The search for a friend
Search for Sarah - this site - how it began:
Sarah deVries disappeared Tuesday, April 14, 1998 at approximately 4:30 in the morning at the corner of Princess and Hastings.
On Monday April 13 at
about 7 PM Sarah called. She wanted to come over and visit for awhile. I
had known her for just over 5 years and we had become good friends over time. So I picked her up at the Beacon Hotel on East Hastings and Carroll
St. where she was waiting and then drove back to my place. We talked and had something to
eat and she took some vitamins. Sarah always tried to stay in the best of
shape despite her lifestyle. She needed some of her clothes and so she grabbed a pillowcase of clothes to
take with her. [her clothes were always getting stolen]. At around 8:30 PM I took her back down to Hastings and Carroll
Streets to the
Beacon Hotel where she had been staying with her boyfriend. The last words
we said to each other were, be cool my friend and she said I'll call you. That was the last time I saw
Sarah. She was to disappear approximately 6-8 hours later from the corner of
East Hastings and Princess Avenue.
Just over a week had passed and I had not heard from her and that
was unusual. I
went and talked with Bernie on Princess where she had lived for many years. He
hadn't seen her nor had anyone else. This was not like her. I walked up and down
Hastings St. asking almost everyone I came into contact with if they had seen
her or knew her. Sarah was well
known on the east side. No one had seen her. I then called 911 to put
in a missing persons report and was told you had to be family to do that so immediately I called Sarah's sister Maggie, and she
filed a
missing persons report.
I was the first of her friends to go in for an interview with Det. Al
Howlett of the VPD Missing Persons Unit. I gave him the latest
picture of Sarah and then was interviewed. I told him it was not like her
to just up and disappear. Family and friends agree. Sarah's support was here and she had many ties to
the downtown eastside community. She could not and would not have left the
city on her own.
Something terrible must have happened. She was not the transient type who moved
around from place to place. Sarah was afraid to leave Vancouver. She also has
two children, Jeanie
and Ben who live with her mother Pat and Aunt Jean back East and she would not
have wanted them to think something terrible had happened.
At that time in April of 1998 she was the fifth woman
involved in the sex trade to go missing from the downtown eastside. I started
my own search for Sarah, trying to trace her
last movements after leaving my place. She had left all her belongs here, including
her journals. A few weeks later I began a poster campaign, hitting the downtown
eastside with posters and talking with as many people as I could. Other friends of Sarah's
helped in distributing posters. Eventually I met Sylvia who had been with
her the night she
disappeared. She had met her five days previous and they had become fast
friends. Both shared a lot in common. Sarah was 28 and Sylvia was 29.
Both were born on May 12 and adopted. They were also the same size. She last
saw her at about 3 am Tuesday April 14, 1998. Sylvia and Sarah had gone to work
the street at the corners of Princess and Hastings. Sylvia on the
Southeast corner and Sarah on
the Northwest corner. Sylvia was picked up first and headed east on Hastings to circle the
block and head back downtown. After talking with her prospective date, they
agreed to disagree and Sylvia got out. That was approximately one minute later.
Sarah had disappeared from the corner of East Hastings and Princess Avenue.
She has not been seen since. I have talked with Sylvia many times and never was there any indication that
she was about to leave Vancouver. Her feeling was that something terrible had happened to
her. This information from Sylvia I gave to the detective. They were never
able to get Sylvia to come in for questioning. However Det Shenher who took over the case
approximately 8 months ago did meet with her one day on the street. Sylvia was drug
sick and not able to come in. At this time Sylvia cannot be located.
In the search for Sarah, along with her sister
Maggie, a 1-800 number was added to our missing person posters. In the
early days of her disappearance I tried desperately to get the media involved.
No-one it seemed was interested in covering a story on a missing eastside
hooker. Eventually the Province ran an article. Then finally the
media became more involved. The
Sun was interested as they were already working on a story related to 4 missing
women. Global News also interested ran a story of Sarah and the other missing women on the downtown eastside.
Other
articles followed.
In the meantime came a pager call saying that Sarah had
been spotted at the York Hotel in Calgary. It sounded legitimate. Maggie,
Sarah's sister and I talked it over and decided it must be checked out. So
off to Calgary I went. I contacted outreach organizations in Calgary, supplied them with posters and information and
contacts. Went with the Calgary Police to the York Hotel to check with the manager
and tenants. No one recalled ever having seen her. She had not been a resident
there. I drove around all the working strolls with posters and no one
recognized her. I posted in a lot of different areas and handed out posters to sex
trade workers to distribute. Then headed back to Vancouver.
Then came more media. Sarah's disappearance and
that of the other women were getting the attention needed. Sarah, like the
other missing women was not someone who just up and left to go on a holiday
somewhere to another city, to leave her family, friends and all her belongings
behind. She was a member of the community with a strong network of
friends. And very well known and liked on the east side.
We continued with the poster campaign, getting help from
some of Sarah's other friends. Her sister and I postered on the weekends and
talked with east side residents. I continued to stay in contact with her
mother and sister. She had always made it a point to stay in
touch with her family.
I had posted the disappearance into many net
newsgroups and had responses from people offering to add a web page for Sarah. I contacted
troubleshooters and they
posted a missing persons on their site. Another site that has posted is catnip's
spirit.
Also placing a classified ad 6 months ago at www.citynews.com
in Reno,
Nevada that covers all of North America, 255 cities in all.
Then came the three pager calls July 26, 12:10 Sunday morning.
Someone had said she was dead, so drop the case. The calls came back to
back. These are the calls: "Sarah's
dead," so there will be more girls like her dead. There will be more
prostitutes killed. There will be one every Friday night. At the busiest time.
"You'll never find Sarah again. So just stop looking for her, all right?
She doesn't want to be seen and heard from again, all right? So, bye. She's
dead." "This is in regard to Sarah. I just want to let you know
that you'll never find her again alive because a friend of mine killed her, and
I was there." I
contacted the Vancouver Province and they ran an article on Monday on the pager calls.
Global News and Vancouver Television subsequently ran stories on their newscasts
which again put the missing women back in the public focus. Sometime after
I contacted America's Most Wanted and informed Producer Tom Morris of what was
going on here in Vancouver. I knew that AMW had
been asked before by a family member of one of the missing women to help in locating
her sister but had been turned down because of the amount of letters they receive
asking to help locate a person. It just wasn't possible for them to do
that. However with more than one missing woman they would more than likely be able
to do something so we proceeded on that basis. He advised me to keep him posted and they
would see what they could do. Meanwhile more women were going missing.
With all the information and the number of women missing America's Most Wanted
decided to do the story. I was informed of this and told it would be approximately
two months before they could get started.
The media attention picked up for awhile. The official missing sex trade workers stands at 22 since
1995 through into 1999. 1 from 1986. {see update at end of article}
The website www.missingpeople.net
started in January 1999 with the name DOWNTOWN VANCOUVER-eastside.
We've heard some say that women like Sarah
chose their lifestyles, to be prostitutes and drug addicts. I know that's not true. Sarah never
made a concious choice to be a drug
addict or a prostitute. She desperately wanted out, but was unable to break
free. Heroin and cocaine owned her. I knew her as a very caring
person who was tormented by her life on the east side. She was a very
sensitive complex person with a lot of anger. After all she was living a
life in hell. But Sarah had a great sense of humor and liked to tell dirty
jokes. Not all her days were bad. I miss her.......
Wayne
Christmas of 1997 we had breakfast at her sister Maggies. Sarah got to chat with her mom and children back east. She cherished that day. We had blueberry pancakes. The last movie we saw together, Titanic, I think, meant a lot to her. She only left her seat once during the three hour and twenty minute show.
There are now 50 women officially listed as missing from the downtown east side of Vancouver. Sylvia has been located and recently filled out a statement of her time with Sarah. It is posted on this website.
Sept 30, 1999. Linda Jean Coombes and Karen Anne Smith have been found. Both are deceased. 29 women remain missing.
Sarah and Ben
Sylvia's statement on the morning Sarah disappeared
Sylvia speaks about her friend
"Sarah de Vries was twenty-nine
years old when she disappeared on April 14, 1998. She left behind a
seven year old daughter and a two year old son, living with her mother,
their grandmother. She was in regular contact with her mother and her
sister and had many close friends in her community on the Downtown
Eastside. Sarah loved to write and she loved to draw. No matter how
difficult her life was at times, she never stopped putting pen to paper.
And, though she was never able to free herself from a life she hated,
she helped many young women and girls get off the streets and go home.
She was loving. She was loved. She was tough. She loved to laugh. And
she was loyal down to the tips of her toes."
Love Maggie & Family
DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF ALL THE MISSING AND MURDERED WOMEN ON THE DOWNTOWN EASTSIDE OF VANCOUVER.