New season of Island Crime investigates three unsolved Victoria murders

Between 1990 and 1991, three teenage girls were murdered in Victoria. Their deaths have not been solved—their cases going cold not long after their bodies were found. Veteran journalist Laura Palmer is hoping the new season of her podcast Island Crime, titled ‘Sweet Hearts’, will draw some much-needed attention to their stories.

Palmer first heard about the murders while researching a previous season of her podcast, focusing on the disappearance of Michael Dunahee and the massive country-wide search to find him. An officer on the Dunahee case said that at the time police in the region were working on three separate murder cases of young girls, all within one year.

Kimberly Gallup, 17 and known as Kimmy by her loved ones, was murdered on Nov. 21, 1990, strangled at the Colony Motor Inn on Douglas Street.

Cherri Lynn Smith, 18, was six months pregnant when she went missing on June 4, 1990, and was found three months later in the underbrush of a Saanich park, having been beaten to death.

Melissa Maureen Nicholson, 17, was found dead in the bushes south of Shawnigan Lake, on June 11, 1991. Nicholson, an Indigenous girl who grew up in a Cree and Mohawk household, is one of the many cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls (MMIWG) in Canada. Her brother Seth Leforte spoke of his sister’s case at the National Inquiry into MMIWG public hearings. He said the police told him they were exploring different theories, from a possible serial killer in the area to a connection with the murders of other sex workers. Both of these theories fell through—the other murdered women were victims of prolific serial killer Robert Pickton and Leforte was told his sister’s death wasn’t linked. No other theories from police have been brought to him since.

Their three cases share similarities of young girls manipulated into the sex trade and then violently murdered.

Palmer heard a retired officer involved in investigating say on the Victoria police union podcast, True Blue, that he believes there was a serial killer in Victoria operating between 1989-1991, targeting sex workers. While this information has never been confirmed in an official capacity by the police, Palmer believes there’s reason to believe this is true—and that these three murders are linked.

Palmer’s journalism background guides her podcast

Palmer has worked as a journalist on the West Coast for decades, having a successful career as a radio and TV producer with CBC. Now she’s applying those audio reporter skills to the podcast, where she can finally dig into the crime stories that have long piqued her interest. She’s spent years researching some of these cases.

Palmer hopes by bringing these cases to light, she can get people talking about them, possibly spawning new information.

Her first season looked at the disappearance of Nanaimo’s Lisa Marie Young—a girl with whom Palmer has a loose connection. An acquaintance of Palmer’s went to high school with Young and it got her thinking about the many loose ends of her case.

Since the release of Young’s season, Palmer says she’s received multiple tips, leading her to create additional episodes. She’s hoping the same will happen with the cases of the girls in “Sweet Hearts.”

In a somewhat macabre coincidence, Palmer shares the same name as the fated victim in Twin Peaks, a young woman whose mysterious murder is central to the plot (Palmer even has the character’s picture as her Twitter profile photo). As someone who has dedicated the last several years to investigating unsolved crimes against young people, it’s an eerie parallel. She points to the Twin Peaks character when talking about the girls in “Sweet Hearts”—TV’s Laura Palmer led two lives, one as a sweet all-American girl and one involved in the sex and drug trade. Which story is presented to the public can have serious consequences on a case.

“Teen hookers”

The girls were labeled in the press as teen hookers, a phrase used by reporters at the time when covering stories of slain young sex workers. Palmer acknowledges the harm this label had on the family and friends of the victims, as well as the public’s perception at the time.

“I say that not at all being self-righteous, because I was also a journalist 30 years ago, and the way we talked about people who worked in the sex trade was entirely disrespectful,” said Palmer.

The families of the girls have wondered aloud whether their involvement in the sex trade led to less interest in finding their killers. However, Palmer has never heard a police officer—working or retired—say their involvement in the sex trade affected the efforts of police in investigating.

“The closest thing I would say I heard is something along the lines of ‘Well, these girls work in a dangerous profession’,” said Palmer. “Which sounds like victim blaming to me.”

Palmer said it appears the investigations weren’t as vigorous as they could have been and the aftermath of Pickton highlighted the apathy when investigating slain sex workers.

Gallup's father told Palmer that he felt the girls’ cases were overshadowed by the attention given to four-year-old Michael Dunahee’s disappearance in 1991. While he understood the attention Dunahee's case received, he says he stopped hearing from police once the boy went missing. Palmer said priority was given to a small boy who could still be alive over a dead teen girl perceived as simply a prostitute.

She points out these girls were never really prostitutes, saying “when you’re too young to consent, it’s sex trafficking.”

“This is not a girl or a young woman who has actively made this choice in life,” said Palmer. “This is a teenager in high school who's being lured and, you know, is being told by a boyfriend that he's gonna look after her. But he's a pimp, he’s a sex trafficker.”

Left to right: Cherri Lynn Smith, Kimberly Gallup, Melissa Maureen Nicholson. Photo: Courtesy of Laura Palmer

Canada’s sex trade is subtle

Sex trafficking in Canada is more pervasive than many in the country might realize. The vast majority of victims are Canadian women under the age of 24.

Palmer said in the 1990s, girls were targeted at school or in places where young people gathered. All three girls were lured by handsome young men they believed had their best interests at heart. Palmer spoke to a former pimp of Gallup’s who admitted he knew she had a crush on him and used it to his advantage.

For Smith, she met a boy at a carnival who she quickly fell for. She ran away from her family in Regina, moving to Edmonton with him. Within two weeks she was being trafficked on the streets, eventually ending up on the Island.

The girls were on Canada’s western trafficking circuit, a commonly identified path where victims of the trade are brought by their traffickers. Gallup’s father said on Island Crimes that she was brought to Kelowna, Vancouver, and Kamloops during this time.

Palmer said she realized she had lacked understanding of how sex trafficking worked when she first began her research. She had heard talk of trafficking in Island communities, but wondered if it was “alarmist or overblown.”

“I don't see it. I can't imagine this happening now here on the Island,” said Palmer. “I was not understanding that sex trafficking—certainly what was happening with these girls—is much more subtle than that.”

A striking aspect of the first episode is that Gallup’s family and friends seemed to be aware of the sex work she was doing. They were concerned for her safety but wrote it off as teenage rebellion. According to those who knew Gallup, this wasn’t out of the ordinary for South Island teens at the time.

“I remember not being surprised,” said Rhonda Waterfall, a high school friend of Gallup’s, in an interview with Palmer. “It wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for girls in Sidney. The only shocking thing to me was that she actually got murdered. Being in the sex trade was, meh, whatever.”

To Waterfall, Gallup was like any other girl at Parkland Secondary School. “She was just as normal as the rest of us, just a normal girl,” she said.

“It could have been any of us.”

Palmer was surprised by this awareness. “It was kind of like an open secret in some ways, or they were kind of thinking it was possible, not unlikely, but that this was happening.”

Palmer said the same approaches to lure girls into the sex trade are used now, though technology has added a complex and more hidden layer that didn’t exist in 1990. Sextortion through online platforms has been on the rise in BC, with teenage boys particularly at risk in Victoria.

Too many jurisdictions, not enough info sharing

A factor that also complicated the investigations of murders on the South Island and Vancouver was the lack of information shared across departments. With a mixture of RCMP and city police departments handling cases in the area, early-era internet impeded information sharing in the surrounding districts. And sometimes, though rare, departments didn’t want to share information with one another.

“Police officers, although for the large part are people [who] want to solve the crimes and want to be willing to share information, you do have some turf wars going on as well,” said Palmer. “That’s very real.”

Palmer points to these issues coming to light during the Pickton trials, with jurisdictions slow to link the string of missing women from coastal BC. After the Pickton case, many of these lines of communication improved, along with the technology.

Advancements in DNA could bring answers

Palmer hopes that advancements in DNA technology will bring some closure to all involved in these cases.

“I believe they will be solved with DNA or have the potential to be solved with DNA,” she said, adding that a former officer involved in the investigations says the cases are good candidates to extract DNA.

DNA advancements have helped solve multiple cold cases throughout North America in recent years, with suspects identified decades after crimes were committed.

“I'm hopeful that that's going to happen for these families,” said Palmer. “It won't bring their daughters back, but it will bring them perhaps some peace. And Lord knows they deserve it after all this time.”