The Legacy Letters

by Janice Landry

  The story I was viewing was called “King Family Leaves Halifax.” It aired, according to the log sheet, during March 3-6, 1992. Andrea’s mother, Ann King, and her sister, Debra, came to Halifax for two weeks in late February, early March 1992, a few weeks after Andrea had been reported missing – nine months before she was finally found in the wooded area in Lower Sackville.

  I had interviewed the King family often during that time frame and beyond.

  Like other journalists, I had reported the RCMP had tracked Andrea to a downtown Halifax hotel where she had been dropped off by a shuttle bus. My story said she was expected to stay at a hostel about six blocks away and at that time, police said her trail ended at the hotel. But she might not have reached downtown because her remains were found in woods not far from the main highway into Halifax from the airport.

  At the end of that archival story, Ann made an emotional plea to the public for help and sent a direct message to her then missing daughter. “I would like to say that if there’s somebody who knows anything about Andrea’s whereabouts, please contact the police or the media. And if Andrea’s out there: We’ll keep looking, sweetheart, ’til we find you,” Ann said.

  Listening to Ann say the last sentence, with such hope, forced me to stop playback of the story a second time. During that first visit to Halifax, Ann and her daughter, Debra, searched all over downtown Halifax for leads and for Andrea herself.

  On my archive tape, there is also a story listed by reporter Jonathan Kay, who used a video clip of the Kings as they visited the YMCA, a place a young person on a tight budget may stay or visit. The YMCA was then located near the now demolished CBC radio building, near the Halifax Public Gardens, on South Park Street.

  This video exchange occurred as part of Jonathan’s story. I do vividly remember being the reporter at the YMCA with the Kings, so it is likely he used parts of my interview in his re-cut story. News items are routinely re-edited for different shows using footage and interviews obtained by all staff on a single story or topic. You do not see me in the exchange. You only see the Kings and the YMCA staff person. The YMCA staff knew who Andrea was and agreed to keep a photo of her at the desk, in case anyone had seen her.

  The public was affected by what was then still a missing person’s case, as they are in all such cases. People wanted to help the Kings.

  Time passed during that first King family visit and their hopes faded a little, which was evident in another interview quote from Ann in the Kay story. “When I came [to Halifax], I used to look for Andrea everywhere. Now I don’t think I expect to see her walking the streets or she would have phoned. I think now I’m just looking for clues, so our hopes are pretty low at the moment. But we’re going to keep up the good work,” Ann said, before she and Debra left for British Columbia.

  Nine months later, word came from police Andrea had been found. The case switched from a missing person’s file to a murder investigation.

  On Tape Seven, there is another story from January 29, 1992, one week after Andrea had been located in woods. “Nova Scotia RCMP is practically back to square one in the Andrea Lynn King case. Dental records confirmed last week it was King’s body discovered in woods in Lower Sackville by a hunter. RCMP still don’t know how she died or got into the woods, above a small rock face,” the story said.

  An RCMP officer, Constable Brian Carter, former media spokesperson, said authorities were waiting for the medical examiner’s report following an autopsy. Questions like cause of death and time of death were to be determined, if possible. Neither has been released, which is standard in police investigation. Only the murderer or their accomplices know those details.

  It is not known whether the location where Andrea was discovered is the place where she was actually killed, or if she was placed there afterward.

  The possible false lead about the shuttle bus was also discussed in my story immediately following the discovery of her remains. I said this on-camera as a follow-up: “It was originally thought King made it into Halifax to a hotel on an airport shuttle. RCMP will now have to go back to see if that was actually the case, and they say they will have to re-interview many of the original witnesses, so, they say, no stone is left unturned.”

  Constable Brian Carter confirmed, at that time, “RCMP would have to look at the possibility King entered the woods, not from the area where her body was recovered, but from the opposite side, the highway that leads to the airport where King originally arrived.” No confirmation of this has ever been definitively reported.

  Which way did she enter the woods, or was she carried into the woods? The path of lesser resistance would have been over the rock face, which was only a few feet high and not too far from the street. In 1992 the street was an undeveloped cul-de-sac. It was primarily a wooded area. Through the woods from the highway side would have been much tougher, but not impossible.

  Some questions surrounding the nature of her death were answered by the medical examiner. It was the subject of my next story, “Andrea King Update,” done the following week after she was found. The exact cause of her death has not been released, as the investigation remains open.

  My story stated, “It’s been just over a week since the body of eighteen-year-old Andrea Lynn King was found in woods just outside of Halifax by a hunter. Today, RCMP confirmed they are treating her death as murder.” I asked Constable Brian Carter on-camera: “Why make that statement?” [about it being a murder as opposed to a medical emergency or something else].

  “Part of it is as a result of the autopsy,” he replied.

  What other information or evidence did RCMP have week one, besides the autopsy, that led them to believe she was murdered?

  Constable Carter stated they would be withholding the cause of death for several reasons: “… including the fact only the murderer or murderers know how she died and RCMP don’t want that information to encourage false confessions. Meanwhile, RCMP say further forensic tests will be done on the remains. And authorities expect the case to be a lengthy one. Why? In part because of the time that has passed between when King went missing, one year ago, New Year’s Day.”

  One year after she was found, the RCMP installed a telephone line, in January 1993, solely for generating tips for this case. At this point, it was also confirmed by authorities they were examining similarities between the King case and other recent investigations involving missing or murdered young women in Nova Scotia and, in particular, within the Halifax area.

  I reported, on January 4, 1993, “… RCMP will look at the case of twenty-year-old Carla Gail Strickland originally from Mahone Bay, whose body was discovered in woods in Dartmouth in June of 1991. And authorities will also look at the [then] three-year-old missing person file of Kimberly McAndrew of Parrsboro, who was last seen leaving work at a Halifax Canadian Tire Store.”

  Constable Carter addressed why police were looking at multiple cases involving young murdered or missing women. “There may be suspects who come up in other cases that may be of benefit in this case. We have to look at everything.”

  One suspect did come up in multiple cases. He has made national headlines. He is currently listed as a Dangerous Offender in Canada and is serving time in British Columbia. He has not been charged with any murder or in any missing person’s case in Nova Scotia, as of September 2017.

  A week after the phone lines opened in the Andrea King murder, police also kept up the pressure and brought in two members of the military with metal detectors who searched the site where she was found. We videotaped them, from a distance, combing through the woods in Lower Sackville, but no details have ever been provided about what they did or did not find.

  The story I finally had to face was located on Tape 8. It is called “Andrea King’s Parents Here.” The story was done January 25, 1993, five and a half years into my reporting career. Of the approximately 1,500 stories I have told for television, this is one that still haunts me.

  In hindsight, it was too voyeuristic for my lik
ing. I now wish I had chosen another way to tell it. Andrea’s parents had returned to Nova Scotia after she had been found by the hunter. They arranged to visit the wooded site, accompanied by members of the RCMP and the media. We were invited to attend. All involved hoped it might spark someone to come forward with tips or a lead.

  The site where Andrea lay has drastically changed since 1992. That area of Lower Sackville, off Glendale Drive, near the Sackville Business Park, has grown and expanded. It no longer exists the way it did. During the early 1990s, it was a quiet street without much activity. You could drive to the end of the road, get out of your car, and walk a short distance through the low scrub and bushes up a small rock face or ridge into the woods.

  It took about five minutes to walk to the location. I was thinking, as I crawled up and over the rock face, that it would have been difficult for someone to move Andrea to where she was found, unless they had help, or unless Andrea walked into the woods, under duress, or of her own will.

  The media, including myself and a cameraperson, followed the officers and Ann and Wayne King, to the exact spot where Andrea was found.

  I opened the story this way: “Ann and Wayne King say they had to come, had to be at the last place where their daughter Andrea had last been alive. Today they visited the site where she was found …”

  We watched and videotaped her parents toss four long-stemmed white roses onto the ground in the woods. A likeness of one of those roses and the woods appears on the front cover of this book as a way to honour Andrea and her family.

  It was gut-wrenching then and it was still heart-wrenching to revisit the videotaped scene for this work. I stopped playback for a third time. I will never forget the image of the roses or the deeply anguished look on the Kings’ faces.

  “Anytime we drive by a wooded area, we think, Gosh, she was just lying in the woods, and it’s dark, and she was alone. What could have happened? I wish I could turn the clock back and know,” a distraught Ann said, on-camera, as she wiped away tears.

  I am still moved by the Kings’ combined strength of character in the face of senseless tragedy. They allowed us to be part of their fragility. I have never been part of something quite like it since.

  “If there’s anything more we can do for her, as we did while she was alive, then this is what we can do for her. Also we needed to see where she was killed. We’re going to have to live with that,” Ann said at the site.

  There, in her own words, is part of the rationale for the media being allowed to join them in the very private and painful moment; it was one way they could try to help their daughter, in death. They also wanted to spark tips, leading to answers.

  Ann’s husband, Wayne, did not speak to reporters in the woods. His wife spoke on the family’s behalf. Most of the time, it was Ann King who gave interviews to me and the other journalists.

  I developed a relationship with her, even visiting her and her daughter, Debra, at a Lower Sackville motel where they were staying during one of their visits to Nova Scotia. The motel was located on Sackville Drive, near where Andrea was found. I remember sitting in the room with them and talking. They were no longer strangers.

  On the trip, which included the visit to the woods, Debra was not with her parents. After we finished at the site, Wayne and Ann hosted a media briefing at a nearby RCMP detachment.

  “The pressure and the emotion of the past year, since Andrea went missing and her body was found, broke through today during a meeting with reporters,” the archival story said.

  At the media briefing, Andrea’s father could no longer contain his anguish. In the RCMP station, in front of the cameras, Wayne burst into sobs and punched his right fist into the palm of his left hand. He looked up at the ceiling and back down again before saying to the assembled group, “Ask me, one at a time, and I’ll tell you [pause, tears], I guess I want other kids to be safe as a [pause] little measure of why we lost her,” he explained, of the family’s public reveal of a highly emotional and personal day.

  Despite their utter despair, Andrea’s parents wanted to help other families avoid the grief and pain they were experiencing. Their strength is admirable. It is also unforgettable. Wayne dissolved into tears. He and Ann were seated at a small conference table set up at the front of the room in the RCMP detachment. No one spoke.

  I distinctly remember being in my seat and watching Wayne’s reaction and starting to cry myself at the media briefing. I had never broken down at work in public before. I struggled to regain my composure because I did not want to look unprofessional or upset the King family. Journalists are not supposed to show emotion while at work. They are expected to be impartial. However, we are human first, and it would have been impossible to see Wayne break down in public and not feel for him and the whole family.

  Investigators hoped the parents’ emotional plea would result in a breakthrough in their daughter’s high-profile murder investigation. It is standard procedure in murder cases, or cases of missing persons, for families or loved ones to make statements through the media.

  “It may not seem very relevant, but every little piece may make that jigsaw puzzle fit a little better. There’s so much good in Nova Scotia, but just one little piece of evil. I’d like to find out what that is,” Ann concluded that day.

  More exactly, who is the “little piece of evil”?

  I noticed, while watching the archival footage, Ann King wore a sweatshirt with a large panda on it the day of the visit to the woods. Andrea must have loved pandas because a stuffed panda bear toy was also present at a Halifax memorial held on January 28, 1993, for the murdered teenager, three days after the emotionally charged media briefing.

  The stuffed animal was placed on a table with a framed photo of Andrea and a single red rose in a vase. I later learned from Ann, during our 2016 interview, that Andrea had visited the Calgary Zoo a couple of years before her death and fell in love with the panda bears she saw there. She had a collection of panda bear memorabilia and stuffed animal pandas that she had bought and also received as gifts.

  The story, filed from the memorial, began, “Hundreds of people filled St. Paul’s Church today in Halifax. They came to pay tribute to Andrea King.”

  Ann King had said at the media briefing that there was “so much good in Nova Scotia,” to the point where the public filled a church for a memorial for a complete stranger. The intense media coverage had allowed the public to get to know the Kings. People felt strongly about the family’s loss, and cared about Andrea herself, so much so that many in the church were reduced to tears, even though they had never met the young woman or her parents.

  Reverend John Newton, the officiating clergy, said, “Although none of us has had the privilege of knowing her, over the past year, she has profoundly touched our lives. We come together today, in the acknowledgement, too, that an injustice has been done; that a young woman who looked ahead to so much of life’s promise has had that life violently taken away from her.”

  Ann King also spoke at her daughter’s memorial. She read a passage she had written describing her daughter. “Admired intelligence, liked family gatherings, strove to be nonjudgemental, and above all, loved unconditionally. Andrea: we will always love you, unconditionally,” her mother said.

  As the memorial drew to a close, many people were crying as they approached the Kings. People hugged them and spoke to them as they exited the church.

  “Ann and Wayne King say they’re overwhelmed by the support, especially since they didn’t know anyone in Nova Scotia, until Andrea’s death,” I reported that day, also asking people afterwards on-camera why they felt they had to attend Andrea’s memorial, even though they did not know her. “I think we should support the family … it’s a terrible thing, what has happened,” one woman answered.

  Trying to discover exactly what had happened to the teenager had also led the police, on April 1, 1993, to release a new photograph of Andrea, taken just a couple of weeks before her disappearance, as well as pictures
of two of Andrea’s personal belongings she had carried with her when she arrived in Halifax from British Columbia.

  One is a handbag with an array of bright colours embroidered on it by hand. It was woven and soft-shelled. The other is a backpack. Both items are unusual. The backpack would stand out because it is large and made of green canvas with an aluminum frame around it, the kind a hiker would take on a long journey. The purse was one of two police knew existed. Ann told me Andrea and her girlfriend had each bought one while travelling in Mexico. Neither of Andrea’s bags was common, and investigators hoped people might recognize one of them since they were both unique. Neither bag was discovered with Andrea or has ever been reported to have been found.

  On August 2, 1993, an article appeared in The Chronicle Herald newspaper called “King’s mother questions search,” written by journalist Rick Conrad. In it, Conrad discussed two other items Ann King mentioned that are still unaccounted for “such as one of Ms. King’s boots and a favorite ring.”

  Ann wondered in the Conrad article why the RCMP had returned to search the area where Andrea had been found. Then investigating officer RCMP Constable Bruce MacDonald said police “have searched about 500 feet into the woods and 1,000 feet on either side of the scene,” Conrad reported.

  Concluding the article, Conrad said Ann King planned to return to Halifax in about eight weeks to “teach school kids how to be safer, which she’s been doing in Vancouver.”

  That matches the timeline of the last entry on my library archival tapes I could find about Andrea King. My final story about her is located on Tape 37 and is dated October 16, 1997, more than five years after the young woman had gone missing.

  Ann King had indeed returned to Halifax, this time to attend a conference put on by Our Missing Children. My story explained those involved in the group were working “with partners that aim to locate abducted or missing children at international borders and airports.”

  The Government of Canada, on its “Canada’s Missing” webpage, lists “The Our Missing Children” program as being “comprised of four Federal Government Departments – Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s NCMPUR [National Centre for Missing Persons and Unidentified Remains] Operations; Canada Border Services Agency; Global Affairs Canada; and Department of Justice Canada. Although each Department has their own function, the four departments work together to effectively and efficiently locate and return children to their parents/legal guardians.”