CSI Alberta by Peter B. Smith

Author:Peter B. Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-926936-16-1
Publisher: Heritage House
Published: 2010-12-31T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

6

The Sewage Plant Skeleton

Alone and lonely, the homeless man crawled into his desolate shelter in a deserted ravine not far from Calgary’s sewage plant, away from the thousands of citizens in their snug, warm homes. What happened to him that night no one knows, but by morning he was dead. No one missed him. No one found his body.

Nothing much happened to that isolated stretch of land for nearly 20 years, until new work was started on the sewage plant in the 1980s. A team of men with bulldozers was ordered to fill in the ravine as part of the landscaping connected to its expansion. By this time, Calgary was burgeoning, and the Bonnybrook Sewage Treatment Plant needed upgrading.

By the 1990s, the city was really booming and the sewage plant needed a second major expansion. Once again, backhoes were sent in to excavate new foundations for the bigger and better plant. But this time the work had barely begun when it came to a complete halt. One of the workmen saw a shoe deep down in the earth, and he thought he could see human bones inside it. It was November 2, 1992. Uniformed police officers were called, and they brought in the homicide detectives.

Workmen had already excavated a pit at least five metres deep in preparation for installing an electrical manhole when they made their grisly discovery. It brought a sudden stop to the $140 million operation, and from that minute on, the sewage plant construction site was transformed into a full-scale crime scene.

Initially, workers had taken no notice of the shoe deep down in the excavation. Their work had produced two large mounds of earth below ground level, and the shoe was only partially exposed. Supervisor John Vogel said boots, shoes and other items were often found, which explained why the shoe was ignored at first, probably for a couple of days. “Today, one of the men checked the shoe, found bones inside it, so we called the police,” said Vogel.

Forensic specialists from the medical examiner’s office and homicide unit detectives climbed down ladders into the excavation site to carefully sift through the remainder of the mound of earth. After two days of digging they had located almost enough bones to complete an entire human skeleton. They photographed every stage of their work and took measurements of the ground around it. Once the bones had been removed, detectives scoured the base of the excavation pit with metal detectors, seeking any clue that might be linked to the mystery body.

In the next few days, Dr. Anne Katzenberg, an anthropologist from the University of Calgary, and a radiologist joined forensic experts at the medical examiner’s office to examine the bones. Homicide unit detectives were also at their side, as no one knew at this stage whether or not this was a murder victim.

After three weeks, the forensic scientists under Alberta’s chief medical examiner, Dr. John Butt, announced their findings. These amounted to a few sparse personal clues and a huge gap in information about who the man was.

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