HUNTER: Grandson, 39, charged in murder of trucking queen Viola Erb, 88

In dusty file boxes across the province, every town has an ancient cold case that was never solved.

Often — and this is anecdotal — at least one of the unsolved murders involves an elderly person and a botched robbery. When you look at them, you realize that some were born in the 1800s, while others survived the bloody trench fighting of the First World War.

But when murder is in the house, none of that counts for much except as memories for their devastated loved ones.

Baden is described as a suburban area in the Regional Municipality of Waterloo. It isn’t really. It is a largely rural area still filled with farms started by the original Mennonite settlers.

Murder came to Baden on Saturday afternoon.

There, emergency services found the body of 88-year-old Viola Erb in her home on Sandhills Rd. She was dead at the scene.

The Erb’s aren’t just any family in the Waterloo Region. Viola and her late husband Vern founded the prominent Erb Group of companies, giants in the world of Ontario trucking.

According to cops, evidence at the scene led officers to deem it a “suspicious death.” On Monday, detectives went all in and called the death of the beloved Viola Erb a homicide.

On Thursday afternoon, cops announced that they had arrested her grandson, 39-year-old Erick Buhr, and charged him with second-degree murder. Buhr worked at Erb as a corporate parts and warranty manager.

He is also charged with breaching the terms of a conditional sentence and is prohibited from contacting eight named individuals, the Waterloo Record reports.

So far, investigators are being tight-lipped about what led them to categorize the great-grandmother’s death as a murder or what the cause of death was.

Cops have also not outlined a possible motive. After all, who murders an 88-year-old woman? But when money is in play in a wealthy family, all bets are off.

Viola Erb led a rich, varied and productive life that centred around her faith, her family and their business.

On the Erb website, an article discussing the company’s history describes how in 1959, her husband wanted to get into the trucking business. His early efforts didn’t pan out.

It was Viola who pushed Vern forward and took an active role in the company that made Erb a giant in the trucking industry now employing 1,500 people with terminals in Ontario, Quebec and Manitoba.

“In the early days, Viola was the dispatcher, bookkeeper, and payroll when Vernon was out on the road. She tried to retire in 1980, but that was short-lived,” her obituary read, adding that it took years for her to dial back her workload.

In retirement, she spent her time quilting, gardening, knitting and helping the less fortunate. Her faith was the bedrock of her life, along with her three children, eight grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

And now, she’s finally reunited with her adoring husband Vernon Erb, who died of cancer in 2020.

About 47 minutes north of Baden, on June 25, 1967, William Gray, 92, and born one year before baseball’s National League was established, was found murdered in his home. Cops believed he had died 10 days before.

He lived alone. Gray had been beaten about the head and an autopsy revealed he died from a fractured skull and brain damage. His house had been ransacked.

Sadly, the case remains unsolved.

But in 1967, cops didn’t have the smorgasbord of forensic tools they have now, nor the sleuthing skills.

Hopefully, the life and death of Viola Erb will be remembered for something other than local lore, when murder came to a small community at harvest time.

With the arrest of her grandson, only time will tell.

bhunter@postmedia.com

@HunterTOSun