Woman in Marpole reports seeing neighbours’ car the night before they were found dead

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – Vancouver Police have found the car that was missing from the home where two people in their 60’s were found murdered on Wednesday.

Police say the white Kia Soul was found parked and empty around 9:30 p.m. yesterday.

Emma Greenhalgh lives next door to the house where the man and woman were found dead on Wednesday. She says everything seemed fairly normal at her neighbour’s home the night before, until she was heading to bed.

“I remember seeing a car leave the night before — I recognized it as their car, the white Kia — at about 10:30 p.m., just as we were going to bed,” she explains. “It did seem unusual because… I’ve never seen her go out that late at night, especially on a weeknight.”

“My partner had seen… their back door open. Their back door is slightly elevated, so they look right into our backyard. So, we see each other all the time. [My partner] had seen their door open that morning,” she adds.

“He says it was unusual. Then, he saw it open again a little while later. Then, about an hour later, it was closed.”

Yesterday, the VPD put out a call, asking people to keep an eye out for the Kia, which was missing from the home on 64 Avenue near Hudson Street following the killings. Police have not confirmed who the car belongs to and are now working to figure out what role, if any, it had in the murders.

This morning, the lights were still on inside the home, where the man and woman in their 60s were found murdered. Police tape was still up, and a lone police cruiser stood guard.

Police say this does not appear to be a murder-suicide case, adding investigators are treating it as a double murder.

Greenhalgh says she and her partner didn’t hear any commotion next door.

“That’s what we keep talking about. You can hear everything; honestly, we can hear them cough next door, from our house. So, I don’t know how we would have not heard anything. If anything happened during the night or in the morning before we left — we all left at about 8 o’clock for work and school — if it had happened before then, we would have heard something.”

On Wednesday, a friend of the people who live at the home went there to check in. Police say when that person arrived, something “caught their attention,” and that’s when they were called in.

Greenhalgh says the people living next door have been very good neighbours to her. “Very kind people. They used to give us kale from their garden on a regular basis, invited us for Thanksgiving even before we moved in. Really neighbourly, nice people.”

“We think they had an Airbnb in the basement,” says Greenhalgh. “So, they would have people come then… They were very social. They had friends over and people around.”

She believes the people who were killed were her neighbours, but police have not identified the victims yet.