It was like something out of The Departed.
Two people - a man and his wife - were found dead. They were lying side by side on the floor of their bedroom. The bed was still made, and they were in their nightclothes. There were two bullet wounds in each victim; one in the face and the other in the abdomen.
No one heard the shots. No one heard any screams. The bodies of Dr. Robert MacLauchlan and Margaret Ann Cunningham lay silent and untouched in their Fifth Street home in New Westminster. It wasn't until the afternoon of March 23, 1966, when Cunningham's brother stopped by for a visit at the small bungalow that the couple was found - nearly two days after coroners determined they were killed.
Early news reports speculated about scorned lovers and torrid affairs. There were reports of a taxi driver who had been instructed to leave a bouquet of red carnations on the front steps, but no romantic entanglement was ever confirmed. In the end, investigators concluded that the double homicide was most likely drug-related.
Nearly 50 years later, the cold case has piqued the interest of two New Westminster writers who are hoping someone in the community will be able to help piece together some of the new information they've dug up.
Ken McIntosh, a former New Westminster police officer, and Rod Drown, a local writer, have spent more than a year looking into the lives of MacLauchlan and Cunningham. They've spent hours pouring over old articles from the Burnaby Columbian - the local newspaper at the time - and searching online databases to find birth records, marriage certificates and death notices.
"A lot of the stuff was in the papers. Back then they didn't hold back like they do (now)," McIntosh said. "It's been quite a challenge to find out all this different information because different states and provinces aren't (online), so that makes it tough."
But what they've come up so far is remarkable.
Drown and McIntosh have found evidence that MacLauchlan was something of a drug smuggler. In fact, they believe that at the time of his death he was "the number two man in the West Coast drug trade of the middle 1960s."
According to the writers' research, MacLauchlan, who was 72-years-old when he was killed, and Cunningham, 48, had been arrested less than six months earlier on drug trafficking charges. Arrested and released on bail December 23, 1965, New Westminster police had raided the Fifth Street home earlier that month and turned up about $200,000 worth of heroin.
This shocking twist is what McIntosh and Drown said keeps them searching through records and newspapers looking for clues as to who these two really were.
They've determined that at the time, Cunningham was working at the now infamous Woodlands school and had just received her bachelor of education from the University of British Columbia. Her family, the Herrings, had a long history in New Westminster. She a was well-liked member of the community, reported the then Burnaby Columbian - that is until she shacked up with MacLauchlan.
The doctor's past was not so squeaky clean, Drown said. He moved to Calgary with his family in the early 1900s. His father was a prominent doctor in the community with a specialty in treating tuberculosis patients. MacLauchlan followed in his father's footsteps and graduated from McGill medical school in 1919. From that point on, MacLauchlan's life spiralled out of control like a cheap crime novel. He married wife number one and they moved to California, where he practiced medicine. His medical licence was eventually revoked when police discovered he had been performing illegal abortions. MacLauchlan then returned to Calgary, alone, where he was under the supervision of his father, but that didn't last long. MacLauchlan soon met wife number two, a popular stage actress, and the two moved into a lavish home in one of Calgary's upper-crust neighbourhoods.
But what's most interesting about this doctor are his flight records, McIntosh said. Since 1938, they've determined that MacLauchlan had made hundreds of flights overseas to places like China and Southeast Asia. When police searched the New Westminster home, they found a certificate from American Airlines congratulating MacLauchlan on completing one million miles.
But in 1955, MacLauchlan's happy little bubble burst when he was once again arrested for performing abortions. That time he remained in custody and served a one-year sentence in Lethbridge. When he was released a year later, he moved to 912 Fifth St. in New Westminster - a home owned by Ms. Margaret Ann Cunningham.
Drown and McIntosh have discovered that the two began living together in 1957, almost immediately after MacLauchlan moved to the Royal City. According to Drown and McIntosh, the couple pretended to be uncle and niece for a while before admitting they were in fact a romantic couple.
The nature of the relationship is just one of many loose ends that Drown and McIntosh are hoping the community can help tie. They've got evidence that both Cunningham and MacLauchlan lived in Calgary at the same time. Cunningham moved back to New Westminster in 1953, and four years later, MacLauchlan turned up in the city and moved in with her. The home on Fifth Street was never in his name nor was any mail ever delivered to him at that residence. Why did he stay under the radar? Was he hiding from someone?
The case remains an "open and unsolved homicide file investigation," according to the New Westminster Police Department. Drown and McIntosh don't expect they'll solve the case, rather they're just hoping to share this exciting piece of the city's history.
"It would be very difficult for the police to put a case together now, with so many people dead," he said. "We just think it's a great story."
Shortly after their arrest, MacLauchlan and Cunningham made a quick trip to Washington State, where they were married in February. Despite having lived together for almost a decade, it wasn't until they were arrested that the couple decided to marry. Police, at the time, suspected that this was done to ensure that neither could be called to testify against one another.
This is just one of many holes left to fill, Drown said.
Other questions that remain unanswered include, how did the two meet? And where? Was it in Calgary? Why did the doctor stay under the radar when he moved to New Westminster? Why did Cunningham's father pay MacLauchlan's bail after the December 1965 arrest?
Drown and McIntosh hope people in the community who might have information about the couple, will come forward, just to provide a fuller picture about who these two really were.
"The story has a richness to it. Imagine their last hours together. She sees her husband shot, and she knows that she's next, and I can imagine a whole cascading series of realizations on her part, that this man that I trusted to look after me has betrayed me," Drown said.
Anyone looking to contact Drown and/or McIntosh can reach them at [email protected] or [email protected].
