Fifty years after the death of police officer Roger Pierlet in Surrey, Debby McLachlan was surprised to see another news story written about the man she was going to marry.
Last March 29, a story in Surrey Now-Leader marked the 50th anniversary of Pierlet's passing on 176 Street in Cloverdale, where he was shot and killed by a guy who didn't like cops and was out for revenge.
"Your article touched my heart for several reasons," McLachlan, an Ontario resident, wrote in an email to this reporter.
"I am the lady Roger was going to marry."
She'd read "dozens of articles about Roger" but never thought that after 50 years she would see a new article about him," she added.
"To know that he has not been forgotten means everything to me. Roger was a wonderful man and we were very much in love. His death changed my life and I think of him often."
In a subsequent phone interview, McLachlan agreed to publicly share her memories of Pierlet for the first time ever, and sent photos of the two in happy times before their planned wedding date in September 1974 — a wedding that never happened, sadly.
"Things were different back then, and as an RCMP officer he couldn't get married before being two years on the job," McLachlan recalled.
The day he died, the 23-year-old Pierlet was working his final shift before taking a few days off to visit his parents, who were flying in from Montreal.
"The majority of newspaper articles said the wedding was going to be the following week, the week after his death, but it was actually September," McLachlan clarified. "It was Roger's last shift before a few days off, not his last shift before our wedding. It's been a different story told."
On that fateful March day, John Harvey Miller, 28, and Vincent John Roger Cockriell, 18, were drunk and hunting for a cop to shoot as they drove through Cloverdale in their 1964 Dodge. Cockriell wanted revenge, blaming police for the death of his brother, who was killed during a high-speed police chase.
The pair threw a beer bottle through the police station window. After luring Pierlet out, and he pulled them over, the young Mountie told Miller to get out of the vehicle. As Pierlet stood in front of the open car door, Cockriell, from his passenger’s side, squeezed off a shot from a 30-30 Winchester rifle. The bullet hit Pierlet in the chest, killing him almost instantly.
The killers were originally sentenced to death, but these were commuted to life sentences after capital punishment was abolished in Canada in 1976.
"We both knew what could happen with him working in the police force, but you never think it was going to happen," said McLachlan.
Years earlier, the two met at a dance in Montreal.
"I was 18 and he paid a lot of attention to me, which I loved," McLachlan recalled. "Everything he said and did was perfect, you know. He had a good sense of humour and we laughed a lot. In all of those photos of us together, we were smiling and very happy, so that says something."
With Pierlet sent to Regina for training as a Mountie, McLachlan stayed in Montreal for a few months.
"We waited to see where he was going to be posted, which ended up being in Surrey," she said. "We got engaged at his graduation ceremony and moved to B.C."
McLachlan said Pierlet loved his job very much.
"Of course there was night work, there was day work, but we adjusted to all of that, and as long as we could see each other and be together, we were very happy," she underlined.
"The morning that he was shot, he had been working all night," McLachlan added. "It is true that his parents were flying in that morning for a visit. I got the call by coincidence that morning from somebody from the RCMP. They didn't really know too much about me, but the word travelled quickly among the people he worked with and somebody said, 'Did anybody tell the fiancée?' So I got a phone call first thing in the morning when I was getting ready for work. Two officers came to the door and I asked, 'Did anyone tell his parents? Because they're coming into town today.' Nobody realized it, and they scrambled and went to the airport to meet his parents' flight. There was all of this scramble, just a blur."
Pierlet is buried in Regina. McLachlan attended the service, but since hasn't visited his gravesite.
"There was a time that I thought I would like to, but I did not," she said. "And as a matter of fact, it took me many, many, many years before I was able to go back to Vancouver, and it was just once that I did that."
After Pierlet's death, McLachlan returned to Quebec and, eventually, moved to a town in Ontario.
"I would like to be able to tell you that I found love again and lived happily ever after, but that did not happen," McLachlan explained. "The scars were too deep. I worked, have friends and enjoyed some travel. I am now retired and live in a wonderful small community on the shores of Lake Huron. I have good friends and live minutes from my sister, my best friend."
McLachlan says Pierlet "was the one" for her.
"We were both fully in love and there was no question about what my future was going to be, it was going to be with him," she said. "We were going to get married, we were going to have babies and raise the kids, and that was going to be our life. My life was never going to be thinking about a career or anything. That was not what I thought, I thought wedding and babies and marriage. And so I had to really adjust everything, and then had to make enough money to live on and everything else."
Today, in Pierlet’s memory, the 176 Street overpass just south of Highway 10 was named after him and two bronze plaques were mounted on concrete pillars on its north end.
with files from Tom Zytaruk and Kevin Diakiw
