Adam Rose
Twin Cities News
When older Newfoundlanders hear the name, Dana Bradley, without hesitation they remember the tragedy of the 14-year-old St. John’s teenager first reported missing on December 16th of 1981 and found dead on December 18th, leading up to the Christmas week.
Times were very different in 1981 when teens would hitchhike as means of their independent transportation.
It was common for I.J Sampson students to stand on the sidewalks in the Bennet Avenue area and stick their thumbs out for a ride from strangers than take a slow ride on the bus.
The schools location was in a busy traffic area due to the nearby Brookfield Ice Cream manufacturing facility located on Lemarchant Road, as it was not uncommon for some students to walk along St. Michaels Avenue, enter the parking lot of the ice cream factory to ask for free ice cream, and at times look for rides from off duty workers.
Over the past 44 years the city of St. John’s has changed where I.J Samson used to be once bustling with students and has been replaced with townhouses nestled in the former schools footprint.
The Brookfield Ice Cream factory is no longer in existence but its memory of the iconic facility is marked by a plaque attached to the black rot-iron rods at 314 Lemarchant Road.
Hours Before The Teen Went Missing (December 14, ’81)
During the afternoon hours on December 14, 1981, Dana Bradley had been in the company of her two friends and fellow schoolmates, Terri Melindy, and Penny Cobb.
The girls made plans to hangout after school and Dana and Penny were gonna meet up with Terri afterwards as she planned to skip last period to have her hair shortened and styled at the Cornwall Beauty Salon next to the Cornwall Convenience store on the corner of Lemarchant Road and Hamilton Avenue Extension.
Dana and Penny left school at 2:30 pm, walked down Bennet Avenue and made a right onto Lemarchant Road passing Brookfield Ice Cream to meet up with Terri at the Cornwall Convenience store and Beauty Salon.
The girls walked across the street and began thumbing for a ride.
The girls were picked up by a Mount Pearl man, who resided on Mount Carson Place, and he dropped them off on the corner of Topsail Road & Cowan Avenue.
The girls walked to 14 Fermuse Street, the home of Lloyd Melindy and his daughter Terri.
Dana and Penny hung-out with Terri for a short amount of time before leaving
shortly after 4 pm, and walked to Penny’s located at 8 Currie Place, the home of William and Phyliss Cobb.
Dana remained at the Cobb’s residence till about 5:10 pm. Before leaving, Dana tried making a phone call to the 47 Cowan Avenue home of William and Ruby Thomas, Dana’s grandparents, but the phone went unanswered.
Dana also tried calling her mother at work, ‘New Dawn Unisex Styling Salon’ located at 290 Freshwater Road, owned by Dana’s mother, and her call there also unanswered.
Dana then tried calling home at 160 Patrick Street and the phone wasn’t answered when she first tried calling, but on her second attempt the phone had been answered and Dana asked her then-to-be Stepfather Jeff Levitz for a ride and he told Dana she would have to take the bus.
Dana prepared to leave the 8 Currie Place residence and as she was going out the door, Dana said to Penny she would call when she arrives at home and walked across the middle of the cul-de-sac in the righthand direction onto Topsail Road.
At approximately 5:20pm on December 14, 1981, Dana was seen hitchhiking at the bus stop on Topsail Road when a Dodge model or similar looking vehicle pulled into the bus stop lane and the driver offered Dana a ride.
Two brothers Harry and John Smeaton of Gander, were selling Christmas trees near the bus stop as seen in the photo above.
Based on the Smeaton’s eyewitness account, the RNCs sketch artist drew a possible resemblance of what the person may have looked like that offered Dana a ride.
The disappearance of Dana Bradley had been announced late in the evening on Dec. 15, first on VOCM and then breaking on CBCs live evening news broadcast just before the program was scheduled to end.
Print media followed up the missing report the next day, Dec.16. The Evening Telegram, The Daily News posted the same photo of Danas class picture.
During the week of miss Bradley’s disappearance a man by the name of Bruce Gerald Connors made numerous prank phone calls to the home of Dana Bradley.
Connors told Dana’s mother, Dawn, that he and Dana are having a baby, that they are running away to be married, and he asked Dawn for her blessings.
The police had set up a wiretap on the Bradley phone, traced the call to Connors, and charged him with making harassing telephone calls. Connors had served time in HMP for making numerous prank calls to the 160 Patrick Street home.
When the RCMP took over the Bradley Homicide on the 19th of December 1981, the RCMP interviewed the eyewitnesses that were on Topsail Road seeing Dana entering the dilapidated vehicle.
Other witnesses, a couple from Maddox Cove were venturing out to St. John’s to conduct Christmas shopping when they saw a car parked on the side of the road with the door partially ajar and the interior light illuminated. They also saw a man coming out of the woods and boarded his vehicle as they passed by. The RCMP managed to produce a composite image of the person of interest of what the man may look like. The RCMP released this image to the news media on the following Monday leading up to the Christmas week.
In Jan. of 1986, the RCMP received a letter in their postal mailbox claiming that a man named, David Grant Somerton, had murdered Dana Bradley.
Somerton confessed during the integration at the police station where he claimed he used a homemade blackjack to beat Dana Bradley to death and buried it nearby the body recovery site in Maddox Cove.
The police spent close to one million dollars digging up the body recovery site in Maddox Cove, including a nearby area in Maddox Cove.
The RCMP expanded the dig at the Robin Hood Bay garbage dump looking for the murder weapon and an alleged buried vehicle said by Somerton that he used in the commission of the crime.
To no avail of recovering said items, Somerton recanted his statement, and police charged him with misleading law enforcement.
Somerton stood trial for misleading police and served 2 years in prison for the offence. At the time in 1986, the murder charges stayed due to lack of evidence. But due to new advancements in DNA technology in 2015 that were brought to light, the stayed murder charge for Dana’s murder that Somerton faced was dropped.
The Card the Mounties Kept Close to Their Chest
In 1989, the RCMP investigators assigned to the investigation decided to do a reset investigation and started from scratch and requestioned Dale and Helen Smith.
They also had to track down the man named Terry whom Dale spoke with who was further up in the clearing chopping junior trees back in 1981.
After the RCMP spoke with Terry, they began to investigate further into the man as to why he chose Maddox Cove to cut the junior trees observed by Dale Smith.
The man’s full name kept in secrecy, never told to a single journalist, is Terrance (Terry) Wayne Alexander.
In 1981, Alexander lived in Long Pond Manuels, married, and had a 2-year-old daughter.
Alexander was employed at The Imperial Life Assurance Company of Canada located at 240 Water Street 3rd floor of The Canada Trust Building in St. John’s, which is near to where Dana’s then-to-be stepfather, co-owned and operated Avalon Jewelers Limited, located at 318 Water Street.
Also, near to where Dana’s Aunt Cherly worked, at the Bank of Montreal Leasing Corporation, located at 238 Water Street, just next door to the office building where Alexander was employed.
Upon further investigation into Terry Alexanders past, he and his wife Bonnie, attended the First Baptist Church located at 100 Portugal Cove Road in St. John’s.
In a 2014 interview with Alexander, he said he had been cutting junior tree’s back on December 18, 1981, for staffs that young children were to hold in their hands while acting as shepherds for the then December 20, 1981, children’s Christmas play at the First Baptist Church.
As the investigation expands into Alexanders past it would also include people known to him – including his closest family members, colleagues, and friends.
Alexander worked along the side of a man whom resided at 117a Canada Drive, a Mr. Drover.
Across the street resided the Principal of I.J Samson, Fred Tulk, he lived at 118 Canada Drive.
RCMP Inspector, John Jack W. Lavers, who at the time in ’81 was assigned to the Bradley Homicide and he also resided on Canada Drive, at 121. All three neighbors were known to each other and known to Alexander through Mr. Drover when the landlord of Mr. Drover hosted backyard BBQ get-togethers. Also not far from some of Dana’s class mates, especially not far from where Dana’s friend Terri lived.
One of Alexander’s brothers lived at 25 Topsail Road, near the downtown area of St. John’s. Alexander’s wife’s siblings also lived in St. John’s.
One of Mrs. Alexanders brothers, Mr. K. Tucker, was employed at A.L Collis and Sons Limited located at 552 Topsail Road in St. John’s – just a stone-throw away from Dana’s friend Penny Cobb’s 8 Currie Place home.
Mr. K. Tucker resided on Hamilton Avenue Extension – some of Dana’s friends lived on the same street. Just below the slightly elevated hill is the Cornwall Beauty Salon where the three teens hitched for a ride after school on the day Dana would later go missing.
Terry Alexander also knew a man who drove a 1973 Dodge Dart Sport, employed at the Brookfield Ice Cream factory in 1981.
According to the RCMP investigators currently working on the file, although this is very much so circumstantial, Alexander should not have been overlooked in 1981.
Terry Alexander can be placed in the same areas Dana Bradley was known to visit, Terry Alexander from time to time had been known to occasionally attend Wesley United Church on Patrick Street, just a stone toss from the Bradley residence.
Alexander passed away March 21 of 2021.
Journalists Tarra Bradburry and Glen Whiffen at The Telegram (formally known as The Evening Telegram in 1981) ran a series of articles about a man they named Robert, a pseudonym given to prevent identifying the man who claims he saw Dana Bradley murdered by his 1981 next-door neighbor: a former mayor of Witless Bay, former Liberal Candidate in the 1989 provincial election, and convicted in 1991 for numerous charges of sexual assault, Thomas Carey.
The man named Robert went public after the RCMP in 2014 refused to believe his story that he saw Dana Bradley murdered. His Name, Danny Tuff.
Tuff met with a man named Terry Hynes from Renews, who crusaded for Tuff and created the Facebook page ‘Justice for Dana Bradley.’
Jeff Levitz said the pair used their Facebook page to bash the RCMP investigators, Sgt. Kent Osmond in particular.
Hynes made calls in 2014 to VOCM Nightline advocating for the RCMP to dig up private property in Witless Bay once occupied by Tuff’s father, Maurice Sr.
According to RCMP Sgt. Kent Osmond, “there wasn’t any valuable buried evidence in relation to the Bradley Homicide to be excavated based on any of the statements given by Danny Tuff.”
According to Sgt. Osmond, Tuff contacted Jack Lavers, a former RCMP officer that led the Bradley Homicide in ’81 to early ’87.
Tuff told Lavers, who is now a lawyer at his own firm Lavers Law, about his story in which Lavers recorded a 66-page document and presented that document to Sgt. Osmond in 2013.
The Facebook group operated by Hynes, Tuff and other associates, held a fundraiser with a goal of $10’000 for them to pay a private contractor to dig up the property looking for the so-called-evidence, which is strikingly the same amount to the reward that was put up by Dana’s Grandfather, Otto Bradley after he sold his 17 Raeleigh Street home which he offered $10’000 for information that led to the capture of the culprit for murdering his granddaughter.
Hynes would later say on his site that they found a private contractor willing to dig up the Witless Bay property free of charge.
Tuff announced on his personal Facebook page that the money raised was to pay for DNA testing at a lab in the United States.
When Hynes and Tuff had the private contractor excavated the property old car parts had been found, rusted out junk piled onto the Witless Bay property and Tuff and Hynes proved Sgt. Kent Osmond to be correct that there would be nothing of evidential value pertaining to the Bradley Homicide.
In 2011, Tuff went to the RCMP and spoke with Sgt. Kent Osmond. Tuff continued to speak with the officers leading the investigation. This would continue for 3 years leading up to the creation of the Facebook page, Justice for Dana Bradley.
Tuff made false allegations against Osmond and his team where a body of oversight of investigators from Alberta went into the RCMP ‘B’ Division to investigate these allegations.
From January of 2012 to February of 2014, the team of 12 investigators had access to the Bradley Homicide; 30 years of files had been examined, pieces of physical evidence submitted for advanced DNA testing which obtained successful results in 2015.
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