On April 13th, 1977, a couple in Lindbrook, Alberta, Canada were searching their abandoned property for a septic tank pump when they made a horrifying discovery: the mutilated body of a human being, floating in their old septic tank.
The victim was clad in a blue, button-up Levi’s shirt over a gray t-shirt, jeans, and a pair of knockoff Wallabee shoes. The corpse was wrapped up in a yellow bedsheet that had been tied with nylon rope.
The cause of death was determined to be two gunshots to the head and chest, and it was clear the victim had been savagely tortured before death; he had been tied up (possibly to a bed), beaten, burned with cigarettes and a butane torch, and sexually mutilated with an unknown sharp object which may have been a pair of farm shears. The extent of the sexual violence was so severe, in fact, that authorities were at first not sure if the victim was male or female. After the victim’s death, the killer or killers had covered the body in quicklime, perhaps because they believed the remains would decompose faster.
Upon closer examination, the RCMP surmised that the victim might have been a migrant worker who was not originally from Alberta. They also suspected he was Caucasian, and aged between twenty-six and thirty-two years old. Police were confident that he likely knew his killer or killers, as the savagery of the crime suggested a personal vendetta.
The man remained unidentified, being referred to as Sam Doe, Tofield John Doe, or Septic Tank Sam, and he was buried in an anonymous grave. In 1979, though, the body was exhumed and sent to a forensic anthropologist named Clyde Snow and a medical illustrator named Betty Pat Gatliff in Oklahoma. Together, they examined the remains anew and came to the conclusion that not only was the victim probably older than the RCMP believed—perhaps closer to thirty-five—but that he was likely indigenous and not Caucasian. The pair also produced a facial reconstruction at this time, which sadly did not compel anyone to come forward with his identity. The John Doe was exhumed again in 2000 and another facial reconstruction was released to the public, but again the result was silence.
Finally, in 2021, Septic Tank Sam was identified through genetic genealogy as twenty-six-year-old Gordon Edwin Sanderson of Manitoba, Canada. A delve into his past revealed that he was indeed an indigenous man who had likely been placed into foster care at nine years old during the infamous “Sixties Scoop,” in which child welfare authorities in Canada were authorized to take indigenous children from their families and place them with white foster parents.
Gordon Sanderson was living in Edmonton in the 1970s and had one daughter. The last time he spoke to his family, he told them he was planning a trip to Calgary to visit his brother Arthur. He subsequently disappeared.
The murder of Gordon Sanderson is still an ongoing investigation. Authorities theorize that the victim may have been killed by his associates in some criminal enterprise, as Gordon himself had had previous encounters with police and had suffered from drug addiction, but all avenues of inquiry remain open.
Crime Immemorial 