There’s a stamp on the police folder that reads “Dead file – no further work to be done.” Those six words sit at the heart of Season 9 of Island Crime, the award-winning true crime podcast hosted by Laura Palmer out of Port Alberni.
The case behind that stamp involves Elizabeth and Andrew Kostyniuk – Lizzie and Curly, as the community knew them – a couple stabbed to death in their own home in South Wellington, just south of Nanaimo, in June of 1959. It’s a 67-year-old double murder with no arrest, a heavily redacted RCMP file, and a great-great-granddaughter named Shauna who refused to let it stay buried.
Shauna found her way to Laura’s podcast and brought the file to her almost apologetically. “I get it if you don’t want to take this on,” she said. “No one is ever going to be brought to legal justice.” Laura told me what she told Shauna: it doesn’t matter how long ago it happened. “Everybody counts or nobody counts.” That’s the Harry Bosch line she quoted.
What makes this season particularly compelling is the access. Because the case is seven decades old, Laura was able to obtain coroner’s reports, autopsy records, and psychiatric files that would never be released in an active investigation. She had a retired coroner help her parse the medical language. She and Shauna visited the house – the murder house, as the old newspapers called it – and found it still standing, the original structure largely intact. They knocked on the door. The owners let them in.
Laura works alone. When a listener wrote in referring to “her team,” she laughed. The team is her, a cat, and a dog. Nine seasons of meticulous, victim-focused storytelling built by one person who takes these cases seriously because the families deserve nothing less.
Hear the full conversation with Laura Palmer, on The PULSE Community Podcast at: https://bit.ly/S2EP39PulsePodcast
The PULSE Community website: ThePulseCommunity.ca
Peter McCully is a multimedia creator and podcast host based in Parksville, BC. https://mccullymedia.ca/category/blog/