It's never been so likely that a killer will dodge the Lower Mainland's integrated homicide team and get away with murder, according to a report obtained by CTV.

According to a report by RCMP Superintendent Wayne Rideout, murders are on the rise in Metro Vancouver and the Mounties' ability to solve them is dropping fast.

With more bullets, more bodies, and more killers still on the streets, its' all too much for Eileen Mohan, whose son was one of the innocent victims in a horrifying slaughter of six people in a building in Surrey last year.

"It brings be back to October 19th, when criminals walked into an apartment building and killed my son who was innocent - and they're still not found," Mohan told CTV's Carrie Stefanson.

A report from the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, which investigates murders throughout the Lower Mainland, says that murders are on the rise, and many of them are tough-to-solve gang crimes.

In 2003, some 80 per cent of homicides were solved by the end of the year. By 2006, that number had dropped to 62 per cent. Murders had increased from 26 to 43 in the same period.

Over the same period, funding for IHIT increased by about 50 per cent, from $6.1 million to $9.3 million.

Difficult to get gangsters to testify: Oppal

B.C.'s Attorney-General told CTV News that it's difficult for police to get gangsters to testify.

"I don't blame the police because I know how difficult it is to make arrests because there's a code of silence for people involved in this activity," said Wally Oppal.

But Rideout said in his report that one thing standing in the way of getting approval was prosecutors, who refused to charge people if the evidence came from witnesses the jury might find unsavoury.

"The unsavoury nature of victims, associates, and witnesses, preclude believable testimony and crown counsel declines to lay charges in the face of substantive evidence. This is a common scenario in relation to organized crime and gang activity," he wrote.

Rideout wrote that IHIT is facing more complex crimes that mean big bucks for the department.

  • In April, 2006, 14-year-old Chelsey Acorn's body was found in a shallow grave outside of Hope. After a lengthy, two-part covert investigation lasting more than a year and spanning Vancouver Island and Alberta, two people were charged, at a cost of more than $1-million.
  • A hitman murdered pregnant Tasha Rossette in Surrey in November 2005, and the year-long investigation resulted in charges against two men. But the investigation was complicated by the suspects' "chronic crime," said Rideout, and the cost of more than $1-million is still rising.
  • In November 2005, Anthony Serdoncillo was in the wrong place at the wrong time, murdered by a gang that broke into a house in Richmond. After two years of an extensive covert investigation, police charged three people, two of whom lived in Halifax. The investigation cost over $700,000.
  • Brian Sinclair was murdered in Coquitlam during a break-in in January 2006, and a young man was charged after months of investigations, totalling several hundred thousand dollars, according to IHIT.
  • Kee Woo was murdered in Surrey in June 2006, and an investigation lasting months and costing more than $500,000 eventually resulted in a number of charges.

For Mohan, these are just numbers in police's uphill battle against crime. But she believes that her son's killers will get what's coming to them.

"I'm the only one who has to walk in my shoes," she said. "To the criminals who killed my son, hide as much as you can, if the law of this country doesn't get you, someone else will, so watch your back."