Elizabeth Kraus cried when she found out police were arresting someone for the murder of her sister, Monica Jack, who went missing almost 40 years ago while riding her bike home along Highway 5A near Merritt.

“I was in shock that finally someone was going to pay for what had happened to my sister,” a teary-eyed Kraus told the Herald.

“I thought about her every day, and the pain of her being gone will never go away.

“I still think about her all the time,” the 47-year-old said.

“She never got to get married, never got to graduate.”

In December, RCMP charged 67-year-old Gary Taylor Handlen with first-degree murder in the 1978 death of 12-year-old Monica.

He is also charged in the 1975 murder of Kathryn-Mary Herbert of Abbotsford.

Handlen made his first appearance in court in Abbotsford on Dec. 8.

Kraus, along with other members of Monica’s family, travelled to the courtroom expecting Handlen’s appearance to be made via television monitor.

They gasped when he was brought into the room.

“We all were just astonished,” Kraus said.

“He was an old man — white hair and pot belly. He looked like anybody else.”

The man accused of murdering  Monica will be in court again on March 2.

Now, members of Monica’s family are holding a fundraiser at the Shulus Hall on Feb. 14 to ensure they can be in the courtroom for the trial.

Her hope is to raise money for expenses incurred by travelling to the Lower Mainland for court proceedings.

The Valentine’s Day fundraiser will run from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Kraus, her mother and her aunt Maggie and uncle Francis Shuter — who helped who raise her and her siblings — will be at the Shulus Hall selling Indian tacos with tea for $10.

There are about 15 family members who have travelled to the Coast so far, once for the recent court hearing and once for the press conference with RCMP announcing the charges.

“Everyone comes with us for support,” Kraus said.

Kraus, who has seven siblings, remembers her older sister Monica as a strong, beautiful and outgoing woman.

“She was the kind of person that loved everyone,” Kraus said.

Both born in May, the two were about three years apart in age, and would often go swimming, tobogganing or set up tree forts together.

“We weren’t rich or anything, so we made up things to do,” Kraus said.

Kraus and her sister would even hunt for golf balls to sell back to the nearby golf course.

“We played all the time,” Kraus said.

On May 6, 1978 — the fateful spring day she went missing —  Monica left her home near Nicola Lake on her new bike to go shopping in Merritt.

Nearly 40 years later, Kraus is emotional when she talks about her sister’s disappearance.

“The reason she went to town was because I asked her what she got me for my birthday,” Kraus said through tears.

“She hadn’t got me anything, so she decided she’d go in to town to get it.”

Later that day, Kraus and her mother were on their way to Stoney Lake where she was to have her birthday party.

In the back of her mother’s station wagon, Kraus saw her sister for the last time as they came upon Monica riding her bike back home along the highway.

Their mother asked Monica if she wanted a ride the rest of the way back, but Monica declined the offer, wanting to continue riding her bike the rest of the way.

“She never got there,” Kraus said in a whisper.

After returning from the lake the next morning, Kraus’s brother — who had stayed home — told them Monica hadn’t returned.

Their mother reported her daughter missing to the police, who began a search, as did the family and members of the community.

Kraus said that they searched for Monica for weeks.

Her bike was found down a bank near her home, but she was nowhere to be found.

“Nothing was ever the same again,” Kraus said.

Kraus said that after her sister went missing, she didn’t have the same freedom to go out on her own anymore, and her mother became very protective of her children.

“She was protective of us before, but then she wanted to know where we were all the time until the time I moved out,” Kraus said.

That protectiveness is a trait Kraus said she has with her own two children.

“I watch them like a hawk,” Kraus said.

Monica was about two weeks shy of turning 13 at the time she went missing.

Seventeen years passed before her remains were found on  June 2, 1995 by pure coincidence.

Forestry workers came across bones in a ravine on Swakum Mountain, a few kilometres from Highway 5A.

The bones were confirmed to be human later that month, and police looked up old missing person cases to help identify them.

In February of 1996, through DNA testing and dental records, the bones were confirmed to be those of Monica.

Kraus said that the finding of her sister’s remains was a relief, but it ushered in the same feelings of grief that had plagued her in 1978.

Kraus — in her late 20s at the time — recalled visiting the police station in Merritt in 1996 where she and her sisters were given some of Monica’s clothes police had used to try and track her scent.

Kraus remembers them being shocked by the items in the box.

“They were the clothes of a little girl,” she said.

“I never thought of her like that. She was older than me, she had a strong personality. I never thought of her as a little girl, ever.”

That winter, family members and friends made a trip to the site where Monica had been found.

An indigenous doctor conducted a prayer.

While the group prayed, a gust of wind came up, Kraus recalled, noting it wasn’t a windy day.

“She left then, I think,” Kraus said of her sister.