CIRCUMSTANCES

Pauline Brazeau, 16,  was a child herself even though she was mother to a 9-month old baby when she was murdered.

On January 8, 1976, Pauline was partying at her aunt’s house with friends when she and another person left to go eat pizza around 2:30 a.m. The two left together when they were done, but Pauline realized she had left her gloves. She returned to the restaurant alone.

Not finding her gloves, and pretty drunk, Pauline left to return to her aunt’s place when she was abducted.

About five hours later the same day, Pauline’s partially clothed body was discovered on Jumping Pound Forestry Road located approximately 22 miles southwest of Cochrane, Alberta.

She had been stabbed to death.

Pauline had only been in Calgary for a short time. She moved with her older sister from Yorkton, SK a few months earlier.

Pauline is Metis, but no one in her family grew up First Nation. She is included on the official lists of Missing & Murdered Indigenous women.

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