deadmonton 2008 - april crime report - near-naked woman found dead
Police investigated a suspicious death in a neighbourhood adjacent to the City Centre Airport.
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Emergency services were called to a home in the Prince Charles community, near 121st Avenue and 122nd Street, at about 5:15 p.m. on April 23rd, 2008 after a woman's partially-naked body was discovered lying face down in the snow of a backyard.
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The woman was wearing only a pair of black underwear. The body was found by a man shovelling recently-fallen snow from a late-spring storm, the worst on record for the month of April.
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Roland Amundson told media the woman had lived alone in a basement suite in the home next to his for the past five years and was known as "Joanne." When found, she was only steps away from her open back door.
The fact that the woman was clad only in underwear was not surprising to the man. Joanne had showed up on his doorstep just two days earlier similarily clad, mumbling something about the key for her house.
"She wasn't all there ... I hadn't seen her like this before," said Roland's wife Dawn. She said she thought the woman was on drugs or alcohol because she wasn't making sense, rambling incoherently while her hands shook.
Roland went to check Joanne's house and found the back door open. Dawn said she put a coat over Joanne's shoulders and made sure she got back home safely.
Another neighbour, Manuel Duarte, said he saw Joanne's back door wide open for the last three days. Duarte thought that was odd considering the unusually cold weather.
The woman's background was filled in by Don Koziak, co-owner of the rental house. He said Joanne was 38 years old and had been a tenant for five-and-a-half years.
Koziak called the death "a tragedy."
"She had mental-health issues," he said. "She must have gotten disoriented somehow and succumbed to the cold weather."
Koziak said he didn't believe the woman was a victim of foul play.
A homicide detective appeared on the scene but Insp. Greg Alcorn said the death was unlikely to be ruled a homicide.
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"We don't know how long (she's) been there. There's some belief that it may have been a couple of days, (that she) may have been covered up by snow at some point."
"As far as we know we don't believe that there's any wrongdoing here but we want to make sure we're doing everything that's possible just in case there was something," Alcorn said.
"We need to take every precaution just to ensure we aren't missing anything just in case down the road we find out there's something else to it."
Forensic staff secured the area and worked well into the evening.
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Staff from the medical examiner's office removed the woman's body after night had fallen.
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"It's just sad because this is the last snowstorm," Roland said hopefully. "If it was plus five or six, she would have been okay. She'd be alive today if it wasn't for this cold snap"
An autopsy later determined the 39-year-old woman's death was non-criminal. The medical examiner said toxicology tests were still to be conducted to determine an exact cause.
The discovery was made just three days after another person was found dead in a backyard.
On April 20th the body of 25-year-old Cory Cockle was found lying on the deck of a home in Mill Woods. Cockle had been stabbed to death in what police figure was a drug-related matter. A person of interest was interviewed and released.
The incident also recalled the discovery of a man's body just south of the airport several months earlier.
On November 28th, 2007 a woman driving to work near 113th Avenue and 116th Street found a man dead in an alley. An autopsy later determined the man's death was non-criminal.
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This page updated
17:15 2008-04-24.