Bernard "Bernie" Carlson was a 61-year-old husband and father living a quiet life in Thompson, Manitoba. For 40 years, he had been married to his wife, Elva, and together they raised two sons. In the years following his death, one of his sons would fulfill a lifelong dream of becoming an RCMP officer at the age of 40, partly inspired by the desire to bring answers to families like his own. Bernie was in his own home, a place of supposed safety, when his life was abruptly and violently ended.
In the early morning hours of Friday, October 26, 2007, Bernie and Elva were asleep in their Yale Avenue home in the Eastwood area of Thompson. They had locked the front and back doors before bed, leaving a single light on. Around 1:00 a.m., the couple's dog, Missy, began to bark insistently, waking them from their sleep. Bernie got out of bed to see what was causing the disturbance.
As he walked into the hallway, he was confronted by an intruder who had forced their way through the front door. The intruder fired a gun, fatally wounding him.
Immediately after the shots were fired, the killer fled the residence. Hearing the gunfire and the sound of footsteps running away, Elva went to her bedroom door and saw her husband lying in the hallway. She hid in the bedroom and called the police for help. When Thompson RCMP officers arrived, they found the front door had been forced open and discovered Bernard Carlson deceased inside his home.
The investigation into Bernard’s murder began immediately, but the case has haunted investigators for years. "Here was a guy, asleep in his home, and seconds later, he was dead," said Sgt. Dan Barnabe, head of the RCMP's historical case unit, in a 2017 statement. "Investigators at the time did everything they could, and now it sits with my team, who specialize in investigating historical homicides. We need to find out what happened to Mr. Carlson." The case remains an active and open investigation with the RCMP Historical Case Unit.
The senseless violence left a permanent scar on the Carlson family. "I relive that night over and over," his wife Elva said in a public appeal. "I want to know who did this. I want to know why they did this. Somebody knows what happened that night, and I beg them to come forward to the police." His son, Sean Carlson, has also spoken about the enduring pain of the loss. "I miss him a lot," he said in 2016. "There isn't a single day that goes by that I don't think about it... For the family, for myself as a person, I'd love to see an end to it, to have some amount of closure... I hold a lot of hope and faith that someday someone will be arrested and charged and convicted and I firmly do believe that that day will come."
Over the years, the RCMP has periodically re-issued appeals to the public for information, hoping that someone with knowledge of the crime will finally come forward. As of November 2017, police reaffirmed that the homicide remains an unsolved historical case with no arrests made. Investigators believe someone in the community has the key to breaking the case open.
Police and Bernard Carlson's family are asking for anyone with information, no matter how insignificant it may seem, to contact them. Anyone with information about the murder of Bernard Carlson is urged to call the RCMP Historical Case Unit at 204-983-6880 or to remain anonymous, call Manitoba Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
