The girl in Saskatoon

the long version

In 1961, a country singer named Johnny Cash chose a beautiful young woman named Alexandra Wiwcharuk to be his "Girl in Saskatoon" and sang to her in front of a hometown crowd. A few months later she would be found brutally murdered on the banks of the Saskatchewan River. As Sharon Butala notes, "An entire city came to a stop." Her high school friend Alex had dreamed of becoming a glamorous stewardess; she had been crowned a beauty queen in local pageants; she was about to graduate as a nurse. Her brutal killing became a touchstone moment for Saskatoon residents: years later, people could still remember exactly what they were doing when they heard the news. Why was Alex's murder so haunting? And why did Sharon Butala return some 40 years later to reconstruct Alex's life and search for answers?