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Bjerky, Verna 5-2=1981 Canada
Topic Started: May 8 2011, 01:36 PM (607 Views)
Ell
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Photograph by: Submitted, The ProvinceIn the frantic first days, they searched for a body.

Now they look for bones. Thirty years ago, 16-yearold Verna Bjerky disappeared while hitchhiking from Hope to visit her boyfriend in Kamloops.

She has never been found, despite dozens of searches by family and friends.

"We'll never stop looking," says Verna's mother, Clara Chrane.

But at 73 years old, Chrane admits to a need for emotional closure.

"We never had any kind of service. Thirty years have passed and nothing is finished." She pauses. "I don't know if finished is the right word. It will probably never be finished."

Even so, on Thursday, May 12 -Verna's birthday -family and friends will gather for a memorial service that three decades without answers has denied her. They will tell stories about an outgoing "golden-haired" teenager and likely relive the day she disappeared.

It was Saturday, May 2, 1981a sunny day in a spring darkened by the recent disappearances of several B.C. children. Police were beginning to suspect a serial killer was at work.

Verna, just 10 days shy of her 17th birthday, had plans to visit her boyfriend in Kamloops. The buses were on strike, but she told her mother she had a ride.

"I had a feeling," says Chrane. "I told her that, if her ride fell through, she shouldn't hitchhike."

But that's exactly what happened, says Verna's best friend, Cathy Lamberton.

"We had hitchhiked to Kamloops before. That was Verna. She was daring, not scared of anything."

Cathy believes the two friends had been picked up by Clifford Olson on another Kamloops road trip a few days before May 2.

"When he was arrested in August, I saw his picture and immediately recognized him. He was a creep. He kept offering us drinks and peanuts."

But the teens returned home safely, and this time, Verna hit the road alone.

After spending Friday night at Cathy's place in Hope, she got up late, showered and prepared to go.

"Before she left, I gave her a steak knife," recalls Cathy. "I said, 'If anything happens, you use this.'

"I never saw her again."

We are having a memorial to Verna now because, as of May 2, it has been 30 years since she disappeared. We have never been able to have a funeral for her and want to finally have a public remembrance for her, both as some sense of closure for her family and friends, and also as a reminder to all that she existed and was lost to us. We have never stopped searching for her, and her case still remains open today.

She was born in 1964, and as of May 12 this year she would have been 47. She disappeared 10 days before her 17th birthday, and we are certain that she died the same day she went missing. We chose to have her memorial on her birthday, not her death day.

We do not like to give publicity to the serial child killer of those days, but please know that she went missing with at least 14 other children at that time and have no doubt that she was one of those victims. The case was solved for most of those families, but not all, and Verna's case remains in limbo to this day.

I still miss Verna terribly. She was only four years younger than me, so we spent our whole childhoods together in Yale, along with my brother Dan, whose age was right in between us.

Verna was fearful yet brave, with a temper (a little spitfire in any fight), and was also sensitive and artistic. She liked to draw and paint and wrote a small amount of poetry. She had a great sense of humour and loved babies and animals. She adored our new baby sisters, Gladys and Glennie, when they were born at the turn of the 1970s. (Just as an aside, my youngest sister, Glennie, was killed on her motorcycle in 1988 at the age of 18 -a double blow for my already-grieving mother.) We have matching pink granite headstones for them, even though Verna is not there.

Verna was the sweet little blond girl with hazel eyes and clear skin that tanned in a minute. It was inevitable that she would be the favourite of our relatives and babysitters -everyone doted on her. Perhaps my brother and I were a little jealous. I know that whenever we watched our beloved horror movies, we would proceed to scare the heck out of her, never dreaming that she would one day have a reason for true terror, and I deeply regret frightening her as a child.

When Verna grew into her teens, she also grew very independent. Times were different in the late 1970s. We had various jobs, mostly in restaurants, hitchhiked to those jobs all the time; and quit school before graduating. I left home at 16, and Verna left at 14. . . .

On May 2, 1981, Verna was staying in Hope with her friend Cathy Lamberton. She chose to hitchhike to Kamloops. . . . We know she did not make it very far. . . .

My family went through a lot trying to deal with her disappearance and also dealing with bureaucracy and attempts to make the police believe us at first. . . .

This has been a painful journey for all of us. . . .

So, after 30 years, this is probably our final public chapter in Verna's case, although we will, of course, keep remembering her publicly on May 2 and 12, and every day in our hearts.

And there is always the hope that her remains will be found one day. We keep praying for that, too.

On the Tuesday morning, Chrane went to Cathy's door, looking for Verna, who hadn't arrived in Kamloops.

They went to the police together. They also drove to Kamloops, searching the roadside.

On Mother's Day, Chrane took her three daughters and drove the road again, "searching every side road we could find," recalls Verna's elder sister, Irene Bjerky. "We all knew something terrible had happened to Verna . . . it was not like her to go anywhere without telling anyone."

In August 1981, Olson was arrested and later confessed to killing 11 B.C. children and teens. On the day Verna disappeared, the body of Olson's third victim, 16-year-old Daryn Todd Johnsrude, who disappeared in April 1981, was found at the bottom of an embankment in Deroche, on the north side of the Fraser River on Highway 7.

In October 1981, some of Verna's personal belongings were found eight kilometres from Hope, also on the north side of the Fraser River. Crown prosecutors identified Verna as a likely Olson victim, but charges were never pursued.

Years later, Olson claimed to have knowledge of Verna's murder, along with the deaths of 11 additional young people. When authorities declined to pay for the information, he did not reveal the location of her body.

To this day, both Chrane and Cathy Lamberton believe that Olson is responsible for Verna's death.

Over the years, they have searched the banks of the Fraser River dozens of times, hoping to make a discovery that is difficult to even contemplate.

But the area has changed -"there's more houses, more gates," says Chrane. "There's not much we can do any more."

Sometimes, Verna's mother runs over the desolate river terrain in her mind.

"I often think back to a place and wish we had gone a little farther. It nags at me."

Verna's younger sister, Gladys Chrane, admits she's always searching.

"When I dig in my back yard, I'm looking," she says.

In February of this year, a body was found on the north side of the Fraser near Hope. Verna's family was hopeful, until it was identified as a missing Chilliwack man.

Gladys Chrane says she thinks Thursday's memorial service will bring a measure of peace.

"It's time to do this," she says. "I think my mom deserves it. I think Verna deserves it."

Irene Bjerky says the memorial will likely be the final public chapter in Verna's case, "although we will, of course, keep remembering her . . . every day in our hearts."

gluymes@theprovince.com

twitter.com/prov_valleygirl

Verna Bjerky's missing-persons file remains with Chilliwack RCMP. Anyone with information is asked to call 604-792-4611.

The memorial service is planned for Thursday, May 12, from 2 to 3 p.m. at the Church of St. John the Divine in Yale. For more information, visit the Verna Bjerky Memorial Site on Facebook.



Read more: http://www.theprovince.com/news/feeling/47...l#ixzz1LmsnDlPU
Ell

Only after the last tree has been
cut down;
Only after the last fish has been
caught;
Only after the last river has been
poisoned;
Only then will you realize
that money cannot be eaten.
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