Standard, Alberta
Standard is a village located in the southern part of the province of Alberta, Canada. It is situated within the County of Wheatland, approximately 80 kilometers east of the city of Calgary. Its 2006 population is approximately 380 residents. The village was originally settled by Danish immigrants. Standard's economy is based on the surrounding farming community and the energy industry, with a number of oil and gas rigs in operation in the vicinity. Chief employers include Agrium Liquid Fertilizer, which operates a manufacturing plant, and the Husky Oil Plant.
Standard is best known in Alberta for the tragic and well-publicized abduction and murder of one of its residents, 15-year old Kelly Cook, in 1981. The Grade 10 student regularly babysat for townsfolk, and on the morning of April 22, 1981, she received a phone call from a man who identified himself as Bill Christensen. He asked her to babysit for him that evening. Although she did not know the caller, she agreed, as 'Christensen' was a common surname in the area and crime was virtually unknown in the village, with residents routinely leaving their doors unlocked. The caller arranged to pick Kelly up that evening and drive her to his residence. At 8:30 that evening, a car pulled up in front of the house where she lived with her parents and siblings. The driver did not leave his car, and Kelly walked out of her house and climbed into the automobile's front passenger seat. The car then immediately drove off. A few hours later, her anxious parents, concerned that Kelly had not called or returned home, called the RCMP. A massive local search was launched but yielded almost no clues. Two months after her abduction, on June 28, her badly decomposed body was discovered in Chin Lakes, southeast of her hometown of Standard. The case caught the public's attention like few other murder cases because it was so unusual, with the killer actually picking up his victim at her house while her mother watched through the window. Despite the publicity this murder case generated, and a $100,000 reward offered by the Village of Standard for information leading to the arrest of Kelly's killer, as of January 2007, the case has not been solved.
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