In today’s The Big Story podcast, in a 12-month span from 1990-1991, three teenaged girls were murdered in Victoria, B.C. All three had been sex trafficked and were working on what was then the city’s “stroll” where sex workers solicited clients. All three were found separately, and the ensuing investigations were a jurisdictional mess. The crimes are unsolved to this day, though some with knowledge of the murders believe they may have been committed by the same person.
Laura Palmer is the host and creator of Island Crime, Season 6: Sweethearts. She says that recording this most recent season gave her new insight into the reality of sex trafficking in Canada.
“It’s not that they’re picked up off the street and thrown into the back of a van, and sent off to another country. It’s slow and manipulative, and really evil,” says Palmer.
Who were these girls and how did they find themselves on the stroll? What might we learn about these still-open cases more than 30 years later? Why couldn’t police make headway in the 1990s and what’s changed that might finally help bring the killer or killers to justice?
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