Alexandra Wiwcharuk
The death of beauty queen and nurse, Alexandra Wiwcharuk stunned everyone in her hometown of Saskatoon. Nearly 50 years have passed and her family is still seeking justice for Alexandra.
TIMELINE: Alexandra Wiwcharuk
1939
Alexandra Wiwcharuk was born in 1939 in the town of Endeavour, Saskatchewan 330 kilometers east of Saskatoon. She was the youngest of ten children that included six brothers and three sisters in a traditional Ukrainian family.
1950’s
The Wiwcharuk family put their hopes and dreams into Alex’s future. She attended high school at the Saskatoon Technical Collegiate where she was a member of the drama club. Her dream was to become a stewardess, but at a mere 5’1″, she was too short. Instead, in 1959, she returned to Yorkton and, with financial help from her family, took her nurse’s training at the Yorkton Union Hospital School of Nursing from which she graduated in 1961. Alex was the only one of her family to be educated beyond high school.
1960
Pretty and vivacious, Alex was voted queen of the Kinette Skating Carnival in Yorkton in 1960 and she was Yorkton’s entrant in the province-wide Saskatchewan Wheat Queen contest in 1960.
1961
With her nursing degree in hand she began work at the City Hospital in Saskatoon in September, 1961. She shared a basement apartment in the city with three other nurses: Alice Hall, Doreen Badduke, and Pauline Tyllis.
It was during this year that Alex was chosen The Girl In Saskatoon in a contest sponsored by a local radio station to promote a concert by country singer Johnny Cash. Cash sang his song “The Girl In Saskatoon” to Alex in the Saskatoon arena in front of fifteen hundred fans.
May 18, 1962
On May 18, 1962, around 8:00 p.m., Alex Wiwcharuk went for a walk. She was seen at several locations: Mead’s drugstore, near her home, between 8:30 and 8:45 p.m. and later, by a group of boys fishing on the riverbank between 9:00 p.m. and 9:45 p.m. But, Alex Wiwcharuk didn’t show up for her shift at the hospital that night, nor did she come home.
May 31, 1962
Her body was not found until May 31, 1962. Her skull had been fractured by a blow from a concrete block and her unconscious body buried before she died. She was found six blocks from her home. An autopsy determined that the cause of death was suffocation and that she had died before 10:00 p.m. Thirteen days had passed between her disappearance and the discovery of her body when crucial evidence could have been gathered.
June/July 1962
The 131-man Saskatoon police force began working immediately on the murder of Alexandra Wiwcharuk. Saskatoon police created a pool of files containing 1100 names. RCMP conducted interviews with another 100 people as far away as Alberta and Ontario.
1960’s
Police continued to follow leads, but by 1970 the case had gone cold, although it stayed alive in the memories of some of the Saskatoon police and in the memories of Alex’s family and friends.
Late 1990’s
One person who attended high school with Alexandra Wiwcharuk was Sharon Butala, the respected author of sixteen works of fiction and non-fiction. In the late 1990s, her mind was turning to a new book project and she began to consider the story of Alex’s unsolved murder. She pursued the story and her persistence lead her to a retired police officer named Ed Yakubowski who, like Sharon Butala, continued to be haunted by the memory of Alex Wiwcharuk long after her murder.
Ed Yakubowski had been a beat cop at the time of Alex Wiwcharuk’s murder and he had his own suspicions about who might have killed her. But, it wasn’t until he moved up the ladder of the police force, when he took over the police force’s murder and robbery squad, that he was able to look through the extensive Wiwcharuk file (1700 pages, including 650 interviews and statements) and follow up on his original hunch. His results were futile and he retired in 1998, but he was never able to forget Alex Wiwcharuk and what had happened to her on the night of May 18, 1962.
1998
In 1998, Ed Yakubowski registered a complaint with the Attorney-General about the handling of several unsolved cases, including Alexandra Wiwcharuk’s murder. The result was the creation of a police cold squad, but the question of who killed Alexandra Wiwcharuk remained resolutely unanswered.
November 30, 2002
On November 30, 2002 Sharon Butala was being invested as an Officer in the Order of Canada and, during a formal dinner, she found herself in conversation with the Governor-General, Adrienne Clarkson, and began to describe the story of Alex Wiwcharuk’s short life and brutal murder. The Governor-General, who had a long and distinguished career as a journalist and former host of the CBC’s “the fifth estate” urged Sharon Butala to contact Linden MacIntyre, which she did.
At this time Sgt. Neil Wylie, of the Saskatoon Police Service Major Crimes Unit, was beginning one last effort to find the killers of Alexandra Wiwcharuk. The challenge for the police is that so many witnesses have died, so many memories have faded. But, now technology may provide answers that memories cannot. Evidence from the 1962 crime scene was tested for DNA in the mid-1990s without success. But, the police are hoping that new advancements in DNA analysis will help them this time; help them to identify Alexandra Wiwcharuk’s killer.
2004
The Wiwcharuk family gives permission to the Saskatoon police to exhume Alex’s body. Hair missed during the original autopsy is discovered. It is sent to the RCMP lab in Regina.
2007
A high tech lab in Thunder Bay called Molecular World, finds a DNA profile that is not Alex’s. Saskatoon Police start collecting profiles from suspects or family members of dead suspects.
Two suspects are cleared. Billy McGaffin, the redhaired boy who saw Alex down at the river that night, is cleared as a suspect after police collect DNA from his daughter and brother. McGaffin died in 1998.
Leslie Klassen was only a teenager in 1962 but he was known to police. He had already served jail time for sex offenses including five convictions for indecent exposure starting in 1960. He has 19 convictions for indecent acts, two indecent assaults. In 1974, during sex with a 15 year old, the victim died from a blow to the head. She was buried in a snow bank. Now serving time in a federal penitentiary in British Columbia, Klassen was excluded as a DNA match.
2008
Police are in the process of matching the profile against 13 “persons of interest”. Several people have been excluded through DNA comparisons.
April 2008
Sharon Butala’s book on Alex’s murder called The Girl in Saskatoon: A Meditation on Friendship, Memory and Murder is released. Hundreds of people in Saskatoon attend her readings.
May 2008
Alex’s four nieces Patty Storie, 49, Lorain Phillips, 57, Lynn Gratrix, and Gwen Taralson, read Butala’s book and decide to actively investigate their Aunt’s murder. Only children at the time of their Aunt’s murder, they vowed when they grew up to solve it. According to Storie, the book gave them a needed “kick in the pants.” Over the next couple of months they interview over 100 people and came up with four theories and suspects in the murder of their Auntie Alex.
October 1, 2008
The nieces unveil a billboard in downtown Saskatoon at the corner of 25th Street and Second Avenue asking for tips to their Aunt’s murder . It has a toll free number on it, 1-866-794-1962. In the first week the nieces receive over forty calls. The four nieces who live in British Columbia, New York, and Alberta, will return to Saskatoon every couple of months to follow up on any leads.
(From the CBC website)
