The Bulldog and the Helix Read online

  At Somass Division in 1977, an aboveground conveyor system running along the shoreline transfers wood waste northward to a boiler complex at the sprawling MacMillan Bloedel pulp and paper mill, where two giant concrete smokestacks spew steadily, two twelve-hour shifts per day, seven days a week. Nobody has heard of emission control, and smokestack precipitators will not appear for nearly a decade. Port Alberni residents still contend with a daily layer of fly ash that settles on every exposed surface overnight.

  At each of its big mills, MacMillan Bloedel has installed a rough car wash where workers can hose down the daily layer of grime that accumulates on their brand-new Dodge Chargers and Ford Mustangs and Chevy Camaros while they are on shift cutting logs and moving paper rolls and pulling lumber off the green chain. It’s a scene familiar to any kid who lived in a mill town in British Columbia in those days.

  IN THE MASSIVE investigation that followed the murder, Port Alberni RCMP soon identified a suspect, but despite some compelling evidence collected at the scene and a credible witness who came forward a few years after the crime, Crown prosecutors didn’t have quite enough evidence to lay charges. It would be just five weeks short of twenty years before the foundry owner’s son was finally charged.

  The Carolyn Lee case would be broken largely through the efforts of one determined member of the RCMP’s General Investigation Section (GIS) in Port Alberni who, over the years, immersed himself in the emerging field of forensic DNA investigation and waited for the technology that could process long-degraded crime scene samples to unequivocally link the suspect to the crime scene. Equally important was new federal legislation, enacted on July 13, 1995, which compelled that suspect to provide a DNA sample. While the re-energized Carolyn Lee investigation was unfolding, the community would be rocked by another horrific sex slaying of a pre-teen girl named Jessica States, and the investigator and his colleagues would actively use DNA to track down the killer.

  Enter the Bulldog

  WHEN RCMP CORPORAL Dan Smith was assigned to the Port Alberni General Investigation Section in January 1988, one of his duties as the “new guy” was to take over old cases still on the books. Photographs of Smith show a medium-tall man with an athletic build, a large jaw, and an easy-going smile. That smile seems to convey the nature of a “nice guy,” as his former colleagues describe him, “easy to work with,” someone who “liked to stay out of the spotlight.”

  But look a little closer at those photographs—especially the candid newspaper shots taken of Dan Smith on the job, poring over evidence or speaking at a press conference—and you will notice a characteristic set in the jaw, a reflexive clench in moments of concentration, hinting at a man with deep reserves of focus and determination. You get the impression that, like the legendary bulldog, once this guy sinks his teeth into something, he’s not going to let it go. And, as his Port Alberni colleagues discovered, Dan Smith was not a man to let a homicide investigation slip through the bureaucracy—not when it involved the rape and murder of a child.

  “The first file I was assigned when I came into General Investigation Section was [the cold-case murder of] Carolyn Lee,” Smith said. While he was on record as the lead investigator, he was not expected to conduct an active investigation. “I was assigned the file and told that everything that could be done had been done. This file was given to me simply so I could fill out the C-237.” As he discovered, the C-237 was the report that the lead investigator was required to send to head office advising that the investigation was still in progress, no matter how dormant. “You never close down a murder file. This was simply a matter of updating it every six months.” Smith was expected to fill out the form even if “there had been no new developments.”

  While this was his first formal posting with a major crimes unit, Smith already had considerable experience as a street investigator. He arrived in Port Alberni as a General Duty officer in August 1985, after spending most of the first ten years of his career in Prince George, in northern BC.

  Smith was born in rural Alberta, but the family moved to Calgary, where he completed his schooling. “In high school, I decided I wanted to be a police officer. I was torn between joining the Calgary Police and the RCMP.” For most of its history, the RCMP had a policy of not posting its officers in their home territory, so there was always a tacit understanding that if you joined the force, you could be posted anywhere in Canada except close to home. In those days, the RCMP expected its members to be mobile, and transfers were frequent. In his deliberations, Smith discovered that, while the RCMP had the prestige, the Calgary Police had a higher pay scale. And you didn’t have to worry about being posted to some godforsaken corner of Canada.

  “You only had to be nineteen to join the RCMP,” recalled Smith, “and you had to be twenty to join the Calgary City Police. I applied to the RCMP first, when I was eighteen, and as luck would have it, eleven days after my nineteenth birthday, I found myself in Regina.”

  Smith entered the RCMP training centre, known as Depot, in 1975. His first posting, in Prince George, was to a booming pulp mill town just in the process of expanding its municipal boundaries. For a rookie Mountie, it was urban policing in a Wild West atmosphere. After just one and a half years, Smith was transferred to Fort Nelson, in the northeast corner of the province, for one year, where the petroleum industry was flourishing. His next posting, again for a single year, was to the forest industry town of Mackenzie. After that, it was 180 kilometres due south on Highway 97, back to Prince George.

  For young Mounties, frequent transfers were part of a seasoning process intended both to keep them mobile, but also to provide a range of experience and build up their skill set. And officers who demonstrated specific aptitudes had plenty of opportunity to move up. Smith got that opportunity in Prince George. “I was there from 1979 to 1985, mostly on general duty, but I also spent one year on burglary and one and a half years on court liaison.”

  “I got to Port Alberni and thought my [dispatch] radio was broken because there were no calls coming in. I never saw any of the other members on my shift, and I always wondered, ‘Where did everybody go?’ I had come from a place that was three times the size, and the radio traffic was constant. While you were dealing with one call, there were more calls backing up for you.”

  When Smith came to the General Investigation Section in Port Alberni in early 1988, the unit was commanded by Sergeant Murray Sawatsky. He’d earned a reputation as a top-notch investigator who supported his team members and let them take credit when credit was due. When a GIS slot came open, he invited Smith to come on board.

  As a new investigator, Smith had a case file in his hand, albeit one that was more than ten years old. While the murder of Carolyn Lee was still fresh in the minds of the people of Port Alberni, RCMP members tended to move frequently, and the case was not uppermost in the minds of local officers by 1988. “I knew it had happened, but I was not privy to the details . . . I knew it had not been solved.”

  A cursory examination of the file revealed that a suspect had been identified shortly after the killing, but investigators were unable to put together a case against him. On November 26, 1983, the suspect’s ex-wife had given police a statement that strongly indicated his guilt, but again, there just wasn’t enough evidence to take to court. In July 1984, the suspect had been charged in a pair of unrelated sexual assault cases but was later acquitted. While he was known to local police, he didn’t stand out.

  “He wasn’t really on our radar, as far as keeping an eye on him. There were far more active criminals I dealt with on a daily basis. I was probably aware of him, but that was about the extent of it . . . until, of course, I got conduct of the file.”

  By now, the Carolyn Lee investigation had generated a full filing cabinet of evidence, investigation reports, press clippings, and sundry paperwork. Surely, Smith believed, there must be something in there that held the key to solving this case. The easy thing to do would have been to simply follow instructions and dutifully fill
out the C-237 report every six months to say the investigation was still open but that there was nothing new to report. “However, as luck would have it, as I was new to the Major Crimes Unit, and I didn’t yet have a whole lot on my plate, I undertook a file review.”

  For Dan Smith, it was the beginning of a nine-year journey to bring a murder charge against the man who had been the prime suspect since the earliest days of the investigation. During that time, the infant science of forensic DNA would evolve into the most potent new weapon in the hands of police investigators since the fingerprint, and the Carolyn Lee prosecution would have to ride the outer edge of the available technology and law until the final guilty verdict came down in December 1998.

  DISAPPEARED

  In Port Alberni, people subscribe to the philosophy, “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes.” The changeability of west coast weather just might have played a major role in the life and death of Carolyn Lee. On April 14, 1977, when Carolyn and her classmates at the Pat Cummings School of Dance wrapped up their Thursday afternoon tap dance session and stepped out onto the sidewalk on Athol Street, west of Second Avenue, just before 6:30 PM, the early evening air was pleasant but cool, appropriate for the winter coat Carolyn wore. The sun would soon dip behind Cataract Mountain on the west shore of the harbour, but it was still daylight.

  Just as Carolyn prepared to leave, Pat Cummings leaned out the front door to remind her that she was required to acquire a leotard or a body suit for the upcoming year-end performance. “Carolyn, Carolyn. Don’t forget to order your suit from the catalogue,” she called out.

  Nancy Moore, also twelve, was waiting outside for a ride from her brother. Twenty-one years later, she testified that Carolyn had just begun the short walk along Second Avenue to the Pine Café when her brother drove up. “He asked her if she wanted a ride, and she said no, she’d rather walk.”

  Would Carolyn have accepted a ride from Nancy’s brother if it had been raining? In her waist-length ski jacket, she was prepared for the unpredictable spring weather, and it was only a short walk to the Pine Café. Furthermore, Carolyn’s father, John Lee, would later say that he had cautioned his daughter “very explicitly not to accept rides at all.” John concluded that two people must have been involved, and that Carolyn was abducted by force. Investigators had already come to that conclusion. Had the young dancer accepted that ride with Nancy’s brother, she might well have been alive today.

  On Second Avenue, Carolyn crossed paths with another dancer, Janice Pierce, fourteen, who was on her way to a seven o’clock ballet class. They exchanged a brief “Hi” in passing. Janice was the last person to positively report seeing Carolyn alive.

  According to Carolyn’s older sister, Linda, Carolyn would normally arrive at the restaurant after dance class, at about 6:45, and her father would drive from their home at the top of Argyle Street to pick her up. But when he arrived that evening, Carolyn had not shown up as expected. John Lee then drove the short distance to the dance school only to find she wasn’t there either. At this point, he drove to the Port Alberni Gymnastics Academy to pick up Carolyn’s sister Brenda and then drove home, where he started to make phone calls. At eight o’clock, he contacted local RCMP. Before the first hour was out, police had begun a search along Carolyn’s walking route and gradually expanded the search area to include nearby local parks.

  Sergeant Donald Blair, head of the Port Alberni GIS, was at home when watch commander John Fox contacted him at 9:00 PM to tell him that a twelve-year-old girl was missing. Blair immediately assumed command of the search.

  “It sounded serious enough that I went down to the office and we carried on from there,” Blair said. “I think her age had a lot to do with it. If she was sixteen, we might have said, ‘If she’s not back by noon tomorrow, give us a call.’ But we were concerned right off the bat.” There had been instances when girls went missing, but the circumstances surrounding this situation felt different. “In those days, if a teenage girl didn’t come home, they usually had trouble at home or they had trouble somewhere else. About ninety percent of the time, that’s what the situation was, and that’s why police wouldn’t get fired up right away.”

  But this was no sexualized high school kid; this was a pre-teen girl from a well-known, hard-working Chinese family, walking a familiar three-and-a-half block route in broad daylight. And that set off all the alarm bells. Carolyn’s sister Linda later told the Alberni Valley Times that, at the time of her murder, Carolyn “didn’t look a day over her twelve years. Carolyn was just a child,” she said. “She looked and acted like one. She didn’t look older than she was, and she wasn’t even interested in boys.”

  Instilling a sense of responsibility was a priority in the Lee family. John and his wife Sau Kuen routinely put in long hours at the restaurant, which meant the children were required to supervise themselves at home. Being the eldest, Linda frequently took charge. She characterized Carolyn as a quiet girl who succeeded at almost everything she attempted, as well as being a good athlete. “She never picked fights. In fact, she was the type that people took advantage of, she was so easy-going. Even at home, if there was something that had to be done, and no one wanted to do it, Carolyn would do it. She didn’t complain about anything. Nobody would ever have a grudge against her.”

  THE SEARCH

  That night, as Carolyn’s half-clothed body lay on the muddy shore of a small lake south of the city, snow fell, adding to the mud of spring. The hastily assembled team of searchers combed the Alberni Valley overnight and into the next day, working in difficult conditions.

  The Alberni Valley Rescue Squad was a group of volunteers trained and equipped for the sort of search and rescue operations one might expect in an industrial community surrounded by water and forests and mountains. They might be called out to locate a missing hiker on nearby Mount Arrowsmith or to rope-rescue anyone foolish enough to try paddling through Stamp Falls Gorge. But the Rescue Squad was about to enter a new phase. Within a few minutes of arriving at the detachment and assessing the situation, Sergeant Blair became convinced that he was dealing with a kidnapping and that he needed to get as many bodies and as many search vehicles on the street as possible as quickly as possible because Carolyn might be lying injured on the side of a road somewhere—and minutes counted.

  For the volunteers, this wasn’t a search for an overdue fisherman or a missing hunter—they would be searching for a victim of crime with the suspect or suspects still at large. Members of the local CB radio club set up a base to coordinate communications between rescue vehicles and police, and the Rescue Squad teams took to the streets, beginning with Carolyn’s Second Avenue walking route, then gradually expanding into the Third Avenue business district and the waterfront.

  The local radio station, CJAV 1240, issued bulletins with a description of Carolyn and urged residents to check their own properties for any sign of the missing girl. The next morning, police brought in a tracking dog from Vancouver and an RCMP helicopter from Victoria. By then, it seemed certain that this was, in fact, a kidnapping.

  At Port Alberni’s West Coast General Hospital, staff members were alerted to watch for people with suspicious injuries. Dry-cleaners were contacted to keep an eye out for bloody clothes. City garbage collectors were alerted to watch for unusual items on their pickup routes. Probation officers were canvassed about clients, and even psychiatrists were approached for any hint of suspicion that a client might be involved.

  At Maquinna Elementary School, teachers and classmates were grilled about Carolyn’s activities and her behaviour. Was she depressed? Did anyone know if she had run away from home? According to all sources, Carolyn was behaving normally. In the Friday, April 15, edition of the Alberni Valley Times, the headline announced “12-Year-Old Girl Missing.” (The Times erroneously spelled her name “Caroline” in the story and in the photo caption.)

  The Times came out every afternoon. That day, when the Times sent the pages to press at noon, the search operati
on was still active, so the story included a description of Carolyn and urged readers to contact police if they had any information on her whereabouts. By the time most readers picked up the paper at dinnertime, the operation was just shifting from an active missing-person search to a crime scene investigation.

  INITIAL INVESTIGATION

  The morning of April 15, RCMP and Rescue Squad members had been combing the Alberni Valley for nineteen straight hours when the watch commander contacted Sergeant Blair to advise that “the missing girl had been discovered.” Her body was found near Cox Lake, about four kilometres south from the southwestern edge of town, off Franklin River Road. To get there from the dance studio, a driver would have two options to reach Ship Creek Road, which linked up with Franklin River Road. The shortest but most exposed route would require the suspect vehicle to take busy Third Avenue. Heading south on Third Avenue, a driver could make a hard right down the hill toward the sawmill, ease right onto Plywood Road to the plywood mill, or continue a half block further south and swing left onto Ship Creek Road.

  For the alternative route, the driver would go west a short distance to the bottom of Argyle Street and turn left onto Harbour Road, travel along the waterfront to the entrance of the sawmill, and then east up South Street to the Ship Creek Road junction at Third Avenue. The waterfront route, which flanked the rail line that brought lumber to the Assembly Wharf, swung left at the mill and back up to Third Avenue. It was a considerably longer route, but it would have exposed the suspect vehicle to less pedestrian and vehicle traffic.