Feb 04, 2008 - 06:03 PM

By Jeff Mitchell

DURHAM -- Investigators are appealing to the public for new information as they revisit the murder of a young woman killed more than 30 years ago in her home north of Oshawa.
    
Someone knows who shot 22-year-old Beverly Smith in the back of the head and left her to die on her kitchen floor in Raglan on the evening of Dec. 9, 1974, Durham Police Inspector David Kimmerly said in making a plea for information during a news conference Monday in Whitby.
   
“It’s somebody that was interacting in the community at the time,” Insp. Kimmerly said.
   
“It is our hope the person or persons responsible are still alive and still within our reach.”
   
Ms. Smith, mother of a 10-month-old daughter and the wife of a GM worker, was signing Christmas cards in the living room of her Old Simcoe Road home before opening the door to a visitor, Insp. Kimmerly said. She was found dead by neighbours who went to the house after being notified by her worried husband, who called home during the evening and got no answer.
   
No arrests were made in the 1970s, although investigators identified persons of interest, including Ms. Smith’s husband, who was cleared after co-operating with police. The file has been re-opened from time to time since then and in the spring of 2007 a team of dedicated investigators was struck to start from scratch, Insp. Kimmerly said.
   
Police have interviewed more than 200 people across Canada and in the United States and have asked some people to submit DNA and fingerprint samples. Insp. Kimmerly said not all those approached for DNA samples have been co-operative, but that doesn’t automatically make them suspects.
   
The fact that no one in the tight-knit community reported seeing or hearing anything out of the ordinary on the night of the killing has led police to believe the murder was perpetrated by a local person, Insp. Kimmerly said. Reinforcing that theory is the absence of signs of forced entry; it appears Ms. Smith let the killer into her house.
   
“Our investigations have shown no one saw anything out of the ordinary,” Insp. Kimmerly said.
   
“It’s been a belief of investigators since 1974 she knew her killer.”
   
Investigators aren’t declaring the murder a premeditated act, but Insp. Kimmerly noted circumstances, including the way in which Ms. Smith was killed, don’t point toward a spontaneous event.
   
“Whoever came brought a firearm with them,” he said, noting the murder weapon was never found.
   
Also on hand at police headquarters in Whitby Monday morning were Ms. Smith’s twin sister, Barbra Brown, and the dead woman’s daughter, Rebecca. Both women appealed for information that would lead to a resolution for Ms. Smith’s family and friends, who for decades have lived with the unsolved crime.
   
Speaking directly to the killer, Rebecca, who didn’t want her last name used, appealed to the guilty person’s conscience: “I understand you were young at the time and you may regret your actions of that night,” she said.
   
“Now I’m asking you to give my family and my mom, and even yourself some peace.”
   
Ms. Brown said her sister’s unsolved killing has long been a source of torment.
   
“To me it feels like yesterday,” she said. “I felt my twin’s pain when she died and I feel her turmoil now. She needs to be at peace.”
   
Updated information and photographs relating to the homicide are on the police website at www.drps.ca/unsolved cases.
   
Anyone with new information on the cold case is asked to call detectives Leon Lynch or Doug Parker at 905-579-1520, extension 7810, or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.