The Leader-Post from Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada • 62

16 Crime The Leader-Post Regina June 19, 1992 tester survIvoR Victims relatives find birthdays anniversaries and holidays the most-trying times He met Jackie in the summer of 1950 in Wasaga Beach, and they married a couple of years later. They ran a aimer store near Toronto until 1970 when they moved to Lindsay. In addition to raising their kids, Jackie got involved with church groups and community organizations, including Friends of Schizophrenia, a disease which afflicted their youngest son, David. Reitav says it isn't surprising Major and McAllister have found birthdays, anniversaries and holidays the most trying times: Theyre magnets that draw out all your unresolved emotions. Major, who would have celebrated her third anniversary July 15, says her husband's death has been more distressing since it occurred at the end of a long trip home from a job interview in British Columbia.

He was 41 miles from home, she says wistfully. I don't know why but I think it would have been easier to take if it happened in Alberta. Major and McAllister desperately want the killer to be punished for what he did to their spouses, yet both acknowledge it will do nothing to fill the void hes created in their lives which have changed forever. I dont read the newspaper, McAllister says. Anytime I hear about crime I think about the victims and what its done to their lives.

been beset with problems. McAllister is a slightly built man with greying hair. He emits a nervous sigh when be describes himself as the kind of guy that just doesnt want to be alone." But his relationship with a good lady friend has led to a rift with his three adult children. Everybody has a different way of coping and I guess the kids were having problems with the way I was coping, says McAllister, who began counselling together with one of his sons and his daughter in May. I thought I could cope by myself, but maybe I cant, he says.

The range of emotions McAllister has gone through since his wifes death are natural, says Jaan Re-itav, a Toronto psychologist who specializes in grief counselling and discussed such cases in an interview. Shock, denial, rage and numbness tend to envelop someone for six months and it's only then that an acute sense of grief takes hold, Re-itav says. It really starts to sink in and that's when the sense of loss hits home, he says. There are no definitive times for these stages but Reitav says the grief tends td be worst for the six months up to the anniversary of the loss and slowly lessens over the next year. Like Johanne Major, McAllister says he doesnt get through most days without crying.

LINDSAY, OnL (CP) Its been yi year since Cord McAllister has fen able to watch Perry Mason or anybody else solve a murder mystery on TV. I used to watch detective movies. I just can't now, says McAllister, whose wife, Jackie, was shot to death in their motorbome beside a desolate stretch of Northern Ontario jhighway a year ago. I Everythings too easy to solve and at the end theres nobody crying. It just doesnt happen that way in real life.

Police still dont know who wounded McAllister and killed his wife. The same gunman is also thought id have killed Brian Major who stumbled on to the bloody scene last June 28 when he pulled his car into the roadside rest area between Blind River and Iron Bridge. But the story goes beyond just the deaths of two people. The killings Idee all of the more than 640 pides each year in Canada devastated the lives of families and friends. "McAllister, 63, had never met his attacker before that rainy night, nor has he seen him since.

Yet, in that Single moment, this stranger turned McAllister's entire world upside down. I He lost his wife of 39 years. He has returned to work because the retirement he and Jackie, 59, had long planned became countless days plone. McAllister has also been forced to seek counselling to heal a nit that developed with their three ddult children. Major, meanwhile, says she has struggled to come to grips with the killing that left her alone, at age 28, to raise her four-year-old son, Jamie.

He was cool and calm as if I've done this before, I'll do it again. It was another day's work for him. McAllister was hit by two bullets from a gun in his back and another in his foot. Provincial police investigators refuse to say exactly how Jackie McAllister or Major died. Only a limited number of people know exactly what happened and we want to keep it that way until theres a trial, says Sgt.

Harv Howden, one of five officers still on the case. The gunman fled with money and credit cards. A motorist passing by at the time told police late( that a blue van sped out of the rest area heading east on the Trans-Canada Highway along the north shore of Lake Huron. McAllister, who spent nine days in hospital recovering from his wounds, described the man to police as about 30 years old and six feet tall with stringy blond hair. So, along with his other problems, McAllister lives with the knowledge the killer knows he's the only witness to Jackie's death.

As a result, police wont allow photographs of McAllister or the name of the company he works for to be published. For a long time I was always watching behind me, he says, shifting in his chair during an interview at a police station in Lindsay, a town of 15,000 northeast of Toronto. Even when he has tried to rebuild his shattered life, the effort has Police waif for break Andrde Lachapelte (CP) between Sudbury and Sault Ste. Marie. The highway was barely visible through a stand of evergreen trees.

Just before 1 a.m. on the rainy night, they were awakened by banging at the side of the motorhome. A man, who identified himself through the door as a police officer, told the startled couple they had to move. Jackie opened the door and he said Im gonna rob you McAllister recalls. His voice trails off and tears well in his eyes.

the air and divers checked a nearby river. News of the killings hit the radio by morning and a motorist who had passed on the highway at about 1 a.m. called police to say he saw a blue van speed out of the rest area heading toward Sudbury. Howden has a list of more than 36.000 blue vans registered in Canada that is used for cross-referencing. The release of a sketch of the suspect led to more than 1,000 calls about potential suspects.

For 12 months Howden and other officers have been checking those leads. When it comes down to it, thats what an investigation turns out to be, says Howden, whose officers have already talked to more than 1.000 people to verify alibis. Despite all the effort, Howden admits it may take a lucky break to solve the case. Hes got to tell somebody at some time and weve got to hope that person can't live with it. If you know someone involved in crime, call Cash Rewards Up To $2,000 Your Identity Not Required No Calls Traced You Do Not Have To Testify He's coping better than I am, Major says of her son during a telephone interview from her home in Elliot Lake, about an hours drive east of where her husband was murdered.

I still cry every day. The killings occurred the day the McAllisters headed from their home, in the central Ontario town of Lindsay, in a motorhome they had bought for a trip to Winnipeg to visit Jackie's relatives. They called it a day when they spotted a rest area about halfway vieu Police sketch A passing trucker was waved down by Gord McAllister shortly after 1 a.m. and he radioed police, who dispatched a car from nearby Blind River. Within an hour, the first road blocks went up.

More than 16,000 licence numbers were recorded from cars and trucks that were checked on the highway, crossed the U.S.-Canada border at Sault Ste. Marie, or bought gas in the area on a credit card. The rain-soaked crime scene was scoured for clues even before daybreak. At dawn they scanned 30 kilometres of highway ditches for clues while a helicopter searched from AULT STE. MARIE, Ont.

(CP) Sgt. Harv Howden glances at the computer screen on his desk as a list of 4,100 electronic files flashes by. He wonders if the mass of material holds the clue that will help him catch a killer. 1 Its like going through that proverbial haystack and lifting every piece of straw until we find that needle, Howden says of information collected by the provincial police. Hes looking for the man who killed Jackie McAllister and Brian Major a year ago at a rest area about 100 kilometres east of Sault Ste.

Marie on a desolate stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway. If its in there we havent found it yet, Howden says, jerking his head at the computer in the spartan brick-walled office. Howden, one of five officers still on the case, is relentless and systematic in his search for the man he knows only as a 30-year-old white male with stringy blond hair, slightly built and six feet tall. His 28 years on the force have also taught him that with any investigation the longer it drags on the more difficult it becomes. gunman seemed to vanish last June 28 after he killed McAllister and shot and wounded her husband, Gord, when he robbed them in their motorhome.

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