A 49-year-old cold case homicide was put to rest inside a Calgary courtroom on Monday with both the killer and his teenage victim’s daughter — who was just seven months old at the time of her mother’s death — speaking publicly for the first time since murder charges were announced.
Originally charged with murder, Ronald James Edwards, now 75 years old, pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the fatal stabbing of Pauline Brazeau, a 16-year-old who was killed in 1976.
Court of King’s Bench Justice Robert Armstrong accepted prosecutor Patrick Bigg and defence lawyer Pawel Milczarek’s joint proposal for a 6½-year sentence.
Edwards has 4½ years left to serve with credit for the time he’s spent in custody.
Both Brazeau and Edwards are of Métis heritage.
‘There are no memories’
“There are no memories,” said Brazeau’s daughter Tracy, reading from a victim impact statement. “Nothing shared between her and I, no laughs, no smiles.
“We didn’t get the chance to share the love of a mother and daughter.”
In 2023, Edwards, who was 26 years old at the time of the killing, was arrested at his Sundre home after investigative genetic genealogy (IGG) work done by both RCMP and Calgary police officers.
‘I’m sorry’
A smaller man with dark hair and a long grey beard, Edwards was offered the chance to address the court on Monday. He offered a tearful apology to Tracy.
“I’m sorry that your mother was taken from you before you had a chance to know her,” he said.
“I was a drunken young man … I don’t think I was capable of feeling anything, I just drank them away.”
In 1976, Brazeau had just moved to Calgary from Yorkton, Sask., with her infant.
She was hanging out with friends and family on the night of Jan. 8 and into the early morning hours of Jan. 9, 1976.
The group ate at Peppe’s Pizza on 17th Avenue. Brazeau lost her gloves and returned alone to look for them around 3:30 a.m.
Details of the crime come from an agreed statement of facts read aloud by Bigg.
According to the document, Edwards was driving around in the area of 17th Avenue and Second Street that night and picked up his victim, believing she was a prostitute.
Teen stabbed, left alone to die
In search of a deserted road, Edwards drove her outside Calgary city limits, where the two had “consensual sexual intercourse,” according to the agreed statement of facts.
Edwards was drunk that night “and does not remember many details of what occurred.”
He’s admitted to using a four-inch buck knife, stabbing Brazeau outside of his vehicle. Assuming she was dead, Edwards drove away.
Hours later, two hunters discovered Brazeau’s body on Jumping Pound Road, about 20 kilometres west of the city.
Nine stab wounds
She was completely naked but for a black coat covering part of her lower body.
Her blood stained clothing was nearby.
An autopsy determined Brazeau had defensive wounds on her hands and had been stabbed nine times.
The first “extensive investigation” went cold. Police revisited the case numerous times In the decades that followed.
By the mid-1990s, police had a DNA profile of their suspect based on a semen swab taken from Brazeau’s body after her death. In 2022, investigators used IGG to find relatives of the killer, identifying Edwards as their suspect.
‘Very rewarding’
On Oct. 17, 2022, officers grabbed a glass mug used by Edwards from the Sundre A&W, tested it and confirmed it was a match to the profile of their suspect.
Each of Brazeau’s five family members who wrote impact statements thanked the RCMP and Calgary police for sticking with the case.
“It’s very rewarding to hear as an officer who worked on the case, but also we have to realize that it’s not just the officers today. It was the officers that were at the scene in 1976. It was the officers from task forces in the ’90s as well as 2000s,” said Sgt. Ferrah Yeager with the RCMP’s historical homicide unit.
“It’s amazing to see a resolution to something that’s 49 years old.”
