CIRCUMSTANCES

P

Ha — a 19-year-old Vietnamese refugee — was found on Feb. 28, 1981, near Golden. She had been raped, strangled and her body mutilated after death.

The shy teen had come to Canada seven months earlier and landed a job as a chambermaid at a Banff hotel. Her body was found face down in the snow, a few metres from the Trans-Canada Highway, about 80 kilometres west of Golden, on the road to Kamloops, and 200 kilometres from Banff.

Pauline’s murder is included of a series called The Highway Murders, and authorities believe her murder is linked those of other young women who were raped and left in remote areas along the Trans-Canada Highway.

• Police believed she had either hitchhiked or was picked up by someone after leaving the restaurant.
• Gary McAstocker, 34, was a person of interest in Barbara’s murder. He was a sex offender who killed himself in 1994. He had just been released on parole after serving an 11 year sentence for a 1982 rape, and sexual assault in 1988. He killed himself hours before he was going to meet police for questioning in the murder of 14-year-old Tina McPhee.
• Authorities think this case is could be connected to the unsolved homicides of:
  • Barbara Maclean
  • Marie Goudreau
  • Oanh Ngoc Ha
  • Pauline Brazeau
  • Tara Jane White