Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - "The Boozing Barber" Gilbert Paul Jordan Pt. 1

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

An alcoholic from his teenage years onward, Gilbert Paul Jordan spent his young adulthood in 1950s Vancouver tallying up arrests for theft, assault, and drug possession. Then he discovered a crime he wouldn’t be punished for: plying a victim with alcohol until she was poisoned to death. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of assault, rape, pedophilia, and murder that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. On the morning of July 30, 1982, 50-year-old Gilbert Paul Jordan rolled over on his dirty mattress and came face to face with a dead woman. Instead of startling or screaming for help, Gilbert stood. up, stretched, and looked around the back room of his barber shop. He grinned at the empty vodka bottles littering the floor. After downing a swig of vodka, Gilbert started wringing his hands and adopted what he assumed

was an anxious posture. Then he took in several short breaths, trying to sound traumatized by the discovery of a dead body. Once he felt ready, Gilbert picked up the phone and dialed the number for his lawyer, fully prepared to lie his way out of yet another murder. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson. This is Serial Killers, a Spotify original from Parcast. Every episode, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today we're taking a look at Gilbert Paul Jordan,

the murderer otherwise known as The Boozing Barber. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. Today, we'll discuss Gilbert's early dependency on alcohol. We'll also examine how booze fueled Gilbert's insatiable sex drive, his pension for breaking the law, and his urge to kill women. Next time, we'll detail Gilbert's deadly reign as Vancouver's boozing barber, exploring

how his unique MO helped him get away with murder. We've got all that in. more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Whether you're hiring for a role or searching for a killer, the hunt can be exhausting. When detectives looked and searched to find any kind of evidence to find the person they were looking for, like Jack the Ripper, the Golden State killer, the unit bomber. It's tedious work to find what you're looking for. So, if you're hiring, I've got news for you. You can skip the lengthy investigation and the tiresome process of

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For some, alcohol can ruin families and marriages and even lead to life-threatening conditions like liver failure. And for many, that's the rock bottom of alcoholism, as bad as things can get. get. But for Gilbert Paul Jordan, things got much, much darker. Gilbert wasn't your average alcoholic, because booze didn't just turn Gilbert into a jerk or a cheat. It also contributed to his alleged penchant for murder. The second child of Jack and Winifred Elsie, Gilbert Paul Jordan, was born in December of 1931 in Vancouver, British Columbia. In an effort to protect his family, namely his older brother Bud. Gilbert always refused to speak publicly about his upbringing.

As a result, little is known about Gilbert's early life. We do know that his parents split up when Gilbert and Bud were young, and the boys were sent to live with their father. By all accounts, Jack and Winifred's divorce was amicable. Both parents eventually remarried, and despite living apart, Gilbert remained close with his mother. When examining the life of a serial killer, we often look back on his or her childhood.

Usually we can point to moments of abuse and neglect that may have contributed to the development of an abnormal and violent personality. But in Gilbert's case, there is no known early trauma to speak of. His brother, Bud, maintained that he and Gilbert were both loved and cared for by their parents. While Bud acknowledged that Gilbert was a strange and oftentimes misunderstood child,

Jack and Winifred were not at fault. but insisted that, quote, Gilbert's worst enemy was himself. He was always blaming everyone else for his problems. And Gilbert did have problems. Around 1944, when he was 13, Gilbert dropped out of school and never went back. He started drinking heavily shortly after he left, though no one knows what drew him to the bottle. His father had no issues with alcohol, and his mother was a lifelong teetotaler who refused to keep in the house. And yet, by the time Gilbert turned 16, he considered himself a full-blown alcoholic.

Though it's difficult to discern why Gilbert turned to drink at such a young age, there's no doubt that it had a profound impact on his life. That said, it might not be accurate to blame alcoholism for his emerging behavioral issues. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. According to a 2006 paper published in the journal Addictive Behaviors, Dr. Hirt-Dome and fellow researchers found that early-onset alcoholics have higher levels of impulsivity, sensation-seeking,

and aggression when compared to people who develop alcoholism later in life. However, research from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism maintains that the disease is not the cause of disinhibitory behavior. In fact, almost all adolescents who develop early-onset alcoholism display a lack of control over themselves far before they ever have their first drink. Whatever psychological issues Gilbert had, it's possible they weren't brought on by booze, but were merely exacerbated by it. And it began to show. Unable to break free from his cycle of addiction, Gilbert exhibited odd behavior that affected his ability, to socialize.

Other kids knew Gilbert as the guy who could drink anyone under the table, but that was about it. He didn't seem to have any real friends, and he had even less luck finding romantic relationships. This was especially problematic, as booze also fueled Gilbert's insatiable sex drive. To get his fix, he frequented an area of Vancouver known as Skid Row, where sex workers were known to hang out. He often paid these women to sleep with him, since he felt. found it difficult to make connections on his own. In addition to drinking and sex, Gilbert experimented with drugs and petty theft.

His adult criminal record officially began in 1950, when the 18-year-old was sentenced to 12 months in jail for stealing a car. By 1960, he had a laundry list of crimes to his name that included assault, breaking and entering, heroin possession, and drunk driving. But in 1961, Gilbert officially transitioned from small, criminal to a real threat to society. In the spring of that year, Vancouver police officers noticed a car parked on the side of the road. Suspicious, they pulled over and peered inside to see 29-year-old Gilbert with a five-year-old

indigenous girl. Gilbert was charged with abduction, though some reports implied that he'd raped the child as well. Beyond that, details about the kidnapping are murky, and it's unclear exactly what happened in Gilbert's car that time. Following his arrest, the case against Gilbert ended in a stay of proceedings, and he was never convicted for his actions. Though he escaped any legal consequences, it seems the experience greatly affected Gilbert. Over the next several months, he grew extremely depressed, and in December of 1961, he threatened

to jump off Vancouver's Lionsgate Bridge. Police received calls of stopped rush hour traffic and drove out to investigate. When they arrived, they found an intoxicated Gilbert standing against the rail, threatening to end his life. The police tried to coax him down, but he refused to move. They eventually enlisted the services of Gilbert's longtime defense attorney who managed to get Gilbert safely off the rail. Following the incident, he was charged with public intoxication, but it wasn't the end of his reckless behavior. At the trial, a few months later, he addressed the magistrate by giving him a Nazi-sufficiency. Gilbert was found in contempt of court and sentenced to six months in jail for his conduct.

Following his release, 31-year-old Gilbert continued to challenge the law. In January of 1963, he found himself facing a judge once again. The court was told that in March, 1962, he had approached two women from Skid Row and lured them into his car with the promise of alcohol. They drove a short distance to Cole Harbor, where they parked and drank copious amounts of vodka from paper cups. When one of the women started to feel ill from all the booze, she stepped outside to get some fresh air. To her horror, Gilbert immediately shut the door, trapping her friend in the car and drove off. He headed toward North Vancouver, where he allegedly raped the other woman. Then he shoved her out onto the street and sped off with both ladies' purses,

still in his car. The women reported the incident to police, and Gilbert was charged with theft and rape. Due to a lack of evidence, he was acquitted of the rape. However, with the purses still in his possession, he was found guilty on two counts of theft and received a two-year sentence for his crime. Unfortunately, Gilbert didn't spend much time behind bars improving himself or addressing his addiction. After successfully appealing the convictions, he returned to the bottle with a vengeance and

felt an almost equally insatiable hunger for sex. So, in January of 1965, he set off to feed his vices. While out of the town, 33-year-old Gilbert met a switchboard operator named Ivy Rose Oswald. Perhaps 52-year-old Ivy invited Gilbert back to her Vancouver hotel room for what she assumed would be a night of innocent fun. But instead of a warming nightcap shared between two strangers, The evening turned dark. Gilbert likely forced Ivy to keep drinking,

pounding back shot after shot, long after she was already drunk. At some point, it's believed that Gilbert and Ivy had sex. Whether it was consensual or not, we'll never know, because Ivy was found dead the next morning, naked on her hotel bed. She had died of alcohol poisoning. Research shows that alcohol poisoning deaths

often occur after one reaches a blood alcohol level of 0.37%. Ivy's blood alcohol level was astoundingly high at 0.51%. Gilbert knew he'd made Ivy drink too much, but he also recognized

that there was no evidence to prove foul play, and it's entirely possible he had no intention of killing his drinking partner that night. At any rate, he called the police himself and claimed that when he woke up

next to his date, she was already dead. Considering the evidence, authorities believed his tale and ruled Ivy's death an accident. But as Gilbert stumbled out of the hotel a free man, he was potentially hit with a sobering realization. He had just discovered how to get away with murder. Coming up, Gilbert feeds a new addiction. Listeners, this month marked 60 years since John F. Kennedy became the 35th president of the United States. ushering his already prominent family into the highest enclaves of political power.

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visit zepbounds.lily.com. Now back to the story. After allegedly killing Ivy Rose Oswald in January of 1965, 33-year-old Gilbert Paul Jordan felt a deep sense of satisfaction. He had potentially discovered how to get away with murder. What's more, the high that he got from killing may have been just as intoxicating as the buzz he got from drinking. Although some have speculated that he enjoyed,

his alleged first kill, Gilbert recognized that his actions could tarnish his family's good name. The press from his recent string of arrests was already becoming too much for his parents and brother, so he curtailed his behavior. Slightly. For a while, Gilbert satisfied his cravings for chaos and excitement by committing crimes not quite as heinous as murder. Between 1966 and 1971, he tallied up arrests for drunk driving, car theft, burglary, indecent exposure, and assault. Although he received punishments for as many misdeeds, they came in the form of small fines, probation, or at worst, a few weeks in jail. It seemed that the courts didn't view Gilbert as much of a threat.

Left to his own devices, Gilbert returned to Skid Row to feed his sexual appetite. He continued to enlist the services of sex workers and took advantage. of vulnerable women, though it seemed he wasn't entirely unfeeling. In 1971, 40-year-old Gilbert began dating a 46-year-old woman named Renona. Unlike most of his previous sexual partners, Renona was a divorcee who was never involved in sex work. Perhaps because of this distinction, their relationship blossomed over time, and Gilbert fell hard.

Unfortunately, his love for Renona couldn't stop his wandering eye. eye. He frequently slept with sex workers and racked up a string of sex-related offenses. It seems unlikely that Renona was aware of Gilbert's devious behavior, because in early 1973, she agreed to marry him. But the marriage was doomed from the start. During their first year as husband and wife, Gilbert was convicted of three separate sexual offenses. The first was in April, when 41-year-old Gilbert invited a group of local children back to his house to watched television and exposed himself to them. Seven months later, Gilbert noticed a young woman stranded on the side of the road and pulled over

to speak with her. She told him that her car had run out of gas, so he offered to drive her home. The woman got into the car and Gilbert proceeded to drive down a long, deserted road. At some point, he stopped and asked the woman to drink with him. Sensing she was in danger, the woman tried to get out of the car, but Gilbert locked the doors. Then he undid his pants and sexually assaulted her. Luckily, another car passed, giving the woman an opportunity to escape. Seizing her moment, she unlocked her door, dashed onto the road and screamed for help. The other driver quickly ushered her into his car and sped off to safety.

Gilbert's final offense in 1973 occurred as the year was coming to a close. After finishing up his errands at a grocery store, he spotted a young woman waiting for a cab in the free freezing cold. Gilbert told the shivering woman that he'd happily give her a lift. He just had to drop his groceries off at home first. The woman accepted the offer and climbed into the car. When they got back to his apartment, she helped him carry his groceries upstairs. As a thank you, Gilbert offered the woman some hot buttered rum. She drank it all down and then drank some more. The woman eventually became so intoxicated that she lost consciousness. When she awoke a few hours later, she found Gilbert standing in front of her with his pants

around his ankles. Gilbert tried to talk the young woman into having sex with him. When she refused, he became violent and sexually assaulted her. Once he was done, the woman waited until Gilbert fell asleep before slipping out of his apartment. The details of what happened in the courtroom are unclear, but we do know that Gilbert avoided doing any significant time for his crimes. This likely left him feeling entitled to continue his violent ways, without fear of more serious consequences. Unfortunately, Gilbert's impulsive and aggressive personality wasn't reserved for random attacks on strangers. He was also allegedly

abusive to Renona throughout their marriage. She was admitted to the hospital once in late 1973 and twice in 1974, but refused to explain what had happened to send her there. After a hospital stay in early 1974, Renota's doctors noted that her husband was making threatening phone calls to the hospital, demanding that his wife be discharged. Fortunately, his requests were denied. His frustration quickly turned into anger. With his wife beyond his reach, Gilbert likely took his rage out on local women. It was also around this time that Gilbert spent six months behind bars for his previous assault convictions.

He was released from prison in late September of 1974. A month later, Renona was back in the hospital. Due to his past behavior around hospital staff, Gilbert was forbidden from visiting his wife. So they determined 42-year-old dressed in disguise and snuck into the hospital planning to break her out. It was a complete failure. Gilbert was quickly recognized and apprehended by hospital security, and Renona was allowed to finish her recovery in peace. It might have been just the time she needed to gather her strength. In October of 1975, Renona collected the resolve to leave Gilbert once and for all.

She requested a police escort to take her to the airport, where she boarded a plane for California, hoping to never speak to her husband again. In a desperate attempt to keep her in Canada, Gilbert called in a bomb threat to Renona's plane. He was quickly apprehended by authorities and charged with endangering the safety of an aircraft in flight. However, because the plane never actually took off, Gilbert successfully appealed the charge. It was yet another legal victory for Gilbert Paul Jordan. Although he had spent some time behind bars, his overall appeal record was quite high. He always seemed to evade harsh punishment, and it made him feel invincible. However, in 1976, Gilbert discovered that the authorities had been keeping a closer eye on him than he thought.

The Crown Council petitioned to have Gilbert declared a dangerous sexual offender, otherwise known as a DSO. According to Canada's criminal code, a DSO is someone who has failed to demonstrate control over his or her sexual impulses and is likely to cause pain, injury, or other harmful acts upon others in the future. Were Gilbert labeled a DSO, he could be put in prison indefinitely. Hoping to fight the petition, Gilbert's attorney obtained the expertise of Dr. Tabor Bessiretti, the co-director of psychiatric emergency services at Vancouver General Hospital at the time. After conducting a series of interviews and psychological tests,

Dr. Bezarelli testified that while Gilbert displayed the signs of a psychosovo, He didn't fit the profile of a DSO. Meanwhile, Crown prosecutors called psychiatrist Robert Laird Whitman as their own expert witness. Dr. Whitman had examined Gilbert when he was imprisoned in 1962 and diagnosed him with antisocial personality disorder. The DSM-5 classifies antisocial personality disorder as a dysfunctional thought process that focuses on social irresponsibility and deviant or criminal behavior. Anti-social personality disorder typically manifests in the form of deceitfulness, impulsivity,

aggression, irresponsibility, and the violation of others' rights. All of these behaviors are accompanied by a lack of remorse, which suggests an inability to empathize on the part of the offender. People with antisocial personality disorder may be predisposed to violent crime, but it's important to note that they are not beyond rehabilitation. It's when their personality disorder gets coupled. with the presence of psychopathy that patients are less likely to live a normal life. As Gilbert was a diagnosed psychopath, Dr. Whitman believed there was a, quote,

strong probability that Gilbert would cause injury or evil to others if he were free. However, because Dr. Whitman's testimony was based on an examination from 14 years earlier, the judge was hesitant to lock Gilbert away for the rest of his life. The prosecution protested, explaining that Gilbert had, had been wholly uncooperative with their investigation and would not consent to an interview with their psychiatric team. Still, Dr. Whitman's assessment gave the magistrate pause, but although he believed that Gilbert was a dangerous sexual offender in the past, he doubted that Gilbert would continue to be one

going forward. So in November of 1976, 44-year-old Gilbert Paul Jordan was allowed to walk free. He should have remained behind bars. Two months later, Gilbert was arrested for indecent exposure in Cold Lake, Alberta. And a month after that, he committed yet another shocking crime. On February 21, 1977, Gilbert drove to the Alberta Hospital and left the facility with a female patient. According to a non-certified psychiatrist who testified at Gilbert's preliminary hearing, the woman, who will call Nora, was 47 years old, but had the mental capacity of a child. Gilbert convinced Nora that he was a doctor and coaxed her into his car.

Then he sped off to a hotel in Edmonton, where he beat and raped her, then stole the jewelry from her body. After three days subsisting on nothing but vodka, Gilbert forced Nora back into his car and headed west. At some point, he pulled over into a ditch and attempted to, to rape her once more. Before things progressed too far, passing police officers noticed the parked vehicle and decided to check it out. Shining their lights into Gilbert's car,

the police immediately took note of the empty liquor bottles littering the floor. They also noticed that the woman sitting beside him had bruises and scratches all over her body. Gilbert claimed that she'd fallen, but Nora spoke up, insisting that he'd beaten her. Gilbert was taken into custody

charged with kidnapping, abduction of a female with intent, rape, sexual intercourse with the feeble-minded, theft, and assault. Denied bail, he remained in prison for over two years until his trial took place in April of 1979. Because of her developmental disorder, Nura wasn't allowed to testify. Without her testimony and with little in the way of physical evidence, the case against Gilbert was much weaker. In the end, he was acquitted of all charges except for the assault. He was sentenced to the 26 months he'd served in Fort Saskatchewan Correctional Institution while awaiting trial.

So when proceedings concluded, Gilbert was allowed to go free. It would prove to be a deadly miscarriage of justice. Coming up, Gilbert opens up shop as the deadliest barber in Canada. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right, so I can tune out travel advice that's just plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon. Just tell the manager you'll sue.

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While in prison, he'd received a small inheritance from a family member. And thanks to the help of a broker, Gilbert invested the money in the stock market. Unfortunately, the extra cash only helped feed his addictions. After enduring forced sobriety in prison, Gilbert immediately returned to the bottle, drinking roughly a liter and a half of vodka every day. He also resumed preying on women in the Skid Row area of Vancouver. At some point in 1980, Gilbert met 42-year-old Mary Johnson. The exact nature of their relationship is unclear,

but we do know that it didn't end well for Mary. During the last week of November, Mary made an alarming phone call. She told her sister-in-law, Lovana Juntree, that she was afraid someone wanted her dead. But when Levana asked for more details, Mary refused to elaborate. Levena thought Mary was acting a bit paranoid. Still, she advised Mary to call her again if she really felt like she was in danger. A week later, Mary was dead.

Her lifeless body was found in Quebec's Aylmer Hotel, with a blood alcohol level of an alarming 0.34%. Investigators quickly deduced that she died. from alcohol poisoning, which suggested that it might have been an act of suicide or an accident. The only issue with their ruling was the phone call Mary had made to her sister-in-law. The authorities listened to Lovanna, but ultimately dismissed her concerns. There was no physical evidence of foul play in the hotel room or on Mary's body. They figured Lovanna was simply disturbed by her sister-in-law's death

and refused to believe that Mary had died by suicide. Perhaps in an attempt to placate Lovana's misgivings, authorities ruled Mary's cause of death as unnatural and accidental. Unfortunately, less than a year later, authorities found themselves using the same language to describe another death. In September of 1981, 27-year-old Barbara Ann Paul was found dead in the Glen Eyrecht Hotel. Her blood alcohol level was at 0.41%. According to some accounts, Barbara was at times employed as a sex worker and she was a reported alcoholic. As such, the police seemed to have no qualms about ruling her death as unnatural and accidental due to alcohol poisoning. No one even suspected murder.

It was clear that authorities weren't yet aware of Gilbert's involvement. And to be fair, why would they? There was no immediate evidence of another person's presence in either of the victim's hotel rooms. and the deaths occurred around a year apart in different cities. But looking back, the similarities surrounding Mary and Barbara's deaths were indicators of Gilbert's emerging M.O. Both were indigenous women. Both were known to drink heavily on their own,

and both were found dead without a scratch on them. By now, it seems Gilbert had mastered the art of murder and was eager for his next kill. But securing a hotel room every time he wanted to drink a woman to take, death was becoming rather taxing, he needed an easier way to get his victims alone. Around this time, Gilbert discovered the solution to his problem. While serving time in jail for one of his many convictions, Gilbert took a vocational course on barbering and found that he had a talent for cutting hair. Thanks to his lucrative stock investments, Gilbert managed to save up

enough money to purchase his own barbershop. In the early 1980s, he opened the Slokin Barbershop in downtown east side Vancouver. Although it was grungy and run down, Gilbert was thrilled to have a home base of his own. Aside from anything else, it meant he didn't have to go through the ordeal of securing hotel rooms anymore. Instead, he could pick women up right on the street outside and bring them back to his shop. One of those women was 29-year-old Mary Johns, who had the great misfortune of meeting Gilbert in the summer of 1982.

Mary was an indigenous woman who'd recently fled Canada's Yukon territory after the death of her son. Perhaps Gilbert provided Mary with the opportunity to numb her pain through drink, and she readily accepted, following him back to his barber shop. The next morning, one possible scenario played itself out. Gilbert stood over Mary's dead body with a telephone in his hand. He called his lawyer and explained in a panic that he'd been drinking with a friend the night before, and it seemed she'd imbibed too much. Gilbert's lawyer advised him to call the police.

If it was truly an accident, he had nothing to worry about. Gilbert hung up the phone and looked at Mary, who was lying face down on a foam mattress. Of course, Mary's death wasn't an accident at all. Her blood alcohol level was 0.76%, which, according to the coroner, was enough to kill the small woman two times over. It's unclear why the authorities thought she was capable of drinking to that excess. Once her BAC hit 0.30%, someone her size would almost certainly have fallen unconscious. But as difficult as it was to imagine that Mary had drunk herself to death, it was even harder

to believe that she'd been murdered. As far as anyone in the area knew, no one in recorded history had ever killed someone by forcing alcohol down their throat. And it seemed ludicrous to think that anyone ever would. Besides, the only viable suspect in her death had called the police himself and seemed genuinely distraught. If Gilbert was guilty, why would he link himself to the crime? It just didn't add up.

But unbeknownst to authorities, Gilbert was a master manipulator. His performance as, The Man Who Just Happened to Wake Up Next to a Dead Body, was so convincing, it appears that authorities didn't even check if Gilbert had a criminal record. If they had, they would have discovered that psychiatrists had already referred to Gilbert as a psychopath, who had a tendency to stretch the truth. One of the key traits that often appears alongside psychopathy is Machiavellianism, a personality trait centered on selfishness. Those with Machiavellian traits will do whatever it takes to

manipulate others for their own personal gain, and that manipulation almost always involves deception. According to a 1981 study published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, people with high levels of Machiavellianism were found to be much better liars than non-Macavallians. So when Gilbert swore that Mary's death had simply been an unfortunate accident, people were inclined to believe him. Taking his word, officials closed the case and ruled the death as accidental. Once again, Gilbert went free. Gilbert's talent for mendacity may also explain how he was able to juggle a girlfriend while moonlighting as an alleged murderer. He met 48-year-old Maria Alvira in 1979, and the two enjoyed a pleasant courtship. But shortly after they started dating, Maria's Canadian

visa expired, and she was forced to return to South America. Although he took comfort in the warm embrace of sex workers, Gilbert couldn't deal with the loss. He penned passionate letters to Maria, declaring his love. Just like the authorities, Maria fell for his lies, and in October of 1983, the couple was married by proxy. Maria knew her husband enjoyed drinking, but Gilbert had managed to conceal the full extent of his addiction during their initial string of dates. However, when Maria returned to Canada in May of 1984, Gilbert didn't bother to hide his disease any longer. He drank so heavily that Maria often found him

in a pitiable state. He would weep hard enough that he could no longer raise the bottle to his lips. She was forced to console him when he was in this condition, and her tender feelings towards her new husband soon twisted into resentment. During the rare moments when, Gilbert was sober. He was back to his kind and loving self. But alcohol transformed him. It made him sad. It made him mean. And it made him more likely to cheat. One night around October of 1984, Gilbert brought a young indigenous woman who will call Beth back to the apartment he shared with Maria. Gilbert and Beth were visibly drunk. And when Maria asked her to leave, Beth refused. Maria told the drunk woman to get out of her house and leave her husband alone. Beth looked incredulously at Gilbert.

He hadn't told her he was married. Gilbert denied Maria's story, telling his date that his wife was actually his cleaning lady. At this, Beth became enraged with Maria, and she tried to attack her with a kitchen knife. Maria ran and hid in the bathroom. She waited a long stretch of time before deciding it was safe to emerge. As she snuck out of the house, fearful for her life, Maria passed her bedroom, where her husband was having sex with Beth. Over the next few days, Gilbert pleaded for Maria's forgiveness. He blamed the alcohol for his indiscretions, saying that he didn't even remember the incident at all.

But Maria held firm. Less than five months after returning to Canada, she filed for divorce and never looked back. Gilbert dealt with the dissolution of his marriage, the way he dealt with everything in life, he drank. He got drunk in Vancouver's Skid Row nearly every night, often with women whom he paid to drink and have sex with him. One night in December of 1984, 52-year-old Gilbert approached 40-year-old Patricia Thomas. Patricia was an indigenous woman, a member of the DTEDDOT people, and she had a young daughter named Joanne. She was also a vulnerable, marginalized woman known to have issues with alcohol.

In other words, she was just Gilbert's type. And once she was in Gilbert's sights, her hours were numbered. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back soon with part two of Gilbert Paul Jordan, where we'll explore the other alleged murders committed by the boozing barber. We'll also discuss the winding path that led to his final incarceration. For more information on Gilbert Paul Jordan, amongst the many sources we used, we found the article, Death by Alcohol from the October 22nd, 1988 issue of the Vancouver Sun, extremely helpful to our research.

You can find all episodes of Serial Killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron. Ron Cutler, sound designed by Carrie Murphy, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, and Joshua Kern. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Ellie Reed, with writing assistance by Abigail Cannon,

fact-checking by Bennett Logan, and research by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood. Serial Killers stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. Fiction, fame. Discover the real story behind what of history's most formidable families, and the spot or original from podcast, The Kennedys. Remember, you can binge all 12 episodes starting on Tuesday, January 19th. Listen free and exclusively on Spotify. Do you want to hear something spooky?

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Listen now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up, getting ready for bed, is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcast. this year, but they're not Crime Beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts.