By Timothy Schafer
Saturday, June 10, 2006
When it happened Herb Muskego couldn’t believe it.
His oldest and only daughter, in her third year in education at the University of Saskatchewan, had gone missing.
When it happened Herb Muskego couldn’t believe it.
His oldest and only daughter, in her third year in education at the University of Saskatchewan, had gone missing.
Daleen Kay Bosse (Muskego) was a mother of one, living in Saskatoon with her husband and was one year away from becoming a teacher, the same occupation Herb and his wife Pauline held on the Onion Lake First Nation reserve.
But one night Daleen dressed up for an evening out in Saskatoon, bade goodbye to her two younger brothers, staying with her while they attended school, and said she would be back later.
That was May 18, 2004, and Daleen has not returned. Herb and his family went to the Saskatoon City Police, hired a private investigator and searched the places she was rumoured to have been, all to no avail.
The Muskego family still searches, offering a $10,000 reward for information leading to her whereabouts.
On Friday, Herb and his family joined nearly 300 other aboriginal people who had lost a relative in similar ways, for the second annual Prince Albert Grand Council Women’s Commission Honouring our Sisters and Brothers memorial walk.
Two years later Herb still searchs for answers and words to describe the loss of his daughter.
“I don’t like to think the worst scenario, that she was picked up and victimized by a sexual predator,” he said. “But that’s a common story with aboriginal women across Canada.”
He looked down at the poster with a picture of his daughter in his hand. “We don’t really know what happened, but it’s been two years now. It’s been too long for her just to be away.”
The first walk was prompted after an Amnesty International report last year on murdered aboriginal women in Saskatchewan noted how little had been done about them, said Shirley Henderson, chairwoman of the PAGC Women’s Commission.
“We said we had to do something to raise awareness. It’s obvious when you look at the number of people that came out there is concern out there.”
The walk has spawned similar walks across the province. On July 15 a walk for Amber Redman will be held in Fort Qu’Appelle, one year to the day since the 19-year-old went missing.
Her mother Gwenda Yuzicappi from the Standing Buffalo Dakota First Nation near Fort Qu’Appelle walked on Friday with hope her oldest daughter was still alive and would return to her someday.
“I believe in these events because they are building public awareness. “I still have a lot of hope and I do believe in my prayers and that she will come home.”
What started as a response to an Amnesty International report in Prince Albert has taken on a Western Canadian appeal.
Walkers came from four western provinces to participate, nearly 300 people in total.
The walk began at 9 a.m. in front of City Hall where people heard from various speakers on various aspects of the issue of missing aboriginal women and men. The walkers made three more stops where they told more stories of aboriginal people who had gone missing and laid flowers at the base of crosses.
Once the PAGC Women’s Commission decided upon the walk in 2005 to raise awareness of missing aboriginal women, the move was ratified by the PAGC chiefs, then by the Federation of Saskatchewan Indian Nations and then by the provincial legislature.
After all of that, 2005 became the Year of First Nation and Métis Women. This year the Women’s Commission added missing brothers to the walk.
Four people were commemorated with the walk: Amber Redman (missing: May 4, 2005), Kevin Charles (missing: 1993), Mary Goodfellow (missing: 1993) and Ernestine Kasyon (missing: Dec. 6, 1989).
- SCHAFER
Prince Albert Daily Herald
http://www.paherald.sk.ca/
Saturday, June 10
Friday, June 9
List of missing B.C. women cut by one after woman found in U.S.
Canadian Press
Friday, June 09, 2006
VANCOUVER (CP) - Police are removing one of the names from the list of missing women in B.C.
The RCMP say they have confirmed that one of the women, Linda Grant, is alive and well and living in the southern U-S.
Grant contacted her family earlier this week after going on the Internet and finding her name on the list.
She disappeared in 1985, saying she moved away when she was 25 after losing custody of two young daughters.
When Grant's name is removed from the list, there will still be 67 missing women.
Robert Pickton is charged with killing 26 women, mostly sex trade workers who disappeared from Vancouver's gritty downtown east side.
© The Canadian Press 2006
Friday, June 09, 2006
VANCOUVER (CP) - Police are removing one of the names from the list of missing women in B.C.
The RCMP say they have confirmed that one of the women, Linda Grant, is alive and well and living in the southern U-S.
Grant contacted her family earlier this week after going on the Internet and finding her name on the list.
She disappeared in 1985, saying she moved away when she was 25 after losing custody of two young daughters.
When Grant's name is removed from the list, there will still be 67 missing women.
Robert Pickton is charged with killing 26 women, mostly sex trade workers who disappeared from Vancouver's gritty downtown east side.
© The Canadian Press 2006
Woman who vanished found alive in U.S.
Linda Grant, mother of three little girls, was last seen more than two decades ago. Her Port Moody family thought she had been murdered. Then came a stunning e-mail.
Lori Culbert
Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
CREDIT: Peter Battistoni, Vancouver Sun
Dawn Grant broke down in tears when she talked to her mother (pictured 23 years ago) on the phone.
Linda Grant, one of 68 women listed as missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, ended more than 20 years of silence this week, contacting police and her family to tell them she is still alive.
"I didn't even know I was on that list until [Monday]," said Grant, who grew up in Port Moody and left the Lower Mainland in 1983 to begin a new life in the United States.
In a telephone interview Tuesday, Grant said she found out she was listed as missing while she was surfing the Web on Monday to learn more about Robert (Willy) Pickton, the Port Coquitlam pig farmer accused of killing 26 women.
She said an American friend originally from Surrey "was telling me about this Pickton guy. I went on to the computer and there was Pickton. And then I saw myself."
Her photograph was staring back at her from the police poster of 68 women missing from the Downtown Eastside, said Grant, who lives in the southern U.S. and gets little Canadian news.
The slightly out-of-focus picture of the smiling blond woman, taken more than 23 years ago, indicated that Linda Louise Grant was last seen in October 1984.
Although Grant said she had not spoken to anyone in her family since 1984 after fleeing a home she described as troubled, she was startled to see her name on the poster because she wasn't aware she had been reported missing.
And she insisted she doesn't fit the profile of the other women on the list -- denying she has ever worked in the sex trade or done hard drugs.
She said that over the last two days, she has spoken to police officers with the Missing Women Task Force and members of her long-lost family, but noted everyone was skeptical that she was who she claimed to be.
The RCMP has not taken Grant's name off the poster yet, saying a police investigation must be conducted to prove the woman is no longer missing.
"We are trying to confirm that she is alive and well, but we haven't done that yet to our satisfaction," media relations officer Staff Sgt. John Ward said on Tuesday.
Grant turned to an American cold cases website for help on Monday, and the administrator pointed her to a missing women website that Wayne Leng has run since his friend Sarah de Vries disappeared from Vancouver.
Grant's daughter Dawn Grant had posted notices on Leng's website in an effort to find more information about her mother. Linda Grant got her daughter's e-mail address from the website and sent her a message Monday.
"I was cynical. I thought someone was pulling a prank on me," said Dawn Grant, 28, a telemarketer from Surrey who has a young son.
But Linda Grant said she was ready to prove who she was. "Finally Dawn started e-mailing me back and asking me questions that only I would know the answers to," Linda Grant said.
On Monday night, Dawn Grant, her 27-year-old sister Briana, her two aunts, an uncle and her grandfather participated in a teleconference call to Linda Grant to try to determine if the woman was for real.
"She knew the names of everyone in our family, our birthdays, the story of playing pool and the pool ball going through the window. Silly things that only my mother would know," Dawn Grant said.
"My Auntie Sue was very skeptical. She just kept asking questions and questions, and mom had all the answers -- even about her dental work."
Linda Grant said she wanted to answer the queries so her family would believe her. "My sister Susan asked me what colour my bedroom was as a teenager," she said.
Dawn Grant is convinced she has found her mother -- a woman she last saw when she was five or six years old. She has only vague memories of brushing her hair while the two sat together on a couch.
"This is just overwhelming. I'm so happy," Dawn Grant said, weeping Linda Grant broke down in tears on the phone when asked about everything she has missed during her 23-year absence from her daughters and the rest of her family. She said she moved in 1983, when she was 25 years old, to the southern United States -- "the furthest place I could get" -- after losing custody of her two young daughters, Dawn and Brandy.
She claimed she reached out unsuccessfully to one family member in 1984, and then decided to create a new life -- although the decision was a tough one to make.
"I love my kids," she sobbed.
When she left Canada, Linda Grant was pregnant with her third daughter, Briana, whom she gave up for adoption.
(Briana later tracked down a family member -- but not her mother -- and met with her biological family.)
Linda Grant said her life has been a happy one in the U.S., where she had a new family and owned a bar that she has since sold.
"It was so hard, but I got married and I had three more girls, and I thought that was God's way of getting me through it," said Linda Grant, who now works as a bartender.
After discovering her photo on the missing women poster, Linda Grant said she told her husband on Monday night and her three youngest daughters on Tuesday that she had left a life behind in Canada before moving to the U.S.
Dawn Grant said she grew up thinking her mother had abandoned her, but when she read about the serial killer investigation at the Pickton pig farm, she feared her mother was no longer alive.
"I was worried something bad had happened to her," Dawn Grant said.
Pickton is charged with killing 26 of the women on the list of missing, but more than 40 remained unaccounted for. The list had 69 names on it until May 2005, when police announced Tammy Fairbairn had been located in central Canada.
Linda Grant -- who police said was last seen in 1984 but wasn't reported missing until February 1996 -- was officially added to the list in July 2002, but very little was known publicly about her at the time. If she is removed from the list, that will lower the police tally of missing women to 67.
Leng, who runs the missing women website, also started communicating with Linda Grant online Monday and called the Missing Women Task Force to alert police to her claims. Leng is convinced the woman is telling the truth about her identity.
"This just made me so happy because often it's another dead body being found, it's often sad news. To get something so uplifting that somebody has survived -- that is such great news," Leng said.
Dawn Grant said she hopes other families of the missing women can also be reunited with loved ones. She said she would like to see her mother as soon as she can find the money to fly to the southern U.S.
"I've been waiting 23 years for this. I just want to see her," the emotional young woman said.
Linda Grant is also determined to see her oldest children and the rest of her family again.
"We are all going to meet together. I don't know where or when, but we will."
lculbert@png.canwest.com
This story can be heard online after 10:30 a.m. today at www.vancouversun.com/readaloud.
MEMO FOR HER MOTHER
One of the postings that Dawn Grant put on the www.missingpeople.net website in an effort to find her mother:
Thursday, May 25, 2006:
"My mom is Linda Louise Grant. She went missing 23 years ago and was last seen a block from the Pickton pig farm. I miss her very much and hope she is still out there some where. When I was a kid I always thought that she just abandoned me and when I heard about the pig farm I was hoping more than ever that she abandoned me.... I used to be mad at her for missing me grow up and for not being there when her first grandchild was born. But now I just hope she is still alive and safe and happy. I feel robbed as I imagine that all the families of the missing women do.... All I know is that I want my mother back and if she is still out there and you have any information about her please e-mail me ... even if you don't think it's important. I just want to know anything about her."
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
Lori Culbert
Vancouver Sun
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
CREDIT: Peter Battistoni, Vancouver Sun
Dawn Grant broke down in tears when she talked to her mother (pictured 23 years ago) on the phone.
Linda Grant, one of 68 women listed as missing from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, ended more than 20 years of silence this week, contacting police and her family to tell them she is still alive.
"I didn't even know I was on that list until [Monday]," said Grant, who grew up in Port Moody and left the Lower Mainland in 1983 to begin a new life in the United States.
In a telephone interview Tuesday, Grant said she found out she was listed as missing while she was surfing the Web on Monday to learn more about Robert (Willy) Pickton, the Port Coquitlam pig farmer accused of killing 26 women.
She said an American friend originally from Surrey "was telling me about this Pickton guy. I went on to the computer and there was Pickton. And then I saw myself."
Her photograph was staring back at her from the police poster of 68 women missing from the Downtown Eastside, said Grant, who lives in the southern U.S. and gets little Canadian news.
The slightly out-of-focus picture of the smiling blond woman, taken more than 23 years ago, indicated that Linda Louise Grant was last seen in October 1984.
Although Grant said she had not spoken to anyone in her family since 1984 after fleeing a home she described as troubled, she was startled to see her name on the poster because she wasn't aware she had been reported missing.
And she insisted she doesn't fit the profile of the other women on the list -- denying she has ever worked in the sex trade or done hard drugs.
She said that over the last two days, she has spoken to police officers with the Missing Women Task Force and members of her long-lost family, but noted everyone was skeptical that she was who she claimed to be.
The RCMP has not taken Grant's name off the poster yet, saying a police investigation must be conducted to prove the woman is no longer missing.
"We are trying to confirm that she is alive and well, but we haven't done that yet to our satisfaction," media relations officer Staff Sgt. John Ward said on Tuesday.
Grant turned to an American cold cases website for help on Monday, and the administrator pointed her to a missing women website that Wayne Leng has run since his friend Sarah de Vries disappeared from Vancouver.
Grant's daughter Dawn Grant had posted notices on Leng's website in an effort to find more information about her mother. Linda Grant got her daughter's e-mail address from the website and sent her a message Monday.
"I was cynical. I thought someone was pulling a prank on me," said Dawn Grant, 28, a telemarketer from Surrey who has a young son.
But Linda Grant said she was ready to prove who she was. "Finally Dawn started e-mailing me back and asking me questions that only I would know the answers to," Linda Grant said.
On Monday night, Dawn Grant, her 27-year-old sister Briana, her two aunts, an uncle and her grandfather participated in a teleconference call to Linda Grant to try to determine if the woman was for real.
"She knew the names of everyone in our family, our birthdays, the story of playing pool and the pool ball going through the window. Silly things that only my mother would know," Dawn Grant said.
"My Auntie Sue was very skeptical. She just kept asking questions and questions, and mom had all the answers -- even about her dental work."
Linda Grant said she wanted to answer the queries so her family would believe her. "My sister Susan asked me what colour my bedroom was as a teenager," she said.
Dawn Grant is convinced she has found her mother -- a woman she last saw when she was five or six years old. She has only vague memories of brushing her hair while the two sat together on a couch.
"This is just overwhelming. I'm so happy," Dawn Grant said, weeping Linda Grant broke down in tears on the phone when asked about everything she has missed during her 23-year absence from her daughters and the rest of her family. She said she moved in 1983, when she was 25 years old, to the southern United States -- "the furthest place I could get" -- after losing custody of her two young daughters, Dawn and Brandy.
She claimed she reached out unsuccessfully to one family member in 1984, and then decided to create a new life -- although the decision was a tough one to make.
"I love my kids," she sobbed.
When she left Canada, Linda Grant was pregnant with her third daughter, Briana, whom she gave up for adoption.
(Briana later tracked down a family member -- but not her mother -- and met with her biological family.)
Linda Grant said her life has been a happy one in the U.S., where she had a new family and owned a bar that she has since sold.
"It was so hard, but I got married and I had three more girls, and I thought that was God's way of getting me through it," said Linda Grant, who now works as a bartender.
After discovering her photo on the missing women poster, Linda Grant said she told her husband on Monday night and her three youngest daughters on Tuesday that she had left a life behind in Canada before moving to the U.S.
Dawn Grant said she grew up thinking her mother had abandoned her, but when she read about the serial killer investigation at the Pickton pig farm, she feared her mother was no longer alive.
"I was worried something bad had happened to her," Dawn Grant said.
Pickton is charged with killing 26 of the women on the list of missing, but more than 40 remained unaccounted for. The list had 69 names on it until May 2005, when police announced Tammy Fairbairn had been located in central Canada.
Linda Grant -- who police said was last seen in 1984 but wasn't reported missing until February 1996 -- was officially added to the list in July 2002, but very little was known publicly about her at the time. If she is removed from the list, that will lower the police tally of missing women to 67.
Leng, who runs the missing women website, also started communicating with Linda Grant online Monday and called the Missing Women Task Force to alert police to her claims. Leng is convinced the woman is telling the truth about her identity.
"This just made me so happy because often it's another dead body being found, it's often sad news. To get something so uplifting that somebody has survived -- that is such great news," Leng said.
Dawn Grant said she hopes other families of the missing women can also be reunited with loved ones. She said she would like to see her mother as soon as she can find the money to fly to the southern U.S.
"I've been waiting 23 years for this. I just want to see her," the emotional young woman said.
Linda Grant is also determined to see her oldest children and the rest of her family again.
"We are all going to meet together. I don't know where or when, but we will."
lculbert@png.canwest.com
This story can be heard online after 10:30 a.m. today at www.vancouversun.com/readaloud.
MEMO FOR HER MOTHER
One of the postings that Dawn Grant put on the www.missingpeople.net website in an effort to find her mother:
Thursday, May 25, 2006:
"My mom is Linda Louise Grant. She went missing 23 years ago and was last seen a block from the Pickton pig farm. I miss her very much and hope she is still out there some where. When I was a kid I always thought that she just abandoned me and when I heard about the pig farm I was hoping more than ever that she abandoned me.... I used to be mad at her for missing me grow up and for not being there when her first grandchild was born. But now I just hope she is still alive and safe and happy. I feel robbed as I imagine that all the families of the missing women do.... All I know is that I want my mother back and if she is still out there and you have any information about her please e-mail me ... even if you don't think it's important. I just want to know anything about her."
© The Vancouver Sun 2006
Tuesday, June 6
Missing person reward pulled
Hasn’t worked, says family
By CARY CASTAGNA, EDMONTON SUN
June 6, 2006
Just weeks before the fourth anniversary of Red Deer tree planter Nicole Hoar's disappearance, her family has withdrawn a $50,000 reward for information in the case.
The reward had been posted by the Hudson's Bay Co., where Nicole's father has been a longtime employee.
"We came to the realization that (the reward) hadn't done what it was supposed to do," Jack Hoar said yesterday.
The family announced in October that they would withdraw the reward on June 3, 2006. Jack said the idea was to spur potential tipsters to come forward.
Although tips came in, none of them have helped explain what happened to his daughter.
Nicole was 25 years old when she vanished June 21, 2002, in B.C., while hitchhiking on Highway 16 from Prince George to Smithers to visit her sister. She had been working in B.C. as a tree planter.
The highway, now known as the Highway of Tears, has been a Bermuda Triangle for hitchhikers.
Nine women have been murdered or are missing since 1990 from communities that dot the largely remote Highway 16 corridor that stretches almost 750 km from Prince George to Prince Rupert.
Nicole is the only non-native woman of the nine.
Jack, who believes his daughter is dead, said he would just like some resolution in the baffling case.
"It's bothersome when you don't have any information," he said, adding he believes a person or group of people are preying on women along the highway and he hopes police can put an end to that.
"I think she happened to be at the wrong spot at the wrong time."
Prince George RCMP Sgt. Paul Strader said investigators are following up on tips as they come in.
Ray Michalko, a Vancouver-based private investigator, has also taken up the search for answers after recently becoming intrigued with the Highway of Tears.
"I'm involved in it and I'm not quitting now," said Michalko, of Valley Pacific Investigations Ltd.
"It's my opinion somebody out there knows something."
By CARY CASTAGNA, EDMONTON SUN
June 6, 2006
Just weeks before the fourth anniversary of Red Deer tree planter Nicole Hoar's disappearance, her family has withdrawn a $50,000 reward for information in the case.
The reward had been posted by the Hudson's Bay Co., where Nicole's father has been a longtime employee.
"We came to the realization that (the reward) hadn't done what it was supposed to do," Jack Hoar said yesterday.
The family announced in October that they would withdraw the reward on June 3, 2006. Jack said the idea was to spur potential tipsters to come forward.
Although tips came in, none of them have helped explain what happened to his daughter.
Nicole was 25 years old when she vanished June 21, 2002, in B.C., while hitchhiking on Highway 16 from Prince George to Smithers to visit her sister. She had been working in B.C. as a tree planter.
The highway, now known as the Highway of Tears, has been a Bermuda Triangle for hitchhikers.
Nine women have been murdered or are missing since 1990 from communities that dot the largely remote Highway 16 corridor that stretches almost 750 km from Prince George to Prince Rupert.
Nicole is the only non-native woman of the nine.
Jack, who believes his daughter is dead, said he would just like some resolution in the baffling case.
"It's bothersome when you don't have any information," he said, adding he believes a person or group of people are preying on women along the highway and he hopes police can put an end to that.
"I think she happened to be at the wrong spot at the wrong time."
Prince George RCMP Sgt. Paul Strader said investigators are following up on tips as they come in.
Ray Michalko, a Vancouver-based private investigator, has also taken up the search for answers after recently becoming intrigued with the Highway of Tears.
"I'm involved in it and I'm not quitting now," said Michalko, of Valley Pacific Investigations Ltd.
"It's my opinion somebody out there knows something."
Monday, June 5
Police lay second murder charge, seek links in Niagara Falls slayings
Police lay second murder charge, seek more links in Niagara Falls slayings
Canadian Press
June 5, 2006
NIAGARA FALLS -- Police investigating the slayings of five women from "high-risk" lifestyles in southern Ontario laid a second charge of first-degree murder today against a man already accused in the death of one of the victims.
Michael Durant, 33, was charged today in the slaying of 28-year-old Diane Dimitri, one of five women whose remains have been discovered in various locations in the Niagara region over the past decade.
Durant was charged with second-degree murder earlier this year in the death of Cassey Cichocki, 22, an exotic dancer who vanished late last year. Her body was found in January, wrapped in a blanket and dumped in the bush near the Niagara Gorge.
That charge has since been upgraded to first-degree murder, police said.
"I'm pleased with the developments made in this case, but it still doesn't bring my sister back," Dimitri's younger brother, Andrew Kyriacou, said outside the police station where Niagara Falls police held a news conference.
Dimitri's body was discovered in a ditch in rural Welland in August 2003.
The charges come after a task force began looking into the killings of five women -- three prostitutes and two exotic dancers -- who lived so-called high-risk lifestyles tinged with drug use in the Niagara region.
Niagara Region police deputy Chief Donna Moody said police are continuing to investigate whether there is a connection between the slayings, but noted "there is no information that would connect (Durant) to the other three homicides."
And while the task force is narrowly focused on the five victims, police weren't ruling out the possibility that others could emerge during the course of the investigation.
"There could be (more victims). We don't know that and we aren't investigating any other cold cases right now," said Niagara police Staff Sgt. Cliff Sexton.
Police said the new charge against Durant followed a tip from a member of the public during their investigation of the Cichocki slaying in January.
Dimitri's father, Kyri Kyriacou, said he's growing more hopeful that the person responsible for his daughter's death will face justice.
"For the past three years we've had no idea why, no questions answered, and now we have a possibility," he said Monday.
"It's going to be a long struggle," Kyriacou said. "Closure is the important thing."
On behalf of all of the victims, Kyriacou also asked for discretion and sympathy.
"They're all girls who were led down the wrong path," he said. "We don't have the right to judge what they do, since we don't know what they've been through."
Dimitri's four children -- who range in age from 5 to 15 -- are now under his care and he said it has been hard for them to deal with the media coverage of their mother's death.
The other dead women were identified as Dawn Stewart, 32, Nadine Gurczenski, 26, and Margaret Jugaru, 26.
The slayings prompted the creation of the Project Advocate task force to probe more than a dozen attacks on sex-trade workers in the Hamilton-Halton area.
Cichocki, who turned to the streets to fuel a drug problem, was last seen in the early hours of Dec. 4.
Stewart, who was 32 and pregnant, vanished from her home in September 1995. Her skeletal remains, and those of a fetus, were discovered March 31, 1996, in a wooded area in Pelham.
The body of Gurczenski, 27, was discovered May 8, 1999, in a roadside ditch in Vineland.
The body of Jugaru, 26, was discovered in a school parking lot on July 9, 2004.
Monday's developments were just the latest in a series of unrelated deaths involving high-risk victims across Canada.
In British Columbia, accused serial killer Robert Pickton faces 26 counts of first-degree murder related to dozens of women who went missing from Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside.
Pickton has been in custody since February 2002.
In Alberta, a police task force dubbed Project Kare has spent more than two years investigating the deaths of dozens of Alberta women, many of them involved in the sex trade.
Thomas George Svekla, 38, of High Level, Alta., was arrested May 9 and charged with second-degree murder in one of those deaths.
Canadian Press
June 5, 2006
NIAGARA FALLS -- Police investigating the slayings of five women from "high-risk" lifestyles in southern Ontario laid a second charge of first-degree murder today against a man already accused in the death of one of the victims.
Michael Durant, 33, was charged today in the slaying of 28-year-old Diane Dimitri, one of five women whose remains have been discovered in various locations in the Niagara region over the past decade.
Durant was charged with second-degree murder earlier this year in the death of Cassey Cichocki, 22, an exotic dancer who vanished late last year. Her body was found in January, wrapped in a blanket and dumped in the bush near the Niagara Gorge.
That charge has since been upgraded to first-degree murder, police said.
"I'm pleased with the developments made in this case, but it still doesn't bring my sister back," Dimitri's younger brother, Andrew Kyriacou, said outside the police station where Niagara Falls police held a news conference.
Dimitri's body was discovered in a ditch in rural Welland in August 2003.
The charges come after a task force began looking into the killings of five women -- three prostitutes and two exotic dancers -- who lived so-called high-risk lifestyles tinged with drug use in the Niagara region.
Niagara Region police deputy Chief Donna Moody said police are continuing to investigate whether there is a connection between the slayings, but noted "there is no information that would connect (Durant) to the other three homicides."
And while the task force is narrowly focused on the five victims, police weren't ruling out the possibility that others could emerge during the course of the investigation.
"There could be (more victims). We don't know that and we aren't investigating any other cold cases right now," said Niagara police Staff Sgt. Cliff Sexton.
Police said the new charge against Durant followed a tip from a member of the public during their investigation of the Cichocki slaying in January.
Dimitri's father, Kyri Kyriacou, said he's growing more hopeful that the person responsible for his daughter's death will face justice.
"For the past three years we've had no idea why, no questions answered, and now we have a possibility," he said Monday.
"It's going to be a long struggle," Kyriacou said. "Closure is the important thing."
On behalf of all of the victims, Kyriacou also asked for discretion and sympathy.
"They're all girls who were led down the wrong path," he said. "We don't have the right to judge what they do, since we don't know what they've been through."
Dimitri's four children -- who range in age from 5 to 15 -- are now under his care and he said it has been hard for them to deal with the media coverage of their mother's death.
The other dead women were identified as Dawn Stewart, 32, Nadine Gurczenski, 26, and Margaret Jugaru, 26.
The slayings prompted the creation of the Project Advocate task force to probe more than a dozen attacks on sex-trade workers in the Hamilton-Halton area.
Cichocki, who turned to the streets to fuel a drug problem, was last seen in the early hours of Dec. 4.
Stewart, who was 32 and pregnant, vanished from her home in September 1995. Her skeletal remains, and those of a fetus, were discovered March 31, 1996, in a wooded area in Pelham.
The body of Gurczenski, 27, was discovered May 8, 1999, in a roadside ditch in Vineland.
The body of Jugaru, 26, was discovered in a school parking lot on July 9, 2004.
Monday's developments were just the latest in a series of unrelated deaths involving high-risk victims across Canada.
In British Columbia, accused serial killer Robert Pickton faces 26 counts of first-degree murder related to dozens of women who went missing from Vancouver's notorious Downtown Eastside.
Pickton has been in custody since February 2002.
In Alberta, a police task force dubbed Project Kare has spent more than two years investigating the deaths of dozens of Alberta women, many of them involved in the sex trade.
Thomas George Svekla, 38, of High Level, Alta., was arrested May 9 and charged with second-degree murder in one of those deaths.
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