Dubbelmordet på Leif Carlsson och Ann Duran, Vancouver, 1972 - skjutna i sovsäckarna

19500927-2039
Karlsson, Leif Bertil

Trestegsg 83
603 63 Norrköping
(Boendeadress 1 nov 1970)

Död 20/6 1972.

Kyrkobokförd i Norrköpings Borg, Norrköpings kn (Östergötlands län, Östergötland). Mantalsskriven på samma ort.

Född 27/9 1950 i Linköping (Östergötlands län, Östergötland).

Ogift man.
--------------
Motsvarande kyrkobokföringsförsamling(ar) 1/1 2007:
Norrköpings Borg, Norrköpings kn (Östergötlands län, Östergötland)
Vrinnevi, Norrköpings kn (Östergötlands län, Östergötland)

Födelseförsamling i källan:
LINKÖPING (Östergötlands län)

Källor:
MTL 71 / RTB 72

In June 1972 a "freaked out" University of B.C. student had hiked hours through the bush into Tofino's RCMP detachment and reported a horrific scene on pristine Radar Beach, 10 kilometres out of town.

The student told the Mounties he'd been walking the coast and came upon a young man and woman cuddled together in a single blood-soaked sleeping bag in a tent in the woods, just steps away from the surf.

Michelson and a fellow officer, plus the young student, took a boat to the isolated beach. The light was fading as they arrived.

The man was shot four times in the head. The woman five times in the head and once in the hip. They were UBC student Ann Barbara Durrant, 20, and Swedish student Leif Bertil Carlsson, 21.

It would be at least 12 hours before investigators from Victoria were flown to the beach, so the three men had to camp out to protect crime scene integrity.

"It was really weird sitting there," Michelson told The Province in an exclusive interview Tuesday. "We didn't know where the hell the killer was. He could have killed the three of us right there."

The killer, RCMP believe, was Joseph Henry Burgess, who'd been on their radar but unaccounted for, for 37 years.

Finally on Monday, the perplexing double-murder of Durrant and Carlsson, which shocked Tofino and likely snuffed out the area's peaking hippie scene of '72, was blown open when New Mexico police called the RCMP and told them Burgess, 62, had been killed late last week in a gunfight with police.

New Mexico police had been after Burgess — who they knew as the "Cookie Bandit" — for breaking into cabins in a remote mountainous area near Albuquerque over the past 10 years and stealing snacks and survival goods. One officer was killed after Burgess broke into a cabin police were staking out.

"I was vibrating when I saw the news [Monday]," Michelson told The Province. "A case like this you never really forget, especially if it's unsolved."

After an intense investigation, in July 1972 the RCMP put out an arrest warrant for Burgess, a "hippie-intellectual-type" draft-dodger from New Jersey, after concluding he'd killed the couple because of his extreme religious beliefs. Other campers in the area had reported Burgess didn't like the fact Durrant and Carlsson were living together in a beach commune as an unwed couple.

Burgess's fingerprints were found on the couple's discarded belongings and he left a personalized Bible near their campsite. Shell casings with unusual markings established the murder weapon: a rare two-piece, .22-calibre semi-automatic Gevarm rifle.

Michelson remembers conducting interviews about Burgess with other young hippie campers just days after the killings.

"They would say 'Oh yeah man, he's really weird'. . . 'He always quotes verses from the Bible' . . . 'He's just got this freaky stare.'"

Police surmised that Burgess would have wandered up to the Radar Hill campsite, conversed with the couple and learned their story, later sneaking back to shoot them while they slept.

"It was the hippie era, everybody loves everybody," Michelson said. "They probably hug each other and sit down and start puffing [marijuana] and talking. Then he gets weird."

Even though Michelson said he feels a certain closure with Burgess now dead, there are a few burning questions he wishes he could have put to the suspected killer.

"He thought he was some kind of hippie saviour," Michelson said. "I would say: 'You quoted these scriptures from the Bible; is that your belief that you were saving these people by shooting them?'"

North Shore resident Linda Olivier knew Durrant and lived with her and a small group of other student couples in cabins above Radar Beach for one summer in 1971.

"Ann was very intelligent and kind and gentle," Olivier told The Province. "She liked to converse and meet people. She probably shared [personal information] with Burgess."

Olivier said Durrant broke up with a long-term boyfriend after the summer of '71 and went back to Radar Beach with Carlsson the following summer.

"It's too bad she went back and tried to recapture the magic," Olivier said. "I felt sorry that the killing was possible in a time when people were so open with other people."

RCMP Cpl. Darren Lagan told The Province investigators with RCMP's Vancouver Island Integrated Major Crime Unit will now work with authorities in New Mexico in an effort to close the Tofino doublemurder case. Meanwhile, there are several double murders along the West Coast which seem to resemble the Tofino killings.