Finding Graham McMynn: Be the cop during one of Canada’s biggest kidnapping cases

Six years ago Graham McMynn was abducted in a brazen attack by armed men as he was leaving his family home in a wealthy part of south Vancouver.

Several men boxed in McMynn's car near his home and dragged him out at gunpoint and into their vehicle. His stunned girlfriend saw the whole thing as they didn't touch her but did take her cell phone.

The CBC's the fifth estate speaks with the father, the negotiator, cops and journalists in a live interactive edition of the show, which will air Friday. The fifth estate recreates the kidnapping and will let viewers decide what to do to catch the predators. CBC has also set up an interactive site that allows people to be the girlfriend identifying the plates and then be the cops searching for the kidnappers.

You are placed at an officer's desk and follow clues including tracing phone calls, tracing license plates and tailing suspects until you make the call for a series of raids on different house and eventually find McMynn. It seems hard not to make the right call but knowing a person is missing and trying to find him as fast as possible had my heart racing as I navigated through the interactive site.

While the stress of real officers working on this case was probably much higher, it gives regular people a bit of insight into how the police found McMynn and the predators.

In reality, McMynn was stripped, bound with plastic ties, blindfolded with duct tape, threatened with rape and dismemberment and felt a pistol pushed against his head.

Eight days after the kidnapping, police made a breakthrough and launched daring raids to free McMynn. Almost 200 officers from many different units helped in the case, which eventually ended with finding the 23-year-old UBC student in an upscale area of Surrey, a suburb of Vancouver.

"We got him back safely," the proud chief said at a press conference in 2006. "This is an emotional day, an historic day for the Vancouver police...You get one of these cases in a career."

(Screen capture from CBC website)