On the last day of January 2001, another sex worker would be found dead in Canada, this time not in Edmonton, Alberta, but in Victoria, British Columbia—more than a thousand miles away.
Thirty-nine-year-old Roberta Jean Elders was a mother of two who had worked as a prostitute for some time, and had been living at the Holiday Court Motel in Victoria. On January 31st, her body was discovered in Pemberton Park. Although her exact cause of death was not made public, authorities put forth the possibility that she might have died from an accidental drug overdose, though shortly after the inquiry got under way, they began investigating her death as a homicide.
Just as in the disturbing series of sex worker murders occurring in Edmonton, discussed previously in the case of Kelly Dawn Reilly, some researchers also believe that Roberta Elders was a victim of a serial killer or killers operating in Victoria, though not necessarily the same one as that suspected in Edmonton. As evidence, an article published in the Times Colonist in May of 2001 points out that numerous prostitutes vanished or were murdered in the Greater Victoria area, going all the way back to 1986.
For instance, in late 2000, the body of Carla Slots was found near Shawnigan Lake. She had been beaten to death. Another young woman, seventeen-year-old Melissa Nicholson, was also found beaten to death in the same area in June of 1991, and that same year likewise saw the disappearance of twenty-five-year-old Nancy Greek, last seen on August 23rd of 1991.
Additionally, seventeen-year-old Kimberley Gallup was strangled to death in November of 1990 at the Colony Motor Inn; eighteen-year-old Cheri Lynn Smith was murdered in September of that same year in Saanich; and twenty-one-year-old Chantall Venne was strangled to death in mid-February of 1986, her body dumped on the side of a road in Esquimalt.
Just as in the Edmonton series, investigators are uncertain which, if any, of the murders are linked. Since sex workers are involved in a “high-risk” lifestyle, it’s possible that all the victims encountered separate assailants; however, enough similarities exist between some of the murders to at least entertain the idea that a serial killer is targeting prostitutes in British Columbia. About the murders, Victoria homicide detective Sergeant Don Bland was quoted as saying in 2001, “I don’t know what’s worse—to have one monster running around killing people, or if you’ve got six or seven. I guess it’s probably worse to have six or seven because if you actually get one guy, there’s still five or six left.”
Crime Immemorial 