True Crime

A riot at a Rolling Stones concert opens this compelling story of a year-long confrontation in 1972 between the Vancouver police and the Clark Park gang, a band of unruly characters who ruled the city's east side. Corrupt cops, hapless criminals, and murder figure in this raucous history with contemporary overtones that questions which gang was tougher: the petty criminals, or the police themselves.

Aaron Chapman is a writer, historian, and musician and the author of two Vancouver nightclub histories, Live at the Commodore and Liquor, Lust, and the Law.

The late 1970s and early 1980s were a volatile period in the history of Vancouver, where broad social and cultural changes were afoot. This was perhaps most clearly evident in the West End, the well-known home to the city's tight-knit gay community that would soon be devastated by the AIDS epidemic. But the West End’s tree-lined streets were also populated by sex workers, both female and male, who fought a well-publicized turf war with residents. This, combined with a rising crime rate, invited the closer attention of the Vancouver police, including its vice squad. But after a body was found dumped in nearby Stanley Park, it was discovered that the victim’s high-profile connections reached far beyond the streets and back alleys of the West End, making for one of the most shocking investigations in Vancouver history, with secrets long held, and never fully told until now.

Vancouver Vice reveals the captivating beating heart of a neighborhood long before the arrival of gentrifying condo towers and coffee bars. Part murder mystery, investigative exposé, and cultural history, this book transports readers back to a grittier, more chaotic time in the city, when gambling dens prevailed, police listened in on wire taps, and hustlers plied their trade on street corners. With warm regard and a whiff of nostalgia, Vancouver Vice peers behind the curtain to examine how the city once indulged in its vices, and at what cost.

Eve Lazarus (Cold Case Vancouver) investigates murder and missing persons cases that have perplexed and fascinated British Columbians for years.

In her book Cold Case Vancouver, crime historian and reporter Eve Lazarus used investigative skills to shine a light on the city’s most baffling unsolved murders. In Cold Case BC, Lazarus casts her gaze more widely on long forgotten and unsolved murder cases throughout the province of British Columbia, Canada. These include teenager Molly Justice, who was murdered on the outskirts of Victoria after taking the bus home from work, and a follow-up to the tragic 1948 Babes in the Woods story of two children found murdered in Stanley Park, whose names were finally revealed this year in a story broken by Lazarus herself. There’s also the tale of four police officers in the 1960s who committed a string of robberies that culminated in the biggest heist in Vancouver’s history. Their reign of terror ended with one of the officers murdering his family before killing himself. Or were they all killed by someone else?

           

Lazarus also looks at some of the province’s most intriguing missing persons cases, such as three-year-old Casey Bohun, who vanished from her bed in the middle of the night, and the Jack family of four, who left Prince George to work in a logging camp along the infamous Highway of Tears but were never seen again.

           

Interviews with law enforcement, forensic experts, and family and friends of the victims add new life to these historical cases, some of which date back to World War II. The book also includes some cases that have been solved, revealing the painstaking investigative work and new forensic technology that ultimately brought about closure for victims’ families.

           

Meticulously researched, Cold Case BC is a fascinating true crime book that reveals startling details about British Columbia’s criminal past. 

When Carys Cragg was eleven, her father was brutally murdered during a home invasion. Twenty years later, she decides to contact his murderer in prison, and by doing so comes across startling new information about the crime. In this powerful and emotional memoir, she learns of his horrific childhood, and the reasons he lied about the murder; in turn, he learns about the man he killed. She mines the letters they exchange for clues about the past, revealing her need for the truth and the murderer’s reluctance to tell.

Carys Cragg is an instructor at Douglas College in Vancouver.

When forty-year-old Esther Castellani died a slow and agonizing death in 1965, the official cause was at first undetermined. The day after Esther’s funeral, her husband, Rene, packed up his girlfriend, Lolly; his daughter, Jeannine; and Lolly’s son, Don, in the company car and took off for Disneyland. If not for the doggedness of the doctor who treated Esther, Rene, then a charismatic and handsome radio personality, would have been free to marry Lolly, who was the station’s pretty twentysomething receptionist. Instead, Rene was charged with capital murder for poisoning his wife with arsenic-laced milkshakes.
Murder by Milkshake is the compelling story of the Castellanis, and of their daughter, Jeannine, who was eleven at the time of her mother’s murder and who clung to her father’s innocence, even committing perjury during his trial. Rigorously researched, and based on dozens of interviews with family, friends, and co-workers, Murder by Milkshake documents the sensational case that kept a city spellbound, while providing a snapshot of the Mad Men–esque social and political realities of the 1960s.

Heralded internationally as “Canada’s Sherlock Holmes,” John Vance was an innovative and pioneering forensic investigator who was so successful at solving criminal cases, he was the subject of numerous attempts on his life. Over the course of forty-two years beginning in the 1930s, Vance helped police detectives in British Columbia to determine murder from suicide as well as solve hit-and-runs, safe-crackings, and some of the most sensational murder cases of the twentieth century.

Eve Lazarus is a journalist with a penchant for criminal history. Her previous books include Cold Case Vancouver.

When Carys Cragg was eleven, her father was brutally murdered during a home invasion. Twenty years later, she decides to contact his murderer in prison, and by doing so comes across startling new information about the crime. In this powerful and emotional memoir, she learns of his horrific childhood, and the reasons he lied about the murder; in turn, he learns about the man he killed. She mines the letters they exchange for clues about the past, revealing her need for the truth and the murderer’s reluctance to tell.

Carys Cragg is an instructor at Douglas College in Vancouver.

Eve Lazarus (Cold Case Vancouver) investigates murder and missing persons cases that have perplexed and fascinated British Columbians for years.

In her book Cold Case Vancouver, crime historian and reporter Eve Lazarus used investigative skills to shine a light on the city’s most baffing unsolved murders. In Cold Case BC, Lazarus casts her gaze more widely on long forgotten and unsolved murder cases throughout the province of British Columbia, Canada. These include teenager Molly Justice, who was murdered on the outskirts of Victoria after taking the bus home from work, and a follow-up to the tragic 1948 Babes in the Woods story of two children found murdered in Stanley Park, whose names were finally revealed this year in a story broken by Lazarus herself. There’s also the tale of four police officers in the 1960s who committed a string of robberies that culminated in the biggest heist in Vancouver’s history. Their reign of terror ended with one of the officers murdering his family before killing himself. Or were they all killed by someone else?

           

Lazarus also looks at some of the province’s most intriguing missing persons cases, such as three-year-old Casey Bohun, who vanished from her bed in the middle of the night, and the Jack family of four, who left Prince George to work in a logging camp along the infamous Highway of Tears but were never seen again.

           

Interviews with law enforcement, forensic experts, and family and friends of the victims add new life to these historical cases, some of which date back to World War II. The book also includes some cases that have been solved, revealing the painstaking investigative work and new forensic technology that ultimately brought about closure for victims’ families.

           

Meticulously researched, Cold Case BC is a fascinating true crime book that reveals startling details about British Columbia’s criminal past. 

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