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[Bob] Me and Nellie were out investigating.
We followed Barbara's route.
We found out she went up to that bar.
[O'Brien] Barbara's in a bar at closing time,
gets into an argument with two individuals.
[Howland] We knew she was missing.
That's all we knew.
[O'Brien] We could not find any footprints of life
for Barbara after she left Renegades.
[Howland] They were going straight across Highway 22.
He saw the passenger side door open
and there was a woman who appeared to be naked
trying to get out of the truck.
[mom] I'm worried that she's not alright,
like, she could be hurt or even dead.
Because I fear the worst.
Welcome to Crime Beat. I'm Anthony Robart.
A night out ends in turmoil as a young woman vanishes.
Loved ones held out hope
that the aspiring nurse would be found safe,
but after months of searching,
that hope was shattered.
With a murder investigation underway,
detectives race to find the truth
behind the shocking details of this murder mystery.
Here now is Nancy Hixt with "Last Call."
[street din]
[Nancy] Early one morning in 2002,
the driver of a semi-truck was navigating snowy roads
when he noticed a vehicle driving erratically.
The trucker then saw a naked woman
hanging out of the passenger door.
He figured the occupants had been drinking.
And soon after, the vehicle drove out of his sight.
More than a week later,
while reading a local newspaper,
he made a startling connection between what he saw
and a mysterious case
that had been unfolding in Calgary.
So the family members of Barbara Eyapaise
called us and they were concerned
because they hadn't seen her in a few days,
hadn't heard from her in a few days.
Barbara had a scheduled appointment
with her dad at a bank.
And her dad called us and said,
like, it is very, very unusual
that she wouldn't have attended.
And if she wasn't going to attend,
she certainly would have contacted him.
And the fact that she didn't show up,
she didn't contact him, it was a concern.
They didn't know what happened, if anything,
but she just hadn't been seen in a bit
and they were concerned.
But I also knew of Barbara's way.
She was always-- If she was said she'd be somewhere,
she'd keep her word.
Well, Nellie was getting all panicky for a day or two.
I said, "Just relax.
If she's not back for her job Monday...
then we'll do something."
Well, she didn't come back for her job.
So then I said, "Okay, we'll do something."
So, I went down and talked to the detectives.
[Nancy] As investigators retraced Barbara's steps,
they realized none of her family or friends
had seen or heard from her since January 17th.
[Kevin] It was actually my mom that phoned me
and she was hysterical,
kind of just saying that she was gone.
And that wasn't like her, right?
Like, she always was in touch with my mom,
always in touch with my dad, my aunt.
So when we interviewed Barbara's mom,
we knew that they had been out together.
They had been drinking at the Legion downtown,
that they had left that place together
and they had gone to another bar,
the Cecil Hotel downtown.
And that later on, after a few drinks,
that Barbara's mom left
and Barbara was still there with some other individuals.
When the mom couldn't get a hold of Barbara,
she started doing her own investigation.
She found out that Barbara had gone
to Renegades bar from the Cecil via cab
and that it was actually a group of them that had left
the Cecil and went to Renegades.
♪ Got your name in lights, you're a superstar ♪
["You're a Superstar" by Love Inc.]
The inquiries at Renegades indicated
that Barbara had gotten into some type of altercation,
argument with two males.
It seemed to be over her accusing them
of stealing $25 and that she needed that money
because that was her cab money to get back home.
And that seemed to be the gist
of this particular dispute that was going on.
I can only think that it was probably
a substantial argument if people are noticing it.
And if that's your cab fare to get home
and somebody's taken it and now you're stranded somewhere,
like I can see, where somebody obviously would be upset.
The manager said that there was an off-duty doorman/bouncer
that had given Barbara a ride home.
He said that he gave her a ride home.
He also said, though, that
there were some other individuals
that seemed to be involved in this story somehow
that when he gave her a ride home,
that there were some other people that were there
and they were the people from the bar.
So, it was pretty clear that he has some information
and we need to get that information from him.
[Nancy] Calgary Police Detective Len Howland
was assigned to work on the missing persons case.
His first task was to interview the bar's bouncer,
who was now considered a key witness in the investigation.
[Howland] His statement was that
she was incredibly intoxicated.
She had no money.
She said that someone had taken it.
He was in there on his day off.
So, he technically wasn't working,
he was in there as a patron,
but he volunteered to drive her home.
And he said that he drove her from the bar to her home
and he mentioned that he thought
someone was following him from the bar,
but he dropped her off at her home
where she told him it was.
He saw a couple of guys get out of a car.
[Nancy] This witness told police
it was the same two men
Barbara had been seen arguing with at the bar
and he didn't want to get involved
in an altercation, so he left.
[Howland] And he drove me on the route
that he took to take her home.
When he dropped her off, it was at the intersection,
which was about three houses from her home.
Not in front of the house.
He's even stronger in his description
of having been followed, a couple of guys,
and he watched them get out of their vehicle,
they started arguing with Barbara,
and he drove away.
It was certainly red flags for us.
You know, Barbara's in a bar at closing time,
gets into an argument with two individuals,
and those two individuals somehow show up at her house.
[Nancy] Then came disturbing reports
of gunfire aimed at the bouncer.
This is a significant concern, and it's really an escalation.
♪
Welcome back to Crime Beat.
As police investigate
the disappearance of Barbara Eyapaise,
they are confronted with conflicting stories
about her final hours.
That is, until key evidence came to light
from an unexpected eyewitness.
Here again is Nancy Hixt with "Last Call."
I'll keep burning it for her
until I hear something, you know?
[Nancy] Nellie Eyapaise kept a candle burning
for her missing daughter, Barbara,
as a sign of hope that she'd be found safe.
[Nellie] Nobody's seen her
or heard from her or anything.
That's not like Barbara.
She would have got in contact with one of us.
[Nancy] Barbara was working as a waitress
at a downtown Calgary restaurant
and had recently been accepted into a nursing program.
Just days before her disappearance,
she had spent time with her family.
[Bob] Well, that's when she came over,
cooked that beautiful meal, and I walked her outside.
She had a bike. She was gone.
She only lived a few blocks away.
[Nancy] With every day that passed,
Barbara's family became more fearful.
I'm worried that she's not all right,
like, she could be hurt or even dead,
because I fear the worst.
Just the not knowing, like, no one knew anything.
Not knowing is the worst,
right, because it could be anything.
My mother said that she'd got a call from the bar manager
and said that Barbara was there at the club
and that she was going to be getting a ride home
from one of the staff members.
But that was all she said
and that's all she knew, but she never showed up.
You know, I can't imagine what it's like for the family
when you've got your 24-year-old
that's gone missing and you had just been out with her
just before she went missing.
So the family, as they're trying to help
and they're trying to get information,
they also know about this argument
that took place in the bar.
They're talking to family and friends.
They're getting some of this information,
and they are very convinced that these two individuals
must be responsible because they're the only ones
that anybody saw Barbara have a conflict with.
They now show up at her house, parked outside,
and you now have the bouncer claiming
that his window was shot out by them.
So, like this is definitely an escalation
in this particular investigation.
[Nancy] The bouncer went to his local police station
and provided officers with a description
of the suspect vehicle
and details of what happened.
[Nancy] The bouncer told police
he was targeted because he could identify the men
responsible for Barbara's disappearance.
[Nancy] The witness volunteered
to have police examine his truck
to help them find the person responsible for the shooting.
[O'Brien] There was a substantial amount
of investigative work that went into this,
and in particular into trying to identify
these two individuals, but we did,
and we were able to go
and interview both of those males
that Barbara had that argument with.
We interviewed them separately.
Their stories were very similar,
and their story was that they did leave the bar,
but they left the bar in a cab,
and they gave us a cab number.
When we tracked down their alibi,
it seems to check out.
We got a taxi receipt
that indicated that, in fact, they did take a taxi.
We talked to the roommates that said,
"Yes, this is when they showed up."
And so we've got two conflicting stories
going on here.
We're not really sure what's going on,
but it appears that these males are not involved
in her disappearance.
[Nancy] And then another startling development.
[O'Brian] We were able to determine that
there's no way that that vehicle was shot at.
So, we had our forensic crime scenes unit
look at that window, and it was broken for sure,
but they were able to determine
that it was not shot out.
That it looked like it was some type of instrument
that had broken it.
It definitely was not broken by a bullet.
That that part of the story that he provided,
there's something wrong there, because that is not accurate.
[Nancy] Why would Fred Abma, the Renegade's bouncer,
lie to officers about
a missing persons investigation?
[Howland] There's so many conversations with him.
He's starting to get suspicious that
maybe we think he's the suspect.
And he says that we need to talk to his friend,
where he went after he had dropped the victim off.
I went and talked to that friend
and got a written alibi, a statement stating
that Mr. Abma had been to that house
from, like, 2:30 till 4:30 in the morning on the 18th.
So, we have an alibi.
[Nancy] By now, Barbara's case had become front page news.
But what happened to her remained a mystery.
[O'Brien] It's pretty clear that somebody's lying to us.
And so we need to figure out who that is.
We could not find any footprints of life
for Barbara after she left Renegades.
So when we looked at banking information,
there was no banking information.
She had a job. She didn't show up to her job.
We already know that she had not contacted her family.
We know that she had missed that appointment with her dad.
All of these pieces coming together
causes us great concern
that something more has happened to Barbara.
[Nancy] That's when police finally
got a break in the case.
♪
ng]
[Nancy] Just over a week
after Barbara Eyapaise vanished,
the investigation unraveled in an entirely new direction.
A semi-truck driver came forward to police
to report a shocking scene on the highway
early in the morning of January 18th,
just hours after Barbara was last seen
leaving Renegades Bar.
We got a witness statement from the RCMP
that originated from a truck driver
who had seen a suspicious vehicle out south of Langdon.
It was nighttime. It was snowing.
He was behind this pickup truck.
This truck driver said that he had seen a woman
trying to get out of the passenger side cab
of the truck.
He's thinking, "This is strange." His brain clicks.
He gets a hold of the RCMP. He provides a statement.
[Nancy] The truck driver had seen a newspaper article
about the missing persons case in Calgary and said
he believed the woman he saw
could have been Barbara Eyapaise.
[Nancy] The trucker took police on the exact route
he drove that night.
[Nancy] That's when it appeared
the woman tried to get out of the truck.
An older model blue Dodge Dakota pickup
with a burned-out taillight.
He's following them along.
And when they get to Langdon, they turn right, head south.
When they're about to cross,
they were going straight across Highway 22,
he saw the passenger side door open, and...
there was a woman who appeared to be naked
trying to get out of the truck.
[Nancy] The bouncer who gave Barbara
a ride home from the bar,
Fred Abma, drove a dark blue Dodge half-ton truck.
We got a witness describing a vehicle
that's the same description as what the original witness
that I drove around had.
This vehicle,
another witness had seen a woman trying to get out of it.
We've got a missing person case
where the witness that owns a pickup truck
admitted that he drove her home in it.
[Nancy] Police put out a press release
stating there was new information
on the disappearance of Barbara Eyapaise,
[Howland] May have been a dark-colored pickup truck
in this line of traffic, and we've been told
there were two people in this truck
that were attracting the attention of other motorists.
So we're asking if anyone has seen this
or has any information regarding this truck,
if they could give us a call.
So, what we released to the media as a follow-up
was a description of this truck,
including the fact that the truck had
a burnt-out taillight.
We released the fact that
there was two occupants of the vehicle
and they seemed to be in some type of altercation,
and we released the time
and the location of this vehicle.
What we didn't release and what was hold back for us
was the fact that the truck driver
saw a female trying to get out of the vehicle
and through that door and then being pulled back.
And so that's the piece that we held back
in this particular case.
By now, Mr. Abma is a suspect.
We've got people following him 24-7.
Well, then we would watch Mr. Abma.
He fixed his taillight the next morning
when the information came out in the paper.
Certainly this is looking suspicious.
[Nancy] Just over a month
after Barbara Eyapaise vanished,
searchers began scouring the countryside
east of Calgary.
[Glen] Looking for things that are unusual,
out of place,
and that's the job that we do.
[O'Brien] So as we track Barbara's whereabouts
as best we can, we know she left Renegades,
and then we suspect that a few hours later
at four o'clock in the morning that she was seen
in that truck trying to get out.
So what we did was the investigators
arranged for a search of that particular area.
So, we started searching south of Langdon.
Huge area.
Some of us were out there on our own time,
driving around just trying to see
what the lay of the land and stuff.
We got our search and rescue teams out there,
and we searched and searched along the highway, you know,
back a few hundred feet, looking for small items.
So it wasn't-- We weren't looking for big items.
We were looking for anything we could find.
[Nancy] The search continued for weeks.
[Rocks] Well, we have found some items,
but we don't know their significance
or relevance to the investigation.
That'll be done at a later time.
We're just going to collect everything that we can,
and our [indistinct] people
will be examined thoroughly afterwards.
[Nancy] But there was still no sign of Barbara.
[Howland] We had a belief that
she was no longer alive, and we were determined
to do everything we could to find her killer.
I was giving news releases, like, I met with the reporters
in a parking lot by my home or in the office
or out at Renegades and stuff like that.
Like, it was just constant.
So, this is where Renegades used to be.
The bar is gone.
The main entrance would have been there
where that chipboard's on the wall.
[Nancy] Detective Howland stayed in constant contact
with the Renegades bouncer, Fred Abma,
never letting on that he was considered a suspect.
"So, what do you think happened?
You're the last person to see our victim.
What do you think happened?"
Nothing that Abma was telling us made sense.
All it did was raise suspicions.
[Nancy] What Abma didn't realize was that
covert officers were watching him 24-7.
He spent time establishing his own business
called Fast Fred's.
[Cole] He was delivering appliances.
It might have been a dryer, some kind of appliance.
He had delivered to a location of ours.
[Nancy] At that seemingly chance meeting,
Fred Abma struck up a conversation
and jumped at a chance
to discuss possible business opportunities
over drinks at a Calgary bar.
[O'Brien] Throughout the entire investigation,
the investigators are continuing to look to see
if there's other investigative strategies that they could use.
It's been months now, and we still have had
no signs of life from Barbara,
and we're not moving the investigation further.
The investigators make a very bold choice to see
if they could introduce
undercover operators into Abma's life.
They were happy to involve Mr. Abma,
and they would pay him cash for...
For small jobs that he would do,
and this is how the friendship developed.
What always happens in these operations
is that the undercover officers...
want to gain the trust of their target.
They want the target to fully believe
that they are criminals.
At the time, we were given very limited information,
or at least I was,
and the reason we have limited information
is to protect the integrity of the investigation
so that we don't know what happened, right?
I was aware that a woman by the name
of Barbara Eyapaise was missing,
and it was believed that she may have been
the victim of a homicide,
and that Mr. Abma was the suspect
that the homicide detectives had identified.
It's a tough file, and...
even though Abma has been lying to us,
and he's a suspect, we need evidence.
It's not good enough just to say he lied.
We need evidence,
We need to find Barbara,
and/or we need some other break in this particular case.
♪
[woman singing]
[Nancy] Exactly two months
after Barbara Eyapaise disappeared,
family, friends, and strangers gathered
for a candlelight vigil.
[Nellie] I'm just taking it a day at a time,
like, day by day, like, it's hard.
It's really hard not knowing,
and this cold weather doesn't help.
Like, you know, I worry about where she could be,
she could be cold.
No, but I'm just...
I just feel that there's something wrong
because she would have been trying to contact anyone of us.
[woman singing]
[Nancy] As time passed,
Barbara's mother found it hard to stay positive.
[Nellie] I have hopes that they'll find her
and find out what happened to her,
but I don't think I'll see my girl alive again.
I just, you know, I just have that feeling.
After a month or two goes by,
you just basically know it's...
It can turn out one way, right?
[Nancy] Police continued to search east of the city,
where the semi-truck driver believed he saw Barbara
trying to escape from the vehicle.
So now we arranged for more of our search and rescue teams.
They come out.
They were out, I think, a total of three times.
One time we had,
must have had 50 members out there,
like, walking the bush
and down by the river and stuff like that.
We needed to go over that land
because you can hide a body behind a tree,
and we believed that she was out in that area.
On our own time, like when we're not scheduled to work,
let's go look.
[Nancy] At this point, the undercover operation
targeting the bouncer, Fred Abma,
was well underway.
[Der] Mr. Abma...
I believe, at least at that point in time,
may have started to feel that he was in the clear
because it was--
Nothing was being said anymore
on the news or media.
The police weren't hounding him.
[Nancy] Then, three-and-a-half months
after Barbara Eyapaise vanished...
[Howland] On the 27th of April,
we got a phone call
that a fisherman had found a body
in the Bow River, south of Langdon.
[Nancy] Investigators drove about an hour
southeast of Calgary to investigate further,
to the south shore of the river
near Wyndham-Carseland Provincial Park.
[Howland] We had help from Fish and Wildlife.
They provided a boat and an operator that--
We got her on the boat, and they took her over
to a wharf where they could load her
into the coroner's van.
Rather than get people's hopes up or not,
we're going to wait until the M-E tells us
who the victim is.
So after the remains were located,
we did send out a media release with regards to that,
just that we located the remains.
And then we saw a newspaper article that actually came out
that talked about what we released,
but also put in some additional information in there.
It talked about the truck driver and that particular tip,
and it also quoted Abma in that article.
But what was of interest to us in particular
was the fact that in the article,
it talked about a female trying to get out
of the passenger window of a truck.
"They were following up a report
of a partially nude woman seen struggling
and hanging out of the passenger window
of a moving pickup truck along Highway 22X."
[O'Brien] And that was supposedly a tip
that had come from the truck driver.
That was not information we had released,
and in fact, it wasn't accurate.
As we know, she was-- A female was trying to get out
of the door, not the window.
So for us, it was inaccurate,
and we just let it play.
I know it's her.
[Nancy] Even without official confirmation,
Nellie Eyapaise felt in her heart
that the body recovered from the river
was Barbara.
[Nellie] Something told me that she was in the water.
I just-- Gut, I don't know.
It's, you know, mother's intuition,
I guess you'd call it, but I just knew
she was in the water somewhere.
[Nancy] That's when she blew out the candle
she had kept lit for her daughter.
[O'Brien] In this particular case,
it took dental records and skeletal records
to confirm that in fact
the body the fishermen saw was Barbara.
As far as cause of death goes,
the medical examiner said it was really undetermined,
but he couldn't rule out choking.
It was not easy, because Nellie wanted to see her daughter
and I had to tell Nellie that
there's not going to be an open casket.
You know, she was in bad shape.
Three months under the water, under the ice...
above the ice, predation.
You know, she was in rough shape.
[Nellie] We're just going to put her to rest,
have a decent funeral for her,
And just try and continue on.
Like, it's going to be hard,
but that's what Barbara would want.
She was a fighter right to the end.
[Nancy] Once again, Barbara's case
topped local news headlines.
[O'Brien] Well, when we have an undercover operation
ongoing and there's something
that is significant to the file that happens,
such as in this case where we've located Barbara,
and we've now gone public with that information,
or at least some of that information,
it often is a great opportunity
for our undercover operators
and the subject to have conversation around it.
[Nancy] And that's exactly what happened,
just days after Barbara's body was recovered.
[Cole] At that time, we were still
hanging out with Mr. Abma.
Maybe he felt like the police were kind of closing in
and that he was feeling his jeopardy.
The police had reached out to him
and claimed that they had some new evidence
or something to that effect,
and wanted to interview him again.
And it was following that that he had...
essentially told myself
and another operator that he was involved
and responsible for Barbara Eyapaise death.
And so, as it always does go,
they talk about Mr. Big.
They talk about their boss,
and that their boss can fix a lot of things
in the criminal justice area.
Mr. Abma just has to be frank and truthful with the boss
so that he knows what the real problem is and how to fix it.
[Cole] According to Mr. Abma, they had consensual sex
and then afterwards, he went to drive her home.
And at that point in time, he said that Ms. Eyapaise
accused him of, in his words, of raping her.
He said that he did not want that allegation of rape.
He knew somebody that had been charged previously
and what that person went through,
and he didn't want to go through the same thing.
So, I think he used the words
getting rid of the problem or taking care of the problem
or something to that effect.
From that, he said that he ended up driving...
down Highway 797
down to a body of water
where he had killed Ms. Eyapaise
and discarded her into the river.
[Nancy] Abma told officers that a trucker
likely saw Barbara as she tried to escape
out the passenger door of his truck.
Hold back is so important in...
really any investigation,
but certainly investigations like this.
And in this particular case,
what we had was Abma
talking to undercover operators and he confessed to the crime.
He confessed to murdering Barbara.
But on top of that, there's what I would call
a reverse hold back.
There was the information that was in the article
about a female trying to get out of a passenger window
of the truck on Glenmore Trail.
And we know that that's not what happened.
And in fact, Abma was adamant that that's not what happened.
And he told the undercover operators,
actually she was trying to get out of the door.
A female trying to get out of the door of that truck,
we had never told anybody.
We had never released to the media.
And so, but he was adamant that the information
about the window was inaccurate.
And he was right, it was inaccurate.
That became very, very crucial
to corroborating his confession.
[Nancy] At one point, Abner drew a map
for undercover officers to better describe the route
he had taken after they left the bar.
He had ran out of gas near Langdon.
And that he had pushed his truck either
up to the gas station or near the gas station.
He described the gas attendant and he also described
telling us a story about how he told this gas attendant
that he was out there looking for a fifth wheel trailer
that he had sold to two guys from Newfoundland
that didn't pay him.
[Howland] They tracked down the lady that was working
at the gas station at the time that Abma stopped there.
Got a statement from her, and yes,
she confirmed that he was there.
Described his vehicle and him.
And got his name because she had asked for it.
It was pretty clear that
this was a legitimate confession.
Welcome back.
Three and a half months
after Barbara Eyapaise disappeared,
the search sadly ended in heartbreak.
Her body was recovered from a river.
Downstream, in fact, from where a semi-truck driver
saw her trying to escape.
Then, a confession in a Mr. Big sting operation,
but would there be justice for Barbara?
Here now is Nancy Hixt
with the conclusion of "Last Call."
Every day I put an X down that I--
that I haven't heard nothing, I haven't seen nothing.
[Nancy] Nellie Eyapaise had marked 100 X's
on her calendar until her daughter was found.
[Nellie] The 17th, that was the last day I was with my girl.
A hundred days exactly, yeah.
[Bob] It's the hardest thing in my life
was the first hundred days
'til they recovered her body.
It just drove me crazy every day.
[Nancy] Just days later, on May 3rd, 2002,
Fred Abma was arrested.
[Nellie] I just put a big X on there
that charges were laid down.
They said, "We got good news,
we found the guy, we've arrested him."
The first thing that went through my mind was,
"My girl, you can rest now.
We found him. We found your killer."
You know, "Whoever hurt you, we found him.
You can rest."
He admitted to everything.
You know, he confirmed it with the little things too.
It wasn't just the admission to the undercover guys.
It was, you know, telling us exactly
what the truck driver saw.
No one else knew that.
Found a cell phone on the passenger side floor
of his truck.
Had 911 dial on it.
How long was this girl alive?
And she knew she was going to die.
She was trying to get out of the truck
when they crossed 22X.
She knew it wasn't good. Imagine the fear.
It's a relief to finally know that someone
that can commit this type of a crime is off the streets
and it's going to be facing a trial.
[Nancy] Even after the damning confessions,
investigators continued to search
for further evidence.
They returned to the shore of the Bow River,
hoping to find Barbara's clothing.
If they were located, for instance,
it might even give us a better understanding
of what happened, those moments leading up to her death.
And then I kept working on it,
trying to just tie up loose ends and stuff.
And I went back and talked to the original person
that gave us the alibi on May 5th,
and he recanted everything and said,
no, Abma had threatened him
and, like, told him he had to tell us that he was there.
I think it's a horrendous situation.
You have this young woman
that was out having a good time with family
and then with friends,
is looking to get a ride home,
had money stolen from her so she couldn't take a cab,
is looking for a ride home, and she gets a ride
from somebody that, although off duty at the time,
was working-- Works at that bar and works as a bouncer,
works as a security person for that bar.
And I have no doubt that she trusted him,
even just by his job.
[Nancy] In October of 2003,
almost two years after Barbara Eyapaise went missing,
her accused killer, Fred Abma
stood trial in front of a judge alone.
So the theory of the crown and of the investigator is that
Abma had plenty of time
to plan out what he was going to do,
that it was about a 30 minute drive,
and during that time that he had planned out
that he was actually going to kill Barbara
and dispose of her.
And so he was ultimately charged of,
for first degree murder.
The key evidence in this case was the Mr. Big confessions.
And I say plural confessions
because he had told to friends that he'd made,
and then he told Mr. Big the same story, and that--
that was the key evidence against him.
His testimony...
was that he had dropped her off at her house,
as he'd said,
and that there was somebody in a car that had followed them
from the bar and the last he saw of her was there.
And then later, he hears that she's missing. He--
And the police want to question him.
He hits the panic button and says,
"I made a false alibi up
because I was the last one who was with her."
[Nancy] After six weeks of evidence,
Fred Abma was convicted of first degree murder.
The judge looked at all of the evidence, including...
the confessions by Mr. Abma
to the undercover police officers and said,
"I have no reason to doubt these."
It makes sense that the body could have been dumped
where Mr. Abma said and that it was flowed downstream
because the river ice was melting,
the river was flowing.
The truck driver who saw
this pair of naked legs hanging out the vehicle...
with the distinctive left taillight out
and the same type of vehicle.
All of that added up,
all of these little pieces.
The fact that Mr. Abma had gone for gasoline
and even given his name to the gas attendant very near
where he says the body was put into the river.
All of that circumstantially became overwhelming.
Judge found that it was planned and deliberate
that he had planned to kill her
while basically while he was driving,
which meant an automatic life sentence
with parole ineligibility of 25 years.
[Nancy] Barbara's parents left court feeling some relief.
She was the apple of our eye, I'm telling you.
She was my only daughter.
At least we get some kind of closure on this now.
We can't let this destroy us.
We can't.
[Nancy] But in the end, that's exactly
what Fred Abma did to Barbara's family.
Nellie Eyapaise passed away in 2010.
[Kevin] She wasn't the same, she just lost...
all the will for anything after that.
[Bob] He destroyed our family.
That's pretty nerve wracking, even telling you guys this.
[Nancy] Other than in the Mr. Big sting operation,
Fred Abma has never admitted to killing Barbara Eyapaise
and never expressed remorse.
[Bob] Yeah, everybody knows except him.
I don't know why.
You know.
If he said he was sorry...
you know, had a little remorse,
actually I probably wouldn't say, well...
give the guy another chance.
But I hear he has no remorse.
Jesus.
That sickens me in a roundabout way.
I'm scared for other people.
I'm scared if he ever gets out...
that it could happen again.
That's what I worry about.
I don't want him to [indistinct] another girl,
another family.
♪
[Nancy] As Barbara's father battles cancer,
he can't help but feel robbed of time and precious memories
he could have had with his daughter.
I just love her smile.
Yeah. [chuckles]
I do miss my girl.
Everybody missed her.
That word, closure, there's no such thing as closure.
I wish there was, but there's not.
Sometimes, I just...
hear a tune that I know Barbara would like,
tear might come to my eyes.
You know, she was a great daughter.
[Antony] Fred Abma remains in prison
and runs several online pages proclaiming his innocence.
In 2020, he requested
a ministerial review of his case.
However, officials determined there was no reasonable basis
to conclude a miscarriage of justice occurred.
As of the release of this episode,
he has been denied day and full parole.
After her death, a donation was made in Barbara's name,
contributing to a scholarship fund
at Bow Valley College,
awarded to students enrolled
in the Practical Nursing Program.
Thank you for joining us tonight on Crime Beat.
I'm Antony Robart.
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