Ambushed
Murder in cattle country
An original podcast by CBC Calgary
On the night of December 13th, 1997, Lorraine McNab and Peter Sopow were driving home after dinner out with family.
The kindergarten teacher and RCMP sergeant were headed back to Lorraine's mobile home on a rural property just outside the prairie town of Pincher Creek, Alberta.
It was late, but there was a full moon that night, so it's possible they saw their killer before he shot them.
The double murder of McNab and Sopow shook southern Alberta and remains unsolved 20 years later. It continues to haunt their friends and family and sows doubt in this tight-knit community.
Police said the perpetrator was someone known to the victims, someone familiar with the rural property where the murders happened. But who could have wanted them dead? And why have the murders never been solved?
Ambushed is a six-part podcast series that tries to answer those questions.
Episode One:
December 13, 1997
Lorraine McNab's family has deep roots in southern Alberta. A true cowgirl who competed in rodeo events, she grew up on a ranch that's been in her family since 1884.
Peter Sopow's roots didn't run as deeply in Alberta; he grew up in B.C. in a family that moved a lot. Sopow was a 52-year-old sergeant with 32 years of service in the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, nearing the end of his career and looking forward to retirement.
Everyone says what a good guy Pete was; easy to get along with, he played hockey and baseball with the local beer leagues.
Peter and Lorraine weren't the kind of people who had enemies. They were both divorced and Lorraine, in particular, was starting a new chapter in her life, after some hard years and a bad relationship. She finally had what she had always wanted: her own piece of land.
It was on that land where Pete and Lorraine's bodies were found, in a horse trailer, 36 hours after their murders. But the killer wasn't the only one on the property that night.
Listen to Episode 1 here:
Episode Two:
The fire, the wind, the bodies.
Twenty years ago, Lesley Marsh was 18 and still living with her mom, Lorraine McNab, in their mobile home out in the country.
She was one of the last people to see Lorraine alive. The afternoon of December 13th, she was napping at home and was woken up by her mom before Lorraine headed out to that family dinner with Pete.
"She always woke me up by grabbing my toes," said Marsh. "And she told me that she loved me, and I told her that I loved her back. And then she left, her and Peter left in his truck."
It wasn't until Pete didn't show up for work on Monday morning that the police were dispatched to Lorraine's property.
During that day and a half, the wind blew relentlessly, scrubbing the crime scene. That made the RCMP investigation very difficult.
Listen to Episode 2 here:
Episode Three:
Who wanted them dead?
Peter Sopow was the head of the Fort Macleod RCMP detachment. With his decades on the force working cases and dealing with criminals, the police turned their attention to possible motives.
Did someone have a grudge against Sopow? His fellow RCMP officers were unsettled.
"For the first little while, I didn't get a whole lot of sleep," said Jay Wiebe, a friend and RCMP colleague of Sopow. "I had all my doors locked and I was prepared if somebody came around ... I had my gun with me all the time."
Sopow may have seemed a more likely target than a beloved local kindergarten teacher, but McNab had bad relationships in her past.
And it wasn't long before the RCMP looked to her ex-husband.
Listen to Episode 3 here:
Episode Four:
The Red Car
The police got a tip that a red sports car was parked at the end of the dead-end country road to Lorraine McNab's acreage the night before the murders.
They also learned that in the months before she was killed, Lorraine McNab was getting a lot of unwanted phone calls — as many as 20 a day.
Twenty years after the murders, her friends and family talk a lot about hindsight. After something terrible happens — like your best friend or sister being murdered — you look at everything that happened before it in a different light.
At the time, the police were suspicious about those phone calls and began to look at a former co-worker of Lorraine's.
Listen to Episode 4 here:
Episode Five:
The Prime Suspect
The police began to investigate a man who became the prime suspect. A local widower, he was seen washing his red sports car the morning after the murders.
The police searched the car wash, looked for the murder weapon, and combed his property, even cutting down trees on his shooting range to examine the bullets embedded in them.
As the investigation moved into the summer, a dive team searched for the murder weapon at the base of Lundbreck Falls, a local tourist attraction.
Meanwhile, area residents debate whether the suspect was capable of the murders, specifically if he was big or strong enough to drag the bodies into the horse trailer.
Listen to Episode 5 here:
Episode Six:
Another killing, a final suspect
The deaths of Lorraine and Pete were the beginning of a succession of strange, violent deaths that shook the town’s security and their faith in the police. Before this, there had only been one murder in the area in 30 years.
Over the next 18 months, a man was discovered beaten to death on the town’s main street. A woman vanished and her body was found months later in a creek. An RCMP officer died in a light plane crash.
Then, after a local man was killed in police custody, questions were raised about whether the RCMP itself played a role in Peter and Lorraine’s murders.
Listen to Episode 6 here:
Map
Lundbreck Falls, searched by an RCMP dive team looking for the .22-calibre murder weapon in August 1998. (Video by Jenn Blair/CBC)
1. The murder scene: Lorraine McNab’s property.
2. RCMP dive team searches: Lundbreck Falls.
3. A .22 rifle is revealed by low water in the Chin Reservoir, fueling speculation that it's connected to the Sopow-McNab homicides, but is ruled out by RCMP as evidence.
4. Cowley, home of the suspect.
5. Lundbreck, where the suspect taught school.
6. Pincher Creek, where Lorraine McNab taught school.
7. Fort Mcleod, where Peter Sopow lived and worked.
8. Calgary, base of the RCMP's Major Crimes unit.
9. Twin Butte, where Lorraine and Peter were last seen alive.
Outlined area: approximate fire zone of the Granum fire, including the fire start point south of the Porcupine Hills.