Doreta Mary Andrews

More than three decades have passed, yet the questions surrounding the life and death of Doreta Mary Andrews remain unanswered. Who she was, the life she led, and the friends who mourned her are details lost to time, overshadowed by the brutal manner of her death. Her story is a quiet one, a cold case file waiting for a crucial piece of information to finally bring a resolution.

On Sunday, March 21, 1993, Doreta, a 49-year-old woman, was killed inside her own home. She was strangled in her townhouse located at 7837 120A Street in the Newton area of Surrey, British Columbia. Her residence was in a complex called Berkshyre Gardens, a collection of 56 townhomes that were only about two years old at the time, situated in a busy and developing neighborhood. What should have been a sanctuary became the scene of a crime that has confounded investigators for decades. No details have ever been publicly released about the state of her home, whether there were signs of forced entry, or what, if any, evidence was collected at the scene.

The year 1993 was a difficult one for the community of Surrey. Doreta’s murder was one of three unsolved homicides that occurred in the city within a few months. Just ten days after she was killed, 80-year-old Dorothy Britton was stabbed to death in her bungalow, also in Newton. Later that summer, in August, the charred remains of a man believed to be 64-year-old Bikker Singh Sangha were discovered in a local pizza restaurant. These violent events stretched the resources of law enforcement and left a cloud of uncertainty over the community.

In the early 1990s, before the formation of the regional Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT) in 2003, homicides in Surrey were investigated by the municipality's own Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) serious crimes section. It was these officers who first responded to the call and began the difficult work of piecing together the last hours of Doreta’s life. They would have canvassed the neighborhood, speaking to residents of the townhouse complex, and searched for anyone who saw or heard anything unusual on that late winter day.

Despite their efforts, the investigation yielded no arrests. As the years turned into decades, Doreta’s file was passed to the Surrey RCMP’s Unsolved Homicide Unit. These specialized investigators are tasked with re-examining cold cases, looking for new leads, witnesses who may be more willing to talk, or opportunities to apply modern forensic science, such as DNA analysis, to evidence that was collected long ago. Still, the case remained stagnant, with no publicly identified suspects or persons of interest.

The file on Doreta Andrews’s murder is a testament to the persistence of law enforcement and the long, slow journey of unsolved cases. For years, it was held by the Surrey RCMP’s Investigative Services Unit after the Unsolved Homicide Unit was folded. The policing landscape in Surrey has undergone a significant transition, leading to another chapter in the handling of this case.

As of October 2024, Doreta’s case is one of 56 unsolved homicide files being transferred from the jurisdiction of the Surrey RCMP to the newly formed Surrey Police Service. This transfer, scheduled to be completed after November 29, 2024, means that a fresh set of investigators will inherit the file. They will review the decades-old evidence and reports, hoping that a new perspective might uncover a previously missed detail. For now, the identity of the person who took Doreta Mary Andrews’s life remains a mystery, and justice for her has been delayed for more than thirty years.