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.

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

Missing girls’ families accuse police of racism, incompetence

By Brendan Kennedy, Ottawa Citizen
September 5, 2009

KITIGAN ZIBI ANISHINABEG FIRST NATION, Que. — Lisa Odjick is stalked by nightmares of her missing granddaughter.

“One time I dreamt she was being held against her will,” she says. “I could hear her calling me.”

Maisy Odjick, 16, and her friend Shannon Alexander, 17, disappeared from the Kitigan Zibi-Maniwaki area, about 130 kilometres north of Ottawa, on Sept. 6, 2008. The house where they were last known to be was locked. There were no signs of foul play. The teens left behind purses, clothes, electronics, identification and even medication.

On the reserve, rumours abound of human trafficking, prostitution, drug use, even possible sightings of the teens in Montreal, Toronto or as far away as Arizona.

The girls’ parents accuse the Kitigan Zibi police of incompetence. They’ve called the Surete du Quebec, the provincial police force, complacent and racist. (Maisy lived on the reserve; Shannon resided in the nearby town of Maniwaki. It is a joint police investigation.) The parents say the investigation was botched from the start because the provincial police assumed the girls were runaways.

The provincial police won’t discuss the case. Const. Steve Lalande will say only that police are doing “everything humanly possible”_to find the girls.

And while that force says the girls ran away, Kitigan Zibi police say they have no such evidence.

“We didn’t really want to commit (to saying that they were) runaways right away,” explains Kitigan Zibi Police Chief Gorden McGregor. “They (the Surete du Quebec) felt that the information that they had — which is the same as ours — they felt that they were able to commit to that notion.”

Maisy’s mother, Laurie Odjick, says there was no ground search in the days after the girls went missing, for example, and it took police more than a month to seize the girls’ computers.

McGregor understands the families’ frustration, but says there has never been anything solid to investigate.

“We’re dumbfounded.”

Jurisdictional questions only add to the confusion: Maisy is registered to the Kitigan Zibi band; Shannon is Inuit and not registered to the band. Maisy’s mother says every time she asked the provincial police for updates, they referred her to reserve police.

At the outset, the girls’ files were kept apart, even though they went missing from the same place and were believed to be together. Kitigan Zibi police took Maisy’s file, while the provincial force had Shannon’s.

McGregor insists this was only the case with paperwork; police collaborated from the start.

“No matter what: We open up a file on Maisy; they open up a file on Shannon. We still work together on the file,” he said. In any case, after a couple of months, the files were formally joined.

Shannon’s father, Bryan Alexander, believes the provincial police wanted to wash their hands of the case so they gave it to the Kitigan Zibi police — a community force of eight officers.

“This happened in town, not on the reserve. They don’t care if a million . . . Indians go missing,” he said,

echoing the criticism that has been made of police forces across the country in what advocates say are hundreds of missing and murdered women cases.

The circumstances surrounding when the girls were last seen are not entirely clear. Alexander says that on Friday, Sept. 5, 2008, he left the teens at his home — just outside the reserve in Maniwaki — and went to Ottawa for the weekend to help his son paint his apartment.

Later that day, the girls mowed the lawn at Maisy’s grandmother’s home. When the work was done, Maisy announced plans to spend the night at Shannon’s house.

Later that evening, the girls hung out with friends in a park, across the street from the Polyvalente high school, where a dance was being held. A 15-year-old boy who was with the girls that night says the girls claimed they’d just smoked crack. He thought they might be joking, though they did seem drunk or high.

At some point between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., Shannon got into a fight with a boy in the group. Shortly after, Shannon and Maisy left together — the last anyone saw of the girls.

Maisy’s Facebook account was last active at 10:31 p.m. that night.

When Alexander returned from Ottawa on Monday, the girls were nowhere to be found.

On Tuesday, Alexander called police. He’d assumed you had to wait 24 hours to file a missing person’s report.

Four days passed between the last sighting of the girls and that first contact with the police.

• Shannon’s story

Bryan Alexander raised his daughter alone. He explains that his wife, a crack addict, left when Shannon was about a year old. The father and daughter lived in Ottawa until Shannon was about six, moved to Hull, then settled in Maniwaki, where they have family.

As a child, Shannon enjoyed the outdoors where she and her father would ride three-wheelers or go fishing.

In her later teens, she grew argumentative and angry. After a fight with her principal, she quit school.

Sixteen at the time, her father says she enrolled at the adult education centre the following day. While attending night school, she struggled unsuccessfully to find work. She tried grocery stores, restaurants, tobacco shops.

“My daughter’s not stupid,” Alexander says, “she just looks native.” She became increasingly frustrated.

Almost two years before she disappeared, Shannon decided to find her mother. Although warned she might not like what she found, she took a bus to Ottawa and found her mother in a crack house. “She flipped out” and was never the same, he says.

Alexander is himself a former crack addict who struggles with alcoholism. He says he attends AA and NA meetings and hasn’t smoked crack since his daughter’s birth. He knows he wasn’t always the best father, but says he gave his daughter everything she needed.

Alexander says his daughter would sometimes leave home for a few days, but not without calling or leaving a note. She spent some months in a foster home at some point in the past few years, but he isn’t clear on the details.

At the time of her disappearance, Shannon was completing her last high school math credit and was enrolled in a nursing college in Mont-Laurier, where she planned to move.

• Maisy’s story

Laurie Odjick still remembers the day Maisy, the first of her four children, was born. “She was the hardest labour,” she says with a teary smile. “She was always thinking she could do things on her own.”

Maisy became an independent and rebellious teen who fought with her mother.

Almost a year before she disappeared, Maisy dropped out of school. Laurie knew Maisy was experimenting with marijuana and alcohol.

At 16, Maisy moved in with her 18-year-old boyfriend, an arrangement that lasted about a month. She next moved in with her grandmother.

Maisy’s grandmother convinced her to try to finish high school. She had re-enrolled at Maniwaki’s adult education centre and was scheduled to resume her studies days before she disappeared.

Maisy made no secret of her desire to get away from Kitigan Zibi. She often spoke about moving back to the Saugeen Shores-Port Elgin, Ont. area, where she lived from 2003 to 2006, and where she still has friends and family.

In any case, Laurie says, Maisy would have taken her favourite possessions — family photos, and her camera, clothes and jewelry.

Laurie Odjick has been vocal and proactive in her hunt for answers. With the help of her sister-in-law, Maria Jacko, Odjick has organized searches and raised $12,000 in reward money. Every month she sends posters of Maisy and Shannon to women’s shelters across the country.

© Copyright (c) Canwest News Service

'She had a million-dollar smile' - Winnipeg Free Press

'She had a million-dollar smile' - Winnipeg Free Press

Posted using ShareThis

Body found, linked online to missing teen Poorman

By ANNE KYLE and JOE COUTURE, Leader-Post; with files from Barb Pacholik
April 20, 2009 8:2

REGINA — Police have not yet publicly identified the remains of a body found on Friday about half a block from where Tara-Lyn Poorman disappeared from a birthday party more than four months ago.

But on pages of social networking sites set up to promote the search for the missing 17-year-old, family and friends left posts over the weekend making a connection between the teen and the grisly discovery, and expressing hopes she will "rest in peace."

The creator of a Facebook group called "Finding Tara-Lyn Poorman," who identified himself as her brother Vance Kay, wrote "itz true she iz gone," along with an "RIP" for his "baby sis."

Similar posts were also available publicly on Twitter and Bebo pages.

Reached late on Sunday, Poorman's mother Shellyn Kay told the Leader-Post she had not received any official news and did not want to comment further.

Kay said she "didn't know what was going on" with the social website posts, adding she had not spoken to Vance.

Calls to others in Poorman's family and those who have spoken publicly about her disappearance in the past were not returned over the weekend.

Poorman was last seen at a residence in the 400 block of Halifax Street in December.

Police and her family have both offered rewards for her return.

The decomposing body of a woman was found Friday in the 300 block of Osler Street.

The body is believed to have been at a location in a yard in that area, hidden under a pile of snow, for some time, according to the Regina Police Service.

"We are continuing our investigation into a suspicious death in conjunction with the Office of the Chief Coroner,'' police spokeswoman Elizabeth Popowich told the Leader-Post Saturday.

Popowich said police were dispatched to the rear of the backyard of an Osler Street house just before 7:45 p.m. on Friday after receiving information of a person injured or deceased.

Police and emergency medical services attended the area and confirmed that an unidentified woman found in the backyard was deceased.

"Patrol members secured the area and requested members of the forensic identifications and major crimes units to attend,'' Popowich said, explaining investigators were at the scene for most of Saturday and will continue to secure the area as a crime scene until police have more information as to the cause and manner of the woman's death.

"We are continuing that investigation," she said. "It is being considered a suspicious death and the coroner will order any post-mortem procedures requested. We are also in the process of confirming the identity of the deceased, and once that is confirmed, we will then will notify the woman's family.''

Investigators have said it appears the deceased body was at that location for some time and for that reason identifying the deceased will take some time, Popowich said, noting that won't likely happen until after the weekend.

"In the province of Saskatchewan, we know there are many families who have a missing person in their family," Popowich said on Saturday. "So the discovery of a deceased person before an identity is confirmed must start an agonizing period of waiting for all of those families and it is very, very difficult.

"We can't speculate on the identify of the deceased," continued Popowich, who refused to comment Sunday on the social website postings about Poorman.

"We have to know it through fact and we have to confirm it. As difficult as it is for people to wait for those answers, it is our duty to deal in fact," she said.

akyle@leaderpost.canwest.com

jcouture@leaderpost.canwest.com

© Copyright (c) The Regina Leader-Post