If murder is the worst crime, then solving cases where someone’s life has ended violently and prematurely should be a top priority for law enforcement agencies in Metro Vancouver.

But a Vancouver Sun investigation has found that over a 12-year period, 290 murders remain unsolved across the Lower Mainland.

The Sun compiled information for a comprehensive database from 2002 to the end of 2013 from police releases, news archives and court files.

Canada’s largest murder squad — the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team — worked with The Sun to verify the 178 murders on our list for which IHIT has sole responsibility.

The Vancouver Police Department has conduct of another 90 unsolved homicide cases in the same time period, including files from West Vancouver and Port Moody that the VPD was contracted to investigate.

Not surprisingly, most of the unsolved murders took place in Vancouver or Surrey — the two largest cities in the region. Vancouver had 86 cases over the 12-year period, while Surrey had 76.

But smaller cities in the region also have many unsolved murders. Burnaby has 22. Abbotsford — twice declared the murder capital of Canada at the height of the gang war — has 24.

The victims in a startling 86 per cent of the unsolved cases were men.

Sixty-three per cent of the total number of victims — or 184 — had links to either the drug trade, gangs or organized crime. The most common form of death was gunfire — with fatal shootings accounting for 168 of the 290 victims.

Carol Kinnear’s daughter Brianna is the victim in one of the unsolved cases. The 22-year-old, whose boyfriend was gangster Jesse Margison, was shot to death in Coquitlam on Feb. 3, 2009 as she drove a friend’s truck.

“It’s basically over five years now and it’s become a cold case. I think they’re just working on other stuff,” Carol Kinnear said.

“I want everyone who’s involved not to forget. It’s sad to know that there’s people out there that can bring us answers.”

Police officers investigating murder cases say that while the public might be alarmed by the number of unsolved files, there are several reasons why there are so many murder cases in Metro Vancouver where charges have never been laid.

They point to B.C.’s charge approval standard, which is the highest in Canada.

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VIEW A MAP OF THE UNSOLVED MURDERS HERE

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Supt. Kevin Hackett, the veteran Mountie in charge of IHIT, said in the vast majority of his agency’s open files, investigators have identified a suspect.

“I would think that in 90 per cent of our investigations, if not more, not only do we have an idea, we could likely, if we lived in another jurisdiction arrest them and charge them,” Hackett said in an interview.

In every other province besides Quebec, police have the power to lay charges where they believe on “reasonable grounds” after a thorough investigation that an offence has been committed, according to Justice Canada.

But in B.C., Crown prosecutors decide if and when a charge is laid using a two-pronged approach. First, the Crown must be convinced that there is “a substantial likelihood of conviction,” based on the police report outlining the evidence.

And secondly, the Crown decides whether it is in the public interest to lay a charge.

If, for example, a suspect in a slaying has already been convicted in another killing and is serving a life sentence, the Crown might decide there’s no public interest in having a second trial. So the file remains open.

“Let’s say we’ve charged one guy with murder and we have evidence to potentially charge him for two or three more, but Crown says it’s not in the public interest so we are not going to charge him,” Hackett explained. “It’s solved because we know who did it and we could charge him and yet it’s unfair that it remains unsolved and it drives your clearance rates down, when actually we could throw it to Crown or lay an information and they would just stay it. And they have a point — if he’s doing 25 years.”

Still, Hackett says, IHIT has an excellent relationship with prosecutors despite the charge approval standard.



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Murders are investigated a variety of ways in the Lower Mainland. IHIT is the largest agency by far, with 84 investigators plus support staff covering homicides cases for RCMP detachments from Squamish to Chilliwack, as well as municipal forces in New Westminster, Port Moody and Abbotsford.

Vancouver police investigate their own murder files as a stand-alone agency, but have a close relationship to IHIT.

Vancouver Sgt. Dale Weidman said the two agencies even work together on files in some cases.

“If you have a murder in Vancouver and a murder in Langley, for example, and we think it’s the same suspect, we work with them,” he said.

The VPD has had an agreement with West Vancouver police since 2008 to also probe murders in that city.

As part of the deal, a West Van cop is seconded to Vancouver’s homicide team.

“So they get full-time use of that detective and obviously we have an opportunity to expose our detectives and officers on an ongoing basis to the skill set of homicide investigation,” West Vancouver police Const. Jeff Palmer said. “In exchange for that, that detective and VPD homicide investigate any homicides in West Vancouver.”

He said the main reason for the move out of IHIT to VPD was cost effectiveness.

“The predictable budget item is that you have a detective over there, gaining experience but you also know that is your expense,” Palmer said.

Within IHIT, member agencies contribute officers and money that is calculated on a five-year ‘rolling average,’ with 25 per cent based on the population and 75 per cent based on each city’s crime statistics.

Port Moody Police were originally in IHIT, then opted out and contracted with the VPD for three years.

But after three still-unsolved gang slayings in Port Moody in 2012, the force has now gone back to IHIT. The outstanding cases are being looked after in part by Port Moody officers and in part by the VPD investigators originally on the cases.

Delta is the only other municipal police force that conducts its own murder investigations.

Deputy Chief Lyle Beaudoin told The Sun the arrangement has worked well, with Delta police getting convictions in 73 per cent of its 22 murder files over the last 20 years.

Delta has five unsolved cases in The Sun’s database, two of which are linked to organized crime, two where Beaudoin can’t say if they’re gang-related or not and one with no possible gang or drug connection.

Beaudoin said that while Delta is not officially part of IHIT, the municipal force has an excellent working relationship with the larger homicide squad, as well as VPD’s major crime section.

“We meet at a team commanders’ meeting quite regularly every month and we go over cases and best practices,” Beaudoin said, adding that Delta’s team commanders “are very in tune with what’s going on in the Lower Mainland as well as with the whole picture relative to homicide.”

The VPD’s clearance rate has ranged over the years from a high of 75 per cent in 2012 to a low of 32 per cent in 2003 — the year three people, including a member of a notorious gang family, died in a shootout at the Loft Six nightclub.

Vancouver also keeps track of what it calls “solve rates” — a much higher percentage of cases each year where police believe they know who’s behind a slaying whether or not charges are laid.

IHIT’s clearance rate peaked at 70 per cent in 2004, its first full year of operation, with charges getting laid in just 30 per cent of cases last year.

For both agencies, the majority of unprosecuted cases have links to gangs or the drug trade.

Hackett says it isn’t particularly informative to look only at clearance rates, especially when they are calculated differently from agency to agency and region-to-region.

“It is a very dangerous game I think to solely look at stats in anything you do whether it be in the medical field or any other professional field as equating success,” he said.

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VIEW A MAP OF THE UNSOLVED MURDERS HERE

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As one of the hundreds of relatives waiting for justice in her daughter’s case, Carol Kinnear has felt hope when she’s seen news of arrests in years-old cases.

And she understands that police have tough jobs securing enough evidence to get charges laid and hopefully convictions in murder cases.

But she feels neglected at times when months go by and she hears nothing from police.

“Even if they don’t really have anything they can tell me. It would be nice to know just that they are still working on it,” she said.

IHIT has tried to give top priority to cases where the perpetrators are believed to be continuing threats, to public safety even if an investigation is more resource-intensive as a result.

Hackett said the resources poured into the probe of United Nations gang members who had targeted the Bacon brothers is a prime example. Several UN members pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit murder. Two others, who remain fugitives, are charged in two murders plus the Bacon conspiracy.

“Whether we solve one or two murder charges associated to that effort and all that cost, you can’t quantify all of the other murders that you have perhaps stopped. But if we put that same amount of effort, resources and that same amount of funding into 10 or 12 of our other unsolved, perhaps we would have had 10 more murders solved and increased our solve rate,” Hackett said.

“So if it was just stats driven, then you could fall into the trap of accounting for more widgets, but have we really addressed what’s most important, which is taking out the most dangerous threat to public safety?”

Hackett said “the irony is that when you focus on the most violent — they are also the most difficult to get the evidence for.”

If IHIT washed its hands of the tougher cases to get higher clearance rates, “be prepared we may get a child sitting in the back of a car in a parking lot get hit with a ricochet bullet and then they might not be as concerned about having a 68-per cent-clearance rate or a 70.”

Hackett says the way IHIT is structured has become a model for other homicide teams in North America.

The squad consists of eight-person teams that are sent to the scene of new murder files to collect all the “perishable evidence.”

They’re supported by specialized investigative support teams who have expertize in areas like file management, legal applications or doing investigations.

One of the newer specialized teams is looking specifically at cold case files within IHIT to try to come up with new avenues of approach. Since it started in March 2012, charges have been laid in four cases from 2004 to 2012.

Hackett knows victims’ families can get frustrated when years pass without charges. His team tries to reach out to relatives as much as possible and has just hired a staff member specifically to liaise with those families.

“We want to keep the families updated with honest communication about the likelihood of advancing cases,” he said, even when the message is hard to hear. “But I think you do them a disservice if you give them false hope.”

Hackett is passionate about the work IHIT does and the skill and determination of his investigators, whom he says are driven to seek justice for the families of murder victims.

“We embrace that. That’s so important. That’s what motivates us, grounds us, keeps us going.”

Kinnear still doesn’t know the motive for her daughter’s point-blank execution. Was the killer trying to send a message to Brianna’s boyfriend? Or was the hit intended for the owner of the vehicle, who had been convicted of selling drugs with both Brianna and Margison? Or was Brianna caught up in something all on her own?

The grieving mother had tried for years to get Brianna away from Margison.

As important to her as getting justice for her daughter is “knowing why this happened,” Kinnear said, her voice breaking.

“Every year I put the memorial in the paper and every year I think I can’t keep doing this — another year with no answers. Like I don’t want 20 or 25 years to go by.”

Have a tip on one the unsolved cases?

For a VPD case email: COLDCASE@VPD.CA or phone 604-717-2500

For an IHIT case: email ihittipline@rcmp-grc.gc.ca or call 1-877-551-4448

For other cases call CrimeStoppers at 1-800-222-8477

kbolan@vancouversun.com

Follow me: @KBolan

mhager@postmedia.com

Follow me: @MikePHager