kelly's killer remained at large. 

The FBI put together a psychological profile of the killer quite early in the investigation. This was kept under close wraps. I can't see that it has ever been fully published. The Calgary Herald does make reference to it in 1989, saying according to the profile the killer was aggressive and cocky. He had likely killed before and would go on to do so again.

Constable Adams used the profile in her working of the case. She did not believe the killer was in prison or dead. Adams was convinced that over the years the killer had likely returned to the crime scene. In 1991 Adams confirmed that the RCMP continued to receive phone calls about the case and were currently pursuing six lines of inquiry. Unfortunately none of those leads ever paid off and despite the optimism of investigators that the case would be solved,  the identity of Kelly's killer remained elusive to them.

It's probably worth mentioning here there were other unsolved Calgary murders of young women that were seen as potentially connected to that of Kelly Cook. These include Pauline 48.46 Brazeua, 16, in January 1976, Melissa Ann Rehorek, 20, in 1976 and Barbara Jean Maclean, 19, in February 1977. All three had been hitchhiking and their bodies were found in rural locations surrounding Calgary. Additional names are Tara Jane White and Oanh Ngoc Ha, a Vietnamese refugee. Some links were found between these murders, for example some of the young women had worked in hotels or bars around Banff. A few had been killed in a similar way, by being strangled with cord.  Regional conferences did take place where officers from Calgary RCMP attended to share information about Kelly Cook's murder. Attempts were made to analyse potential connections to the murders I have just detailed and more besides. No definitive links were ever found. Yet as the profile suggests it is thought Kelly’s killer had killed before and would go on to do so again.

All the cases I mentioned remain unsolved and are part of a series of murders known as the Highway murders. These are not to be confused with the Highway of Tears murders which refers to a specific stretch of Highway 16 in British Columbia. This is the location where numerous indigenous women and girls went missing or were murdered from 1970 to the present day.

Kelly Cook’s case was officially reopened in 2010 following a Global news television report but no arrests were made. In 2019 the RCMP announced that they would be taking a new look at the case in light of new developments in technology. Items in evidence were sent to the lab to be re-examined. I cannot find out what items were sent, and there have been no major developments since the testing took place. In 2019 the RCMP claimed they had currently had 40 persons of interest on file. Altogether around  2000 people have been looked at over the course of the investigation.

Kelly’s dad Walter passed away in 2007 without seeing justice for his daughter. Watching recent TV interviews with Kelly's sister Marnie it is evident how much she and the rest of the family are still hurting. It must have been so difficult for Marnie growing up without Kelly, having lost her big sister in such a devastating way. Throughout the 1980’s the murder overshadowed many aspects of life in Standard and yet people would avoid talking about the subject altogether. The whole community was changed as a result of what happened and for the family there has never been closure. 

Marnie is upset by internet forums and armchair detectives who now throw peoples names into the ring as possible suspects. She says it is not helpful. In an interview with Global News in 2019 she said she believes a deathbed confession or possibly a wife or girlfriend coming forward remains the most likely way of her sister's murder being solved.  

As of June 2023 the village of Standard is offering a reward of $100,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of Kelly's murderer. If you have any information that could help contact K Division (Alberta) Serious Crimes Branch, South Airdrie on 403 420 4900, or Crime Stoppers on 1800 222 8477.