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Brianna Danielle Torvalson, 21, was found dead February 21st, 2008.

Torvalson was the Edmonton metro area's first homicide victim of the year.

Case status is open and active.

Project KARE is now investigating the murder of Brianna Danielle Torvalson whose body was found on a remote acreage west of Elk Island National Park and about 20 kilometres northeast of Sherwood Park.

The body was found at about 11:00 a.m. February 21st, 2008 by a resident out for a walk. The person saw it lying in the snow by a long driveway that runs through a heavily wooded area near Township Road 534, about a kilometre west of Range Road 220.

The forked driveway leads to a residence the east and a trucking business to the west. While Township Road 534 is relatively quiet, the driveway is crossed daily by the owner of the land. The body was found out of sight from the main road.

"It's an area that I wouldn't think the body could be out there for any long period of time," Strathcona RCMP Cpl. Darren Anderson told media.

"We haven't got in close enough to determine exactly if we're dealing with a male or a female. Anytime you have an investigation like this, we don't know what happened, you have to treat it as if it were a homicide and take small steps working outside to the body," Anderson said.

Police had been immediately called and about 12 RCMP vehicles were soon on the scene. The area was taped off as officers from Strathcona County RCMP, RCMP Serious Crimes North and the RCMP Forensic Identification Unit investigated. Police later brought in a search dog.

RCMP didn't indicate the age of the person but said there were no visible signs of trauma on the body. Initially, Project KARE was notified but was not involved in the investigation.

Police were already certain the person was not one of two women recently added to the Project KARE list of missing persons.

Neighbour Jody Fontaine said the surprise police presence in the normally quiet and close-knit subdivision was disturbing.

"I'm a little on edge," she told reporters. "I'd just like to know what's going on because I've got a kid coming home on the bus soon. I don't him to really know what's going on.

“I want to get my kids off the bus and lock them inside.”

The body was removed at about 6:45 pm. and an autopsy was conducted the next morning.

By afternoon police confirmed the death as a murder and identified the victim as a 21-year-old sex trade worker. The case then brought in Project KARE, the task force looking into the murders and disappearances of Edmonton-area prostitutes.

RCMP Cpl. Darren Anderson said the woman was not well-known to police but had been been entered into police systems via the Edmonton service. She had not registered a DNA sample or personal information with Project KARE.

"How involved was this victim in the sex trade? We don't know," Anderson said. "Do we think it's a great extent? No, but there was indications that there was involvement in a high-risk lifestyle, and that includes the sex trade."

"She was the kind of person who flew under the radar," he added.

Police said the woman's cause and manner of death would not be released and they weren't publicly speculating whether she was killed near the driveway, or whether her body was left there overnight.

With regard to other cases being investigated by Project KARE, Anderson said it was too early to say whether the current case was related.

The only person charged under the Project KARE mandate, Thomas Svekla, is currently on trial facing two charges of second-degree murder.

Police asked for the public's assistance and anyone who may have seen anything suspicious in the area overnight between Wednesday, February 20th, and Thursday, February 21st, 2008 were encouraged to contact the Strathcona County RCMP at 467-7741 or call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.

On February 23rd, 2008 Cpl. Darren Anderson issued a statement to media.

"We completed the next-of-kin notification this afternoon and have identified the victim as 21-year-old Brianna Danielle Torvalson of Edmonton," Anderson said.

Police said Torvalson worked as a prostitute, but they don't know for how long.

Investigators said they were looking to hear from anyone who knew her, and described the woman as 5-feet 6-inches (168cm), 120 lbs (54kg) with red hair and green eyes.

On February 25th, 2008 RCMP told media they had received dozens of tips and they were in the process of chasing each one them down. Police also renewed the call for anyone else with information to contact them.

The day after Brianna's identity was revealed her family issued a statement aired on Global Edmonton which said they

"... would like the public to know the she was 'not' a discarded, forgotten street person, but rather a loving, caring, beautiful, irreplaceable soul. An extremely strong young woman with hopes and dreams who struggled with many demons and a drug addiction that drew to street life.

"Brianna's murder has created a hole in all her family's life that can never be filled and they hope that her death serves as a reminder to all parents to never miss an opportunity to let their children know that they are loved and to never give up on those that are struggling."

The statement did not include the names of the family members and Global reported they also extended thanks to Rachel Quinney's mother for reaching out.

Kathleen Leary, Biranna's aunt, remembered the young girl in a statement carried by CTV Edmonton.

Brianna Danielle Torvalson - Facebook image

"I just remember her for her long red hair, her beautiful smile and her feisty attitude. She was a lost soul looking for something she hadn't found."

According to relatives, Brianna used to ply her trade in the area of the Transit Hotel on Fort Road. It was in northeast Edmonton the girl who was once told to become a model lived with her grandmother, mother and high-school-aged sister.

Mark Holmes told the Edmonton Journal his neice was "happy-go-lucky," and described her as a quiet but spontaneous girl.

"She loved to be around family," he said, adding he last saw Brianna a month ago.

"I tried to help," he said, giving her money that he hoped would keep her from seeking it from johns.

Brianna started working as a prostitute about two years ago.

"She worked the streets a lot. She turned herself in a couple times to AADAC," Holmes said. "I was proud of her."

And while looking at the photo police issued Mark said, "That's not a happy face."

Holmes did his best to look out for his niece, even chasing johns away from her as she was working the Fort Road area.

"I said, 'Get away from her. That's my niece,' " Holmes said. "I don't know how she got mixed up in the wrong crowd."

The Journal also spoke to a friend of Brianna's who said the girl was addicted to the streets. The 46-year-old man, who is now in a drug recovery program, did not want to be named.

"She was good, she cared, she had heart ... (But) basically she was addicted to her way of life," said the friend. "She wasn't a working girl. Yes, she would play the role, but she wasn't really that girl. She made money her own way."

Torvalson's friend said he last saw her about a week and a half ago. She was homeless, he said, and longed to get off the streets.

"You could see it in her eyes, she wanted it," he said. "We talked about it before."

The friend said Brianna did what she could to survive, and financing her crack-cocaine addiction led her to trading sex for money.

"I don't want her being smeared," he said. "She was a damn good person and she doesn't deserve what she got."

The Edmonton Sun interviewed Brianna's great uncle, who requested his name not be printed.

"The last time I saw her she was just a kid, 10 or 12 years old. I never thought she'd end up in the sex trade. I just heard about that ... that they found her body," he said.

The man said Torvalson's parents separated when she was very young.

"I thought they split up when she was 10 or 12 years old and that she went with her mother," he said.

The man said Brianna's mother was reportedly flying in from Fort Nelson, British Columbia to tend to funeral arrangements.

The Sun also spoke to Brianna's former roommate, Patrick Wight. He said he lost contact with her after she became "heavily involved with drugs."

"I would hear about her periodically, and every time worse than the last ... even her family had not heard from her in some time," he said.

"I knew her as a bright young girl with a (promising) future. It is a tragic ending that didn't need to be."

A tribute to Brianna Torvalson appeared on Facebook, a popular internet social networking site.

But unlike those created by friends and family, this tribute was created by Edmonton Sun reporter Brookes Merritt who openly solicited Facebook site visitors to contact him at the newspaper.

A second Facebook tribute later appeared, this one created by Brianna's friends and family. Family and friends of Brianna Torvalson carries the request it not be used for media purposes.

Outside the trial of Thomas Svekla on February 25th, 2008 Charlotte Lajimodiere, Rachel Quinney's sister-in-law, offered condolences to the Torvalson family through CBC Edmonton's camera.

"It brought my mother-in-law to tears," Lajimodiere said.

"The pain that she knows another mother has to live. She's lived a hard struggle for four years – now there's another mother, another family, another sisters, brothers out there suffering no different than the Innes or Quinney families are suffering."

While it would be assumed that news of another prostitute murdered in the Edmonton metro area would keep women off the streets, JoAnn McCartney, a former vice cop who now counsels sex trade workers as a member of Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton (PAAFE), says the opposite is true.

"It makes them need to get higher," she told Global Edmonton.

"They have to do more drugs because they don't want to think, they don't want to feel, they don't want to be scared and the only way to do that is to do more drugs and that means more prostitution to pay for more drugs.

"So it doesn't reduce the number of women on the street. Some will quit, absolutely. Some will say 'That's it, I'm out,' but not very many. Mostly addiction drives it and addiction is their way of coping," McCartney said.

McCartney also suggested the killing may not have been committed by a john. In some cases, these killings may be by drug dealers that have been crossed, she said.

"You want to think this isn't going to continue happening," McCartney added, saying street workers need a safe haven.

"We will continue to fight for housing. They need some place so that when they're scared – today they hear the news, they're scared, they don't want to do this – that there's somewhere to go."

Danielle Boudreau, who organises the annual Memorial March for Missing and Murdered Women, told Global of reaction among the city's street workers.

"They're really, really shocked about everything ...

"It's saddening because all the feelings come up again of who's daughter is this, what the last moments were, what the condition is – who it is – all those sorts of things," Boudreau said.

"It's really, really shocking. This is not what we wanted to hear at this time."

"Right after Svekla was picked up, we still had women being left in our fields," sex trade worker Carol-Lynn Strachan told the Sun.

"Do they have no other possible subjects? No other people of interest? They must. Why haven't they been arrested? Why are the girls' statements being ignored?"

Recent measures introduced by police, such as towing johns' cars and the Report-a-John program, are backfiring and just make the sex trade more dangerous, according to Strachan.

Transactions now take place in dark alleys or behind bushes, leaving the women more vulnerable as they have less time to assess if a date appears safe, Strachan said.

The Sun spoke to Monica, a 49-year-old escort who has been turning tricks since the age of 20.

"Someone else is out there stalking prostitutes, and I think they're waving it in everyone's face considering (the Svekla trial) is going on right now," she said.

"Every escort and masseuse I know in this city is watching these stories unfold. You can't turn your back on it, because whether you're working inside or on the street, we're all potential targets."

The timing of Torvalson's murder, coming just days into Thomas Svekla's trial, caused some to think the homicide was a copycat killing.

Project KARE has long maintained that more than one person was responsible for the murders and disappearances of sixteen women since 1988.

The Edmonton Sun contacted Jack Levin, an expert on serial killers and author and co-director of the Brudnick Center on Conflict and Violence at Northeastern University in Massachusetts.

Levin said the case of Brianna Torvalson was intriguing in that unlike most of the other victims her body was left where it could be quickly found. He said that's a hallmark of a copycat killer in search of their own 15 minutes of fame.

"I wouldn't be surprised to find more than one serial killer (working around Edmonton), but it's somewhat more likely that this is a copycat phenomenon, especially with (Torvalson's) killing coming so early in the (Svekla) trial.

"It's the ideal time to strike, when people are thinking about (slain prostitutes). The attraction is this element of irony, where the alleged killer is being tried yet new killings are being committed on the streets," Levin told the Sun.

"It's almost a taunting of law enforcement."

University of Alberta criminologist Kevin Haggerty told the Sun he expected police would continue to deal with prostitute killings in Canada until laws governing the practice are changed.

"What creates the problem is the law itself, which pushes it out into unsafe areas."

Publicity over the past several years marking Strathcona County as a body dump site encourages killers to use the lightly-populated area, Haggerty suggested.

"Once an area gets a reputation as a safe dumping ground I don't think it's unusual that a new body should be found there.

"Southeast Edmonton and Strathcona County have a reputation as a private place to take prostitutes. Continuing reputations like that generate their own outcomes."

The Edmonton Sun posed the question of a copycat killer to armchair detectives through an online poll.

The one-day voluntary poll allowed only one response per computer.

deadmonton 2008 - brianna danielle torvalson