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Sweethearts, the sixth season of Laura Palmer’s Island Crime podcast, seems to be on the lives and deaths of the three women and argues the circumstances could possibly be linked
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Kimberly Gallup had simply turned 17 when she was discovered strangled to demise in a Victoria motel in November 1990.
She is one in every of three teen women who have been concerned in intercourse work who have been discovered lifeless on southern Vancouver Island inside a yr. Their deaths stay unsolved greater than three a long time later.
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Kimberly, Melissa Nicholson and Cheri Lynn Smith are the main target of a brand new podcast by former CBC journalist Laura Palmer.
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The primary episode of Sweethearts, the sixth season of Palmer’s Island Crime podcast, was launched this previous week, and dives into Kimberly’s life and demise.
The teenager, a Grade 11 scholar in Sidney on the time of her demise, liked Bon Jovi, the Kansas Metropolis Chiefs soccer staff and style.
She began to insurgent as a younger teenager, bouncing between residing along with her grandparents in Sidney and her dad’s Langford house, earlier than finally shifting right into a home with different women her age close to her dad.
In some unspecified time in the future, her dad, Del Gallup, discovered she was being sexually exploited, with a pimp that she known as her boyfriend.
“I can’t even fathom how she obtained into what she was doing or why. It’s not one thing she would share with me,” Gallup says on the podcast.
On Nov. 21, 1990, between 2 a.m. and three a.m., Kimberly met a person on Authorities Road close to Trounce Alley whereas out on the “Victoria stroll,” an space the place intercourse employees gathered.
The person and Kimberly took a taxi to the Colony Motor Inn, a former motel on Douglas Road, the place she shared a room identified on the time as a “trick pad” with different women, Palmer says within the episode.
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A motel visitor noticed the person leaving the room and later that day, a pal of Kimberly went to the room and located her lifeless.
The person was not identified to different intercourse employees.
On the time, Saanich police have been investigating the demise of 18-year-old Cheri Lynn in comparable circumstances. Cheri Lynn was from Regina however ended up in intercourse work in Victoria after falling in love with a person at a carnival.
“He convinces her to maneuver with him to Edmonton. And two weeks later, she’s on the road in Edmonton. It’s that quick. He’s lured her, pretending to be her boyfriend,” Palmer stated in an interview.
A couple of yr later, whereas six months pregnant, she was killed in Victoria after assembly a person in downtown Victoria. Her physique was found in Saanich within the fall of 1990, Palmer stated.
Each women have been picked up from across the identical space and have been strangled, Palmer says within the episode.
Forensic proof hyperlinks Kimberly’s demise to the deaths of three Vancouver intercourse employees across the identical time, an officer stated on the time.
The second episode tells Cheri Lynn’s story, whereas the third centres on Melissa, who was 17 in June 1991 when she was killed. Her physique was discovered within the Shawnigan Lake space. She was additionally out and in of intercourse work in Victoria and attempting to get out on the time of her demise, her household instructed Palmer.
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Palmer believes the three circumstances could possibly be linked.
On the time of the ladies’ deaths, headlines described them as “teen hookers,” and plenty of reporting targeted extra on the nuisance of intercourse work than on the truth that teen women have been being manipulated by males pretending to be their boyfriends who lured them into intercourse work, Palmer stated.
Right now, the ladies could be thought-about victims of intercourse trafficking, as a result of they have been too younger to consent, she stated.
It’s a stigma that has damage the households of the victims.
“I might similar to to erase the prostitute factor. Only a younger girl that didn’t make it,” Gallup says within the podcast.
Palmer hopes the podcast sequence will convey new life to the circumstances. In the event that they’re going to be solved, it should doubtless be by means of genetic family tree, the method of utilizing DNA proof and family tree to construct a household tree and pinpoint a suspect, she stated.
In later episodes, listeners will hear from specialists in genetic family tree, together with a retired Calgary police officer who was one of many first to get a felony conviction on a decades-old homicide utilizing genetic family tree.
“It’s nonetheless attainable to resolve these circumstances. And hopefully, that sort of work is going on now on these circumstances,” Palmer stated.
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The police departments investigating the circumstances instructed Palmer they continue to be open, however wouldn’t say something extra.
regan-elliott@timescolonist.com
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