The nightmare began with a joke about the date, a casual remark that would forever be etched into the memory of a terrified teenager. Sixteen-year-old Misty Cockerill was walking with her best friend, Tanya Smith, on Friday the 13th, laughing off the superstition of the day. Within moments, their world collapsed into a scene of unimaginable horror as a deranged psychopath emerged from the hedges, shattering the peace of their quiet British Columbia community and setting in motion a cat-and-mouse game with police that would terrorize an entire city for months.
The attack was swift and brutal, targeting two innocent young girls in a seemingly random act of violence that would expose the depths of human depravity. The suspect, who would later be dubbed the Abbotsford Killer, ordered the girls to undress, his chilling command signaling the beginning of a savage assault that would leave one dead and the other fighting for her life. Misty, displaying unimaginable courage, did not hesitate to intervene, throwing herself into the fray in a desperate attempt to protect her friend from the monster that had descended upon them.
As the attacker turned his rage toward Misty, she realized the gravity of her situation, understanding in that terrifying moment that she might not survive the night. “I’m not gonna go down without a fight,” she later recalled, her words echoing the fierce determination that would ultimately save her life, albeit at a tremendous cost. The psychopath wielded a baseball bat with horrifying force, delivering what doctors would later describe as at least three home run type swings to her head, leaving her with severe brain trauma and clinging to life.
The following day, the bedroom community of Abbotsford, British Columbia, was thrown into a state of shock and disbelief as news of the attack spread. Police were informed that a teenage girl with catastrophic injuries had been admitted to the hospital, her condition so grave that doctors were uncertain whether she would survive. Meanwhile, the search for Tanya Smith intensified, with investigators desperately combing the area for any sign of the missing girl, unaware that a grim discovery was imminent.
Inspector Kevin MacLeod was on the scene when they identified Tanya, her naked body found floating in the middle of a river, her chest badly injured with wounds that appeared almost like bite marks. The discovery sent chills through the investigation team, but it was what they found near the riverbank that would prove even more disturbing. Tanya’s clothes had been thrown into the bushes, carelessly discarded as if the killer wanted them to be found, a deliberate act that immediately raised red flags for the seasoned investigator.
“Usually when someone commits a crime they’ll try to distance themselves from it,” MacLeod explained, noting the unusual nature of the crime scene. “Often they’ll hide the evidence, cover their tracks, or create an alibi for themselves. But at this crime scene, we were met with the total opposite.
My initial thought was this guy wants to be known, he wants people to know what he’s done.” This realization set the stage for a psychological battle between the police and a killer who seemed to crave attention and notoriety.
While waiting for Tanya’s autopsy results, MacLeod set up a tip line, hoping that someone from the public might have information that could break the case open. One of the first calls he received caught his attention immediately, a gentleman claiming he had driven Misty to the hospital, a statement that contradicted everything the police believed about the case. “Up to that point, we were under the impression that Misty had made her own way to the hospital,” MacLeod said, his suspicion growing as the caller abruptly hung up after being encouraged to come in for an interview.
Sensing something deeply unusual about the call, MacLeod made the strategic decision to have the telecommunications company trace all incoming calls to both the tip line and the local 9-1-1 dispatch. His instinct proved correct when, later that day, they received another call that would send shockwaves through the investigation. The caller referred to the bite mark on Tanya’s body as his “calling card,” revealing information that had been deliberately withheld from the public as a means of confirming the authenticity of any potential confession.
The trace led police to a phone booth beside the City ice rink, and they arrived within minutes, but the suspect was already gone. “For the timing of the phone call being made and the time it took to drive to the exit, we feel that the first police responders must have met him as he was driving out,” MacLeod recounted, frustration evident in his voice. “The response was that quick, unfortunately it didn’t identify him.”
The killer was not just taunting them; he was demonstrating an intimate knowledge of their procedures and a chilling ability to stay one step ahead.
Misty woke up after four days on the brink of death, her body battered but her spirit unbroken, and her first thoughts were of her friend. As soon as she regained consciousness, she began talking about Tanya, confused and disoriented, unaware that her best friend had been found dead hours earlier. Her mother was forced to make the heartbreaking decision to tell her the truth, knowing that Misty would need to process this devastating loss if she was to help with the investigation, even if the revelation threatened to destroy her will to recover.
“I remember my mom sitting down saying Tanya didn’t make it,” Misty recalled, the pain of that moment still raw. “And she just looked at me, she goes ‘what do you mean she didn’t make it, she was one of my best friends,’ and she goes ‘I didn’t save her, I don’t know.'” The guilt and grief were overwhelming for the young survivor, who had risked everything to protect her friend and had been powerless to stop the brutal attack that claimed Tanya’s life.
Together, Misty and her mother watched Tanya’s funeral on television, the ceremony being held in a church close to the ice rink where the killer had made his taunting phone call the day prior. The police swarmed the area during the funeral, conducting surveillance in the hope that the killer might be watching, drawn to the spectacle of his own handiwork. “We had a lot of cars out checking people that were in the area, checking people that were watching, checking cars driving by,” MacLeod said, but their efforts yielded nothing.
The killer’s audacity only grew, and he made a third phone call, this time directly targeting the police and revealing that he had been watching them investigate the phone booth. “He led us to believe that he was watching us dust the payphone where the 911 call was made,” the inspector revealed, the taunt hitting its mark. The police showed up within minutes, but the booth was empty, with no prints and no trace of the suspect, leaving the investigators frustrated and publicly humiliated by their inability to catch a killer who seemed to be operating with impunity.
Lead investigator Rod Gell was forced to admit the ineffectiveness of their strategy, acknowledging that the killer was making himself available yet somehow remaining untouchable. “We’re not catching this guy yet when he is, he is making himself so available,” Gell conceded, the admission a stark reminder of the challenges they faced. They needed a change of plan if they ever hoped to catch him before he attacked again, and Inspector MacLeod chose to rely on Misty, despite her memories being impaired by the injuries she had suffered.
The police released a composite sketch that Misty had assisted in preparing, despite debating the value of the drawing given her injuries. The decision proved to be a turning point, as the release generated a flood of tips from the public, with three separate people independently identifying the same individual from the composite drawing. “It looked very strong in that particular case that we had the suspect in custody,” MacLeod said, and the man they arrested looked almost exactly like the sketch, categorically refusing to take part in a lie detector test, raising the investigators’ suspicions further.
Another sexual assault victim came forward and said the man looked like the person who had attacked her, adding weight to the case against him. Eventually, he agreed to provide a DNA sample, but back in the 1990s, DNA testing was a new technology, and they had to wait for two months before any results could be handed to them. To MacLeod’s dismay, his superiors believed the case was solved even before the results came in, and they began cutting back resources for the investigation, assuming the nightmare was over.
Unsatisfied with this premature conclusion, MacLeod asked to be left alone with the suspect for 12 hours to interrogate him thoroughly, and his conclusion didn’t look good for the prosecution’s case. “After the 12-hour interview, I was satisfied that he was not responsible for the murder and the attack on Misty and Tanya,” he said, his gut telling him that the real killer was still out there. When the DNA test came back negative, his fears were confirmed, and they were back to square one, with the actual culprit having remained silent while an innocent man was held in custody.
It appeared that the real killer was prepared to allow whoever this chap was to take the rap if that was what was going to happen, a chilling display of his willingness to let someone else pay for his crimes. With no other options, the police decided to release the tapes of the killer’s taunting phone calls, despite fears from city officials that social panic would take over the small community. Robert Linden, a journalist and radio personality, was present when they first aired the tapes and remembers the media circus that surrounded the release.
“All of the media from the Lower Mainland and nationally descended on the Fraser Valley for that one defining moment when the tape was released,” Linden recalled. “They have nothing else to go on, and that was really the point of this whole investigation, was that they had nothing else to go on but that voice.” The city officials were right about the public’s reaction, as the population’s immediate response was one of fear and disgust, hearing for the first time the killer directly threatening them and taunting the police.
“People were being escorted by security guards to their cars, everybody traveled in pairs, the community was in terror,” one resident said, the fear palpable in their voice. Canadian media and news outlets soon stormed the city, interviewing investigators and panicked passersby, amplifying the sense of dread that had settled over Abbotsford. The campaign proved to be almost too successful, with thousands of people calling in, overloading the Abbotsford Police and RCMP capacities to investigate each and every lead, with 9,500 tips coming in.
Shortly after the release of the tapes, the suspect started to communicate again, this time directly targeting Misty, calling her quite a few times, a terrible thing to do to someone who had already been a victim. Her family was put into witness protection, but this seemed to have angered the suspect, who went all out for his next move. He took Tanya’s gravestone and defaced it, writing across her face, a desecration that shocked even the most hardened investigators.
“Why would you do that, haven’t you done enough to her,” one officer said, the question hanging in the air.
He called a local radio station and told the host to go look for his car in the parking lot, and there was the headstone slammed against the hood of his car in broad daylight in the middle of the city. “Quite amazingly, nobody saw him lift this big 180-pound headstone out of there and put it on the hood of the car,” MacLeod said, shaking his head. “It was like we were chasing a ghost, this guy’s invisible.”
The intense media coverage and attention he received from the release of the tapes had reignited his willingness to communicate, and he seemed to be enjoying the game.
The story had moved up a notch, with the media now part of the story, and he got all the publicity he could possibly hope for as a result. But apparently, it still wasn’t enough, because after that, not only did he call them again, but he also sent them a letter, having walked up to the front of a house and thrown a wrench through the living room window. After carefully opening the letter strapped to the wrench, MacLeod and Gell finally discovered the extent of his crimes, learning that the Abbotsford Killer was not only a murderer but also a serial rapist with a particular interest in teenage girls who he referred to as his conquests.
“Never forget the night we read that note for the first time, and just chills going up my spine, it was absolutely terrifying,” Gell said. “He talked about other conquests, and in the end he said ‘you won’t catch me and I will strike again, goodbye for now guys.'” But finally, the suspect made a mistake, as on the piece of tape holding the wrench and the letter together, the police found a fingerprint, and they immediately logged it into the National Database.
“Our whole perception of who we were after changed,” MacLeod said. “We were thinking before it would be somebody that had a record for sexual assault or some kind of criminal record, and in fact he did not have a criminal record at all.”
Later that day, the police received a most unusual call, with someone on the other end of the line claiming to be the mother of the man behind the calls. She phoned the tips line and told the tip taker, “Yeah, this is, I think that’s my son’s voice, and he fishes at the Vetter River, and he went to Tanya Smith’s funeral.” She knew that contrary to the behavior seen in the last major suspect, this man wasn’t cooperative at all, refusing to follow them to the station and not providing any further information.
“I told him if he was innocent, get down there and cooperate, get down to the police station,” she said. “I think you’re guilty because we’ll get you.”
Apparently, the suspect wasn’t aware that he left a fingerprint on the letter, as it was the only thing he agreed to provide to investigators, and he seemed confident that he was going to supply his fingerprints and walk out after doing so. His lawyer asked that his fingerprints be examined right there at the station, under the condition that they should be destroyed if a match couldn’t be established. “Innocent people will proclaim their innocence loud and long, guilty guys will run to their lawyer, generally not always, but you know,” one investigator noted, the irony of the situation not lost on them.
They did the test in the cell block right in front of him, and Jerry Ennis, a forensic scientist, performed the check. “My heart was racing, it felt like I’d won the lottery when I compared that print and found that it was his,” Ennis said, the relief and excitement evident in his voice. “So I advised the investigators that it was his print.”
From tears to high fives, the Abbotsford Police and the RCMP were overjoyed to finally have a credible suspect in custody, but Inspector MacLeod knew that they weren’t done with the Friday the 13th murder just yet.
“When there’s an arrest made, as far as the police are concerned, that’s really when the work starts, because now you’re the clock is ticking to get ready for trial,” MacLeod explained. The suspect was prepared, bringing in a strong defense, claiming that he was responsible for the rape of Tanya but not the attack, allowing him to plead not guilty to the murder charges imposed upon him. “I think what he said in the stand was that he had 𝒔𝒆𝒙 with Tanya, that’s consistent with the evidence, but then there’s no direct evidence to say that he was the person that threw her in the river and in fact killed her because she drowned,” one legal analyst noted.
Without any evidence to back the murder charges, the crown wasn’t in a good position, but the prosecutor had a backup plan. On the last day of the trial, Misty took the stand, and after seven months of rehabilitation, she regained most of her memory and went on to deliver a horrifying testimony starting from the beginning. “I was joking around, I was like oh yeah, it’s Friday the 13th, and this guy comes out of the hedges and told us to take her clothes off,” she recounted, her voice steady despite the trauma she was reliving.
When he brought up the baseball bat, paralyzed by fear, Misty took a good look at the man but couldn’t move at all. “When I looked at his face, it looked like we weren’t going to live through it,” she said. As the man started to force himself upon her friend, Misty watched in horror, seeing the look on Tanya’s face.
“She had such big, big eyes and they just looked completely empty and lost and scared.” In the panic of the moment, Misty felt powerless, and she could have run away but couldn’t even imagine leaving Tanya behind, so the only thing she could do was stare in shock.
“That’s when he’s like ‘stop looking at me, you’re gonna find out what this is like later,'” Misty recalled, the memory sending a shiver through the courtroom. “Well now I’m on my knees on the ground thinking, now what?” As their attacker was undoing his pants, he accidentally dropped his baseball bat, and Misty didn’t flinch, immediately trying to reverse the situation.
“I grabbed the bat and I’m angry and I’m thinking I’m just gonna hit this guy in the head, I don’t care if he dies,” she said, her determination palpable.
But to her surprise, the man didn’t move an inch, instead turning around and grabbing the bat from her hands. Afterward, he immediately jumped at her and started beating her ceaselessly. “I turned around and I covered myself, covered my head and I was screaming for help and I was like ‘please, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,’ and I was thinking you know, this is it, it’s over,” she testified, the emotion of the moment overwhelming her.
The moment of truth came when she was asked to identify the man who attacked her and killed Tanya.
“He was staring at her and smiling and giving that cocky grin, and I thought ‘you think the Judge can’t see you,’ and she just stared right back at him and said ‘point,’ and she pointed to him,” one courtroom observer recounted. “He can’t hurt you now,” someone said to her, and after Misty’s testimony, the judge directly convicted him, sentencing him to life in prison. “I started crying, I was overjoyed,” Misty said, the relief washing over her after months of terror.
After months of fear, the residents of Abbotsford, Misty, and Tanya’s family were finally liberated. “Members of the team put their lives on hold for seven months, we all lived in the community, we all knew the threat,” MacLeod said, reflecting on the toll the case had taken on everyone involved. “He tried to break her, but she made sure that he would never do this to anyone ever again,” he added, paying tribute to Misty’s incredible strength and resilience.
Today, Misty doesn’t want to be remembered only as the survivor of the Abbotsford Killer, instead becoming an advocate for victims’ rights, speaking up for other survivors and making sure they have access to legal representation and support. “I am a mom, my fiance and I decided to name the child after someone who’s made a big impact on your life, which would be Tanya,” she said, honoring her friend’s memory. “She made a huge impact in my life, I didn’t want Tanya’s death to be a waste.”
“It was like an ending and a beginning, the end of what happened to me and then it was the beginning of you know what I can do about it,” Misty reflected. “I didn’t give up and now I have a purpose, and that’s to help other victims.” Her journey from victim to advocate is a testament to the human spirit’s ability to overcome even the most unimaginable trauma, turning personal tragedy into a force for positive change in the world.
