If the two people accused of killing Alfred Wagner had simply asked for his beloved pickup, he would have given it to them, his daughter says.
“That’s just the kind of man he was,” Doris Wagner said.
“If whoever did this to him would have just said, ‘We’re stranded. Can you help? I need to get home’,” her father would have replied, “‘What do you need?'” she said.
Instead, Wagner, 83, was left dead inside his Bonnyville home. The doors of his garage were removed and his olive green 1974 Dodge pickup was gone.
A close family friend stumbled across the scene Sunday afternoon while driving by.
Doris Wagner said the friend was alerted by the missing doors.
“He knew there was something wrong because my dad couldn’t take those doors off without help. He thought he would rush over and lend a helping hand to put them back,” she said.
“He ran into the house and he found my dad.”
The truck was located on the Kehewin Cree Nation reserve Monday.
The next day a 25-year-old man and his 20-year-old sister from the Bonnyville/Kehewin area were charged with first-degree murder.
RCMP said the killing appears to have been a random act and that the siblings had no previous relationship with the victim.
Doris Wagner said her family has no idea, “none whatsoever,” about what happened.
Wagner cared for ailing wife
She said her immediate worry is caring for her fragile, hospitalized mother, Blanche Wagner, in the wake of the tragedy.
“He was her everything,” she said, her voice cracking as she fought back tears.
Alfred Wagner visited his hospitalized wife Blanche daily. (Provided)
“It’s only when my dad went that they were able to give her her medication and they were able to feed her and to lotion her hands and lotion her legs and clip her nails, comb her hair, make her laugh…”
Blanche Wagner fell ill after Doris Wagner, her youngest child, was born. Her husband dedicated the rest of his life to caring for the family of eight.
Her mother’s condition deteriorated to the point she could no longer contribute to household chores by the time Doris Wagner was a teenager.
A year and a half ago Blanche Wagner, who has been mute for 20 years, moved into permanent care.
Alfred Wagner visited her every day.
Doris Wagner recounted the special bond between her parents and how her mother would smile as she reached up to touch her father’s face.
She remembers her father telling her, “‘That’s the look she gave me when I married her.'”
‘Laugh so hard they would cry’
Alfred Wagner was taking advantage of the time he could finally spend with his grandchildren, sitting with them for hours on the couch watching Looney Tune cartoons.
“Sometimes he would imitate Elmer Fudd and he would pull his pants so far up they were almost under his armpits and he would throw his bottom jaw out and he would put his one tooth over his lip and then he would talk,” Doris Wagner said.
“My boys would laugh so hard they would cry.”
A mechanic by trade who used to work for Suncor, Wagner was also an unofficial plumber, electrician and carpenter among other jobs.
Alfred Wagner celebrates his 83rd birthday. (Provided)
His passion was, and always has been, doing handiwork for his family, friends and neighbours.
Doris Wagner said her father was was often driving in and out of town in his pickup truck on runs to the salvage yard where he would gather odds and ends for future projects.
“His truck was, if you’d seen it, probably the most unique thing. When it drove down the street, people heard the muffler and they knew Fred was driving through town,” she said.
She said that’s probably why no one thought twice, as it made a getaway on the weekend, she said.
Doris Wagner wishes those who drove off in her father’s truck had let him know they needed a ride. She said he would have gone out of his way to find them one.
“That’s what he would have done,” she said.
A funeral for Alfred Wagner will be held Saturday at St. Louis Roman Catholic Church in Bonnyville.