Lindsay Buziak.Globe files
Saanich police say they're no closer to solving the murder of Victoria realtor Lindsay Buziak despite a flood of new tips the department has received since an hour-long report on the 2008 killing aired Friday on the NBC news program Dateline.
Saanich police Sergeant Dean Jantzen said Tuesday that police detectives had processed more than 160 tips and were working to clear dozens more even as e-mail and phone calls continued to come in.
However, Sgt. Jantzen said most of the tips are from viewers of the program with "suggestions and theories" that have already been ruled out by police.
"Many of these theories and suggested avenues of investigation are redundant in nature," Sgt. Jantzen said. "This investigation has not changed significantly in the last couple of days."
The Dateline report, seen by about six million viewers, revealed aspects of the investigation that police had previously withheld, but did not shed any new light on the case, he said.
Ms. Buziak was killed between 5:30 and 6 p.m. on Feb. 2, 2008, shortly after she arrived at an upscale home in the Gordon Head part of town to meet a pair of mysterious clients with foreign accents who said they needed to purchase a home immediately.
Uneasy about the meeting, Ms. Buziak asked her boyfriend, Jason Zailo, to meet her at the home. When he arrived with a friend around 5:45, Mr. Zailo saw two figures moving inside the house and decided to park around the corner while Ms. Buziak finished dealing with her clients.
At 6 p.m., after she failed to respond to a text message he sent her, the two men went to check on Ms. Buziak and found the front door locked.
Mr. Zailo called 911 while his friend gained entry to the house through an unlocked back door. Moments later, Mr. Zailo discovered his girlfriend's body lying in a pool of blood in an upstairs bedroom.
Police said earlier this year that Mr. Zailo has been ruled out as a suspect.
Often criticized for refusing to share information, Saanich police revealed last February, two years after Ms. Buziak's death, that she was intentionally targeted and lured to the home, possibly by hired killers.
A cellphone used to set up the fateful real estate appointment was purchased in Vancouver and used "exclusively for this crime," police said.
Investigators were unable to trace the phone, which was registered under a phony name and address.
According to the Dateline report, Ms. Buziak touched base with an old high-school pal named Erickson Lopez Delalcazar while she was in Calgary visiting her father, Jeff, six weeks before the murder.
A month later, Mr. Delalcazar and another man, Graham Scott Taylor of Calgary, were arrested and charged in a major cocaine bust. However, Mr. Jantzen said investigators are convinced there's no connection between Mr. Delalcazar and the Buziak homicide.
Police acknowledge that Ms. Buziak's "wide and diverse social circle" included people with criminal backgrounds, but insist she was not engaged in any illegal activity or lifestyle choices that would have put her at risk.