Carmen Robinson - Missing Since December 1973

By: Shane Lambert
Original: October 2018

Update: February 4th, 2021

I researched the disappearance of Carmen Robinson tonight for a little while. I thought that I would do a bullet-point style summary of what I learned about her case from reading about her in online-newspaper databases. First, here are her important case details as per DoeNetwork:

• Missing since December 8th, 1973 (a Saturday) from Victoria, BC, Canada (on Vancouver Island)
• 17 years old at the time of her disappearance
• White female, blonde hair
• The night she went missing she worked at the Ingraham hotel as a dishwasher, boarded a bus home, got off the bus at West Burnside Road and Holland Avenue, and has not been seen since then (her home was two blocks away)

Details I got from news coverage

• Known child-killer Clifford Olson is mentioned in conjunction with the disappearance; it is stated in an article that he was flown to Surrey "to provide clues on the 1973 murder of teenager Carmen Robinson"; Allan Williams, BC Attorney General at the time, said he was "satisfied it was not a waste of time" (December 4th, 1982; Page 3 of the Ottawa Citizen)
• A later article about Olson indicates that he was lying about any involvement in the disappearance of Robinson (Jan 3, 1983 Ottawa Citizen, Page 2)
• The only lead they had in the case was from a woman who claimed to have seen Carmen arguing with a man two nights before her disappearance but this lead involved placing the witness under hypnosis
• "The witness described a man with a swarthy complexion, black hair and a full beard. She said Robinson got into his car, an early '70s Chevy Nova or Plymouth Duster painted burnt orange."
• "The car had a bumper sticker with the name Ferguson. With help from the public, police matched the sticker to a school board election in B.C.'s interior. It still remains one of only leads in the case." (Time Colonist, online, September 23rd, 2008)

There was difficult to research this case. It will likely go unsolved in my opinion with the location of her remains being the major chance to break the case open.

February 4th, 2021 Update

There hasn't been a major update in this case that I know of since I originally published this article. Carmen's disappearance was recapped in December 2020 with various British Columbian news sources. The update I will provide here has to do with just some new thoughts I've had on the case.

Since 2018, I've profiled at least two cases that are similar to Carmen's. These similarities are in no way meant to mean the cases are related in an investigative way. Rather, I can think of two cases of missing women that went missing during their work shifts or commutes. 

Jessica Heeringa is an individual who went missing toward the end of a shift she worked at a convenience store. Kierra Coles is someone who went missing in his United States Postal Clerk uniform. My thoughts on a worker who goes missing during a shift or during a commute is that the person that disappeared her knew her patterns well.