Four decades since she vanished from the Fraser Valley, Mounties say they are committed to solving the disappearance of 10-year-old Jo-Anne Pedersen, and have recently identified a man at the centre of the 40-year-old mystery.
Jo-Anne disappeared from a phone booth outside a Chilliwack convenience store on Feb. 19, 1983.
An exhaustive RCMP air and ground search involving dogs and teams of volunteers found no trace of the missing girl, nor any signs of foul play.
If Jo-Anne is alive today, she would be 50 years old.
40 years later, the case remains unsolved, although RCMP say it is still an “active investigation,” and any tips received from the public are being followed by investigators.
“It grabbed at everybody’s heartstrings — it was a very, very troubling case,” recalled retired Global BC crime reporter John L. Daly.
“It’s like something out of a movie, and yet it’s real.”
What Daly remembers the most is the chilling 2008 Crimestoppers re-enactment of the evening Jo-Anne vanished.
“To see this little girl in a rainy phone booth, you know, cars passing by, apparently talking to some guy in a black coat,” Daly told Global News in an interview Sunday.
“It was just horrible.”
While their parents were out for the night, Jo-Anne had been walking home with her sister when they got into an argument.
Her sister ran home and locked the door.
Jo-Anne walked to the Penny Pinchers store that used to be near Vedder and Watson Roads in Sardis, where she walked inside and spoke to the clerk before leaving to use the phone booth outside.
Police said Jo-Anne called the operator from the phone booth to connect with her parents, and witnesses saw a man inside the phone booth with her.
Two days after Jo-Anne went missing, her mother recalled that last call with her daughter.
But Jo-Anne was gone.
Then 25 years later, and after the Crimestoppers re-enactment video was posted to YouTube, Jo-Anne’s mother made an emotional plea to the mystery man – who RCMP had not yet identified.
“Please come forward, that would really relieve me of so much grief,” said Angela Reilly in a video released by RCMP on Feb. 19, 2008.
“Please come forward. As a mother, I’m pleading for you to come forward, please do that for me.”
Three years later, there was a break in the case when an anonymous letter dated Aug. 28, 2011, was hand-delivered to Chilliwack RCMP.
“There’s certain details I guess in the letter that only this person would know,” Cpl. Tammy Hollingsworth with Upper Fraser Valley RCMP said in a Sept. 2011 interview.
Hollingsworth noted there was pertinent information they needed to continue the investigation, and they really needed to speak with this person.
At the time, police revealed the man seen in the phone booth with Pedersen before she vanished without a trace had written them an anonymous letter in 2008, but investigators were not certain he was behind the 2011 letter.
Fast forward to 2023 and, days before the 40th anniversary of Jo-Anne’s disappearance, Chilliwack RCMP announced they had identified the man in the phone booth.
RCMP stated in a news release: “Recently, police were able to identify this male and rule him out as a suspect, his identity will not be shared with the public at this time.”
Daly said it’s perplexing to learn RCMP have finally identified the mystery man after all these years, and are publicly stating that he’s not even a person of interest.
“One can only wonder what they’ve told him and why it took so long to find him, and why he didn’t come forward earlier,” said Daly.
“Or have they discovered who he was, determined who he was, and he’s dead – we don’t know.”
While there may now be more questions than answers, Chilliwack RCMP say the investigation into Jo-Anne’s disappearance has never stopped and they have not lost hope that they will find out what happened to her.
“The police went to the wall to solve this 25 years ago, and it looks like they’re prepared to go to the wall again,” said Daly.