April was murdered by a temporary ‘roommate’ and on Christmas Day 2000, while others were opening their presents, Al and I were unwrapping April’s lifeless body from a bag left beside a trash bin. She was but 25 years old, and she left behind an 11 year old son, Daniel. She loved Daniel dearly, but never saw much of him because of her lifestyle. We bumped into her a few days before her murder, and she seemed happy. She was standing on the corner of Main and Hastings. Because none of us had much time, we only talked briefly and we asked her where she was staying. She said she was staying with a friend, that he was a really good guy, and that things were going well. Still locked in the cycle of living from fix-to-fix, she looked rough. The makeup applied to cover the facial sores she was hiding gave her a strange ghost-like appearance.

On Sept. 10, 2001 at the tail end of a long-running investigation, our Homicide Section charged her roommate, Ian Matheson Rowe, with second-degree murder. She died at the hands of a person she thought was an ally, apparently over a few measly dollars. This is what life is relegated to when you live in Drug Central, a place where there are no happy endings. Rowe has since pled guilty, and was recently sentenced to ten years before eligibility for parole.

April’s son Danny is doing very well in school. Although his mother’s life and death is a tale of tragedy, he can be proud of the legacy that she leaves behind in her contributions to the field of drug education. Her good friend Danny has beaten his addiction and has been working since her death.

Carlee passed away November of 2001 of a drug overdose. She was found alone in her room, and despite the spread of time since she was first filmed by Mark, was still battling the exact same health problems she had been four years earlier.

Carlee had become a fixture at the Vancouver General Hospital for the last year of her life. She had been moved in and out constantly, and in total she had undergone something in the neighourhood of eight skin grafts to repair her damaged arm. The last time that this was done the doctors had to remove a section of her hamstring muscle, grafting it into the hole in her arms, and covering it with another skin graft. It never took, much like the previous ones, and much for the same reasons: her lifestyle never gave her body a chance to heal. Her body was breaking down under the load of the health issues that she endured, and at the end, more than a few people felt that in death she had been released from her suffering, such was the plight of her last few years.

I never realized just where she came from until Mark Steinkampf, the officer she was the closest to, in conjunction with Jessica McKee, produced a memorial video tribute to Carlee. I looked at the family pictures that he had selected for this piece and they exemplified youthful beauty and a typical suburban upbringing. There were stills of her as a picture perfect toddler, photos of her beside the pool in her back yard, as a young girl on a tropical cruise, and with her family and friends at a get together. All of it seemed to spell out exactly what we all would want for our own kids. Along the way, however, something went wrong.

A short while after the filming for ‘Through A Blue Lens’ was complete, Mark and Al took Carlee down to the aquarium and arranged for her to feed and pet the Beluga whales. The trip was arranged to give some token thanks back to Carlee for the work she put into the documentary. This outing was particularly significant for Carlee. A marine biologist was her dream vocation, what she would have been if she could have been. When I look over the footage I can’t help but note how much healthier she looks in the comfortable surroundings of the aquarium, mesmerized in an exciting adventure on a bright sunny day in a place that was only minutes away from the sordid streets she haunted.

--Toby Hinton