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PAGE 19

February 3,

YORK News OMS-2031 Classified 986-6222

Distribution 86-1337 52 pages 25¢

; REWS photo tel Lucente

| CRAB SHOP « owner Martin “Sonny” Dobay surveys the damage done to bis seafood store from an explosion Friday night. An estimated one pound :
-of what is suspected to have been dynamite destroyed a shed behind the shop and $50,000 worth of seafood processing equipment. See story rage f

three.

NORTH VANCOUVER RCMP are presently investigating
the murder of an unemployed North Vancouver waitress
described by a former neighbor as a prostitute.

The body of 39-year-old Julie
Marr Smith was discovered in her
apartment by a visiting friend
Saturday at 7:30 p.m.

Investigators found no signs of a
forced. entry and believe the
murderer was expected at Smith’s
main floor one-bedroom suite at
145 West 19th Street in North

Vancouver. i
North Vancouver RCMP Sgt.

Brian Guzda said police have no
suspects at this time.

By MICHAEL BECKER
An autopsy was done Sunday
and results have been completed,
but police are not releasing the
cause of death. “If we give that
right now then the murderer will

know what we know,’’ Guzda
said.

According to landlord Lloyd
English, Smith lived alone.

Former neighbor Jean Kirby

said Smith once confided in her
that she was a prostitute and that
most of her sex clients worked at a
North Vancouver bakery.

Said Guzda: ‘She had been kill-
ed quite recently. It wasn’t a case
where she had been dead for a
matter of days.”’

English said Srnith had been liv-
ing in his building since May 1987.

‘English had beet: subpoenaed as
a character witness to testify ata
family court hearing Jas. 25 in
which Smith was trying to regain
custody of her five-yeay-uld child
from the Ministry of Human
Resources.

English said Smith also had a
number of children with another

man who had custody of them.

“It came as a shock tu me,’’ he
said. “She seemed a very happy
person. | think she was living here
to show that she could make it and
be responsibie. She was never a
problem, a good tenant and always
quite pleasant,”

English said police have ques-
tioned all of the tenants living in
the three-storey, ]4-unit apartment
building. ‘‘Nobody saw or heard
anything. It's sad and upsetting for
everybody.’

A couple of days prior to her
death, Smith had presented
English with a bouquet of daf-
fodils to thank him for testifying
at the custody court hearing.

A bartender working the bever-
age room of the St. Alice Hotel
said Smith was a regular client who
visited the hotel three or four times
a week.

The bartender said he last saw
her last week. ‘‘She was always a
happy-go-lucky person. I was
shocked to hear about it,’’ said
Jack Hildebrand.

Said Olympic Hotel bartender
Peter Howe: ‘She was definitely a
Lower Lonsdale regular. She used
to come down here regularly, and
was always in pretty good spirits.”

Smith’s killing is the eighth as
yet unsolved murder of a Lower
Mainland prostitute since March