Thank you for posting the article on Andrea Scherpf and Bernd Göricke
I was surprised to see the article. I was a reporter in Prince George when this occurred. I think I may have written the first story. I was troubled by this murder. I was very surprised that it was never solved given that there was a trail of travelers' checks and a description of the vehicle. I hope someday it will be solved. JohnSpilker (talk) 02:30, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hello JohnSpilker, thank you for your friendly feedback. My wife has been a good friend of Andrea Scherpf, so we are both involved in the story somehow. How did you become aware of this article? Is the story you wrote available somewhere? The crazy thing with the travelers' check is that to redeem the check you have to identify yourself and fake the signature on the check, isn' it? And maybe, as a native speaker, you might take a review if it is linguistic correct. Thanks a lot and best regards, --Schotterebene (talk) 13:55, 25 January 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Addition: In the discussion page of the film a user wrote: "It occurs to me that someone ought to check the DNA on the murder jeans against that of Joseph Henry Burgess, 62, who was recently killed by police in a gunfight in which New Mexico officer Sgt. Joe Harris also died of bullet wounds. Mr. Burgess, was the indivdual who shot a young, unmarried couple in their thent in Tofino in 1973 for "religous" reasons. He has apparently also been linked to several other murders in which the modus operandi was a shot in the head."[1][2]
Hi, I am sorry that I rarely check my Wikipedia account. I was a reporter for the daily newspaper that was located closest to Chetwynd. I remember writing at least two articles on the murder. The first one was the discovery of bodies outside of Chetwynd. I'm not sure what the second one was. I rarely covered police matters. The story had quite an impact on me as there were several murders in Prince George at the time. I was surprised the police never solved the murder. I always believed the murderer was likely an American as the Travelers' Cheques seemed to vanish towards to the American border. I will look for the articles that I wrote. My direct email is john.spilker outlook.com (It will not accept my full email address.. I've lived in the U.S. for some 35 years. Take Care. JohnSpilker (talk) 04:52, 2 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Here are the two articles I wrote. The second one has very graphic photos that may be emotionally difficult to view. The first one I wrote was the bulletin at the bottom of the page. I recall that we were notified just minutes before our deadline and that was the only information available to us. Prince George is about 200 km from Chetwynd. The top of the page has another murder I wrote that day. It wasn't a good day.
The second one appeared about three days later. I think I was the author of that article although it doesn't have a byline. I suspect we had a holiday on the Monday (Canadian Thanksgiving). The police (RCMP) asked us to publish the photos because they had no idea who the two victims were. Our photo editor cleaned up the photos a little but they were both very graphic. I rarely covered police matters so my direct knowledge ends there.
About a year later, I spoke with a man whose name I can't remember. I believe he wrote occasionally for the newspaper. He mentioned to me he had taken a ferry across Williston Lake (not far from Chetwynd), which is a huge man-made lake, a few days after the murder. I seem to recall that he and his brother grew up in a valley that was flooded to make the lake. On the ferry, he notice someone who looked very uncomfortable and apparently threw a number of items in the water. My acquaintance said to his brother "I bet he's trying to hide something". He reported the matter to the RCMP but I can't image it ever lead to anything. I don't know how this relates to the dates of the Travelers' Cheques that were cashed.
I was always surprised that the police never got any meaningful details from the garages or other businesses that cashed the checks. I seem to recall that merchants usually required a piece of identification. I'm also surprised they didn't seem to have found fingerprints on the cheques.
The murderers (and criminals in general) in Northern Canada and Alaska were not very sophisticated. I believe the police had a description of an old pickup truck but no license plate number. If the vehicle had been registered to a Canadian, I suspect they would have found it easily. But it wasn't found, as far as I know.
One person I've wondered about is "Charles Thurman Sinclair" who died in jail in Anchorage. He was extremely brutal and I can't help but imagined that he drove on the Alaska highway. I can't find any information on his activities in 1983.
I think Vance Hill is the most likely culprit, even though the DNA test supposedly ruled that out (surely something can go wrong with the test). He moved from the vicinity of the crime scene towards the USA (as the checks cashed), confessed the double murder to his ex-wife shortly afterwards, and he killed himself 21 months later... --Schotterebene (talk) 08:37, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]
