The Facts: Officer Garry Vath

Vancouver Police Department

Garry Vath joined the Vancouver Police Department in 1976, and began his career walking the beat as a Patrol Constable. He was later promoted to Corporal/Detective, working in the General Investigations Section. By 1987 he was keeping the peace as a Patrol Supervisor in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside. But officer Vath wasn't destined to remain your friendly-neighbourhood street-cop.

In 1989 he was transferred to the elite Vancouver Integrated Intelligence Unit, Terrorist/Extremist Section. Over the next few years officer Vath was exposed to the seedy underbelly of the city as a member of the Vice and Sexual Offence Squad. But his most difficult assignment came working as a detective with the Homicide Squad for five years, investigating the most violent of crimes: murder.

Investigating a murder is like a jigsaw puzzle: each piece an untimely death, a broken mind, a life forever changed by violence. You have to work backwards, imagining what it looked like before it became a shattered. Was the murder random? Or was there a dark motive hidden amongst the everyday? As a detective, you learn to question the simplest of facts.