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It has been 50 years since 17-year-old Marie Julie Goudreau was murdered on her way home to Beaumont, Alta., a city around 30 kilometres south of Edmonton.
On a warm summer evening in 1976, the teenager vanished while driving along rural roads south of Edmonton. Her car was found later that night, the engine still running.
Her body was discovered nearly two days later.
Five decades after Marie’s death, the Alberta RCMP Historical Homicide Unit and the Goudreau family have issued a public plea for tips that could lead to an arrest.
‘Time is against us’
Monique Goudreau described this anniversary of her sister’s killing as a critical turning point.
She said she fears if answers do not surface now, they likely never will.
“I think it’s important because witnesses or the perpetrator could be aging out,” she said in an interview with CBC News on Monday. “If we don’t get anything by now, I’m not sure that we’ll ever get anything later on.
“Time is against us.”
Marie vanished on the night of August 2, 1976. After dropping off a friend at Edmonton’s central industrial airport, she visited other friends at their apartment in the city.
She left around 10:30 p.m., intending to return to her family’s farm in Beaumont, ahead of an early morning shift at her new job at a café in south Edmonton.
Marie was never seen alive again.
Shortly after midnight, her 1972 blue Plymouth Cricket was found abandoned south of Edmonton on Range Road 244, on what is now Ellerslie Road.
The driver’s window was rolled down, the headlights were on and the engine was running.
Marie’s personal belongings remained inside, including her purse with cash, a mahogany leather jacket neatly folded on the backseat and her leather sandals.
Two days later, Marie’s body was discovered in a watery ditch six kilometers north of Devon, Alta., around 30 kilometres west of Beaumont.
Most of her clothing was recovered nearby, but her navy-blue ankle socks and brown slacks were never found.
An autopsy determined Marie had been strangled to death, and the case was ruled a homicide.
Investigators believe she was abducted — possibly flagged down and lured out of her vehicle by someone pretending to be broken down on the side of the road.
On the evening of her disappearance on August 2, 1976, Marie Goudreau’s vehicle was found on a rural road south of Edmonton, with the engine running, headlights on and her personal belongings still inside. (Alberta RCMP)
The tragedy sparked extensive air and ground searches and left the tight-knit community of Beaumont shaken.
Despite receiving over 600 tips and conducting subsequent cold-case reviews, the Alberta RCMP have never laid charges or named a suspect.
Investigators are now appealing to the public once more, noting details considered insignificant in 1976 might hold new meaning today.
Anyone with information is asked to contact the K Division Historical Homicide Unit, their local police detachment or Crime Stoppers.
‘A wasted life’
Goudreau remembers her sister as an intelligent young woman who loved music and friends and was full of life.
The second youngest of eight siblings, Marie had recently graduated from high school and was saving up to study law enforcement at Grant MacEwan College, now MacEwan University, where she had been accepted for the fall semester, said Goudreau.
Goudreau urges anyone with tips, even the smallest shred of information, to come forward so her family can finally have answers.
If someone knows something, they must have the courage to speak out, she said.
In the decades that have passed since the killing, said Goudreau, family members — her parents and a brother have died — without ever knowing what happened to Marie.
Goudreau also said Marie’s death ripped a hole through their family. What is left behind is decades of heartache and grief at what was lost and the future she was robbed of living.
“When we think of Marie, we just kind of think what a wasted life,” she said. “She had so much potential.
“We just wish we could have lived all those years together.”