Chantel Gillade was a 28-year-old White/Caucasian transgender woman living in Vancouver when she was killed on September 1, 1995. Born in 1967 and raised in the Niagara Falls area, she had been living and working in Vancouver’s West End and Granville Mall area since the late 1980s and was undergoing gender reassignment surgery at the time of her death.

In the early morning of September 1 Chantel was working near Davie and Seymour. A fellow sex worker told police that at about 4:00 a.m. Chantel got into a distinctive black pickup truck, believed by investigators to possibly be a 1989 Chevrolet with a tinted-canopy and a red stripe along its side. A witness described the driver as a stocky man in his early 40s with dark brown, collar-length hair and a receding hairline.

Around 7:20 a.m. construction workers found Chantel’s battered body wrapped in a blue tarp and a maroon blanket in an alley behind 826 Homer Street. Vancouver police classified the case as a homicide and have repeatedly asked the public about the truck and its driver. No named accused or prosecutions have been publicly identified and the case remains an active cold investigation.

Did anyone in the Davie–Seymour area ever see a black Chevrolet-style pickup with a tinted canopy and red stripe that morning or know the man described by witnesses?