DEATH OF A BEAUTY QUEEN TIMELINE


1939:
Alexandra Wiwcharuk was born in 1939 in the town of Endeavour, Saskatchewan 330 kilometers east of Saskatoon.  She was the youngest of ten children that included six brothers and three sisters in a traditional Ukrainian family.

1950's:
The Wiwcharuk family put their hopes and dreams into Alex's future.  She attended high school at the Saskatoon Technical Collegiate where she was a member of the drama club.  Her dream was to become a stewardess, but at a mere 5'1", she was too short.  Instead, in 1959, she returned to Yorkton and, with financial help from her family, took her nurse's training at the Yorkton Union Hospital School of Nursing from which she graduated in 1961.  Alex was the only one of her family to be educated beyond high school.

1960:
Pretty and vivacious, Alex was voted queen of the Kinette Skating Carnival in Yorkton in 1960 and she was Yorkton's entrant in the province-wide Saskatchewan Wheat Queen contest in 1960.

1961:
With her nursing degree in hand she began work at the City Hospital in Saskatoon in September, 1961.  She shared a basement apartment in the city with three other nurses:  Alice Hall, Doreen Badduke, and Pauline Tyllis.

It was during this year that Alex was chosen The Girl In Saskatoon in a contest sponsored by a local radio station to promote a concert by country singer Johnny Cash.  Cash sang his song "The Girl In Saskatoon" to Alex in the Saskatoon arena in front of  fifteen hundred fans.

May 18, 1962:
On May 18, 1962, around 8:00 p.m., Alex Wiwcharuk told her roommates she was going for a walk.  She was seen at several locations:  Mead's drugstore, near her home, between 8:30 and 8:45 p.m. and later, by a group of boys fishing on the riverbank between 9:00 p.m. and 9:45 p.m.  But, Alex Wiwcharuk didn't show up for her shift at the hospital that night, nor did she come home.

May 31, 1962:
Her body was not found until May 31, 1962.  Her skull had been fractured by a severe blow from a concrete block and her unconscious body buried before she died.  She was found six blocks from her home.  An autopsy determined that the cause of death was suffocation and that she had died before 10:00 p.m.  Thirteen days had passed between her disappearance and the discovery of her body when crucial evidence could have been gathered.

June/July 1962:
The 131-man Saskatoon police force began working immediately on the murder of Alexandra Wiwcharuk.  Police questioned and eliminated 52 possible suspects by the end of July, 1962.  RCMP detachments in Saskatchewan and Alberta checked out a further 100 possible suspects.

1960's:
Police continued to follow leads, but by 1970 the case had gone cold, although it stayed alive in the memories of some of the Saskatoon police and in the memories of Alex's family and friends.

Late 1990's:
One of Alex Wiwcharuk's high schools friends was Sharon Butala, the respected author of sixteen works of fiction and non-fiction.  In the late 1990s, her mind was turning to a new book project and she began to consider the story of her high school friend's unsolved murder.  She pursued the story and her persistence lead her to a retired police officer named Ed Yakubowski who, like Sharon Butala, continued to be haunted by the memory of Alex Wiwcharuk long after her murder.

Ed Yakubowski had been a beat cop at the time of Alex Wiwcharuk's murder and he had his own suspicions about who might have killed her.  But, it wasn't until he moved up the ladder of the police force, when he took over the police force's murder and robbery squad, that he was able to look through the extensive Wiwcharuk file (1700 pages, including 650 interviews and statements) and follow up on his original hunch.  His results were futile and he retired in 1998, but he was never able to forget Alex Wiwcharuk and what had happened to her on the night of May 18, 1962.

1998:
In 1998, Ed Yakubowski registered a complaint with the Attorney-General about the handling of several unsolved cases, including Alexandra Wiwcharuk's murder.  The result was the creation of a police cold squad, but the question of who killed Alexandra Wiwcharuk remained resolutely unanswered.

2001:
In 2001, on the 39th anniversary of Alex'a death, Sharon Butala visited her grave.  This visit sealed Sharon's commitment to find out whatever truth may yet be learned about the murder of her friend.

November 30, 2002:
On November 30, 2002 Sharon Butala was being invested as an Officer in the Order of Canada and, during a formal dinner, she found herself in conversation with the Governor-General, Adrienne Clarkson, and began to describe the story of Alex Wiwcharuk's short life and brutal murder.  The Governor-General, who had a long and distinguished career as a journalist and former host of the CBC's "the fifth estate" urged Sharon Butala to contact Linden MacIntyre, which she did.

At this time Sgt. Neil Wylie, of the Saskatoon Police Service Major Crimes Unit, was beginning one last effort to find the killers of Alexandra Wiwcharuk.  The challenge for the police is that so many witnesses have died, so many memories have faded.  But, now technology may provide answers that memories cannot.  Evidence from the 1962 crime scene was tested for DNA in the mid-1990s without success.  But, the police are hoping that new advancements in DNA analysis will help them this time; help them to identify Alexandra Wiwcharuk's killer and offer a kind of peace to her family and friends.

VISIT THE SASKATOON POLIC SERVICE UNSOLVED CRIMES WEB PAGE.

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