4 years after daughter disappeared, mom still hopeful

CTV.ca News Staff
Updated: Mon. Mar. 29 2010 9:18 AM ET

Glendene Grant has never given up hope that her daughter is still alive.
The Kamloops, B.C., mother hasn't seen her daughter, Jessica "Jessie" Foster, since Christmas 2005, when the then-21-year-old came home for the holidays.
Jessie had been living in Las Vegas and told her mom she had become engaged to be married.
"We thought Jessie was living a normal life in Las Vegas, but ultimately, that's not what was going on at all," Grant told CTV's Canada AM Monday from Vancouver.
"We spoke to people who knew Jessie down there and they told me she was actually afraid of this person [her fiancé]."
Grant would later learn that Jessie had been living with 39-year-old Peter Todd, who was well-known to police as a pimp. What Grant also didn't know at the time of Jessie's last visit was that Jessie had also been arrested for prostitution a few months before.
In March 2006, Jessie called her mom to tell her she wanted to come home. Four days later, Jessie spoke to her sister on the phone. And then, silence.
Though police began an investigation into the Calgary woman's disappearance, no trace of Jessie has even been found.
What is worrying about Jessie's case is that at the same time she disappeared, so did three other young women, in similar circumstances. The other three were all eventually found dead.
But Grant doesn't believe her daughter is dead. After learning more about Jessie's life in Las Vegas through the work of a private investigator, Grant now has a theory about what happened to her.
"Jessie was actually a human trafficking victim. And she had fallen victim to these people," she says.
"And when she tried to leave, they just took her away somewhere."
Now, four years after the disappearance of her daughter, Grant is circulating three "age-progressed" sketches of what Jessie might now look like. They're drawn by Diana Trepkov, a forensic artist who's worked with police departments across North America.
They depict Jessie as she might look at age 26. In one of the images, Trepkov drew Jessie as she would look if her appearance had been altered by her captors, in order to disguise her. Her blond hair is darkened and her skin is tanned, here hair is shown straight and short on one side, and long and wavy on the other.
The second image shows how Trepkov thinks Jessie might look if she was being physically abused by human traffickers.
"I made her look very tired, thinned, worn out, a bruise on the lip, dark circles under her eyes. I disguised her with darker hair in a split hairstyle," Trepkov told Canada AM.
"Human trafficking is a $1 billion industry. She would be prime, because she's blond and petite. They would kidnap her and make her look different."
Grant hopes someone will see the sketches and recognize Jessie and help find her daughter.
Grant firmly believes Jessie is still alive somewhere because she says she can feel it in her heart.
"I've talked to the mothers of those other women who were found deceased and one of them in particular told me that she knew even before her daughter's remains were identified that she didn't think her daughter would ever be found alive. She said this came from deep in her heart. We call this our heartstrings. My heartstrings are still connected to Jessie. It hasn't changed in terms of me feeling that she's still alive," Grant said.
"A mother knows in her heart when her child has died, and I haven't felt that at all. And that gives me the greatest hope."
Anyone who thinks they have information about the disappearance of Jessie Foster is asked to call Crimestoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.
© 2010 All Rights Reserved.

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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

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.

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