Murder in the Mountains | 01
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Hey, it's Nancy. Before we begin today, I just wanted to let you know that you can listen to Crime Beat early and ad-free on Amazon Music, included with Prime. Are your ulcerative colitis symptoms proving difficult to manage?

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Surrounded by glacier-fed lakes and streams, it attracts millions of visitors from all over the world every year. The dramatic landscapes have enticed filmmakers and attracted some of Hollywood's biggest names, including Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall, Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, and even the TV show Game of Thrones used Banff National Park as a backdrop.

There are awe-inspiring views in every direction and something to do in every season, from hiking or fishing in the summer to skiing and snowboarding in the winter. And on any given day, you're sure to encounter wildlife, from chipmunks to elk to grizzly bears.

In fact, Banff Avenue, the main road into town, is intersected by wolf, moose, and caribou streets, all animals that can be found in the national park. There's a certain serenity to being so close to nature and wildlife.

But early in the morning, on May 17, 1990, that peace was shattered when police came across a violent scene. It was senseless. She had been stabbed 17 times. My mom called, and she was crying and yelling on the phone and telling me that Lucie had died.

I'm Nancy Hixt, a senior crime reporter for Global News. Today on Crime Beat, I share details of a killing that rocked this popular resort town and the difficulties investigators encountered in solving the case. This is Murder in the Mountains. According to the most recent municipal census, nearly 9,000 people call Banff home on a permanent basis.

But on hot summer days, visitors arrive in droves and add an extra 40 to 50,000 people. Over the course of a year, the town welcomes upwards of 4 million visitors from around the globe. Tourism is Banff's economic lifeline, and seasonal workers thrive on the jobs it creates.

In the spring of 1990, a young woman from Quebec was one of them and was working as a taxi driver. There was a frosty bite in the air early in the morning of May 17th as Lucy Turmel pulled up to the condo she shared with her boyfriend. She had been working an overnight shift and told him she had one bad fare involving a dishwasher from a downtown restaurant. But she was fine, and all in all, it had been pretty slow.

Their conversation was interrupted by her dispatcher. She had fares waiting for pickup at the iconic Banff Springs Hotel, often referred to as the Castle in the Rockies for its striking appearance and lavish decor. It's welcomed many famous guests, including Marilyn Monroe and Queen Elizabeth II. Lucy made her way up the winding road to the hotel, which is located at the base of Sulphur Mountain.

There were three passengers waiting for her, two women and one man. At about 1:40 a.m., they hopped in the cab and she left for a residential area near downtown Banff. Minutes later, her radio went silent. She didn't answer repeated calls from dispatch or her coworker, who was also on the roads that night.

Here's veteran RCMP investigator Doug Morrison to help me share what happened next. He's retired now, but in 1990, he was a corporal with Calgary RCMP Major Crimes. At about 2 o'clock in the morning, Larry from Taxi Taxi, he's the other driver at the time in Banff, Alberta,

was trying to get a hold of Lucy Trammell. There was two cabs on that night. It was a fairly quiet night. And he was radioing her and couldn't get any response. Lucy's co-worker drove to the 600 block of Cougar Street, which was supposed to be her destination. But she wasn't there. Next, he drove past her condo. But still, no sign of Lucy. Shortly after that,

He was coming down going, I believe it's north on Banff Avenue, which is the main thoroughfare in Banff where all the stores generally are, and he noticed the white taxi-taxi of Ford Crown Victoria going south and it was heading towards the forestry office across the bridge and it was a

a male driving it, it wasn't Lucy. So he was calling on the phone. He got a hold of dispatch. A chase through the winding roads of Banff ensued. He followed this cab, he heard a U-ey on Banff Avenue and followed the cab up Mountain Avenue. And at that time, obviously the driver of the vehicle

the individual that was probably responsible for the crime, pulled the vehicle over to the left shoulder and then threw it into park and then off he ran into the bush, heading in kind of a direction that was towards the Banff Springs Hotel. Of course, that's a very heavily bushed and treed area. The driver lost track of the stranger. A closer look at the cab revealed a violent scene.

There was blood on the door of the car, on the turn signal, and the steering wheel. What happened? And where was Lucy Turmel? Ready for your next adventure? KLM Royal Dutch Airlines brings you Real Deal Days. Your chance to uncover real adventures and create real memories. Taste the real Amsterdam, explore the real Barcelona, and discover the real Johannesburg, along with many more destinations around the world.

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Before I go further, I need to take you back a few years and across the country to the province of Quebec, where Lucy Turmel grew up. Louis is her oldest brother. Well, the name of the city we're in is called Lévis. It spells exactly like the jeans Levi's, but we don't pronounce the S. So it's Lévis, and we're just across the St. Lawrence River from Quebec City.

I was born and raised here in Lévis and I still live here. French is his and Lucy's first language. My father was a doctor. He was an obstetrician/gynecologist. My mother was a nurse. That's how they met.

And there were three of us. The older, Louis, my brother is Simon, and my sister was the little kid, Lucie. The three of us were quite bigger than my parents. The main reason is we were adopted, the three of us. And I've got dark hair, my brother was blonde, and my sister was kind of a auburn, a little bit more red than

In my apartment, both of them, they were not over five feet. So it was always funny to show in public with them because people just looked so big. From a very young age, Lucy had an adventurous spirit.

She wanted to be a little bit of a free-minded person. She wanted to travel, she wanted to see the world. She didn't want to fit in the box as sometimes society wants us to be. She went to be a nanny in a Russian family in Toronto. She wanted to learn English but she realized they spoke Russian.

And she moved to a different family after that. And from there, she got the bite of traveling and seeing outer world. So she went to different places and up in Banff. Like most young people arriving in the mountain town, Lucy first got a job in the service industry, starting work at the prestigious Banff Springs Hotel.

From the Ben Spring Hotel, she went after that working for restaurants when she met her boyfriend, Jeff. And she also worked for a taxi company. And she wanted to drive, one of her dream jobs was to drive the big bus that goes on the ice. And while she had to go through different trainings,

And so they wanted her to train on the taxi and that's the job she had. Also, she was a waitress at a restaurant. She loved this situation. She was in love for the last year and she liked it. She felt she was free, she could do a bunch of things.

While in Banff, Lucy fell in love with more than just her surroundings. And in the spring of 1990, she moved into a condo with her boyfriend. Life was providing every adventure she had hoped for. Until that early morning in May when Lucy's taxi radio went silent.

And while her co-worker chased a man driving her cab through the streets of Banff, across town, police made a disturbing discovery. A young woman's body was found in the middle of a residential road. One of the officers in Banff came across the body laying on Squirrel Street. Of course, the call comes in to us at Major Crimes. And

very early on in the morning, a number of us strike out to Banff, Alberta. Calgary Major Crimes RCMP Corporal Doug Morrison became the lead investigator. And I need to warn you, this was a violent homicide and details are disturbing. She had been murdered outside the cab and was laying in the middle of the street. We were able to determine that she had been stabbed 17 times.

So it was a very vicious attempt. She'd been stabbed once in her leg, once in her chest, and a number of times on the left side of her throat. The victim was identified as Lucy Turmel. All the neighborhood inquiries there, it was only houses on the one side of the street, on Squirrel Street. The elementary school was on the other. So we only had those limited amount of houses, but nobody heard any screaming or anything. And this is at...

Probably quarter to two or two o'clock in the morning. So you would think if she was yelling and screaming and running for her life that somebody would have heard, but no, nobody heard a thing. Officers cordoned off the crime scene, which was located just one block from her new condo. It was the town's first homicide in 20 years. A heavy police force converged on the bustling tourist town with multiple scenes to investigate.

Number one is the body, number two is the vehicle, number three is when the owners of the residence on Nahami Drive, I believe it's called, came out and saw the weapon laying between, it was kind of like a condominium, it was laying between the two driveways. You know, it was about a six inch hunting knife and it was covered in blood.

Investigators believed Lucy was killed for the cash she collected at work that night. There was no money in the cab left. She had a wallet that she carried and that had all of the tips and all of the money that she would have garnered from various fairs. And so, you know, because that was kind of back before the days of everybody using the credit card.

So that was gone. There was nothing there. Her trip sheet was there. There was an amount on the trip thing in the cab, which notified $8.50. You know, it's one of those things where you just kind of shake your head and say, you know, for probably $130, she lost her life. Hours later, across the country, police reached out to Lucy's loved ones.

Her brother Louis remembers receiving the call that shattered his family. Well, I was working for the Red Cross at the moment. I was responsible for getting the money for the Red Cross. And my mom called and she was crying and yelling on the phone and telling me that Lucy had died. And I was not sure to understand properly what she was trying to tell me. And I

It didn't go well. I was kind of in a shock. So I needed to go at home. And so one of my partners in the Red Cross drove me back to Lévis. As the investigation unfolded, officers kept her family informed. Key evidence was found inside Lucy's cab.

A forensic examination revealed that none of the blood found in the vehicle was hers. Her brother was not surprised to learn Lucy fought for her life. It was in her personality to fight back. She was raised with two boys, and we played rough games as kids, so she knew how to fight.

Police believed if they could identify whose blood was in the cab, they would find her killer.

RCMP Corporal Doug Morrison said it seemed the only man who caught a brief glimpse of the offender was Lucy's coworker. We knew it was a male. Probably, you know, when Larry said it was under 25, we were looking at probably under 35 and down. She had always had skinny build and dark hair, so. Officers retraced Lucy's route back to the Banff Springs, where she had picked up her final fares.

interview all of the manager and all of the staff there, and do they recall anybody else there, so those names are all generated and a file made up on them. We then go down to Cougar Street where the huge party was and talk to all the residents there.

trying to determine who the one male and the two females were, which may lead us to how this guy got into the cab or whatever the case might be. And that wasn't very successful. One young man who worked at the Bam Springs Hotel and lived in staff accommodation said his roommate had a knife and showed police an empty leather sheath.

There's no knife, but here's the sheath. But this guy isn't even here because he had already left to catch a plane back because he's going to a family reunion. So he wasn't even in Bath. The door knocks continued. Someone had to know something to help push the case forward. You just branch out and other names surface. And so they're interviewed. You know, and it's a very transient area. So, you know, we...

Very quickly, either that night or the next night, we had an individual from Quebec with a knife threatening people in one of the other nightclubs. He ended up being arrested and of course I interviewed him the following morning and lo and behold, he admits to the crime. With more than 20 years of experience under his belt, Corporal Morrison pressed for answers. I said, well, I think I killed her.

And so I said, "Okay, well, what do you recall? And where is the knife that you had?" So the knife was obviously dropped in the bar. As it turned out, it wasn't the knife at all. And as it turns out, he wasn't the guy responsible. So that was just drugs and alcohol delusions. So, you know, thanks for wasting your time, but no, you're not the guy.

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Hi, I'm Donna Friesen from Global National. Life moves fast these days, and we want to make it even easier for you to get the news you need. That's why you can now get Global National every day as a podcast. The biggest stories of the day with analysis from award-winning global news journalists.

New episodes drop every day, so take this as your personal invitation to join us on the Global National Podcast. You can find it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. The murder weapon had been found in a driveway connecting two residences. The knife was examined. The blood on the weapon was Lucy's. No fingerprints were recovered.

Officers wondered if there was anything else that might make it unique. We sent it to a knife expert in the US to try to determine who would have manufactured this knife. Was there a distributor here in Canada for those knives? These are all things, investigative areas that you're going into. It was kind of like mass produced and it actually came out of Mexico.

Officers followed up on a multitude of tips. There was another individual that was actually a Calgary resident and he had a kind of an extensive criminal record for violence and so on and so forth. So I met with him a number of times here in Calgary. He was not very cooperative with us.

You'll recall the most important evidence police had so far was what they believed to be the killer's blood found in Lucy Turmel's stolen cab. With that in mind, police wondered if DNA evidence could prove this suspect's guilt or innocence. He admitted being out in Banff during the time of the homicide, but he refused to give us any blood samples.

Police turned to Gary Verrett, a scientist at the RCMP Forensic Laboratory in Ottawa. I was a civilian member. I was involved in the early stages of the introduction of DNA technology for the use for police investigators in Canada. First, Verrett tested the blood found in the cab. DNA results confirmed what police had suspected all along: the blood was from a man.

Those tests also provided the DNA profile of the person police believed was the killer. This case in question here is one of the first ones we did. It was in the early days of DNA with the first available DNA technology at the time. It was groundbreaking. It was a technology that would be the most powerful technology since the development of the fingerprint.

Armed with a degree in biochemistry and years of previous experience with hair and fiber testing, Verrett guided police investigating Lucy Turmel's homicide. They would need to do an undercover operation to obtain a DNA sample to compare it to the one collected from the cab. Based on the conversations I had with them, I told them what type of samples would work best.

a pulled hair sample, a mouth swab, a blood sample. So the police had to use their investigative techniques as best they could without alerting the suspect that they were trying to seize a DNA sample from him in order to be comparing the profile to the blood in the taxi cab. Undercover officers got to work and obtained samples. Within two weeks, police received the results.

The uncooperative man was not a match, and he was cleared of any involvement. And so, investigators were back to square one. An officer based out of Banff had been assigned as the file coordinator. He kept track of the growing list of people who were in the town when Lucy was killed.

Each of them had to be contacted, so the investigation extended well beyond Alberta, given the tens of thousands of people from all over the world who come and go from the tourist town.

We also sent out letters to everybody that actually stayed in Banff during that period of time. So I think we took a couple of days prior to the homicide and then went to three or four days after the homicide. And we sent out letters to everybody that were from overseas, basically.

and U.S. that were in BAF during that period of time. Sent them letters. Did they see anything? Did they know anything about this? So that was kind of like the start of the canvas.

Any man who was in Banff at the time was considered a possible suspect by police. And the only way to clear them was to collect a sample of their DNA for comparison. I think we're up to almost 200 people that we've taken DNA samples from. Probably the lab is getting a little upset here, you know, here's another sample. Gary Verrett worked as fast as he could.

The testing took place over several months as the police were sending me samples from different suspects. I would batch those samples and once I got a result out, I would immediately inform the police that these samples did not match the blood in the taxi cab. That would then lead to the police looking at other avenues of investigation and they would look at other samples and send me another batch of samples.

But Corporal Morrison said police were running out of avenues to investigate. So then the other thing is, is to generate more tips, is to put out these posters of what Lucy Turmel looked like, the knife that we found. I have a copy of the poster, which I'll share in the show notes. At the top, in bold writing, it says $12,000 reward.

On the left, a photo of Lucy. She looks like she was on a trip, wearing a straw hat, and she had the biggest smile. Beside her, there was a photo of the weapon used to kill her. A large hunting knife with a 7-inch blade, a mahogany handle, and brass fittings. Underneath, a replica of Lucy's wallet that was stolen and never recovered.

and beside it, a photo of a facsimile of Lucy's jacket, which was also never recovered. The caption reads, At approximately 1.40 in the morning on May 17, 1990, Lucy Turmel picked up two unidentified females and one unidentified male at the Works Nightclub at the Banff Springs Hotel in Banff, Alberta.

Her destination is believed to have been 600 Cougar Street in Banff. Approximately 10 minutes later, her body was found on Squirrel Street, near Elk Street. She died as a result of stab wounds. There is a strong possibility that the suspect may have been cut during the struggle.

If you have any knowledge of someone having a similar knife in their possession or unexplained cuts around the time and date of this offense or any other information, please call Banff RCMP. It encouraged those who read it to reach out to Crimestoppers. This went out to gondolas, to every place that would put this thing up. And all the businesses were very cooperative for us.

so that we could get, you know, people that would say, hmm, gee, I know that knife looks like something that I saw that this guy had on him one night at a bar party or a party or a house party or whatever the case might be. Just to get that extra somebody to tell us, come forward and say, listen, this guy had a knife very similar to that. And this is his name. Time passed with no arrests.

The case went cold as Lucy Turmel's killer eluded police. It wore on her family, who were nearly 4,000 kilometers away in Quebec. Her oldest brother, Louis, said it was especially difficult for his mother. She was scared of that person, if that person would come

and try to kill her, she had that in mind. And I said, "No, it just, for some reason it just happened, and he's not gonna run after you." But she got a few times calls that there were nobody at the end. And it's certainly not him, but it was, she associated with him. So it was a long years.

Those anonymous calls caused the family a huge amount of stress. Lucy's mother would avoid answering the doorbell, and when she went out, she worried someone was following her. She couldn't stop thinking about the way her daughter died. Overcome with grief, she couldn't sleep, and when she did, she had nightmares. She suffered for a year in what she called a hellish situation, without improvement,

She began seeing a therapist who helped her to learn to live again, and she was finally beginning to heal. That's when Lucy's parents took a vacation abroad. She turned on the television, and on the screen was an episode of Unsolved Mysteries featuring Lucy's case. Suddenly, every bit of sorrow and fear flooded back, and she was once again reminded of her loss.

The show included reenactments of Lucy's last shift and final fares. It also featured an interview with one of the investigators and the cab driver who followed her stolen taxi. It appealed to the public for information about the homicide. Could all of these measures aimed at generating new tips finally lead to an arrest? So it was a real whodunit.

There's no way I could sit with that and not do anything about it. That's next time on Crime Beat. Crime Beat is written and produced by me, Nancy Hixt, with senior producer Dila Velasquez.

Audio editing and sound design is by Rob Johnston. Special thanks to photographer-editor Danny Lantella for his work on this episode. Thank you to Jesse Wisner, our Crime Beat production assistant. And thanks to Chris Bassett, the VP of Network Content, Production and Distribution and Editorial Standards for Global News.

I would love to have you tell a friend about this podcast. There are six seasons of stories you can listen to and share. And if you can please consider rating and reviewing Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. You can find me on Facebook at Nancy Hickst Crime Beat and on Instagram at nancy.hickst. Thanks again for listening. Please join me next time.

Now it was time to consider that this was a homicide. For an inside look at Canada's most infamous criminal cases. And I just kept yelling at them, make them breathe. Watch Crime Beat, new day and time, Sunday at 7 on Global.