MYSTERY SHROUDS B.C. DRUG DEATHS

Police Suspect That A Killer May Have Forced Three Vancouver Sex Workers To
Overdose

VANCOUVER -- Ry Rong was breathing but had slipped into a drug-induced coma
by the time a passerby discovered her lying near a dike in the Vancouver
suburb of Delta last September.

Lily Nuon had been dead for sometime when a provincial highways worker
spotted her body three months earlier along an isolated patch of the same
suburb, a tree branch clutched in her hand.

Then, last month, Angie Williams was found dead in an isolated farm field
in south Surrey, another municipality south of Vancouver.

All three women led turbulent lives. Ms. Williams, a 31-year-old mother of
three, was a drug addict and worked as a prostitute in Vancouver's Downtown
Eastside.

Ms. Nuon, 21, was also a drug user who supported her habit through
prostitution.

Ms. Rong was the healthiest of the three. Just 21, the Alberta woman had
worked as a stripper and was featured in three pornographic films shot in
Vancouver last year. Her employer, George Marion, said she was a vibrant
woman who saved her earnings, sent money to a younger sister and did not
use drugs.

The women's deaths are a puzzle to police because both Ms. Nuon and Ms.
Rong were alive when they were left in the remote areas, meaning someone
dumped them and left them to die.

It also raises the possibility that the women may have been force-fed the
lethal drug doses.

That prospect has raised alarm bells with a special police task force that
is looking at the disappearance of 45 women from the Downtown Eastside.

The missing women are mostly prostitutes and drug addicts.

Police suspect a serial killer may be stalking Vancouver's notorious skid row.

So far, however, no bodies have been found.

This week, the joint RCMP-Vancouver Police task force confirmed that it is
working with police in Delta and Surrey to try to determine whether the
three women's deaths are linked to the missing 45.

"The connection that we have this far is that the three women who have been
found recently, they have histories as sex-trade workers," said Constable
Catherine Galliford, a spokeswoman for the task force. "Our 45 women are
also sex-trade workers."

Police in Delta won't say what drug is involved in the overdoses.
Withholding such information is a common police tactic that allows them to
screen tips.

In the case of Ms. Williams, police say they don't know what caused her
death, and a toxicology report was inconclusive.

At a memorial service last week, Ms. Williams's relatives said they fear
she was slain. They described her as kind and easygoing, but she struggled
with a drug problem and had lost custody of her children.

Ms. Rong's friends, pointing out that she did not use drugs, also think she
met with foul play. Mr. Marion, who runs Cyberexotica Multimedia, said he's
sure she was not a drug user because his actors are required to take
regular drug tests to ensure they're clean.

Like many of the friends and relatives of the missing Vancouver women, Mr.
Marion complained that police haven't done enough to investigate Ms. Rong's
death. And he resents that police have described Ms. Rong as a sex-trade
worker, which he says implies she was a prostitute.

"She wasn't like that. Everybody at the studio loved her. She had a brain
and she was was not a drug user and she was not a hooker."

"Look at the twinkle in her eye," he added, as she played a portion of her
audition videotape. "Look at her teeth. Look at her body. That's not the
body of a drug addict."

Mr. Marion said he met Ms. Rong at The Penthouse, a legendary Vancouver
strip club. He was taken with her good looks and offered her a part in one
of his film. By last summer, she had finished three videos.

Mr. Marion said Ms. Rong was a friend of Ms. Nuon, the other woman found
dead in Delta. Once, Ms. Rong brought Ms. Nuon to the studio for an
audition. But, he said, Ms. Nuon had track marks on her body from drug use
and he didn't hire her.

He said Ms. Rong was born in Thailand of Cambodian parents who came to
Canada when she was a small child. But she and a younger sister were
removed from their home and raised by foster parents.

"She was a 21-year-old woman but at the same time she was still a kid," Mr.
Marion said. "She didn't have a mom and dad that gave a damn about her."

Mr. Marion said Ms. Rong had a turbulent relationship with a boyfriend and
another man who had worked briefly in adult films. He said he gave both
names to police.

Friends of Ms. Rong said they last saw her getting into a car near her
east-side apartment with four other people on Sept. 2, the day before her
body was found.

Mr. Marion said police are not treating the case seriously enough, and he
thinks it's because of her background in adult films, a charge police in
Delta have denied.

"We've been working hard on both incidents right from the beginning and
both files are actively opened," Constable Kelly Young of the Delta Police
Department said.