Thursday, October 29

DNA of Sharon Abraham found on Pickton farm

Police to recommend Pickton be charged for deaths of six more women

The DNA of 32 women has been seized from Pickton’s Port Coquitlam farm.

By LORI CULBERT, Vancouver Sun

October 29, 2009 3:02 PM

Sharon Abraham with her daughters in 1990.

Sharon Abraham with her daughters in 1990.

Photograph by: Teresa Hardy, submitted

METRO VANCOUVER -- Twenty years ago, Sharon Abraham was a “confident, outgoing” woman and the doting mother of two beautiful daughters, her former friend says.

But the RCMP has now confirmed that ongoing testing of evidence seized from serial killer Robert (Willie) Pickton’s farm has found the DNA of Abraham and another missing woman, Stephanie Lane.

The development means the DNA of 32 women has been seized from Pickton’s farm — half the names on a police poster of 64 women who vanished from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside from 1978 to 2001.

Pickton was convicted of killing six of those women, and is charged with killing another 20 — but any second trial is on hold pending the appeal of his first trial.

Abraham and Lane join four other women, Yvonne Boen, Jackie Murdock, Dawn Crey and Nancy Clark, whose DNA police previously said was found on the farm.

RCMP Const. Annie Linteau said the Missing Women Task Force is preparing a report to Crown counsel recommending charges against Pickton for those six women, even though police have been told verbally by the Crown that the charges will likely never be laid.

Linteau said police are still sending the report to conclude their investigation, and to be prepared in case a new trial against Pickton is ordered by the Supreme Court of Canada, which will hear his appeal in March.

“We are sending all the findings of our investigation to the Crown for their consideration, even though we have been told by Crown and the public has been told by Crown they would not proceed with additional charges,” Linteau said.

Crown spokesman Neil Mackenzie said prosecutors will look at the police report when it arrives, but reiterated if Pickton loses his appeal then no additional charges will be taken to trial against the former Port Coquitlam pig farmer, who is serving a life sentence.

The Crown’s decision has disappointed many families.

Very little has ever been published about Abraham, but her friend Teresa Hardy contacted The Vancouver Sun to share memories of her former roommate in happier times.

The two women lived together in 1989, after meeting in a Lower Mainland transition house. Abraham, who had a toddler and a baby, was starting her life over after leaving an abusive relationship.

“She never drank when she was with me, never did drugs. We didn’t go to bars. We did things with the kids,” Hardy said. “She always made sure the kids had diapers. She wasn’t out buying cigarettes and beer. She always made sure the rent was paid and there was food in the house.”

Hardy last saw her friend in 1990, when Abraham and her girls had their own apartment, and was shocked to learn her friend disappeared in 2000.

“The three of them were such a happy family unit,” Hardy said. ... I’d like to tell her kids some day that their mom was pretty cool. It breaks my heart because she loved them so much."

lculbert@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

http://www.vancouversun.com/Police+recommend+Pickton+charged+deaths+more+women/2159939/story.html

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Pickton charges will get “full scrutiny”

Crown says new Pickton charges will get "full scrutiny"

By Suzanne Fournier, The Province

October 29, 2009 6:02 PM

Troy Boen and his aunt -Debra Benning with the last photo of his mom Yvonne Boen, in Benning's Langley home on Wednesday october 28, 2009.Yvonne Boen, (in photo), is one of the missing women, who RCMP confirm will soon be named as subject of "new" murder charges against Pickton, along with five other women.

Troy Boen and his aunt -Debra Benning with the last photo of his mom Yvonne Boen, in Benning's Langley home on Wednesday october 28, 2009.Yvonne Boen, (in photo), is one of the missing women, who RCMP confirm will soon be named as subject of "new" murder charges against Pickton, along with five other women.

Photograph by: Les Bazso, The Province

B.C. criminal justice branch spokesman Neil MacKenzie said Thursday full scrutiny will be given to an anticipated RCMP report recommending six new charges be filed against serial killer Robert Pickton.

“I understand the RCMP will be providing a formal supplementary report with respect to these six counts,” said Mackenzie, a lawyer who speaks for B.C. Crown counsel, in an interview from Victoria.

“The Criminal Justice Branch will look at the material provided by the police and these six additional cases will go through the usual charge assessment process.”

RCMP Cpl. Annie Linteau said this week that police are recommending Pickton be charged with six more murders: Yvonne Boen, last seen in March 2001; Dawn Crey, who would have been 51 last Monday but disappeared in November, 2000; Sharon Abraham, who also disappeared in late 2000; Yvonne Boen, last seen in March 2001; Jacqueline Murdock who vanished in August 1997 and Stephanie Lane, who was 20 when she vanished in 1997, and Nancy Clark, who was last seen in Victoria on Aug. 22, 1991.

All of the women disappeared from Vancouver’s drug-infested Downtown Eastside, except for Clark.

Linteau would not say what evidence led RCMP to recommend the new charges but police labs across Canada still had more than 100,000 forensic samples to process at the time Pickton’s first trial on six charges began in 2007.

In December, 2007, Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin, Brenda Wolfe, Andrea Joesbury, Sereena Abotsway and Mona Wilson.

He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

Last June 25, Pickton’s conviction was upheld by the B.C. Court of Appeal in a 2-1 decision, which gave Pickton the automatic right to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

That appeal is expected to be heard next March. If Pickton’s appeal is dismissed, the B.C. Criminal Justice Branch has made it clear that it will not proceed with an additional 20 murder charges, which were severed in August 2006 from the first trial.

However, MacKenzie said the charge approval process for these six new cases does not have to wait for the outcome of the Supreme Court appeal.

Linteau noted the RCMP’s recommendation was made “out of an abundance of caution” so that Crown counsel would be ready to immediately file up to 32 murder charges against Pickton, if his appeal should succeed.

© Copyright (c) The Province

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Six more charges likely for Pickton

Recommendations going to prosecutors to pursue cases of missing women

Suzanne Fournier, The Province: Thursday, October 29, 2009 9:58 AM

New RCMP evidence has police recommending charges against Robert Pickton in the cases of six more missing women (clockwise from top left): Yvonne Boen, Dawn Crey, Stephanie Lane, Nancy Clark, Sharon Abraham and Jacqueline Murdock.

New RCMP evidence has police recommending charges against Robert Pickton in the cases of six more missing women (clockwise from top left): Yvonne Boen, Dawn Crey, Stephanie Lane, Nancy Clark, Sharon Abraham and Jacqueline Murdock.

Photo Credit: Handouts, RCMP

The RCMP are recommending that six new first-degree murder charges be filed against convicted serial killer Robert Pickton.

"We're in the process of sending a report to Crown counsel for their consideration. We're recommending six more charges related to Robert Pickton and the Port Coquitlam property," RCMP spokeswoman Cpl. Annie Linteau told The Province Wednesday.

Linteau noted that all six women appear on the police task force's official list of 63 missing women. Pickton, now 60, was not charged in connection with the death of these six, who went missing between January 1997 and March 2001.

Linteau listed the women as: Yvonne Boen, born on Nov. 30, 1967, who was last seen March 2001; Dawn Crey, whose birthday was Oct. 26, 1958, and was last seen in November 2000; Sharon Abraham, whose date of birth was Sept. 15, 1965, and went missing in December 2000; Stephanie Lane, born on May 28, 1976, who went missing Jan. 10, 1997; and Jacqueline Murdock, born Jan. 28, 1971, and was last seen in August 1997.

Those five women, all of whom were mothers, went missing from Vancouver's drug-infested Downtown Eastside The sixth woman, Nancy Clark, who was born July 29, 1966, was last seen Aug. 22, 1991, in Victoria.

The news that the RCMP will finally recommend charges was cathartic to some of the women's family members.

Yvonne Boen's son, Troy Boen, 23, exploded in anger and relief when told of the RCMP's decision.

"About f---ing time, but why did it take them so long?" demanded Troy, who was the last member of his family to see his mother alive.

"My mum deserves her day in court . . . I'm glad the RCMP are finally saying Pickton should be charged with my mum's death." Troy, the eldest of Boen's three sons, attended many gruelling days of Pickton's long trial in B.C. Supreme Court.

In December 2007, Pickton was convicted of counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin, Sereena Abotsway, Brenda Wolfe and Mona Wilson. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

Troy Boen was also present when three B.C. Appeal Court judge's upheld Pickton's conviction last June 25 in a 2-1 split decision that also gave Pickton the automatic right to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

That appeal is expected to be heard this spring. If the appeal is dismissed, B.C.'s Criminal Justice Branch has made it clear that it will not proceed with an additional 20 murder charges, which were severed in August 2006 from the first trial.

Linteau said that the RCMP is recommending another six new charges be laid now "out of an abundance of caution." "We are carrying on with the assumption there could be further judicial proceedings and we are putting everything that could be done back on the table, rather than being unprepared if further trials are required." Should Pickton's appeal be upheld by Canada's top court, prosecutors would move quickly to ask for a new trial on all 32 murder charges.

Linteau said families of all six women have been told in the past that their loved one's DNA was "tied to the Pickton farm," but they won't be officially notified yet of possible charges "because it is up to the Crown to decide whether to proceed." A massive RCMP-Vancouver Police Department task force began searching the ramshackle Pickton pig farm in Port Coquitlam in February 2002.

On Feb. 22, 2002, Pickton was charged with the first two murders of what would become a lengthy list of 26 homicides.

The vehicle-strewn farm, full of human and animal burial sites, was examined by experts down to bedrock, and Pickton soon gained the notorious reputation of being Canada's worst accused serial killer.

Debra Benning was a longtime friend of Boen who believes Pickton should be "held accountable" for Yvonne's death.

"In my heart, I know she's gone, but I think everyone should know if Pickton was responsible," said Benning.

Ernie Crey, a Sto:lo Nation leader, has fought tirelessly for justice for his troubled sister Dawn, whose DNA was confirmed on the Pickton farm in 2004 but whose name was left off the list of those who Pickton would be charged with murdering.

"There's never emotional, psychological or spiritual closure for any of the family members of the missing women, we're always left with the history and the loss of our loved ones, but I am still seeking legal closure," said Crey.

Jacqueline Murdock, a Carrier First Nation mother of four, is still mourned by her large family, said her aunt Elizabeth Murdock, 68, in an interview from Fort St. James.

"It's good if they charge that man finally with Jackie's death. We all want answers."

© Copyright (c) CW Media Inc.

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RCMP to recommend six more murder charges against Robert Pickton

Police will ask B.C. Crown prosecutors to move ahead although appeal on conviction of six second-degree murder charges will not be heard until March.

Robert Matas

Vancouver — Globe and Mail Update Published on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009 1:56PM EDT Last updated on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2009 2:31PM EDT

The RCMP intends to recommend six additional murder charges against convicted killer Robert Pickton, RCMP spokesperson Corporal Annie Linteau says.

In a surprising development in the sensational murder case, Cpl. Linteau said this morning that the RCMP intends to ask B.C. Crown prosecutors to move ahead with more charges against Mr. Pickton although the appeal on his conviction of six second-degree murder charges will not be heard until next March. Crown prosecutors have said they will not consider other charges until the appeal has been resolved.

“Even though we have been informed by the Crown, verbally, that they would not be proceeding with the six [new] charges . . . we are still sending a report to crown counsel to complete the process. We still have a responsibility to fully investigate these cases and send the Crown all the information,” Cpl. Linteau said.

“Of course, we are fully aware and cognizant of what Crown said publicly,” she added.

“But by not sending that information [to Crown prosecutors], it could leave us, the police, unprepared and Crown [prosecutors] not fully informed, should further trials be required.”

The new charges to be recommended by the police would be for the alleged first degree-murder of the following six women:

- Yvonne Boen, who was 33 years old when she was last seen on March 16 or 17, 2001;

- Sharon Abraham, who was 35 when last seen when last seen in December, 2000;

- Dawn Crey, when was 42 when last seen on November 1, 2000;

- Jacqueline Murdock, who was 26 when last seen when last seen on August 14, 1997;

- Stephanie Lane, who was 20 when last seen on January 19, 1997;

- Nancy Clarke, who was 25 when last seen on August 22, 1991;

Cpl. Linteau said the DNA of the six women was located on the farm. The women were associated with Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, were involved in prostitution and were dependent on alcohol or drugs.

She added that the decision to lay criminal charges in B.C. is made by Crown prosecutors, not by police. The recommendation to lay charges has not yet been sent, she also said. She did not know when the RCMP report would be sent.

Gil McKinnon, Mr. Pickton's lawyer in his appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, refused to comment.

Peter Wilson, Mr. Pickton's trial lawyer, was not available this morning for an interview.

Mr. Pickton was convicted of second-degree murder of Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Andrea Joesbury, Marnie Frey, Brenda Wolfe and Georgina Papin. The women disappeared between 1997 and 2001. Mr. Pickton is also charged with the murder of 20 additional women.

Crown prosecutors have said they will not proceed with the 20 additional charges if Mr. Pickton's conviction is upheld at the Supreme Court.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/rcmp-to-recommend-six-more-murder-charges-against-robert-pickton/article1344004/

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Pickton faces 6 more charges


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Monday, October 26

They are the keepers of the flame for more than 500 missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada

Sisters of Spirit shines a light on missing aboriginal women

Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service: Monday, October 26, 2009 3:52 PM

Strengthening the Spirit, a committee of service providers that works to meet the needs of Aboriginal people affected by domestic and sexual violence, hosted their annual conference on March 26, 2009. Speakers (left) Bernice Williams-Poitras, and (right) Gladys Radek shared stories of their own and others who have lost family and friends.

Strengthening the Spirit, a committee of service providers that works to meet the needs of Aboriginal people affected by domestic and sexual violence, hosted their annual conference on March 26, 2009. Speakers (left) Bernice Williams-Poitras, and (right) Gladys Radek shared stories of their own and others who have lost family and friends.

Photo Credit: Dean Bicknell, Calgary Herald

RELATED

They are the keepers of the flame for more than 500 missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada. And their crusade has become - for the moment, anyway - the whole country's crusade.

From a cramped, west-end Ottawa office decorated with dream catchers and infused with hope, the place where a great divide is bridged between hundreds of grieving communities across Canada and the powers that be on Parliament Hill, a small team of researchers and outreach workers is trying hard not to say: "We told you so."

But the people behind Sisters in Spirit, a five-year, federally funded initiative launched in 2005 by the Native Women's Association of Canada, have been saying all along what most Canadians are just now waking up to after a recent media blitz about murdered and missing women in Western Canada.

They've been telling Canadians that the dead and disappeared are almost everywhere across the country; that there is no single serial killer at work, except apathy; that the tragedy runs deep into the history of aboriginal dispossession and discrimination; that jurisdictional tangles and cultural blind spots help explain why so many killings and so many vanished women have been relegated to the cold-case file.

Among the startling statistics that Sisters in Spirit researchers have compiled - apart from the group's showcase figure of 520 missing or murdered Canadian aboriginal women since about 1970 - is that the toll would be equivalent to 18,000 dead or disappeared women from all ethnic groups for all of Canada.

The awareness of such facts is only dawning nationwide after a late-August splash of publicity about one of the 18 disappeared women along B.C.'s "Highway of Tears," and a coincident push by Manitoba police to re-energize a probe into the murders of two native women in Winnipeg.

The alarm blared again in early October when vigils were held across the country - including one on Parliament Hill - to remember the lost and to demand, yet again, more resources and more action to solve old cases and prevent new ones.

"We're dealing with a very marginalized, vulnerable community - I call it the cycle of distress," says Sisters in Spirit director Kate Rexe. "It's not just about violence. It's health issues, housing issues, economic security, drug and alcohol abuse, mental health, racism, and all of those social factors that create a situation of being marginalized or vulnerable."

The cruel irony, notes Rexe, is that it took renewed interest in the fate of the only white woman among the 18 who went missing along a lonely stretch of B.C.'s infamous Hwy. 16 - Red Deer student Nicole Hoar - to finally prompt broader questions and revelations about the national tragedy unfolding among Canada's native women.

Hoar's disappearance "put the Highway of Tears on the map," says Rexe, but the "17 other aboriginal women" were given footnote status.

And there's more cruel irony. Just when the message Sisters in Spirit has been spreading for years may finally be sinking in with politicians and Canadians in general, the project itself is facing a fight for survival - a potential victim of divided funding priorities.

Rexe and the eight other Sisters in Spirit employees at the Native Women's Association of Canada headquarters have applied for a fresh, five-year mandate and another $1-million-a-year funding promise from the current Conservative government. But they've been waiting months for federal approval of the project's next phase.

The funding commitment would match the original 2005 outlay made by Paul Martin's Liberal government and, says Sisters in Spirit, help the group sustain the momentum behind its research, prevention and publicity initiatives.

Those initiatives include tool kits - distributed to native communities throughout the country - to combat sexism, promote safety-conscious behaviour and generally help prevent violence against women.

But as a measure of the relentless sorrow gripping many aboriginal communities, another Sisters in Spirit tool kit offers grieving families advice on dealing with police and the media after a loved one has disappeared or been murdered.

"The best part about going to the communities is that we let them know this is a larger problem," says Sisters in Spirit outreach co-ordinator Jennifer Lord. "We go in as a third-party to say no, you're not alone. Trust me. Communities across the board are going through this. Urban, rural, aboriginal, non-aboriginal communities."

The driving force behind the creation of Sisters in Spirit, former Native Women's Association of Canada president Terri Brown, had been spurred by personal tragedy: the beating death of her own sister, Ada Elaine, in 2001.

"How many more of our sisters have to die before it matters?" she said at the time. "I guess people think, 'Just another dead Indian.' But she was our baby sister. She mattered to us."

In January 2008, Brown's successor - ex-Native Women's Association of Canada president Beverley Jacobs, who left the post in September - was also touched by a family tragedy. Her cousin, 21-year-old Tashina General from the Six Nations native community near Brantford, Ont., disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

At a police press conference to rally search efforts, Jacobs said: "I have been following stories like this for years, but this time I'm personally involved. I'd never thought it would ever affect me. We just want to know that she's safe."

But General wasn't safe. Her body, pregnant with the unborn son she'd planned to name Tucker, was found in the area that April.

Tashina General's biography is now part of a growing Sisters in Spirit library of heart-wrenching but inspiring "life stories" - published accounts of the achievements, qualities and unfulfilled promise of the lost.

The spectre of unfulfilled promise now haunts Sisters in Spirit itself.

The uncertainty about the group's future has arisen amid rumours that federal funding could be cut or dispersed more broadly - and less effectively, Rexe argues - among dozens of groups combating violence across the country.

Even further delays this fall before Sisters in Spirit's financial future is clarified means that the organization - even if funds finally come through next spring - "could potentially go for a year without funding and lose the continuity and staff and the knowledge," says Rexe. "We're in a very tricky position."

The government, so far, is providing expressions of support for the "great work" being done by Sisters in Spirit but no clear comment on the organization's fate as the end of its funding draws near.

The uncertainty has emerged despite the fact that Status of Women Minister Helena Guergis has repeatedly highlighted Sisters in Spirit's achievements to rebuff opposition charges that the Conservative government is doing too little to deal with Canada's epidemic of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Liberal MP Anita Neville, the party's critic on women's issues, has called for a national investigation into the high rate of missing and murdered native women, and for stronger measures from the "so-called tough-on-crime" Tory government to combat human trafficking - the suspected crime behind some cases of missing aboriginal women.

In response, Guergis has hailed Sisters in Spirit as "an example of a partnership that works to create tangible benefits" for aboriginal women.

"Sisters in Spirit aims at quantifying the actual number of missing and murdered women by understanding the root causes of racialized and sexualized violence, and by implementing a public awareness strategy," she said in August, acknowledging that the group's $5-million allocation runs out in 2010.

She expressed similar sentiments in response to the October vigils: "We absolutely support the great work that Sisters in Spirit has done," Guergis said.

Sisters in Spirit, created by a Liberal government and kept alive - so far - by Conservatives, maintains a decidedly non-partisan posture.

But its director persists in asking hard questions of investigators and all parties and governments - federal, provincial and territorial - when it comes to the disturbing numbers of missing and murdered native women that the group generates in its yearly reports.

"Has there been a bias of some sort against aboriginal women?" Rexe wonders. "Have there been gaps that have essentially ignored the red flags and the warning signs when a woman goes missing or has been murdered?"

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

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Sisters lead hunt for native justice

By Randy Boswell, Calgary Herald

October 25, 2009

Laura Florez, from left, Jennifer King, Kate Rexe, Jennifer Lord, Katharine Irngaut, Mallory Whiteduck and Joshua Kirkey of Sisters in Spirit, an Ottawa-based group raising awareness about native women who've disappeared, is also working to prevent further disappearances.

Laura Florez, from left, Jennifer King, Kate Rexe, Jennifer Lord, Katharine Irngaut, Mallory Whiteduck and Joshua Kirkey of Sisters in Spirit, an Ottawa-based group raising awareness about native women who've disappeared, is also working to prevent further disappearances.

Photograph by: Jean Levac, Canwest News Service, Calgary Herald

They are the keepers of the flame for more than 500 missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada. And their crusade has become--for the moment, anyway--the whole country's crusade.

From a cramped, west-end Ottawa office decorated with dream catchers and infused with hope, the place where a great divide is bridged between hundreds of grieving communities across Canada and the powers that be on Parliament Hill, a small team of researchers and outreach workers is trying hard not to say: "We told you so."

But the people behind Sisters in Spirit, a five-year, federally funded initiative launched in 2005 by the Native Women's Association of Canada, have been saying all along what most Canadians are just now waking up to after a recent media blitz about murdered and missing women in Western Canada.

They've been telling Canadians that the dead and disappeared are almost everywhere across the country; that there is no single serial killer at work, except apathy; that the tragedy runs deep into the history of aboriginal dispossession and discrimination; that jurisdictional tangles and cultural blind spots help explain why so many killings and so many vanished women have been relegated to the cold-case file.

Among the startling statistics that Sisters in Spirit researchers have compiled--apart from the group's showcase figure of 520 missing or murdered aboriginal women since about 1970--is that the toll would be equivalent to 18,000 dead or disappeared women from all ethnic groups for all of Canada.

The awareness of such information is only dawning nationwide after a late-August splash of publicity about one of the 18 disappeared women along B.C.'s "Highway of Tears," and a coincident push by Manitoba police to re-energize a probe into the murders of two native women in Winnipeg.

The alarm blared again in early October when vigils were held across the country--including one on Parliament Hill--to remember the lost and to demand, yet again, more resources and more action to solve old cases and prevent new ones.

"We're dealing with a very marginalized, vulnerable community -- I call it the cycle of distress," says Sisters in Spirit director Kate Rexe. "It's not just about violence. It's health issues, housing issues, economic security, drug and alcohol abuse, mental health, racism, and all of those social factors that create a situation of being marginalized or vulnerable."

The cruel irony, notes Rexe, is that it took renewed interest in the fate of the only white woman among the 18 who went missing along a lonely stretch of B.C.'s infamous Highway 16 --Red Deer student Nicole Hoar-- to finally prompt broader questions and revelations about the tragedy unfolding among native women.

Hoar's disappearance "put the Highway of Tears on the map," says Rexe, but the "17 other aboriginal women" were given footnote status.

And there's more cruel irony. Just when the message Sisters in Spirit has been spreading for years may finally be sinking in with politicians and Canadians, the project itself is facing a fight for survival -- a potential victim of divided funding priorities.

Rexe and the eight other Sisters in Spirit employees at the Native Women's Association of Canada headquarters have applied for a fresh, five-year mandate and another $1-million-a-year funding promise from Ottawa. But they've been waiting months for approval.

The funding commitment would match the original 2005 outlay and, says Sisters in Spirit, help the group sustain the momentum behind its research, prevention and publicity initiatives.

Those initiatives include tool kits --distributed to native communities-- to combat sexism, promote safety-conscious behaviour and generally help prevent violence against women.

But as a measure of the relentless sorrow gripping many aboriginal communities, another Sisters in Spirit tool kit offers grieving families advice on dealing with police and the media after a loved one has disappeared or been murdered.

"The best part about going to the communities is that we let them know this is a larger problem," says Sisters in Spirit outreach co-ordinator Jennifer Lord. "We go in as a third-party to say no, you're not alone."

The driving force behind the creation of Sisters in Spirit, former Native Women's Association of Canada president Terri Brown, had been spurred by personal tragedy: the beating death of her own sister, Ada Elaine, in 2001.

"How many more of our sisters have to die before it matters?" she said at the time. "I guess people think, 'Just another dead Indian.' But she was our baby sister. She mattered to us."

In January 2008, Brown's successor --ex-Native Women's Association of Canada president Beverley Jacobs, who left the post in September--was also touched by a family tragedy. Her cousin, Tashina General, 21, from the Six Nations native community near Brantford, Ont., disappeared.

At a police news conference to rally search efforts, Jacobs said: "I have been following stories like this for years. . . . I'd never thought it would ever affect me. We just want to know that she's safe."

But General wasn't safe. Her body, pregnant with the unborn son she'd planned to name Tucker, was found that April.

Tashina General's biography is now part of a growing Sisters in Spirit library of heart-wrenching but inspiring "life stories"--published accounts of the achievements, qualities and unfulfilled promise of the lost.

The spectre of unfulfilled promise now haunts Sisters in Spirit itself.

The uncertainty about the group's future has arisen amid rumours that federal funding could be cut or dispersed more broadly -- and less effectively, Rexe argues -- among dozens of groups combating violence across the country.

The government, so far, is providing expressions of support for the "great work" being done by Sisters in Spirit but no clear comment on the organization's fate.

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald

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Wednesday, October 21

Hope remains

By Florence Loyie, Edmonton Journal

October 21, 2009

Delores Dawn Brower told people she had a plan to get off the streets she had worked on for close to 15 years. The 33-year-old woman disappeared in May 2004. Her family reported her missing in October 2005, and since then they have waited for news.

Delores Dawn Brower told people she had a plan to get off the streets she had worked on for close to 15 years. The 33-year-old woman disappeared in May 2004. Her family reported her missing in October 2005, and since then they have waited for news.

Photograph by: Edmonton Journal, Canwest News Service

EDMONTON — Hope. It is the only thing the families of Edmonton's missing women have left.

Hope that their missing loved ones simply decided to leave their former lives behind and start new ones somewhere else, without telling anyone of their plans.

Hope that one day they will return, even though the chances of that happening are remote.

Delores Dawn Brower told people she had a plan to get off the streets she had worked on for close to 15 years. The 33-year-old woman disappeared in May 2004. Her family reported her missing in October 2005, and since then they have waited for news.

Brower is one of three Edmonton sex-trade workers listed as missing with the RCMP's Project Kare. There are at least eight other women listed as missing with the Edmonton Police Service, nine if you count seven-year-old Tania Murrell, who disappeared on Jan. 20, 1983, while walking home from her elementary school for lunch.

Those listed with Project Kare lived high-risk lifestyles. Brower was the third sex-trade worker to go missing in 2004. Corrie Renee Ottenbreit, 27, went missing on May 9 and Maggie Lee Burke, 23, disappeared on Dec. 4.

"We are still hopeful that Miss Ottenbreit has chosen to make a change in her lifestyle and, after seeing this in the media, will pick up the phone and call investigators," Cpl. Wayne Oakes, spokesman for RCMP K-Division, said at the time of her disappearance.

"We also have to, however, face reality and investigate other avenues along with this."

One year after Burke was listed as missing, there were rumours she had been seen walking along a street in Vancouver. There was hope the five-foot-seven woman with a marijuana leaf tattoo on her upper left arm might be found, although Project Kare investigators have long believed foul play led to her disappearance.

Although Sangeet Khanna is listed with the EPS missing persons unit, investigators think the 41-year-old single mother was killed and her body dumped somewhere along the highway between Edmonton and Meadow Lake, Sask.

Khanna disappeared on April 17, 2006. That evening she told her 15-year-old son she was going to the bank and would bring some ice cream when she returned. Police found her vehicle in a bank parking lot after her son notified them of her disappearance the next morning.

Michelle Louise Mercer, 46, was a street person with no fixed address whose life was written up in articles by Alberta Vue Magazine and Reader's Digest. Both articles were published within days of her disappearance on Feb. 6, 2009.

Police have no idea what happened to her.

"I haven't seen Michelle Mercer in the downtown inner city in a long while," a friend posted on the Unsolved Murders/Missing Persons Canada website. "I hope she has taken off somewhere, and living a better life."

Annette Margaret Holywhiteman was reported missing to police last March by a social service agency. The 41-year-old was known to lead a high-risk lifestyle and has not been seen since Aug. 25, 2008.

Downtown resident Diana Gregory, 44, never showed up at her sister's home as planned on Feb. 26, 2006 and has had no contact with family since. Foul play is not suspected in her disappearance, but the woman who also went by the nickname Daya did require medication for an illness.

Rene Lynn Gunning, 19, and 16-year-old Krystle Ann Julia Knott were not from Edmonton, but the teenagers are believed to have last been seen together at West Edmonton Mall on Feb. 18, 2005. They told friends they were hitchhiking back to British Columbia. The teens are not believed to be involved in prostitution, but the files of both girls were added to Project Kare's caseload in July 2007.

Kamloops mother Glendene Grant has not given up hope she will find her missing daughter, although she admits that after more than three years she is "not one step closer to finding Jessie."

Jessica Foster was 21 when she disappeared in March 2006, four months after moving to Las Vegas. Jessie told her parents she was engaged to a man who was a "trust-fund baby," but Grant later found out Jessie was working as prostitute for an escort agency and the "fiance" was actually a pimp. Foster, who was born and raised in Calgary, is currently listed by the FBI as a missing person.

Grant has created a website dedicated to Jessie, a Facebook page and done numerous media interviews. She has posted YouTube videos and montages, made countless calls to police investigators and armed herself with as much information as she can find on the issue of human trafficking, because she is convinced Jessie was a victim.

"I have decided that if I can't find her, I can at least tell the world about her. If I can't do anything more for Jessie, I can keep her name alive," said Grant.

Grant said she will never give hope that Jessie will be found. "I don't want to ever give up on getting her back. Even if she is not alive, we want her back home."

Edmonton Journal

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

Maggie Lee Burke

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Everywhere on Internet, but still missing

By Sherri Zickefoose, Calgary Herald

October 21, 2009

Calgary-born Jessie Foster was 21 when she disappeared in March 2006, four months after moving to Las Vegas.

Calgary-born Jessie Foster was 21 when she disappeared in March 2006, four months after moving to Las Vegas.

Photograph by: Calgary Herald, Canwest News Service

CALGARY — Glendene Grant's days begin around 3:30 a.m. by typing her daughter's name into online search engines and monitoring dozens of websites devoted to missing women.

Daughter Jessie Foster may have vanished in the underbelly of Las Vegas in 2006, but her presence on the Internet is inescapable.

"She's to me the most well-known, unknown missing person in the world," said Grant, who has created nearly a dozen websites in her daughter's name. She adds Foster's photograph and story to every missing persons list and forum she can find.

Calgary-born Foster was 21 when she disappeared in March 2006, four months after moving to Las Vegas.

Grant believes her daughter is caught up in a human trafficking ring, lured to glamorous Las Vegas by a recruiter who helped turn Foster into a sex slave.

Before her abrupt disappearance, Foster painted a picture of happiness to her parents. She told them she was engaged to a wealthy man, Peter Todd, who drove fast cars and lived in a fancy house in north Vegas. She phoned often and came back to Canada for visits.

Grant eventually learned her daughter's so-called fiance was a pimp with a prior conviction for spousal assault, and that Foster was working as prostitute for an escort agency.

Foster had twice been arrested for solicitation in 2005.

Prior to her disappearance Foster travelled to Nevada, New York and Florida with high school friend Donald Vaz. She called home and said he asked her to earn funds turning tricks because he gambled his money away.

Despite her work in the prostitution trade, Foster kept in touch with family unfailingly, Grant says.

In March 2006, Foster called home to announce she was coming to Kamloops for a visit in a few days and on to Calgary for her stepsister's wedding.

She never arrived.

March 28, 2006, was the last day Foster was seen alive. Since then, Foster's credit cards and bank accounts haven't been touched.

Her frequently used cellphone hasn't been used.

All of these clues are leading Grant to the same horrible conclusion and she is doing everything she can to keep Foster's story alive.

"I want her to be Canada's poster child for human trafficking. It's a symbol of the whole thing. Human trafficking needs to take on a face so people will remember," says Grant.

"Whether she's back or still missing, whether she's alive or not alive, she's already helped a lot of other people start talking about this."

Her website, www.jessiefoster.ca, and YouTube montages offer a $50,000 reward for information about Foster's whereabouts.

She spends hours every day trying to track down leads.

"We're slowly getting Jessie's case saturated around the world. I write enough stories and tag her enough that her name is alive out there."

Grant says she doesn't want to think about her daughter's death, because she wants to focus on finding her alive.

"I think the absolute worst is knowing you're never going to see your child again. But I think I will see Jessie again. I know I will."

Calgary detectives have an average case load of 3,200 missing person reports each year, but "99 per cent of those people are found or find their way home," said Det. John Hebert of the Calgary Police Service major crimes unit.

Calgary simply doesn't have a number of unsolved high-profile cases of local women disappearing under sinister circumstances.

"We're certainly not seeing them. In terms of missing persons we're seeing resolutions of the vast majority of cases as opposed to having a great number of outstanding ones," said Hebert.

"The vast majority of our outstanding missing persons that are reported are resolved in one way or another in a reasonably timely manner."

szickefoose@theherald.canwest.com

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

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‘I love you’ – a missing mother’s last words to her son

By Lori Culbert, Vancouver Sun

October 21, 2009

It has now been more than three years since anyone — her husband of 30 years, her three siblings, her five children — has seen Shirley Cletheroe, who vanished June 9, 2006.

It has now been more than three years since anyone — her husband of 30 years, her three siblings, her five children — has seen Shirley Cletheroe, who vanished June 9, 2006.

Photograph by: Vancouver Sun, Canwest News Service

VANCOUVER — Back in June 2006, Shirley Cletheroe was raising her five children, working at a mill in Fort St. John, and leading a middle-class life.

One night she didn't come home after attending a house party. At first, family members thought she was staying at her sister's place, which she did from time to time. Then she didn't show up for work.

It has now been more than three years since anyone — her husband of 30 years, her three siblings, her five children — has seen the aboriginal woman, who vanished June 9, 2006.

Cletheroe's file is classified as a missing person's case, although police say foul play has not been ruled out.

Cletheroe, 45 years old when she vanished, is one of more than 1,500 women across Canada — many of them aboriginal — who the RCMP has classified as missing.

Perhaps because there are so many of these women, or perhaps because British Columbia just lived through the Robert (Willie) Pickton murder trial, there has been little media attention to Cletheroe's case.

But she, like every other woman who has disappeared, leaves behind a trail of tears and questions.

"My dad's had a hard time since my mom went missing. For him to work and try to keep the family together is challenging," said Brent Cletheroe, Shirley's oldest child.

"My little sister just had her 14th birthday."

Brent Cletheroe, 29, said his faith in God has given him comfort over the last three years as he has grappled with dread and doubt.

"My brothers and sisters have wept on my shoulder and said, 'I know God is looking out for us,'" said Cletheroe, who is a youth pastor at the Fort St. John Pentecostal church and the Zamboni driver at the local ice rink.

The last time Brent spoke to his mother was just a few days before she vanished.

"She phoned and said, 'I love you.' It was really random. I said, 'I know you love me, Mom,'" he recalled. "She said, 'That girl that you're dating . . . That's the one that you need to marry.' My mom had never said that about any of my girlfriends. She said, 'I love you.' And that's the last time I heard her voice."

Brent, who did marry his girlfriend and is now the father of a one-year-old daughter, said his mother was a loving but no-nonsense parent who raised her children while their father worked on oil rigs. She would be proud today, he said, to see his four siblings navigating through life's difficult obstacles.

"In every single one of their lives, I can say I see her in them. And I know they have what I have, what has steered me through the hard times on my path in life. And I owe it all to my mother," he said.

His mother, he said, does not fit the stereotypical profile that many people think of when they hear about an aboriginal woman going missing: she was not a drug user or a sex-trade worker.

She was, however, going through a depression and drinking a bit too much in the weeks before she vanished, he said. The family does not believe Cletheroe disappeared intentionally, but that something bad happened to her at the house party she attended across the street from her sister's house — the last place any one saw her alive.

Brent Cletheroe said he understands his mother had an argument with the owner of the home where the party was held, who the family claims meticulously cleaned up his house and car after the party. However, Brent said police will only tell the family that the case is under investigation, a response he finds frustrating.

"It's three years now and (the police) have given up, really. That's how we feel."

The RCMP appealed to the public for more tips in the case in June, saying they had followed all the leads they had received from the family and the public.

"Nobody just disappears. I think there's somebody out there that has information that can help us. I think somebody could have heard something," said Fort St. John RCMP Const. Jackelynn Passarell.

"There is hope that this can be solved, but it will require that piece of information to come forward."

She said Cletheroe is still considered a missing person, unless "hard fact evidence" is uncovered to suggest otherwise.

"Because foul play hasn't been ruled out, that means it is something that might have occurred here, so we have to keep all avenues of investigation open," Passarell said.

She would not say whether police believe Cletheroe is still alive.

Officers have conducted numerous searches, some in the rural areas surrounding Fort St. John.

"Shirley's family has been holding on for three years, just having that looming question: Where is Shirley? We'd like to solve that for them," Passarell added.

Brent Cletheroe maintains some hope that his mother may still be alive but he cannot, he said, be consumed by "the anxiety of always wondering if she is going to call." Through his faith in God, he has also found the ability to face the fact she may never come home.

He does not, however, have the strength to join other members of his family, who have conducted their own searches of forests and rivers looking for clues.

"I would never want to find my mom like that . . . I apologized (to my auntie) that I was not a part of it, but I was not strong enough," he said. "I have peace. I know that we've done all that we can do."

lculbert@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

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Families of missing women march on

By Suzanne Fournier, The Province

October 21, 2009

Tamara Chipman was just 22 when she disappeared while trying to hitchhike along Highway 16.

Tamara Chipman was just 22 when she disappeared while trying to hitchhike along Highway 16.

Photograph by: The Province, Canwest News Service

VANCOUVER — Despite the striking colours along B.C.'s northern Highway 16, fall is not a good time for the grieving family that on Sept. 21 marked the fourth anniversary of the disappearance of Tamara Chipman.

Chipman, just 22 when she disappeared while trying to hitchhike along Highway 16 from Prince Rupert to her home in Terrace, was an attractive, tall, slim young woman who "could have been a model, she could have had the world wrapped around her finger," says her aunt Gladys Radek.

"Tamara had a black belt in ju-jitsu — she was a strong woman who adored her little boy, but she was also really loving and compassionate and supported me through the toughest time of my life.

"There's not a day goes by that I don't think of Tamara, but this time of year is especially hard because it was when she disappeared and it's also (her) birthday in October, which is the same day as my daughter Rachel."

Radek has kept the memory of Chipman alive with tireless activism on behalf of her niece and the dozens of women who Radek says have disappeared or been found murdered along B.C.'s lonely northern Yellowhead Highway, the 16 West which runs between Prince George and Prince Rupert, B.C.

So many women have vanished in the last two decades that the Yellowhead has been dubbed the Highway of Tears. RCMP doubled its official number of missing women to 18 in October 2007, but activists like Radek say the real number of missing women is far higher.

She puts the Highway of Tears toll at 46 women. Police recognize 13 deaths and five unsolved disappearances for a total of 18 women vanished on northern highways.

For the last two years, Radek and a small group of activists have led the Walk For Justice — in 2008 from Vancouver to Ottawa, and in 2009, a 1,500-kilometre trek from Vancouver to Terrace, B.C. — to get political action and a more active police investigation into the hundreds of missing women who have vanished without a trace in B.C.

The Sisters in Spirit report, released in March, found that the majority of missing or murdered women cases occurred in B.C., identifying a total of 137 cases or 26 per cent of the national average. It's one of the reasons why Radek, a grandmother of five and a Wet'suwet'en First Nation member, has become so vocal in standing up for the rights of missing women, the majority of whom are aboriginal.

On Oct. 4, Radek held up a photo of Tamara at the waterfront Crab Park, close to where dozens more women vanished in Vancouver's ugly Downtown Eastside, 26 of them now believed to be the victims of Canada's worst serial killer, Robert William Pickton.

Pickton, 56, was convicted on Dec. 9, 2007 of six counts of second-degree murder involving women who disappeared from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside: Mona Wilson, Brenda Wolfe, Sereena Abotsway, Andrea Joesbury, Marnie Frey and Georgina Papin.

He still faces trial on another 20 counts of first-degree murder, but the Crown does not plan to proceed on that second trial if Pickton's convictions are upheld by the Supreme Court of Canada, which has set a tentative date of next March 25 to begin hearing the Pickton appeal of his first set of convictions.

The 20-count indictment has been set down for trial on Sept. 13, 2010, although the B.C. Criminal Justice Branch has made it clear that if Pickton's appeal is denied, it will not proceed with the trial on 20 more charges.

That is a decision that has angered families of the 20 victims, but there is also an even more grim category in which the RCMP have identified another six victims.

They are women whose DNA was found in the exhaustive forensic search of the Pickton farm, but neither Pickton nor anyone else has been charged in their deaths.

Another 39 women remain on the list of unsolved disappearances of women who were drug-addicted and worked in the Downtown Eastside's sex trade, says RCMP spokeswoman Cpl. Annie Linteau.

It is for all the women — missing, murdered, remembered or forgotten by authorities — that Radek marches, but Tamara is always close to the top of her mind.

As the cool autumn weather lead to shorter days and fainter hopes, Tamara Chipman's family is recalling for the fourth fall the "sassy" young woman, who had a smile to light up the darkest corners.

"We won't accept that she's gone, and we find it really hard to believe the RCMP have really put a lot of time lately into investigating her disappearance," says Radek. "As we walked across the country, and along the Highway of Tears for the last two years, we felt people's pain and saw their tears — so many came to tell us that they had a missing daughter or mum or sister that the police had never listed as missing.

"The real number of missing and murdered women, the vast majority of them First Nations, has got to be Canada's national disgrace."

When the RCMP began searching a rural northern property this summer, after a tip that Nicole Hoar's remains might lie there, it awoke memories of the Pickton farm search launched in 2002, that turned up dozens of human remains.

That search is complete, but RCMP won't say what they found.

"They haven't said there was nothing there, either, which brings back pretty awful fears for all of us family members," says Radek.

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

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‘I miss my daughter’

By Barb Pacholik, Regina Leader-Post

October 21, 2009

Patsy Favel disappeared from the lives of her mother and son on Sept. 30, 1984, four days after Cody’s first birthday.

Patsy Favel disappeared from the lives of her mother and son on Sept. 30, 1984, four days after Cody’s first birthday.

Photograph by: Regina Leader-Post, Canwest News Service

REGINA — Time is fixed in the photo — an attractive, young mother proudly holding her infant in her arms.

Both are looking at the photographer, no small feat as any parent who has posed for photos with a wriggling infant knows. The mother has a sweet smile that heightens her cheekbones and carries through to her eyes. Her nine-month-old son clutches at the front of her blouse.

If only time had stood still at that joyous moment for Patsy Favel and her baby boy, Cody Blue Favel.

Twenty-five years later, other pictures overwhelm Patsy's mother, ugly images that creep into Alice Berger's thoughts during the day and interrupt her sleep at night. They are graphic images, of two men shooting her daughter in cold blood — a story she has heard about her daughter's fate.

Years ago, the images that filled Berger's dreams about her daughter were optimistic — that she was happy and healthy, a new start, a new life.

There's no telling if any of the dreams or nightmares or stories hold any truth. There's really no telling anything about Patsy. She disappeared from the lives of her mother and son on Sept. 30, 1984, four days after Cody's first birthday. Vanished.

The photos of Patsy with her son are the last ones of her.

Berger's memories of that time are fading with the years, but of one thing the 75-year-old is certain: "She was very, very proud of her boy." Berger later adds, "She just loved him."

A mother, a daughter, a sister — loving and loved and valued.

"I miss my daughter. Lots."

While Patsy Favel is Regina's oldest reported case of a missing woman, many other parents like Berger walk the line between hope and dread.

Across the province, the list of long-term missing women — gone six months or more — stretches to 29 names, five from this city and about one-third from the southern half of the province. While they are outnumbered by missing men more than two to one, the men are more often victims of misadventure, lives lost while boating, swimming, or hiking in the bush. Foul play is suspected in 70 per cent of the missing women's cases, but in only 21 per cent of the men's, according to a provincial report on missing persons.

In its report to the Provincial Partnership Committee on Missing Persons, the Saskatchewan First Nations Women's Commission Secretariat noted that aboriginal females are going missing at a disproportionate rate. Of Saskatchewan's missing women, 12 are Caucasian and 17 aboriginal. Aboriginal people make up only 14 per cent of Saskatchewan's population.

"Higher-risk lifestyles, transitions from reserve to urban without a strong support system, lack of proper transportation — such as hitchhiking from a reserve to urban centre — all contribute to risks that a person may or may not go missing," says the secretariat's report.

"By identifying that some First Nation women may go missing because of who they are, a stronger response can be put in place if a person is thought to be missing," it adds.

In recent years, there's been far more attention on missing persons, with the creation of special police units, committees, and awareness campaigns. Berger admits she's angry that focus was absent when her daughter vanished.

"Now it's too late. Why didn't they do that right away when a person goes missing?" she asks.

"Darn it, why do they leave us behind? Why don't they do something to help with our children?" she asks.

Berger and her husband of 40 years live in a tidy little house — they won a contest for their yard with its flower baskets and trimmed lawn this summer — on the Piapot First Nation, where her youngest brother is the chief, she notes with pride.

Walls of her home are given over to photos of her children, grandchildren and what she affectionately refers to as her "greats" — great, and great-great-grandchildren. There is one picture, slightly out of focus, of a very slender Patsy smiling beside a Christmas tree — the last Christmas with her family.

Patricia Maye Favel, who would be 43 today, is the youngest of Berger's six children. "When I wanted to baby her, I called her Pa-a-tsy," says her mother, dragging out the syllables.

Her mother remembers a quiet girl who enjoyed reading while growing up on Kawacatoose First Nation. "I thought she was going to be a quiet girl the rest of her life."

Patsy was close to her sister, Maxine, a few years older. By age 18 and then living in Regina, Patsy had followed her sister into a lifestyle that reduces their mother to tears even today. Both were addicted to what was the favoured street drug in 1980s Regina — "poor man's heroin," a mix of the prescription pills Talwin and Ritalin. Patsy occasionally found the cash to support her habit on what was then dubbed the "low stroll," a few downtown blocks where mostly poor, aboriginal women sold their bodies to buy drugs, and bought drugs to dull the reality of selling their bodies.

"I tried to stop her, talk to her. We tried everything," says Berger. "Once you get hooked on something like that, it's hard to quit." At five-foot-seven, Patsy had dwindled to 45 kilograms.

When Berger hadn't seen Patsy for a few days, she went looking for her at Maxine's apartment. She spotted Patsy in her brown 1975 Camaro, but her daughter waved her off, as if she didn't want her to come near.

"That was the last time I seen her," says Berger.

Later that Sunday, around 10:30 p.m., Patsy, who had bleached her curly, dark hair blonde a week before, stood two blocks from the Regina police station. According to witnesses who talked to police after family reported her missing on Oct. 2, she had been seen that Sept. 30 night getting into a smaller, red or orange, Japanese-made car, possibly a Datsun or Toyota, driven by a man.

A woman who was also working that night told the Leader-Post in 1984 that she was approached by an Asian man driving such a car. She recalled a Chinese pagoda hanging in the window. When that woman turned him away, he headed towards the street where Patsy was waiting. Like so many other things about the case, there's no way to know if it's true. "It's possible, but it's nothing certain," police said back then.

Even today, the cold case detective in charge of the file can't rule out anything, including a possible link to another mystery. Nearly a year before Patsy vanished, 19-year-old Annette Kelly Peigan disappeared from the downtown on July 29, 1983. Badly burned remains, found three weeks later in a ditch on the city's eastern edge, were subsequently linked to her. It was impossible to determine a cause of death, and Peigan is among the RCMP's cold cases.

After realizing her daughter was gone without any explanation, Berger and her husband searched alleys, drove streets, picked through garbage cans, and consulted with an elder who had a vision of Patsy — all to no avail. Berger believes police could have done more.

Tears glisten on her cheeks as she speaks about the disturbing story she heard a few years ago, that Patsy was taken and killed by two men in the street wars over drugs, prostitution and turf.

"That shot wasn't meant for her. . . . They mistook her as Maxine," she says, relating the tale she heard second-hand. Clearly, Berger fears there may be some truth to it, as she weeps and is comforted by her husband.

"That was the last story I ever heard about Patsy."

Today Maxine is also missed, dead from her addiction, while her sister Patsy is just missing. A victim of a bad date or street violence? Drifted away from a life she didn't want? Alive or dead? Not knowing is the hardest part, says Berger.

"I still have hopes for her coming back. I hope they find her some day."

Patsy's baby boy, Cody, is now a man of 26. Berger cared for her grandson for a time after Patsy disappeared until the child never returned home from a visit to his paternal family. He did keep in touch over the years, and Berger did her best to keep the mother he never knew alive, telling him, "she loved you."

As a young man, Cody found another family, the Native Syndicate street gang, and paid dearly for its acceptance. In December 2006 the then 23-year-old was shot in the upper left chest and lost a lung as punishment for failing to obey the gang.

Despite the risks, Cody testified last year against the men responsible. By then, he was looking to turn his life around.

Like Patsy, Cody too may disappear from Berger's life. At the time of his testimony last year, he spoke of entering a witness protection program.

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

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Tuesday, October 20

Part I: Our national tragedy

By Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service October 20, 2009

Dozens of women have gone missing along the so-called Highway of Tears.

Dozens of women have gone missing along the so-called Highway of Tears.

Photograph by: Mikael Kjellstrom, Calgary Herald

They disappear from small towns and big cities, from native reserves in the north and affluent suburbs in the south. They drift away and they abruptly vanish. And they leave, in their wake, broken-hearted families, confounded investigators and gaping holes in the communities where they grew up, forged friendships, held jobs, raised children.

At this moment in Canada, there are 1,573 missing women on file with the Canadian Police Information Centre, a national case-tracking database maintained at the RCMP's Ottawa headquarters.

The number sheds only a partial light on this dark story. It doesn't include the lost or stolen girls under the age of 18 who may have lived to become missing women. It doesn't account, anymore, for those who were once missing but have since been proven dead.

It doesn't embrace women who are gone but not reported missing.

Yet great depths of misery and mystery underlie even this imperfect figure. The stories of Canada's lost women — enough to equal the population of a small town, or the entire staff of a large urban hospital — would fill many mournful volumes.

The stories include some particularly shocking narratives in which a multitude of the missing disappear from a single area — such as B.C.'s "Highway of Tears," a lonely stretch of road between Prince Rupert and Prince George where five of those women were last seen and 13 others are known to have been murdered.

A high-profile search in late August for the remains of Nicole Hoar — one of Hwy. 16's 18 unsolved cases — sparked extensive news coverage and prompted some nationwide soul-searching, at least briefly, about Canada's missing women.

Then, within days, came an overdue pledge by Manitoba RCMP and Winnipeg city police to more closely collaborate in probing a series of disappearances and deaths of aboriginal women in that province.

Similar concentrations of missing or murdered women in Alberta and Saskatchewan were noted, too, along with the single most horrific chapter in the whole sorrowful saga: the dozens of vanished women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside linked to the predatory B.C. pig farmer Robert Pickton.

But there are tears staining village streets, rural sideroads and inner-city avenues across the country. No province or territory is beyond the scope of a tragedy that encompasses every corner of Canada and which — for all of the individual instances of anguish — is made especially plain with a single, breathtaking number: 1,573.

There are thousands of missing men in the country — more than 5,000, in fact, are listed at CPIC — but the spotlight has turned to Canada's lost women because of the clusters of disappearances throughout the West and the sense that predatory men lurk behind the grim statistics.

Even 1,573 strikes Gladys Radek as a low estimate.

A member of the Gitksan Nation of northern B.C. who now lives in Vancouver, Radek has emerged as a leading voice for the lost. It's an angry voice, and the word "racism" rolls easily from her tongue as she discusses the pain of her own family's loss and the disproportionate toll among aboriginal communities like hers.

But the 59-year-old activist, now studying aboriginal law at a Vancouver native college, has called for governments, police agencies and the public to devote more attention to all of Canada's missing women — "red, black, white and yellow," as she puts it — with greater investigative resources to solve existing cases and strengthened social services to prevent new ones.

"It pissed me off that these women were going missing without anybody saying or doing anything about it," says Radek, recalling her gathering awareness of the crisis in the wake of her own niece's unexplained disappearance in September 2005 along the Highway of Tears.

Tamara Chipman — 22 at the time, and the mother of a two-year-old boy — was hitchhiking outside Prince Rupert when she vanished.

"She was just beginning her life," says Radek. "Tamara was a beautiful, spunky girl."

The tragedy sparked a vision. Radek imagined a cross-Canada pilgrimage linking families and communities across the country struggling to cope with missing and murdered women.

Last year, with a Vancouver-to-Ottawa trek she called Walk4Justice, Radek's vision was realized, drawing widespread media coverage and galvanizing public awareness of Canada's lost women.

The number 4 in the name "covers all the races, and all four directions," says Radek. "Before we did that walk, there wasn't really that much attention paid to the missing and murdered women. That's when the families started coming together more and more.

"It was a pretty powerful journey."

Earlier this year, Radek organized a second Walk4Justice between Vancouver and Prince Rupert to spotlight the suffering of families — including her own — who've lost loved ones along the Highway of Tears.

She isn't convinced police in B.C. or elsewhere are doing enough to probe the hundreds of unsolved cases, or that governments are sufficiently seized by the need to invest more in vulnerable communities and demographic groups — native and non-native — to prevent numbers like 1,573 from growing larger.

"We need better services so women don't get caught in such desperate situations," she argues. "We're pushing for a lot more shelters, even in the smallest communities. There's often nowhere for women to go when they're running from violent situations."

RCMP Staff Sgt. Wayne Clary defends the efforts of police in B.C. and across the country in probing missing-women cases. In his experience, he says, police agencies "bend over backwards" to co-operate across jurisdictional boundaries, comparing notes and sharing clues to try to solve what are often the toughest cases in police work to crack.

But he does agree with Radek about one thing when it comes to the CPIC total of 1,573 missing women in Canada.

"I thought it would be higher," he says.

Perhaps it's a worldview shaped by his immersion in scores of missing-women cases — most notably the Pickton-linked disappearances of up to 60 sex-trade workers and other high-risk targets in Vancouver — during a 29-year career as one of B.C.'s leading investigators.

The province has emerged as the country's main stage in this long-running tragedy, and Clary wonders aloud if Vancouver's history as a key Pacific port — a magnet not just for tourists and immigrants who've brought prosperity to B.C., but also for criminals — has contributed to the crisis.

Resources, he notes, are not boundless when it comes to investigating missing women, or any crime for that matter. But as a key player in the high-profile and well-funded Project Evenhanded investigation that ultimately unraveled Pickton's crimes, Clary says he sympathizes with isolated investigators across the country, who inevitably have a multitude of other open files on their desks in addition to time-consuming missing-person cases.

"If you have a crime scene and no body — no person — that's easy. You just roll it out like it's a homicide. It's when you don't have a crime scene, it's harder. Because obviously you're adjusting resources and files just never stop coming in," he says.

"I've been on a project here, so we just deal with the one issue — which is easier to handle because there's dedicated resources. But when you're investigating with a detachment or a municipal PD, there's stuff coming your way every day. And, of course, it never ends."

The principal strategy for probing the case of a missing woman is simple enough, he says.

"You identify who their associates are, where they work, and you just start asking questions. Generally, that will lead you somewhere. But there's many cases where you just don't know, and where do you go next?"

Bank accounts, credit cards and cellphones are probed because they're likely to record a person's movements, says Clary.

"You can see them existing in society, and then all of a sudden everything stops," he says. "Whether it's the methadone clinic, or their doctor, or their welfare cheque — it just stops. And you have to ask yourself, why did that happen?"

In so many cases, he says, it's what you can't do for desperate families — the anguished ones seeking closure years or decades after a sister or daughter has vanished — that haunts him and other officers assigned to search for the missing.

Too often, he says bluntly, "you can never give it to them. It's difficult to convey to them that there's nothing more you can do."

And the sad reality, he says, is that the disappeared — in many or even most of the cases on file — are dead.

But without evidence to prove that a missing woman was murdered or otherwise lost her life, families are naturally reluctant to turn the page. The word "missing," for all of its horrifying connotations, preserves at least a shred of hope.

One weekend in September, in the remote woods near Thunder Bay, an Ontario family and a team of volunteer searchers were clinging to such hope.

They scoured the forests of Rainbow Falls Provincial Park looking for clues that might point to the whereabouts of Christina Calayca, a vivacious, 20-year-old childcare worker from Toronto who disappeared — literally "without a trace," a police spokesperson says — after setting off for a morning jog from a campsite on Aug. 6, 2007.

Was the young Filipina-Canadian woman snatched by an unknown assailant or human trafficker? Did she intentionally vanish to create a new life and identity? Or did she simply lose her way in the trees, slip into a stream, fall from a rock ledge?

Police do not have evidence pointing to foul play, says Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Shelley Garr, but they just don't know.

"There are a number of possibilities," she says, "but we don't speak to hypotheticals."

There's a website, www.findchristinacalayca.com, that details a 2008 fundraising gala, holds a cache of news stories, promotes a CD — "Missing You" — that's dedicated to Calayca.

The site exudes affection for the lost woman.

"Each day since her disappearance months ago, Christina's loved ones have hoped and prayed that she would return to us safely," a message states. "If hope alone were enough, she would already be home; but she unfortunately is not."

There have now been six searches — three led by the OPP, three organized by Calayca's family, including one with sniffer dogs supplied by a benevolent search-and-rescue specialist from the U.S.

"She went missing and there's been nothing since," Garr said in a recent interview. "Christina's mother was up again this past weekend. They are still actively searching for answers. But it must be frustrating for them."

The best chance for discovery, she adds, might have been during the initial 17-day search in August 2007, a full-scale operation involving aerial crews and extensive grid-pattern sweeps by emergency personnel on the ground.

"But then we got into fall," says Garr, "and fall turns into winter."

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

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