Evil in the Okanagan

Photography by Gary Moore

Evil came for Mindy Tran shortly after dinner on August 17th, 1994, when she vanished while out riding her bike near her home in Rutland, British Columbia, Canada.

We fast forward two months and we follow an ageing searcher, his trusty divining rod and a strand of hair from the missing girl, Rex Fitz-Gerald, a civilian co-coordinator, was able to lead investigators to a shallow grave solving a mystery that had confounded more than 400 searchers. Mindy Tran had been sexually assaulted and strangled discovered just blocks from her home.

The RMCP suspected Shannon Murrin, who lived near the Trans, from the start but the evidence was largely circumstantial. The trial was originally scheduled to begin in May 1998, but was postponed after DNA tests that linked Murrin to three hairs found in Mindy's underwear at the gravesite had been inconclusive.

The Crown suggested that Murrin had killed and sexually abused Mindy, stuffed her body into a suitcase and then buried her in a Kelowna Park. More than 80 witnesses testified at the trial that lasted nearly seven months.

The defense argued that Murrin was at a friend's house at the time Mindy Trans disappeared and that police had convinced a defense witness, Murrin's main alibi, to change his story and say Murrin was there more than an hour later. Murrin's lawyers accused the RCMP's lead investigator Sgt. Gary Tidsbury of trying to manufacture a case against their client, and of manipulating witnesses. Murrin had been badly beaten by three men who said the RCMP in a bid to get him to confess enlisted them. No one has yet been convicted of the crime.

Some questioned the quality of the police investigation after suspect Shannon Murrin was acquitted in January 2000 after a lengthy trial. Kelowna RCMP still consider Mindy's case an open investigation. Since the investigation into the Mindy Tran murder, a major case management model has been developed nationally to deal with any serious or complex investigations.