Big Ben’s killer dead
SYDNEY — Convicted murderer Ernest Gordon Strowbridge has died in an Edmonton hospital while serving a life sentence for the bloody slaying of Sydney convenience store clerk Marie Lorraine Dupe in 1992.
A news release from Correctional Services Canada said Strowbridge, 37, who was imprisoned at the Edmonton Institute for second-degree murder, died Feb. 27 of natural causes at a local hospital.
Correctional Services will be releasing no further information about Strowbridge’s death or years in prison, said spokesman Jeff Campbell.
Dupe was working the overnight shift at the Big Ben’s 24-hour convenience store in March 1992 when she was stabbed more than 40 times in a murder that shocked the community as the savage details became public.
The murder went unsolved for almost 11 years before Strowbridge was nailed through advances in the use of DNA analysis and an elaborate police sting operation that was featured in the TV show “Cold Case Files.”
Richard Dupe, 44, the murdered woman’s son, learned of Strowbridge’s death in a phone call from the victims services unit of Correctional Services Canada.
“I was ecstatic,” said Dupe, who lives in Janetville, Ont. “That was the best news I heard in a long time.”
Dupe said the murder and the almost 11 years that went by before the arrest of his mother’s killer was devastating for him and for his father, Douglas, who before his death several years ago had the satisfaction of seeing Strowbridge brought to justice.
“It was awful. (I was) just full of rage and wondering how and why it could happen,” he said. “No good thoughts whatsoever.”
Dupe said it appeared that suspicion fell on his father at first during the early days of the investigation.
“He was on a lot of medication. He lost a lot of stuff in his lifetime over that. It shook him up real bad.”
As years passed without a break in the case, Dupe feared the murder would never be solved.
A cigarette butt police found in an ashtray at Big Ben’s proved to be the link to Strowbridge years later. DNA analysis was not advanced enough at the time of Dupe’s murder to extract DNA profiles from the butt.
Later advances in technology, however, allowed authorities to establish profiles that were placed on file with the national DNA registry in Ottawa.
Strowbridge was required to provide a DNA sample to the national registry in 2001 after a conviction for assault causing bodily harm and the link was made to the Big Ben’s murder.
To get the conviction, Ontario Provincial Police launched an elaborate undercover sting operation dubbed Operation Phoenix, in which Strowbridge talked on a videotape to undercover police about the Big Ben’s murder.
Strowbridge pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and in May 2003 received the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment with no parole eligibility for seven years.
Paul Doyle, a retired Cape Breton Regional Police inspector who was part of the investigation from the night of the murder to the dramatic DNA breakthrough and the sting, said Strowbridge’s death was the end of a tragic situation.
“When something like that happens, it’s a tragedy all the way around, not just for the Dupe family but also the Strowbridges. They are victims too in a sense,” he said Tuesday.
I was ecstatic. That was the best news I heard in a long time. Richard Dupe, son of murder victim Marie
Lorraine Dupe