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WARNING

Stephane Landry, 37, was stabbed to death January 21st, 2007.

Landry was Edmonton's third homicide victim of the year.

Case status is open and active.

A call came in just before 2:00 a.m. January 21st, 2007 reporting that a dead male body had been found in an alley near Whyte Avenue just west of the Bonnie Doon Shopping Centre.

The body was found by an area resident driving through the alley while taking a shortcut.

Police cordoned the alley north of Whyte Avenue from 85th Street west to 89th Street, starting from behind the under-construction Belcanto Court condominum building at 8508 82 Avenue.

Neighbourhood residents were ordered to stay in their homes.

The man’s body was found lying face-down behind a black cargo trailer. He was fully clothed, wearing a winter coat and his right arm was clutched tightly toward his chest.

Police first treated the death as suspicious but soon four police homicide detectives were on-scene investigating. Forensic officers documented the area.

Evidence markers indicated a trail of blood in the alley leading away from the body.

A large pool of blood was found about six metres from the body. A knife was also found nearby.

“The blood trail could be from the victim, a second victim, or a suspect. We just don’t know yet,” said Insp. Neil Dubord.

Det. Ernie Schreiber did his best to provide media with details.

"When our officers arrived and when the EMS people arrived there was clearly indications that foul play has taken place."

"We're looking at this as a fairly large crime scene. There's evidence that we have to deal with that's covering a fairly significant area."

"I don't know if there's any other victims elsewhere but what we have is a crime scene here and a body that is here."

"We're really at the early stages of this. It’s a massive crime scene."

The age and name of the deceased was not released pending an autopsy, but the Edmonton Sun reported a call to paramedics reported a man in his 50s had suffered serious stab wounds in the same area.

Shirley Gretzan, a Bonnie Doon resident of 21 years, spoke to the media.

“It’s terrifying, that back alley is a black hole ever since the Belcanto condos were put up,” she said.

"You want to feel safe in your home."

"You want to be able to feel that your home is a place where you can come to and be OK – and I don't feel that way around here anymore."

“Just last weekend two men approached me as I was trying to get into my car. I’ll never park in that alley again.”

A spokesman for Belcanto Court told the Sun that all-night outdoor lighting was planned for the building to brighten the alley and parking areas.

The goal was to make it safer for nearby residents without the lights being so bright as to disturb them.

On January 22nd, 2007 Edmonton police asked for the public's help in identifying the man found in the alley and the motive behind his slaying.

A police spokeswoman wouldn't discuss media reports that a knife was recovered from the scene or if the man had been stabbed to death.

“We don't know, obviously, who this victim is. We don’t have any suspects, no motive,” the spokesman said.

“We have no idea who we're dealing with here. That's why there's definitely a plea [for public help]."

“We don't know how long the victim had been there. Anywhere between 10:00 p.m. and 2:00 a.m., that's the time frame that we're looking at here.”

An autopsy was performed on January 23rd. The cause of death was a single stab wound to the chest.

Police said the victim was a 37-year-old man who had recently arrived in Edmonton.

His name was withheld as police were having difficulty locating next of kin. They did not identify where the man was from.

Also on the same day, the Edmonton Journal printed details of an e-mail interview with the man who found the body.

The Journal reported how a couple looking for an early morning shortcut to a nearby bank machine made a discovery that kept them up most of the night.

The man and his girlfriend had headed down the alley when the car's headlights flashed across two legs sticking out beside a cargo trailer. They saw what appeared to be a man lying on his side.

"I figured that they were just asleep," the 23-year-old man wrote in the e-mail interview. "I continued to drive through the alley when I saw a red ball cap and a pool of blood."

The man, who asked the paper not to identify him, then called 911 at about 1:40 a.m.

He backed up the car when he saw the first pool of blood. The car's headlights then lit up a second pool on the road, and then a third pool close to a telephone pole.

"We didn't see his face, as his arms were in the way," the man said. "We didn't see any weapons, but we only made it halfway through the alley before I backed up."

On January 24th, 2007 Edmonton police identified 37-year-old Stephane Landry as the victim of Edmonton’s third homicide of 2007.

The youngest of fourteen children – he had five brothers and six sisters – Landry’s first language was French, although he was fluent in English as well.

Landry had come to Edmonton in June 2006 from Landry Office, New Brunswick to find work as a tradesman. Landry Office is a village of 200 on the Acadian peninsula in the northeastern part of the Atlantic province.

Unmarried and with no children, the trip west was his first time travelling so far away, his sister Alma-rose told the Edmonton Sun in an interview from the family home.

"There is much more money in the West than here," said Alma-rose, adding her brother worked first in Grand Prairie before moving to Edmonton.

Landing had been renting a suite in a house in Mill Woods with roommates, and called home at least once a month. Last Christmas he took turns talking to everyone in his large extended family.

Landry was 6-feet 2-inches tall and weighed 240 pounds. He loved the outdoors and liked to fish, and was described as a huge Montreal Canadiens fan. A Canadiens ball cap was found near his body.

"Stephane was a good guy in a way, and I know he was going west to have a job. I don't know what happened," said his brother-in-law Paul Emile.

Speaking from Pokemouche, Emile said Stephane was a gentle person who loved life and liked to help others.

Landry's family said he was a peaceful man who'd never had trouble with the police, drugs or violence.

He was described as friendly, a person who could easily talk to anyone.

"He was a really great guy," said his brother Rherl. "He never fought anyone. He had la joie de vivre [the joy of life]."

Landry had just sold his truck and would have started his first day of work in Fort McMurray two days after he was murdered. He had planned to work in Alberta for five years before returning home to build a house.

Landry was buried in Pokemouche on January 26th, 2007.

A night owl, Landry often walked to wherever he was going. His family also revealed the large man's nature would protect someone in danger.

Police were exploring the possibility that there was a second person at the murder scene who was also cut.

On March 13th, 2007 police announced that while they still don't have a suspect in Edmonton's third homicide of the year, they do have what they believe to be the murder weapon.

Police released an image of a knife in hopes someone may recognise it and provide investigators with a lead.

Also released was surveillance video from a Shell station convenience store located at 8545 82 Avenue.

Landry was a frequent customer at the store and the video shows him buying coffee at 9:42 p.m. on January 20th. Detectives figure Landry died 60 to 90 minutes later. His wallet and jewelry were still on him when his body was found about a block away.

Police were trying to determine his movements before and after his visit to the station.

"What was Stephane Landry doing between the time he left the convenience store and the time he met his death?" Det. Dennis Storey asked at a news conference.

"There is nothing to lead us to believe that he was involved in anything illegal or sinister whatsoever."

No clue is too small to be relevant in the mysterious case, Storey said.

"If you saw Stephane walking with a coffee, that's important. If you saw him waiting for a bus or going into a car, that's important."

Edmonton police released surveillance video from the Shell station convenience store on their web site that shows Landry buying coffee and exiting.

It may be viewed here (opens as a Quicktime file).

On July 4th, 2007 police released security camera photos of a man they said could provide them with information about Stephane Landry's homicide.

Police did not disclose where the image was taken, saying only that information could jeopardise a potential investigation. The pictures were taken within a week of Landry's stabbing but it wasn't indicated if that was before or after his death.

The man was described as about 6-feet tall, 200 lbs and husky. He was wearing a canvas work coat with a corduroy collar and a black toque.

"This is a difficult case," Edmonton police homicide Det. Dennis Storey told media.

"It's difficult because the motive for his murder is not obvious, the amount of tips and information that's coming in is very scarce at this time."

"And we don't really know why he was in that area at that time and unless you know what a person is up to it's very difficult to determine a motive."

As Landry had no friends or relatives in the Edmonton area, police were unable to question anyone who may have known about his activities prior to his death.

Storey suggested Landry may have been simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

"Stephane Landry was not involved in any type of criminal activity whatsoever. He is your everyday, normal citizen in this city and he could have been anybody at any time, and he ended up in this situation."

"This is a who-done-it. Anything the public has, I'll take it."

About the man police termed a person of interest, Storey was quick to dismiss that authorities were close to making an arrest.

"At this time he is not a suspect. No, he is just a person of interest that I believe was in the area at the time of the homicide."

"And I believe he could have information that may be very helpful in this case," Storey said.

A story published in the Edmonton Sun on July 5th revealed police may have made some headway in determining Landry's final hours.

On the night he died, Landry spent some time outside a Bonnie Doon shopping centre pub, according to police revealing information gathered as a result of tips from the public.

Landry watched an Edmonton Oilers - Calgary Flames hockey game through a window of Bonnie's Lounge just hours before he was found dead.

He later bought a cup of coffee at a nearby Shell station and walked out the door. Within 90 minutes, Landry was stabbed to death in an alley less than a block away.

"Although it wasn't a long period of time we were able to cover up, it did close the gap a little bit," Det. Storey told the Sun.

"I don't know if he was a patron of Bonnie's pub, or if he was just outside Bonnie's pub" that night, the officer said.

His was Edmonton's third murder of 2007. And despite a year that saw charges laid in only 12 of the city's 33 homicides, the unsolved case of Stephane Landry stood out.

On the first anniversary of the New Brunswick man's death, the Edmonton Journal and Det. Dennis Storey retraced the steps of an investigation into a case that was about to go cold.

"This had to be the darkest alley in the city," Storey told the Journal while pointing out where Landry's baseball cap was found and the power pole near where he died.

Landry's murder was the first case Det. Storey was handed after he signed on with homicide. As the start of a new chapter in a police officer's career, the idea of a first case going cold was not easy to accept.

"When does it become a cold case? I'd have to say when there is nothing else to do and we're just waiting." The officer added he keeps a photo of Landry on his desk.

In the Journal article, Storey re-constructed the timeline surrounding Landry's murder.

Landry had come to Edmonton in the summer of 2006 to look for work as a tradesman. He rented a room in a house in Mill Woods. Most of his friends, including fellow francophones, lived in the Bonnie Doon area.

He was described as friendly, and was a frequent patron of O'Connor's Irish Pub and the Cafe des Artistes at La Cite Francophone.

Police surmised Landry was in the Bonnie Doon neighbourhood on January 20th, 2007 to visit friends. He was to leave the next morning for a job interview in Fort McMurray. However, none of his friends interviewed by officers saw him that night.

Landry apparently chatted with a man outside Bonnie's Pub for five minutes at about 9:30 p.m. Together they watched a hockey game through the bar's window. The man said they saw Flames left-winger Alex Tanguay score the first goal of the game.

While the hockey fan recalled the game, he didn't remember seeing which way Landry left. Security footage at a Shell gas station recorded Landry buying a coffee at about 9:45 p.m.

When Landry left the store, he head toward a bus stop on a route that would take him home.

"But he doesn't go to the bus. For some reason he came back to where his body is found," said Storey. The detective figured Landry must have been hit, but not with a weapon, on 87th Street.

A blood trail started, and the drops indicated Landry walked straight south at a consistent pace and in no apparent hurry. He turned east and the trail indicated he walked down the centre of the very dark alley. He passed four power poles and was attacked again.

Landry's hat flew off and landed by a fence. The detective noted there was not a spot of blood on it.

Police figure the 6-foot 2-inch man, who weighed 230 pounds, put up a fight. A knife came out and soon his blood covered the snow. Landry managed to stagger away.

"He probably collapsed four times before he ended up in his final resting place," Storey said, adding he likely died around 11 p.m. Nearly three hours later his body was discovered.

The detective outlined to the Journal the challenges investigators faced in the Landry case. The details dispelled some of the convenient storytelling myths seen in American crime shows.

A dead body is itself a crime scene, bound by the rules of chain-of-evidence and scientific process.

Only a pathologist can touch the body. And in the Landry case it took three days before his body had thawed enough so that a medical examiner could begin his work.

The first stumbling block the detective faced was in identifying the victim. With no one around when Landry died, there were no witness statements to work from.

Landry's fingerprints didn't provide clues to his identity, as he had no criminal record.

As much as the detective would have liked to search the body, that task fell to the medical examiner.

"When you wait three days just to look in his pockets and find a driver's licence, that's frustrating," Storey said. "But with scientific evidence so important now, we can't compromise that."

Challenging police was the long blood trail, running down the alley and then straight down the middle of 87th Street. There was so much blood officers figured another person had been injured, possibly from Landry's last fight.

Trying to find a second DNA profile apart from Landry, blood samples taken from the snow and fresh cigarette butts in a two-block radius were tested. But the results were all the same, according to Storey.

"I can't stress enough, everything was Stephane's." In the police search for a suspect, "At this time we're batting zero," Storey reflected.

"If nothing comes in after this, it's going to go on a back burner," the detective said of the public appeal regarding his first case.

Back in New Brunswick, Landry's family was aware of the frustration of Edmonton police in their efforts to solve the case.

"It's been a year, so I don't know if they're ever going to find something," Stephane's brother-in-law Gaston Robichaud told the Journal. "Nobody believed it could happen in our family. Stuff like that you hear in the news, you never think it's going to happen to you."

"It's too late, but we're hoping justice will be served someday," Robichaud said. "We're always hoping for that phone call."

Landry's family marked the first anniversary of Stephane's death with a Catholic mass and a memorial published in the local paper.

Those with information about the Landry homicide were urged to contact Edmonton police at 423-4567, Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (8477) or online at www.tipsubmit.com - a secure tip submission web site.

Outtakes

During the course of story coverage, many images are recorded but not all are published. Some are redundant, some are of less than optimal quality and some do not fit editorial context.

For the interest of readers, these "outtakes" can be viewed here. Note: not all images have been reduced in file size – page may be slow in loading.

deadmonton 2007 - stephane landry