Sheila McIndoe Henry was a 26-year-old woman who had grown up in Kimberley, British Columbia, where she enjoyed skiing and the outdoors before leaving home for school. She met her future husband, David Henry, while studying in Victoria and later went to Calgary to pursue nursing. The couple eventually settled in Vancouver, where Sheila worked as a nurse at Vancouver General Hospital and David worked as a computer programmer.
They married during a trip to Florida in 1991 and were living in a Kitsilano duplex with a roommate. By early February 1993, Sheila was approximately six weeks pregnant with the couple’s first child.
On February 5, 1993, Sheila was attacked inside the duplex at 3356 West 7th Avenue. Vancouver police describe the killing as a violent struggle in which she was beaten and strangled. Later accounts of the investigation reported that she was found on the kitchen floor in a large amount of blood and that investigators believed a flashlight may have been used during the beating. A pillow was reportedly discovered near her body, and accounts of the case have described suffocation or smothering as part of the fatal attack. At about 8:00 that evening, David returned to the residence, discovered Sheila, and called 911. Emergency personnel could not save her or her unborn child.
Attention soon turned to the people closest to Sheila. Later historical reporting and case summaries identify David Henry as the principal focus of the investigation and, in some accounts, the only publicly identified suspect, although the Vancouver Police Department’s current cold-case profile does not name a suspect. Investigators examined his activities during the hours before Sheila was discovered and questioned inconsistencies and circumstances they considered significant. The couple’s roommate, James Becker, was also investigated but was reportedly eliminated as a suspect because he had been away attending his grandmother’s funeral. Investigators did not find blood evidence linking David to the killing on his person or in his vehicle, and the evidence never reached the threshold required for a criminal charge. David denied killing his wife.
Sheila’s parents, Gary and Linnea McIndoe, continued pressing authorities for answers and eventually succeeded in obtaining a coroner’s inquest. David testified at the inquest and again denied responsibility for Sheila’s death. The jury ultimately recommended that a $10,000 reward be offered for information leading to an arrest. Prosecutors nevertheless declined to bring a murder charge because of insufficient evidence. Sheila’s family later pursued a wrongful-death action against David, but the civil case was dismissed because it had been filed outside the applicable limitation period. The proceeding did not result in a finding that David was responsible for Sheila’s death, and there was never a criminal trial.
More than three decades after the killing, the Vancouver Police Department continues to list Sheila Henry’s homicide among its unsolved cold cases. No one has been arrested, charged, tried, or convicted of murdering her. The case remains open, and investigators continue to seek information capable of identifying and prosecuting the person responsible for the violent death of Sheila and the loss of the child she was carrying.
