Victim's cousin says family 'shocked' at murder charges laid 47 years after teenager killed

Nearly five decades after 16-year-old Pauline Brazeau was stabbed to death, some of her family members showed up Tuesday in a Calgary courtroom for the first appearance of accused murderer Ronald James Edwards, who was arrested in the cold case last week.

Edwards, who turned 74 on the weekend, is charged with murder in Brazeau's 1976 killing.

Duty counsel lawyer Margaret Rondot made a brief court appearance on Edwards's behalf Tuesday, putting the case over to next week, when the accused will appear in court in Cochrane, Alta.

On Jan. 8, 1976, Brazeau was last seen at a pizza shop on 17th Avenue S.W.

Hours later, her body was found on a forestry road near Cochrane, west of Calgary. 

'Her father was crying'

Deborah Poitras was 14 years old when her cousin was killed. Both teens had recently moved to Calgary with family members but had yet to meet when Brazeau was killed.

Poitras's mother and Brazeau's father were first cousins and were close. Poitras says her uncle would visit often. 

"Her father was crying when I came in from school," said Poitras. 

"I asked my mother, 'why is he crying, why is he upset?' And my mother would just tell me … 'he just lost his daughter recently and so maybe when he sees you, he thinks about her.'"

Police investigated Brazeau's death in the 1970s but the case went cold.

In 2021, it was reopened. With advancements in DNA technology, Alberta RCMP and the Calgary Police Service's cold case unit used a tool known as investigative genetic genealogy to help identify Edwards as a suspect in the case. He was living in Sundre, Alta.

• DNA technology results in arrest of Alberta man in death of young mother in 1976
• Man now charged in 1976 death of Calgary teen served time for trying to kill another woman

Poitras says news of his arrest 47 years after the killing came as a shock to all remaining family members. 

So too, did news of Edwards's criminal history. 

Attempted murder conviction

In 1989, he pleaded guilty to attempted murder and sexual assault of an 18-year-old woman. 

According to news stories written by the Calgary Herald and The Canadian Press at the time, Edwards attacked the young woman with a knife.

The judge who sentenced him to 10 years in prison commented that the victim likely saved her own life by escaping through a window at the time.

Poitras says she's pleased there might be accountability in the historical homicide involving her cousin but she doesn't like the word "closure."

"It doesn't bring closure … it feels like it just opens up more trauma."