Look Back: Cowardly teens began lives of crime by killing 86-year-old woman during purse-snatching at her front door in 1994
Despite all the years that have passed and that they are all deceased themselves, three prolific offenders responsible for Betty Anne Langeman’s death still can’t be named
February 23, 2026 • A look back at a tragic, violent incident from 1994
Purse in hand, Betty Anne Langeman walked out of her home downtown Chilliwack on June 14, 1994 to pick up groceries.
The 86-year-old likely didn't have a safety concern in the world as she returned to put the key in the front door of her apartment building on the corner of Nowell Street and Bole Avenue.
With two artificial knees, weighing not much more than 100 pounds, the elderly “lovely, sweet person, who would never hurt anyone,” as a childhood friend recalled, would be no match for three teenage sociopaths willing to kill for a few dollars.
The cowardly criminals attacked Betty who was carrying her purse and two plastic bags of groceries as she tried to get home. The killers grabbed for her purse, tossed her to the ground, and left her to die with the apartment key still in her hand when she was found unconscious by a neighbour who called 911.
Langeman didn’t die on her doorstep, but was rushed to hospital where she lingered in a coma for seven months until her death on Jan. 20, 1995.
This murderous purse-snatching incident wasn’t a one-off for the teenage thieves. It was only the most serious in a string of similar thefts reported in Chilliwack in the summer of 1994. This one became a homicide investigation and the RCMP’s hunt for the “cowardly punks” was on, as late Progress reporter Robert Freeman wrote in a Feb. 15, 1995 story under the headline “Hunting for Betty’s killer.”
The hunt was on while the incident created a level concern in the community. Freeman spoke to elderly friends of Betty who were scared to be identified out of fear for their safety. The attack in broad daylight was disturbing for elderly folks downtown leaving the community somewhat shaken.
“We are a little worried,” one of Betty’s friends told Freeman. “I never leave the house alone.”
The RCMP put out a call to potential witnesses to find the violent cowards, looking for a man on a mountain bike who might have seen it, a young woman at the scene when the ambulance was there.
All they had to go on according to news reports at the time was reports of a skinny young male with blond hair seen running on Bole Avenue at the time of the attack.
Mounties hoped someone would come forward knowing that the brazen young criminal killers might be bragging to friends about their crime.
“These people have a habit of talking quite often, boasting and that sort of thing, when really what we’ve got here is a very cowardly act,” said RCMP Staff. Sgt. Ralph Miller as quoted in The Progress on Feb. 15, 1995.
“Some of these people think they’re heroes going around banging on senior citizens,” S/Sgt. Miller added with a refreshing unrehearsed honesty that is long gone from official police communications.
After the public plea from the RCMP, reports at the time were that two youths surfaced as possible suspects. By April 1995, the two were arrested and charged with manslaughter. Several people around at the time who knew the young men as high-school peers reported to me that there were in fact three young men, one of whom had wealthy parents who somehow managed to get the youth out of facing the serious charge.
The manslaughter charge wouldn’t stick or the other two anyway, however, but one of them pleaded guilty to the lesser charge of robbery in October 1995, the other with possession of stolen property.
Neither could be named because both were under 18 at the time of the killing, a standard ban on naming youth offenders that never goes away except in rare court-ordered circumstances.
“It’s hard to understand how a young man of 17 could become involved in such a heinous crime,” Judge Norman Collingwood said of one of the boys, as quoted in the Nov. 3, 1995 edition of The Progress.
Local high-profile lawyer Thomas Crabtree claimed the incident was the boy’s first purse-snatching incident, and that he was a “hardworking” student who got caught up in bad circles.
(Thomas Crabtree would go on to become a judge, rising to Chief Judge of the Provincial Court of B.C. from 2010 to 2018, now in 2026 serving as a senior Justice of the B.C. Supreme Court.)
In a separate sentencing in front of a different judge, the other punk’s lawyer said the youth was no longer interested in a life in crime, apparently even telling undercover officers that it “felt good to get away from crime.”
In sentencing the one, Judge Collingwood made a couple of statements that were naively hopeful at best.
“There is no question in my mind… that this young man will carry with him the memory of his action for the rest of his life, surely a self-induced punishment far beyond what a court can conceive.”
The judge couldn’t have been more wrong, except when he said the following.
“I strongly suspect he will never re-offend again.”
The youth convicted of robbery was sentenced to 15 months jail, something that did nothing to deter his antisocial behaviour, maybe it even fuelled it.
All three young thieves went on to live super-prolific and violent lives of crime, one joining a gang, at least two involved in drug trafficking, and committing countless acts of property crime.
Elizabeth “Betty” Jane Langeman was born on Jan. 23, 1908 in Russia. A member of First Mennonite Church in Greendale, her funeral was held Jan. 25, 1995 at Henderson’s Funeral Home, and she was interred at Greendale Cemetery.
The three teens who ended her life in this senseless tragic way who went on to lives of crime are now dead, but still can’t be named.
-30-
Want to support independent journalism?
Consider becoming a paid subscriber or make a one-time donation so I can continue this work.
Paul J. Henderson
pauljhenderson@gmail.com
facebook.com/PaulJHendersonJournalist
instagram.com/wordsarehard_pjh
x.com/PeeJayAitch
wordsarehard-pjh.bsky.social