I had the misfortune of moving to Kelowna at the same time that two RCMP members were beginning their careers as the handlers of two RCMP agents. The two cops seen operating in Kelowna during the fall of 1980 were pointed out to me as being Gary Tidsbury in plain clothes and his uniformed partner wearing the name badge Blake. The two informant/agents were Shannon Murrin and a person from Sicamous B.C. referred to as "suspect B".

I took notice of the people meeting with this plain clothes RCMP member in Kelowna 1980, after seeing suspect "B", a person from my home town of Sicamous B.C. associating with this group. Suspect "B" was known as an active drug dealer in the town of Sicamous at the time. He had been previously arrested in a large 1976 Kelowna cocaine bust and was the only one acquitted in that case. 

The plain clothes police officer that suspect "B"  was meeting with was Gary Tidsbury. Gary was seen operating in the company of a uniformed RCMP officer, believed at the time to be his twin brother Blake Tidsbury. The officer wore a name tag with only one  name, "Blake". I only saw the two together once, but that confirmed to me that Gary Tidsbury was also a cop like the informants had said. Suspect "B" caught me seeing him meeting with Gary Tidsbury just before Christmas in 1980. Afterwards, he came over to me very agitated and claimed to be just clearing up some things  from when he had been busted years earlier. I pretended not to be aware of the implications. Within weeks, I was told by a member of this same informant group that a cop he presumed to be Blake Tidsbury had been transferred to Sicamous where suspect "B" was living. I did not see suspect "B" nor officer Blake around Kelowna for a long time afterwards. Gary Tidsbury's meeting place was immediately moved. A member of this same group who admitted to being a paid informant of Gary Tidsbury's, said Gary was just setting up his informant network during 1980 and was planning to be in Kelowna for his entire career. 

 I was curious as to what was going on between Gary Tidsbury and this drug dealer suspect "B", because back In 1977  a series of accidents began killing and injuring young people around Sicamous. Drug involvement was suspected. A young girl named Kathy Breadner and others were killed in a car accident  only one block away from suspect "B's" residence, and only minutes after leaving from there with a driver who had been given a free sample by suspect "B". Don Rendleman, a Sicamous resident, suspecting that drugs were to blame for that and several other accidents that summer, went to the RCMP with his suspicions and  attempted to inform on the drug dealer, (suspect "B") and his associates. The supplier to suspect "B" was found dead  about three weeks later. Don Rendleman was found dead laying on a  highway in Alberta under very suspicious circumstances about three months later. A memorial marking the deaths of these young people and others who were killed over the years, has been placed in front of the School in Sicamous. Don Rendleman's name is included as an accident victim on the monument.

A sketch of a rape suspect was being circulated in Kelowna during 1980 when I first saw a person identified as being Shannon Murrin and met a young woman who later implicated him in those crimes. She claimed to have been raped by Murrin and had gone to the RCMP trying to have him arrested but without success.
This is the Kelowna Daily Courier news report of that event from Aug/1980.

I personally witnessed Shannon Murrin selling drugs in plain view of Gary Tidsbury during that time in the late fall of 1980. I told Murrin that he had been pointed out to me as a rat. He said, "I'm not a pigeon" and lit a joint in front of me saying, "would I be able to smoke this if I were"? Gary Tidsbury, who had been watching this from the shadows approached Murrin and spoke with him. Murrin left immediately and was not seen around this part of town again. Murrin told his associates that he was going home for Christmas in 1980. I did not expect him to return. 

 The RCMP knew that I had also witnessed another event involving Murrin and Tidsbury around this same time. This is the now long forgotten case of a missing girl called what sounded like "Becky" believed to be Elizabeth of Campbell River who disappeared from Kelowna during Feb - March of 1981 after leaving a residence with Shannon Murrin. This residence on Pandosy Ave was a rooming house then where as many as 6-10 people saw Shannon Murrin leave with the girl. Murrin later found and assaulted me in a public location, threatening me at knife point saying that he was so well protected by the RCMP, not just the locals, but right across this country that I couldn’t do anything about him anyway and so if I knew what was good for me I would just forget that I had ever seen him. He said, "You wouldn’t believe how important I am to them". Gary Tidsbury showed up at the same location within ten minutes after Murrin left. He knew and allowed Murrin to assault and to threaten me in that case. Murrin was a known drug dealer and RCMP operative at the time, working for Gary Tidsbury and the Kelowna RCMP, selling drugs to the Okanagan college students from a small house on the S.E. corner of where KLO and Richter St. now meet. This was also the last known destination of "Becky" before she became a missing person poster.

I did not believe that  Murrin was as protected as he said, and so I went to speak with Murrin’s roommate and asked some questions. A friend who had also been at the rooming house when Elizabeth (Becky" had left with Murrin, accompanied me. Murrin's roommate admitted to both of us, that an altercation had occurred on the night that Becky was there, and that he believed that she had been raped in Murrin’s room. He said that he had tried to intervene but was assaulted by Murrin and told to mind his own business. He said that Murrin then turned up the music very loud and left it on all night. He said that he thought it had worked out all right because the girl’s car was still there when he left for work the next day near noon and was gone when he returned. I instructed him to go and view the missing person poster and to phone crime stoppers with this information. The person that I was with had confirmed to me, that the girl on the poster was the girl who had left with Murrin. I asked him to go to the police with his story also.

My friend later told me that he had been threatened after he tried to tell his story to the police. A person resembling Murrin’s roommate was later seen on the news being taken away in an ambulance escorted by a cop resembling Gary Tidsbury, following the cancellation of a crime stoppers segment, which was being filmed next door to Murrin's KLO road residence. The news media was asking questions but was then ordered to quit reporting on this and did. There was no explanation given. This was around Nov./ 18-26 /1981.

It was extremely hard to believe that this was occurring at the time and I had started to take photographs of some of the events that were happening to gather evidence. I photographed the scene where Murrin and his roommate had been living when I saw a demolition team tearing down the dwelling. One of the work crewmembers told me that this was being conducted under the supervision of plainclothes police officers. I went around the corner and using a telephoto lens shot pictures of the license plates on the police vehicles at the scene.

Almost immediately after this I came under constant surveillance by Gary Tidsbury who was joined several days later by a partner. Eventually I was instructed to turn over all my photographs and was told that some times people see things that they shouldn’t see pertaining to official government business and I was told to be silent about it. I was told that I would be under surveillance for 18 months – two years and that I wouldn’t be able to tell who it was that they had watching me. I was told not to speak of this event and not to leave town. I was told that if all went well I could have my life back. I was told that other people in this same situation have had to go through a rehabilitation type program after seeing this type of thing; a program like police officers go through who are involved in stressful shooting events and such. The person telling me this had official looking identification and claimed to be with the Federal RCMP. He was Caucasian, about five foot ten, short dark hair, slightly heavy set, and I believe he had a moustache and wore glasses at the time. I would have guessed him to be about thirty-eight years old in 1981. He claimed to be unfamiliar with the Okanagan Valley and that he did not like the trip out due to the small plane that he had to take to Vancouver from Victoria where he was apparently living with his wife. I believe that the name on his identification was Glen Woods or a very similar name. He showed up many times and just sat around watching me for hours on end. I was puzzled by this as I knew that there were informants around me to report on my activities and I had been making myself and my activities as open and available as possible. I believe by Woods’ behavior that he was a behavioral analyst or a member of a behavioral profiling unit from an RCMP department that has direct official control over the Kelowna organization. He should be about sixty years old and nearing retirement. I am mentioning these details because this is the person who directed and authorized Gary Tidsbury to obstruct justice for Murrin’s benefit in 1981. He is the one who confiscated my photographs of Murrin's 1981 residence and also has the photographs of the residence of another witness. I am suspicious that this person or his department is again involved in Mindy Tran’s case in 1994?

There were other witnesses in Elizabeth's case, a case which could have easily been solved if the intent was there to do so. We were not allowed to implicate Murrin then. He was what he said he was, so protected that we could not do anything about him. He said it was best to forget that we ever saw him. I did not even know if he was using his real name then or if I would ever see him again. I had only gotten brief glimpses of him after Elizabeth disappeared and mostly in poor light, but I was eventually able to recognize him again from the photos released in Mindy's case. The missing person case of Elizabeth is still open and there may be verifiable evidence somewhere. I had hoped that there was some other explanation for the events that occurred regarding Elizabeth. I did not believe that the person last seen with her should be able to get away with possibly having killed her just because he worked for the RCMP. I was concerned then that he would just do this again if he wasn't stopped. 

Later, in the fall of 1981, I witnessed Murrin at a yard party fleeing from a group of men who were calling him a rat. Murrin went straight to a waiting marked RCMP car and left with the police officer while giving the finger to everyone chasing him . This was  just before he disappeared from town again telling his associates that he was going to his sister’s in Edmonton.

Some time later, suspect "B" started showing up at my residence unannounced just to visit like old times. He bragged about being a drug dealer and laughed about being followed around by a drug cop, who was also a former Sicamous cop named Carl Busson. It appears that Carl has progressed far up in the RCMP ranks and is now the Superintendent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Branch of the B.C. RCMP E Division. 

In early 1982, Gary Tidsbury convinced a woman that I knew to lay charges against a local doctor who had almost killed her by performing an operation in his office. George Gfellner, was the RCMP officer who was trusted to come and take a statement from me as a witness. He apparently had no other involvement with any other witnesses in this case. A subpoena was issued to make sure that I would be not leave Kelowna. During that trial, Gary Tidsbury entered my residence through the rear door without even knocking on the pretext that he wanted me to sign a document for travel expenses. The woman who was the principal in this case, and her boyfriend, had stopped in for a beer after court that day. Gary Tidsbury then says a strange thing to the effect of, "So you are all in this together, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it." During the trial, the woman and her witness's were all made out to be liars who had concocted a story in an attempt to make money. The woman lost the case.

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