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Former Kelowna Mountie goes from warmth of retirement to depth of cold cases

Reservist Darren Feist takes on the cases of Sally Winter, Charles Horvath-Allan, Tina Parr, and Ashleigh Pettman
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Retired RCMP Officer Darren Feist steps back into the detachment as a reservist working on four Kelowna cold cases.

Darren Feist has stepped out of his short-lived retirement to work as a reservist with the RCMP in Kelowna and has taken on the files of four cold cases within the city. 

It was just one month into his retirement when Feist jumped back into work and took over the files of missing persons Charles Horvath-Allan and Ashleigh Pettman and the unsolved murders of Sally Winter and Tina Parr. 

Feist is looking at these cases with fresh eyes, having only joined the Kelowna detachment in 2017. He explained why he came back to work. 

"Serious crimes fell under my purview, and I would regularly meet with Denise Allan [Horvath-Allan's mom] and other family members who had come and routinely asked 'What's being done on my file?'" Feist said, explaining that Kelowna is a busy spot and when a new serious crime occurred old files were set aside and officers had to move on. 

"There wasn't a lot of time given to these historical files." 

The oldest file Feist is looking into is the murder of Sally Winter at her home in 1985. The housewife and mother was killed on Valentine's Day. 

"There was a lot of work done in regards to that file," Feist said this was the first case handed over to him as a reservist. He added that there are some avenues in the case he is pursuing. 

The death of Winter does not appear to have been reported by local media at the time and few details of the case have been made public. 

went missing in 1989 and was last seen cashing a cheque at Orchard Park Royal Bank on May 26. 

The 20-year-old had only been in Kelowna for about three weeks as he was backpacking across Canada. All his belongings were left behind at Tiny Town Campground where he was staying. 

The third case Feist is taking over is that of the 1994 murder of , a sex worker whose body was found by a hiker on Knox Mountain. 

The 25-year-old was found on Sept. 26, in the lower picnic area of the mountain and had last been seen alive in the early hours of the day before at a residence on Martin Ave. 

"There was an extensive investigation done and there's still a lot of avenues on that one."

Perhaps the most challenging cases Feist is investigating is the missing persons file of 18-year-old Ashleigh Pettman.

The young woman had been last seen sometime in June 2005 after becoming street-entrenched in Kelowna. 

"Missing person's files like Charles Horvath and that, when you don't have a crime scene and you don't have a body or anything like that, those are the toughest."

But Feist said people who didn't give up information when the crime or disappearance first happened may have had a change of heart or life circumstances. 

"We were dealing with a lot of street-entrenched people. They're under the influence, their memories aren't always the best. It may be a struggle to try and get information, but time has passed and people change."

Although Feist will come at these files with a fresh perspective he has been able to talk about the cases with some of the original investigators, but the task is a daunting one with the majority of files in paper form with chicken scratch handwriting of former officers. 

Anyone with information on the cases of these four individuals is asked to call Kelowna RCMP or to remain anonymous, please call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477 or leave a tip online at .



Brittany Webster

About the Author: Brittany Webster

I am a video journalist based in Kelowna and capturing life in the Okanagan
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