Identified! Canada - Tofield, AB, 'Septic Tank Sam' Ntv/WhtMale 1046UMAB, Apr'77 - Gordon Edwin Sanderson

[theshadow45]

Bumping, today is Gordon’s birthday.

 

[FrankieFalzon]

The burned-out holes in the clothing suggest that they were torturing him while he was still dressed - an interesting note, since keeping the outer clothes on the victim is not too common in similar cases.

 

[FrankieFalzon]

I stumbled on descriptions of tortures similar to what was done to Gordon. I can't go into much details for the sake of my sanity, but all it took was that groups of perps find themselves in position of power. They were attacking guys who in they saw as below them, after experiencing violence and repression from another group.

Snowtown?

 

[FrankieFalzon]

I believe that rumor about him being a child molester is very important. This is something that would make anyone who heard someone spilling beans about his murder shut up and never came forward. Cause who would like to be the one who helped imprison guys who did a "right thing", torturing and murdering a child molester? This IMO sounds like a direct coverup that could came from people involved, not only show up as stupid conclusion from someone who knew very little about the case.

An excellent point. If there only was a chance to find out who was the first man to have muttered "I hear he was diddlin' kids!" in some local smoke-filled bar outside Alberta, when the discovery of the body at the abandoned farm was brought up for discussion... and if he kept repeating it...

 

[beubeubeu]

The burned-out holes in the clothing suggest that they were torturing him while he was still dressed - an interesting note, since keeping the outer clothes on the victim is not too common in similar cases.

I'd tend to think that was cause it was freezing winter weather and cause likely it was done to him in some garage/barn/unheated basement kind of location, close to where they had their stash of lime.
Taking his clothes off may not cross their minds OR they wanted to decrease any possible numbing effects that cold could bring.

Snowtown?

I don't remember anymore and I'm pretty glad that I don't.

An excellent point. If there only was a chance to find out who was the first man to have muttered "I hear he was diddlin' kids!" in some local smoke-filled bar outside Alberta, when the discovery of the body at the abandoned farm was brought up for discussion... and if he kept repeating it...

For me it's same with lime.
Unless it was common misconception from the time and place - with people genuinely believing that lime speds up decomposition (cause of some urban legend or popular movie theme) - I don't get that logic at all.

I think we can all agree on some facts here:
Lime is used in farming.
Cause lime it's used in farming, farmers are buying and stashing tons of lime to fertlize the soil with it early Spring.
Lime does not speed up decomposition.
Gordon's body was found covered in lime, in the area where there were big farms and farmers.
Septic tanks on the other hand ARE speeding up decomposition.
Gordon was found in a septic tank.

Why the conclusion there was that he was covered in lime cause... "probably" his murderers wanted to sped up his decomposition, so they tried covering him with lime and accidentally just preserved his body better, cause newsflash, lime does not speed up decomposition?!
This is just ridiculous for me.
They put him inside a septic tank, on abandoned property, head down, in a place where NOBODY was expected to show up at all, and where NOBODY was supposed to open that septic tank.
That was what they did to make sure that his body will decompose quickly and that he won't be found.

IMO much better quess in trying to figure out the reason why he was covered in lime would be to consider that he was either murdered where somebody stashed their lime, or that his body was transported there in lime bags or same way that lime bags, and got covered in it accidentally.
And that illogical theory with lime was made or strenghtened just to stop everyone from wondering too much who could have a lot of lime near that abandoned farm.

 

[branmuffin]

I'd tend to think that was cause it was freezing winter weather and cause likely it was done to him in some garage/barn/unheated basement kind of location, close to where they had their stash of lime.
Taking his clothes off may not cross their minds OR they wanted to decrease any possible numbing effects that cold could bring.

I don't remember anymore and I'm pretty glad that I don't.

For me it's same with lime.
Unless it was common misconception from the time and place - with people genuinely believing that lime speds up decomposition (cause of some urban legend or popular movie theme) - I don't get that logic at all.

I think we can all agree on some facts here:
Lime is used in farming.
Cause lime it's used in farming, farmers are buying and stashing tons of lime to fertlize the soil with it early Spring.
Lime does not speed up decomposition.
Gordon's body was found covered in lime, in the area where there were big farms and farmers.
Septic tanks on the other hand ARE speeding up decomposition.
Gordon was found in a septic tank.

Why the conclusion there was that he was covered in lime cause... "probably" his murderers wanted to sped up his decomposition, so they tried covering him with lime and accidentally just preserved his body better, cause newsflash, lime does not speed up decomposition?!
This is just ridiculous for me.
They put him inside a septic tank, on abandoned property, head down, in a place where NOBODY was expected to show up at all, and where NOBODY was supposed to open that septic tank.
That was what they did to make sure that his body will decompose quickly and that he won't be found.

IMO much better quess in trying to figure out the reason why he was covered in lime would be to consider that he was either murdered where somebody stashed their lime, or that his body was transported there in lime bags or same way that lime bags, and got covered in it accidentally.
And that illogical theory with lime was made or strenghtened just to stop everyone from wondering too much who could have a lot of lime near that abandoned farm.

I think there has been a public misconception that lime hastens decomposition ever since seeing WW2 newsreels of grainy images of hundreds of bodies being dumped in mass graves and covered with lime. The lime wasn't to hasten decomp but to counteract the smell of decomposing bodies.

Lime isn't just used in farming. Lime is used in building construction, water purification plants, sewage treatment plants, steel production, cement production and other types of industries.

So maybe a body found on a derelict farm and farms use lime to amend soil and lime was dumped in the septic time, so the lime came from the farm. Yes, that definitely sounds like Occam's Razor. But there's a lot of cement companies in Edmonton. Steel companies. Water purification plants. And last but not least the oil production industry. Remember the oil boom in Edmonton in the 70s? All of these companies use lime in their businesses.

We've been talking about gangs which usually conjures up images of bikers and tattoos and drugs. But there's other gangs too; gangs that trade in stolen vehicles and vehicle parts, gangs that are involved in theft in manufacturing environments. These are all considered blue collar thefts. With the industrial boom going on in Alberta in the 1970s these businesses would be multiplying providing lots of opportunities for work. Did Gordie work in any of these industries? In his high school yearbook he stated he wanted to be a Partsman. I looked up a Partsman. Here's a job advertisement for one:

Partsman I Journeyman - RMA

Rural Municipalities of Alberta

rmalberta.com

Gordie struggled with addiction and multiple interactions with the law. Perhaps he became a partsman/journeyman and had the skills to work in any of those industries listed above. His arrest record may have precluded him from working in a legitimate position but his skills could have come in handy for groups who engaged in organized crime.

Nearly 50 years have gone by since Gordie was murdered. I think it's time Sgt Lammerts releasesd the details of that odd and suspicious interaction he reported on that may shed light on who may be responsible for Gordie's death, regardless of the perp's age. IMO

 

[dotr]

There was a torture scene in the fictionalized film (cannot pinpoint the exact one, there are many) based on a true story about an Amish man involved in the drug trade who secretly helped LE capture a huge shipment of drugs.
When the man was discovered to have been helping LE, he was tortured in a very similar manner as the formerly UID Tofield man experienced, imo, speculation, fwiw.

Complete speculation, fwiw, imo, noting.

''Feb 24, 2017
It is a closed religious society with traditional values. At the turn of the century thousands of Mennonites left Canada for Mexico and the area around Cuauhtémoc. At the time of our 1992 piece, their ways were changing in their society as alcohol and economic problems grew and were faced with a bigger issue, a flourishing drug trade. Immigration and border officials in Canada and the United States said at the time there was a Mennonite Mob smuggling tons of drugs into both countries.''

Salem Mennonite Church (Tofield, Alberta, Canada) - GAMEO

gameo.org

 

[musicaljoke]

I'd tend to think that was cause it was freezing winter weather and cause likely it was done to him in some garage/barn/unheated basement kind of location, close to where they had their stash of lime.
Taking his clothes off may not cross their minds OR they wanted to decrease any possible numbing effects that cold could bring.

I don't remember anymore and I'm pretty glad that I don't.

For me it's same with lime.
Unless it was common misconception from the time and place - with people genuinely believing that lime speds up decomposition (cause of some urban legend or popular movie theme) - I don't get that logic at all.

I think we can all agree on some facts here:
Lime is used in farming.
Cause lime it's used in farming, farmers are buying and stashing tons of lime to fertlize the soil with it early Spring.
Lime does not speed up decomposition.
Gordon's body was found covered in lime, in the area where there were big farms and farmers.
Septic tanks on the other hand ARE speeding up decomposition.
Gordon was found in a septic tank.

Why the conclusion there was that he was covered in lime cause... "probably" his murderers wanted to sped up his decomposition, so they tried covering him with lime and accidentally just preserved his body better, cause newsflash, lime does not speed up decomposition?!
This is just ridiculous for me.
They put him inside a septic tank, on abandoned property, head down, in a place where NOBODY was expected to show up at all, and where NOBODY was supposed to open that septic tank.
That was what they did to make sure that his body will decompose quickly and that he won't be found.

IMO much better quess in trying to figure out the reason why he was covered in lime would be to consider that he was either murdered where somebody stashed their lime, or that his body was transported there in lime bags or same way that lime bags, and got covered in it accidentally.
And that illogical theory with lime was made or strenghtened just to stop everyone from wondering too much who could have a lot of lime near that abandoned farm.

Lime has long been used to neutralize outhouse odors, as well as ward away flies.

 

[theshadow45]

Today is Gordon’s birthday.

 

[Blurgle]

Unless it was common misconception from the time and place - with people genuinely believing that lime speds up decomposition (cause of some urban legend or popular movie theme) - I don't get that logic at all.

That was in fact an extremely common misconception: that because lime reduces the smell, it must be also speeding up decomposition.

 

[searchingforyou]

So...
The blue line is the most obvious path between Edmonton and Lindbrook.
40ish mins long drive... to the Lindbrook "centre".
But if Gordon lived in downtown Edmonton, and ended up somewhere along Range Road 220 (red line) then it's just about 20 minutes.

Orange circle is roughly 5 minutes long drive from the likely location of abandoned farm. Red circle would be roughly 2 minutes.
And this "peculiar incident" happened somewhere there, in January.
View attachment 352906
That exact crossroad look pretty similar to what they showed in the vid but unless their recording was kinda old, it's not the same place.
View attachment 352908
If it's indeed there, then abandoned property was right next to the Cooking Lake.
Which means... somewhere here:
View attachment 352910
Likely no neighbours who could notice anything out of ordinary... but also no way that wind could take away snow from that road.

hi just dropping in a couple years late but i watched the global news video and it was taken from this intersection

53°26'27.8"N 112°48'12.7"W · 51504, Range Rd 200, Beaver County, AB T0B, Canada

51504, Range Rd 200, Beaver County, AB T0B, Canada

www.google.com

implying he was found somewhere in beaver hills estates

 

[breachtones]

I've recently bought a newspapers.com subscription, and so have been searching through newspapers looking for unrevealed info about UIDs, when I found something somewhat concerning possibly about Gordon.

This article from the Edmonton Journal (dated Feb 27, 1970) says the following. I don't want to cast aspersions on this poor man's image, but I do wonder if it's the same guy. Gordon, born Oct 22, 1950, would be the right age (19) for when this article was written, and we know he lived in Edmonton and was born in Manitoba, where the offense occurred. Accidentally changing "Edwin" to "Edward" seems like it could be a typo. What do you guys think? Could this have been the motive behind such a brutal killing if it is the same person?

 

[dotr]

I've recently bought a newspapers.com subscription, and so have been searching through newspapers looking for unrevealed info about UIDs, when I found something somewhat concerning possibly about Gordon.
View attachment 534236
This article from the Edmonton Journal (dated Feb 27, 1970) says the following. I don't want to cast aspersions on this poor man's image, but I do wonder if it's the same guy. Gordon, born Oct 22, 1950, would be the right age (19) for when this article was written, and we know he lived in Edmonton and was born in Manitoba, where the offense occurred. Accidentally changing "Edwin" to "Edward" seems like it could be a typo. What do you guys think? Could this have been the motive behind such a brutal killing if it is the same person?

Very interesting find!
Many here iirc thought that the torture, in particular to the victim's private parts, was suggestive of what you are speculating too. imo, speculation.

 

[branmuffin]

I've recently bought a newspapers.com subscription, and so have been searching through newspapers looking for unrevealed info about UIDs, when I found something somewhat concerning possibly about Gordon.
View attachment 534236
This article from the Edmonton Journal (dated Feb 27, 1970) says the following. I don't want to cast aspersions on this poor man's image, but I do wonder if it's the same guy. Gordon, born Oct 22, 1950, would be the right age (19) for when this article was written, and we know he lived in Edmonton and was born in Manitoba, where the offense occurred. Accidentally changing "Edwin" to "Edward" seems like it could be a typo. What do you guys think? Could this have been the motive behind such a brutal killing if it is the same person?

I always wondered whether it was a revenge slaying specifically sexual offence considering the mutilation of his genitals.

If it was it would be easy to focus on those individuals who would have a reason to do so.

 

[Fake Protagonist]

I always wondered whether it was a revenge slaying specifically sexual offence considering the mutilation of his genitals.

If it was it would be easy to focus on those individuals who would have a reason to do so.

Not necessarily imo. If the above article is indeed him, he could've very well been a repeat offender. Say he got out of prison, opportunistically re-offended but messed with the wrong guy's kid this time, and paid the price for it once the kid told her dad. Or something like that. The theoretical offence that potentially led to his theoretical revenge killing might not have been reported in any official manner. Thus police would have no knowledge of the crime as the "punishment"/"justice" was dealt with solely by the victim's family and kept hush-hush. And after nearly 50 years, I doubt anyone is gonna come forward and say "oh, yeah, my dad/uncle/brother/whatever was the one who killed this guy". Am I making sense? Not sure if I got my point across well enough. Sleep-deprived and brain-fogged.

JMO of course. Theory and wild speculation.

 

[branmuffin]

Not necessarily imo. If the above article is indeed him, he could've very well been a repeat offender. Say he got out of prison, opportunistically re-offended but messed with the wrong guy's kid this time, and paid the price for it once the kid told her dad. Or something like that. The theoretical offence that potentially led to his theoretical revenge killing might not have been reported in any official manner. Thus police would have no knowledge of the crime as the "punishment"/"justice" was dealt with solely by the victim's family and kept hush-hush. And after nearly 50 years, I doubt anyone is gonna come forward and say "oh, yeah, my dad/uncle/brother/whatever was the one who killed this guy". Am I making sense? Not sure if I got my point across well enough. Sleep-deprived and brain-fogged.

JMO of course. Theory and wild speculation.

That's always a possibility but by and large most family members would want the perp caught. Besides he may have had other victims. How many parents would go that route? Very few, I would think, and the level of violence inflicted on this guy meant whoever did it, enjoyed it and if they enjoyed it, I wouldn't be surprised they'd done something like that before. If his death was related to the sexual assault of a young white girl, I think it's highly likely that many people tortured and murdered him mainly because he was aboriginal and I'd bet the girl was not. Because the cold hard truth is that sexual assaults that take place on indigenous lands and reservations is about 10 times higher than the national average. And because of that higher average, and the girl was indigenous, I doubt anyone from a reserve would be killing the perpetrator. The link below is from a year ago. You can imagine what it was like 50 years ago.

Plus we don't know if the name is a typo and the rapist is another person.

https://www.aptnnews.ca/national-news/treaty-3-sex-assault-epidemic-investigation/

For me there are two possibilities: sexual assault and retribution or stealing or ratting out members of a theft ring that GES was involved in due to his job as a partsman.

 

[MelmothTheLost]

Because the cold hard truth is that sexual assaults that take place on indigenous lands and reservations is about 10 times higher than the national average.

This seems an opportune moment to ask a question I've had for a long time time about the rate of murdered and missing native/indigenous women in North America, which is whether this is essentially an issue of native on native violence, and therefore an issue with native culture, or whether it is one of white on native violence, and therefore one of racism. Or is it more nuanced than that? I would imagine that matters which occur on indigenous land would be primarily native on native, but that outside of those lands the issue is more mixed.

 

[branmuffin]

This seems an opportune moment to ask a question I've had for a long time time about the rate of murdered and missing native/indigenous women in North America, which is whether this is essentially an issue of native on native violence, and therefore an issue with native culture, or whether it is one of white on native violence, and therefore one of racism. Or is it more nuanced than that? I would imagine that matters which occur on indigenous land would be primarily native on native, but that outside of those lands the issue is more mixed.

It's more nuanced than that. I would say that a lot of the violence that happens on reserves is domestic in nature meaning that the violence inflicted on women in general is from those living on the reserve. There is lack of hope, lack of resources, lack of self respect for many of the inhabitants. Some reserves in northern communities have been on a boil water warning for years or they use bottled water. Why is that?

I don't know if you remember a situation that happened in Walkerton Ontario two decades ago. Several of the town's inhabitants died because of mismanagement of the water supply resulting in contamination. It was cleaned up fairly swiftly but the same doesn't happen for far northern communities. Years and years of looking the other way since much of the problem with the water is industry induced. That industry being the oil sands. Who's gonna tell that money making machine to terminate the business or clean it up? So right there you see a lack of will on the part of the government.

Drugs abound on reserves because they are the last resort of people with no hope. Very similar in many ways to the people who live in towns in middle America where the industries have dried up and moved offshore. You have drug addicted people both men and women leaving the reserves for something better. For men, that probably means dying of an overdose whereas with the women, there's the ability for them to sell themselves which makes them doubly vulnerable to violence from bad actors. It's a cycle that doesn't seem to end unfortunately.

I have much empathy for those individuals who live on reserves or try to leave. It takes a special person to overcome the negativity of the label assigned to them as 'needing the Indian beat out of them'. Even though it happened decades ago, it still resonates not only on the reserves but because non natives who live in Canada can't seem to understand why they can't get over it. No government ever expected immigrants to give up their culture to assimilate into the modern era, whether they are Italian, Greek, Filipino, Indian or Chinese. People celebrate those cultures but are less likely to celebrate the indigenous culture because of the pall of cruelty that engulfs it. My opinion

 

[MelmothTheLost]

It's more nuanced than that. I would say that a lot of the violence that happens on reserves is domestic in nature meaning that the violence inflicted on women in general is from those living on the reserve. There is lack of hope, lack of resources, lack of self respect for many of the inhabitants. Some reserves in northern communities have been on a boil water warning for years or they use bottled water. Why is that?

Thank you for so comprehensive a response. It's really helpful in understanding something of the background or potential background to cases like this. I would imagine that actual experiences on the ground for indigenous peoples varied due to the interplay between federal policies and practices and those of individual states/provinces across both the US and Canada.

 

[beubeubeu]

I've recently bought a newspapers.com subscription, and so have been searching through newspapers looking for unrevealed info about UIDs, when I found something somewhat concerning possibly about Gordon.
View attachment 534236
This article from the Edmonton Journal (dated Feb 27, 1970) says the following. I don't want to cast aspersions on this poor man's image, but I do wonder if it's the same guy. Gordon, born Oct 22, 1950, would be the right age (19) for when this article was written, and we know he lived in Edmonton and was born in Manitoba, where the offense occurred. Accidentally changing "Edwin" to "Edward" seems like it could be a typo. What do you guys think? Could this have been the motive behind such a brutal killing if it is the same person?

Googling through several websites, including findagrave etc. seems to suggest that name "Gordon (x) Sanderson" it's not exactly rare. It's not John Smith, but I stumbled on two Gordon (x) Sanderson's who seemed to live in Edmonton in 70s and were of the right age. Neither of them had a second name starting with letter E. so it's not indicating anything more than it could be either way.

Was "our" Gordon even FROM Edmonton in February 1970? It was said he was living there in the 70's.
Also...
He was born on 22 of October 1950 and the offence occurred on 18th of April 1969 he was 18,5 years old.
Was he even considered an adult at the time?