Show home slaying gripped city

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This article was published 17/09/2017 (3088 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Glen Sytnyk remembers the shock and the horror that gripped Winnipeg’s real estate community in 1979 when news got out that one of their own had been stabbed and bludgeoned to death inside a vacant Winnipeg home.

Now, almost 38 years later, the vicious and brutal murder of real estate agent Irene Pearson is something many in the real estate industry still talk about, and a case they hope will one day be solved.

“We were all on edge after that,” Sytnyk, a Winnipeg real estate agent said about the 1979 murder.

“We all knew how brutal it was and there was the possibility that it was random, and that was the scare, because we didn’t know if there was someone out there that was going to do it again.

“After that we were just on guard all the time, and I know it pushed some out of the business.”

The stabbed and bludgeoned body of the 31-year-old Winnipeg real estate agent was found in the unfinished basement of a new and vacant home that was for sale on Kinver Avenue in Winnipeg’s Tyndall Park area Nov. 16. 1979.

Pearson was stabbed 31 times and her skull had been caved in from blunt force trauma, with the cause of death being massive brain damage and severe lacerations to her heart and lungs.

Winnipeg police have said there is a strong possibility Pearson, who was working for Castlewood Homes at the time of her death, was showing the home to someone she believed to be a potential client when she was killed.

The murder of Pearson sent shock waves through the city of Winnipeg and the local real estate community, and Sytnyk said part of the reason it got so much attention was because of the details and the optics surrounding it.

“To be perfectly honest there was an allure to it because she was an attractive young lady and it was a violent stabbing, and that added to the intrigue of it all,” Sytnyk said.

“It almost felt like Winnipeg’s version of the Tate murders. It was huge, it really was. It almost had a bit of a Hollywood movie feel to it, and we still talk about it to this day.”

In 1980 the Manitoba Real Estate Board offered a $2,000 award for information leading to an arrest and conviction in the Pearson killing, but the case eventually went cold, and no additional information on the case would become public again until 2007.

In November 2007, a story in the Winnipeg Free Press reported Winnipeg police announced they had re-opened the case after obtaining DNA from evidence from the crime scene in 1979.

At the time police would not say what evidence yielded the DNA, although the 2007 story stated it was believed to be a hair.

Now, 10 years later, that DNA evidence has not led to any arrests in the case.

More information on the case and a re-enactment video of the murder were also released when Winnipeg police held a press conference in June 2016, describing a vehicle that may have been in the area at the time of the murder, and possibly connected to the murder.

At the 2016 press conference Winnipeg police said they believe one of the last people to be in the house with Pearson drove a red or blue newer-model Plymouth Volare or Dodge Aspen.

Police also said in 2016 Pearson was last seen around 6:30 p.m. on Nov. 15, 1979 by a witness who told police Pearson and an unknown man were in a show home on Cropo Bay.

Police said a brief time later Pearson and the unknown man left the home and walked to another show home on Kinver Avenue, where they said Pearson was lured to the basement and attacked.

‘We were all on edge after that. We all knew how brutal it was and there was the possibility that it was random, and that was the scare, because we didn’t know if there was someone out there that was going to do it again’– Real estate agent Glen Sytnyk

The 2016 video shows a re-enactment of Pearson walking with the unknown man, being lured to the basement of the home on Kinver Avenue, being attacked and left to die.

“This horrific incident in November 1979 shocked the citizens of Winnipeg. It continues to be a priority for the Winnipeg Police Service, over 36 years later,” Winnipeg police said in a news release in 2016.

At the 2016 press conference police also said they have looked at numerous persons of interest since the murder, but many have been ruled out.

Sytynyk said there have been times when he and many he knows have started to think a break in the case was coming, but it remains unsolved.

“It just seems like every once in a while, new info comes out and it seems like they are making some headway, but now it just seems to have disappeared and gone silent again,” Sytnyk said.

Sytnyk who was in his 20s when Pearson was killed, still works in the business, and is currently working as a realtor for RE/MAX Performance Realty.

He said soon after Pearson was killed, he started keeping a log book, and would not let people in for appointments or open houses unless they identified themselves.

“At the time, a lot of people resisted because they were afraid they would be harassed or get a bunch of sales calls, but I was doing it for safety, and I still do it to this day,” he said.

“If you are not going to sign the book, you aren’t going to come into the house. I started doing that after what happened in 1979.”

Although he did not personally know Pearson, Sytnyk says the details of the murder still reverberate though the real estate community, the members of which would still like to see the murderer brought to justice.

He added with every passing year, many wonder if the murderer is even still alive.

“You have to start to wonder now if that person is even still around,” Sytnyk said. “That was a long, long time ago.”

For Sytnyk, the thought that often crosses his mind is how the person who ended Pearson’s life could go all those years without coming forward and admitting to the crime.

“We all still wonder how someone out there could have done such a horrible thing and live with themselves after what they did,” he said.

Anyone with any information they believe could be relevant to the Irene Pearson 1979 homicide is asked to call the Winnipeg Police homicide unit at 204-986-6508, or Winnipeg Crime Stoppers anonymously at 204-786-TIPS (8477)

Dave Baxter is a freelance reporter, photographer and editor who writes about Manitoba crimes for the Sunday Special.

crimefilesmanitoba@gmail.com

Twitter:@davebbbaxter