Missing woman found alive

She disappeared from Downtown Eastside and wants no family contact

Lori Culbert
Vancouver Sun
Monday, December 04, 2006

One more woman who disappeared from the Downtown Eastside has been found alive, reducing the official police list of missing women to 65 names, The Vancouver Sun has learned.

Wendy Louise Allen, who vanished in 1979, has been found alive -- living under a different name in Ontario -- by the Missing Women Task Force.

She was located by the task force in July, but that information was not made public until The Sun made inquiries about Allen.

"The Missing Women Task Force confirms that in July 2006 they confirmed that Wendy Allen was alive. She was located in another province," said Cpl. Pierre Lemaitre, who speaks for the RCMP in B.C.

"The reason they did not go public with it was at her insistence. She was living under another name and had no desire to have contact with her relatives here."

The police list of women who vanished from the Downtown Eastside grew to as high as 69 names, but has now fallen to 65 because three other women have also been found. Police discovered Tammy Fairbairn was living in central Canada in May 2005; The Sun contacted Linda Grant in the U.S. in June to confirm she was still alive; and Mary Lands phoned the RCMP later that same month to say she was alive.

Lemaitre said no other women on the list have been found that the public hasn't been told about.

He said police spoke to the media when the first three women were found, but made a different decision with Allen.

"With this file, unlike the others, the Missing Women Task Force refrained from advising the media that the woman had been found due to her personal reasons," he said.

Lemaitre said police tracked Allen down to confirm she was alive; in other cases, such as Lands and Grant, the women discovered themselves on the missing-women poster and notified police.

Lemaitre said Allen has lived in Ontario "for several years," but didn't know if she had been there since she vanished nearly 28 years ago.

Allen's relatives have been informed that she is alive and not still missing. However, Allen does not want contact with them.

"This is a happy and a sad development," Lemaitre said of finding Allen. "It's obviously still sad in some respects for her family because she doesn't want to see them."

The women on the list of missing disappeared between 1978 and 2001. Allen is the second-oldest case, as she was last seen March 30, 1979 -- however, she was not reported missing until April 5, 2002.

Her photograph is one of only a handful of black and white images on the missing women poster. With her trademark 1970s short hair, she gazes innocently at the camera in the picture.

Allen, who was originally from the Lower Mainland, was 33 when she disappeared; she will turn 61 later this month. When she was last seen in 1979, she was described as having long brown hair and blue eyes.

The task force announced in July 2002 that it was looking for information about Allen and eight other women who may be missing.

Police said at the time that the nine additional women fit the profile of the other missing women in that they frequented the Downtown Eastside, were addicted to drugs or alcohol and, in most cases, had some contact with the sex trade.

Five of the nine women (including Allen) were reported missing for the first time in 2002 -- after the high-profile search of Robert (Willie) Pickton's Port Coquitlam pig farm began in February of that year.

Pickton has since been charged with killing 26 of the women on the list of the missing.
Pickton has pleaded not guilty and his trial on the first six counts of murder is to start in January.

Lemaitre said the task force continues to investigate the whereabouts of the 39 other women on the poster.

lculbert@png.canwest.com

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

http://www.missingpeople.net/sought_by_missing_women's_joint_task_force-july_26,_2002.htm

Author to speak about B.C. sister's life and disappearance

Author to speak about B.C. sister's life and disappearance
JOHANNA WEIDNER
THE RECORD.com

(Dec 4, 2006)
Maggie de Vries saw her sister clearly only after she vanished.
Sarah de Vries was a drug addict and prostitute living in a sketchy Vancouver neighbourhood.
But she was also a caring and creative woman who fixed up her rundown house to make it a home.
Unfortunately, Sarah was lost to the dark side of her life.
She was 28 when she disappeared on an April night in 1998. Four years later, her DNA was found on the Port Coquitlam farm of accused serial killer Robert Pickton.
Maggie will be speaking about her sister Wednesday in Cambridge at an annual Dec. 6 memorial dinner hosted by local groups of the Canadian Federation of University Women. Fourteen women were shot and killed at Montreal's Ecole Polytechnique on Dec. 6, 1989, by a man who targeted women.
Violence against women is a passionate issue for Maggie, in particular against women like her sister living on society's fringe. Everyone is responsible for that violence.
"We all play a role by turning a blind eye," said the Vancouver woman.
Society ignores women who sell their bodies, writing them off as victims of their own misfortunes. And, Maggie said, there's no concern about how dangerous it is for the women alone on dark streets late at night.
"She's dead because of that," Maggie said of her sister.
She wants to change how others think about these women. Maggie had to confront her own prejudices after Sarah disappeared, finally seeing through the darkness to the good in Sarah's life.
Maggie regularly visited her sister in the little bungalow Sarah rented.
"I hated it. I would try to not see anything around me," she recalled. "I saw it just as a terrible place where my sister was trapped."
Maggie returned to the neighbourhood to put up posters after Sarah's disappearance and, for the first time, she talked to people and really learned about Sarah's life.
"I find out that people knew her, and they cared about her," she said. "It was a community of people who support and care about each other."
She regrets that she was so focused on rescuing Sarah that she couldn't simply be a big sister.
"I'm more comfortable in her world now that she's no longer in it," she said.
Long ago, the sisters inhabited the same world.
Maggie was the oldest of four adopted children who grew up in British Columbia. Sarah, the youngest, was a "very bubbly, life-loving, friendly, dramatic kid," her sister said.
But before Sarah was 14, she started running away from home. She would come home occasionally during her teens, but by her 20s, she was mired in a life of prostitution and drugs.
Sarah had two children, now 16 and 10, who are cared for by her mother in Guelph. Sarah was also HIV positive.
Her family tried to help Sarah move on to a better life, but nothing worked.
"It was hell," Maggie said.
Maggie shares that family struggle in her book Missing Sarah, which includes excerpts of Sarah's journals.
Loneliness, isolation and self-loathing often appeared, "but also there was beauty in her journals" in poetry and art, Maggie said.
The journals also included details about the violence in Sarah's life. She was beaten many times -- almost to death at least once -- and raped.
It's comforting to label certain men as dangerous, aberrations such as Robert Pickon, who is accused of murdering dozens of women, Maggie said. But the truth is that men who abuse women come from all walks of life.
Maggie remembers a meeting between police and families of the missing women in the early stages of the investigation, when police shared a list of area men they said had the opportunity and were capable of the murders.
"They had a list of 600 names," Maggie said. "What kind of society are we that so many men in our midst are considered capable of killing so many women?"
Maggie doesn't want her sister to be forgotten, to vanish forever.
"You can't take away the tragedy . . . but you can try to hold up something good next to it."

jweidner@therecord.com

DEC. 6 MEMORIAL
Author Maggie de Vries will speak in Cambridge for the Dec. 6 memorial dinner hosted by local clubs of the Canadian Federation of University Women.
The event will be at the Cambridge Holiday Inn with a reception at 6 p.m. and dinner at 7 p.m.
Tickets are $50. Proceeds go to a scholarship trust run by the Canadian Federation of University Women, an organization of university graduates working to raise the social, economic, educational and legal status of women and girls.
For tickets and information, e-mail december6th@cfuwkw.org or mailto:cfuwcambridgedec6@rogers.com

Lost, Not Forgotten

After a scathing audit, investigators who track down the missing are winning accolades

Lori Culbert
Vancouver Sun
Saturday, December 02, 2006

CREDIT: (Glenn Baglo/Vancouver Sun)
Vancouver Police Department Missing Persons Unit: from left; Det. Const. Greg Ralla, Det. Const. Henry Wolf, Sgt. Ron Fairweather, coordinator Emer Fitzgerald and Det. Const. Cal Traversy.

It was one of 3,698 files to come across the desks of Vancouver's three missing persons investigators this year: A distraught woman reporting her brother had disappeared just before midnight on May 10, 2006.

The man had not been seen for three days.

He had not shown up for work at a Richmond hotel, where he had a good job.

He made no contact with his friends and family, and would not answer repeated cellphone calls. It was uncharacteristic behaviour.

And then his sister's car disappeared and, suspecting her brother had taken it, the worried woman called Vancouver police.

Patrol officers searched the man's house, contacted his friends, and a missing person report was issued.

The next morning at 6 a.m., Det. Const. Cal Traversy sat down at his desk in the Missing Persons Unit and phoned the sister to get more information.

During the phone call, the woman received a text message on her cell phone from her brother; it was a mass message to all his friends and relatives, saying he planned to end his life.

Traversy alerted his partner, Det. Const. Greg Ralla, who contacted security at FIDO, the company that provides the man's cell phone service.

By 7:40 a.m., FIDO had determined the man sent his message near a cellular site on Othello Road in Hope.

Vancouver police contacted Hope RCMP, who drove through the area and spoke to residents.

A car was spotted parked on a side road in the area. A hose was running from the exhaust pipe into the trunk. The windows were covered with condensation.

The driver, police said, was sweating and suffering from carbon monoxide poisoning.

He had been breathing the fumes for nearly two hours, with the intent of killing himself.

The man was treated in hospital. He survived.

"That was literally in the nick of time, because if we hadn't got to him who knows what would have happened," Ralla said.

"If you find someone missing, alive, it's a success story."

Later, on May 11, 2006, the head of the missing persons unit, Sgt. Ron Fairweather, sent an e-mail to senior officers praising the teamwork between the VPD, the RCMP, police dispatchers and FIDO for making "a significant difference today not only in the life of one man, but also in the many lives of his family and friends."

It was a success story for Fairweather, who took over the beleaguered unit a year ago, and for his new team of three full-time investigators and a civilian coordinator.

However, until recently, accolades were rare for the VPD's missing persons unit, which was criticized in the 1990s for its response to sex-trade workers vanishing from the Downtown Eastside.

The list grew to as high as 69 women who vanished between 1978 and 2001. Port Coquitlam pig farmer Robert (Willie) Pickton has since been charged with killing 26 of those women.

Fourteen months ago The Vancouver Sun obtained a scathing internal audit of the missing persons unit, written in October 2004, which found that understaffing, inadequate supervision and shoddy record-keeping compromised the ability of the squad to solve cases.

There was criticism of the leadership provided by the former head of the unit, now-retired Sgt. John Dragani, who was suspended in April 2005. (He has since been charged with one count of possessing child pornography and one count of accessing child pornography.)

John Schouten, the retired VPD inspector who conducted the audit, made 50 recommendations to improve the unit, which Fairweather said were all addressed by May 2006.

Fairweather, an outspoken and hard-working 26-year veteran of the department, said he and his team are now turning things around in the unit, which had been the "wart" of the major crimes section.

"It [this unit] was the laughing stock. It was the place that was known that burnt-out, soon-to-be retired members would come and punch in, and do very little. It's very different now," said Fairweather, who took over missing persons after running the VPD's recruiting section.

"No way we can refute [previous criticisms]. But that's how it was in the past, that's the black eye that we do wear. But that's the commitment -- that that's not to happen again."

The changes, he said, began with addressing the 50 recommendations in the audit. Fairweather said those include:

nThe number of investigators in the unit has been increased from one to three: Traversy and Ralla look for missing persons, and Det. Const. Henry Wolf is the coroner liaison;

nAll active cases are handled by the three investigators. The audit found in the past several investigations slipped through the cracks because they had been assigned to officers who had retired or been transferred;

nMissing persons files are now investigated by a patrol officer as soon as reports come in, and those primary investigations are more thorough than they were in the past. They are then referred to the missing persons unit, which operates six days a week. The audit found that some missing person reports previously sat idle for as long as 84 hours, due to long weekends or holidays, before anyone looked at them;

nImprovements were made to the computer system that tracks files and to the unit's relationship with the Missing Women Task Force, which is investigating the Pickton case. (Traversy spent three years with the task force before transferring to the missing persons unit two years ago.) The audit found the VPD did not index cases it sent to the task force, leading to confusion about the status of some files -- including one that was "closed" even though the person was still missing;

nThe unit has improved its relationship with other police departments and agencies, such as search and rescue outfits, so they can better work together. And the B.C. missing persons centre has been created by Mounties and municipal police to write new policy for missing persons investigations;

nThe unit developed new policies to deal with chronic run-away youths -- which represented almost 95 per cent of its missing person reports -- and is working more efficiently with group homes, the Ministry for Children and Families, and other caregivers. Between August 2005 and August 2006 there was a 23- per-cent drop in missing person reports, which is attributed to the changes in handling runaways.

Emer Fitzgerald, who has been the unit's civilian coordinator for five years, said she spoke in 2004 to Deputy Chief Doug LePard, who leads the VPD's investigations division, about her concerns that missing person files were not being investigated properly back then.

Fitzgerald, who has the street-smarts of a seasoned investigator, says there is no comparison between what was done then and the work done now to find missing people.

"It's the people that have been brought in here that has made all the difference. We didn't have a sergeant. We were the poor cousins to homicide," she said. "Now every file is taken seriously. Every file is completed."

However, in this line of work, not every file has a happy ending.

In September 2005, Will Exner, a 24-year-old UBC graduate, disappeared while walking to his Vancouver home over the Granville Street Bridge. He was the long-time boyfriend of the daughter of Canadian Labour Congress president Ken Georgetti.

Traversy recalled working with other police units, such as the dive team, and other agencies to try to find the young man's body. The publicity generated by that case had his phone ringing off the hook with tips.

In the end, Exner's body was located in False Creek 11 days after he went missing. How he fell into the water remains a mystery, although an autopsy ruled out foul play.

In an interview this week, Georgetti said the unit didn't have enough staff to run the massive search organized by family and friends, but the officers gave "good sound advice on how to deal with [a missing person] and cope with it."

"We were extremely pleased with the help they gave us," Georgetti said.

After The Sun published stories in September 2005 about the critical audit of the missing persons unit, the search manager of North Shore Rescue wrote a letter to the newspaper also complimenting the work done by Traversy and Fitzgerald on the Exner file.

"A clear action plan was set for the areas North Shore Rescue was to search and the resources required," wrote Tim Jones, a long-time member of the volunteer search group. "It is not my place to comment on the audit of this unit, but it is my place to say that the two members I worked with deserve praise for their work and compassion towards Exner's family and friends."

However, there will not be satisfaction from everyone on how each case is handled.

In January, 14-year-old Alicia McCallum was reported missing after not coming home all weekend. Her mother, Myrna McCallum, complained to the media that police didn't do enough to find her native daughter.

"Look at the city we live in. Look at all those native women who went missing on the Downtown Eastside and no one ... cared," she said at the time.

Alicia was found unharmed after five days in a house in Burnaby -- which Myrna McCallum told police her daughter may have gone to with a friend.

Fairweather initially apologized that the case was not dealt with "in a satisfactory manner," but the next day said he reviewed the file and thought officers did what they could to find the girl who did not want to be found: Vancouver police asked Burnaby RCMP to check out the home the day Alicia was reported missing but she wasn't there; a Vancouver police officer visited the home three days later but a woman refused to say if Alicia was inside; and Fairweather went to the home the next day and, after "soft-shoeing" his way in, found Alicia.

Kate Gibson, executive director of the WISH (Women's Information Safe Haven) drop-in centre for sex-trade workers in the Downtown Eastside, said the department's efforts to improve the unit should be commended.

"It's a great thing that they're doing, that they've made that commitment," said Gibson, who has been with WISH more than three years. "It shows that they want to move forward and they want to make a change."

She said WISH has a good relationship with Vancouver police, who issue missing person bulletins that the agency posts in its drop-in centre and in a van that provides services to women on the street.

Modern-day files of sex trade workers going missing remain with the VPD, but any new reports of disappearances before Pickton's 2002 arrest are handled by the Missing Women Task Force.

Fairweather said all the sex-trade workers who have recently disappeared from Vancouver have been found, and that there are no outstanding files with the VPD. And he's quick to point out that the unit doesn't categorize missing people according to occupations.

"Whether she's from here [the Downtown Eastside] or from the West End of Vancouver, everyone gets the same treatment," added Ralla, a 20-year VPD veteran. "We don't pick and choose who we look for."

He showed The Sun an inch-thick file from an investigation last week into a missing woman -- a sex trade worker and intravenous drug user whose boyfriend said it was out of character for her to vanish.

Ralla said they interviewed her boyfriend, other sex trade workers, and the staff at a hotel where she had turned a trick. They also tried to find her last customer.

Posters were sent to all patrol officers and were about to be given to the media when the woman surfaced, saying she had taken off because she was mad at her boyfriend.

Ralla has hung a poster of the 69 missing women above his desk in the Main Street police station. "That's the reminder right there that I need to do everything I can for a file," he said.

One of the key recommendations in the audit was to review the more than 140 historical, unsolved missing person files in Vancouver since the 1960s. About half have been looked at again, and the rest will also be re-opened to seek new clues to the disappearances.

Of the 77 cold cases reviewed so far, many could not be solved but most people were glad to know police had not forgotten them. "People are happy that you call them. Some people were never called after they made the initial report," said Traversy, a 16-year VPD veteran.

Later this month, the VPD plans to list details of all its unsolved missing person cases on its website the way other agencies, such as the Los Angles Police Department, have done.

The number of unsolved cases in the city is not growing as quickly as it has in the past.

In 2005 there were 4,428 missing person files and only three remain unsolved. So far in 2006, there have been 3,698 and all but the most recent cases have been solved, Fairweather said.

Over the past two years, there were 610 and 530 sudden death files respectively. Wolf was brought to the unit in May to liaise with the coroner on those files, and to track down and notify next of kin.

Since his arrival, not one body has been sent to the public trustee because police were unable to find a relative.

That wasn't the case in previous years. In fact, one of the first things Fairweather did when he took over the unit was apologize to a family because they were never told their son had died a year earlier and his body had been lying in the morgue unclaimed.

As the coroner liaison, it is Wolf's job to not let that happen again. It sometimes requires global searches -- the unit recently used Interpol to find a father of a dead person in the Ukraine, and the ex-wife of another person in the Czech Republic.

Fairweather says Wolf, who joined the unit in May, has a "gift" for the terrible task of delivering bad news to families.

Wolf said the key is to write down for grieving people all the details they will need in the coming days: where the body is, who to contact, where the deceased's personal possessions are.

"You're compassionate, but what you really need to do is make sure they have all the information they need when the shock wears off," said Wolf, who has been with the VPD for 25 years.

LePard said it became apparent to him, not long after being promoted to deputy chief in late 2003, that there were "performance concerns" about the unit, so he ordered the audit be done and the 50 recommendations be acted upon.

"I have not had any complaints about a missing person file since Ron Fairweather took over the unit. Not a single one," LePard said this week.

He acknowledged there could still be a "certain perception" among the general public about how the VPD conducts missing person investigations, but said the department gets high approval ratings and many thank-you notes from the people to whom it has provided service.

"It was unfortunate there were problems in the unit, but it's an example of us identifying a problem and conducting an audit and addressing the recommendations," LePard said.

"I am very pleased with what is going on now."

lculbert@png.canwest.com

© The Vancouver Sun 2006

Slain woman's mom told of professional men buying sex from teens

Sex-trade shocker

CARA KING

By ELIZA BARLOW, EDMONTON SUN
December 2, 2006

New information from a friend of a 22-year-old woman found slain and dumped in a Strathcona County field more than nine years ago has been forwarded to Project KARE.

Kathy King, mother of victim Cara King, said she was shocked and angry when a friend of Cara's offered a disturbing revelation last month.

The friend told Kathy that when the girls were just teenagers, about 12 to 15 years ago, they would party with older, professional men and exchange sex for money.

King said the well-educated, successful men, "whose achievements can be found on Google," would "skulk" around various downtown nightspots and pick up the girls for encounters in various hotel rooms.

"It took me about two weeks to calm down (after hearing about it)," said King, adding she considered confronting some of the men with what she knew, but decided against it.

She did forward the information to Project KARE, a police task force investigating the deaths and disappearances of people who led high-risk lifestyles, many of them prostitutes.

"There's up to 80 disappearances that are unsolved and every link is a possible link," she explained.
"Whether or not these men are murderers - I don't think they are murderers, but the point is they're on the continuum of violence against women."

King favours the system in Sweden, where buying sex is illegal but selling sex is not.

"(Prostitution) is a consumer-driven exploitation," she said. "Can we stop it at the source - and that's in the hearts and minds of men?"

She urged men to "look at themselves and look at each other. The men in the world have a responsibility to say to themselves, 'This is not acceptable.'"

"The point is, an established, successful professional man should have something better to do with his life than partying with teenagers and exchanging money for sexual favours."

Cara King's murder is among the unsolved homicides being investigated by Project KARE.

Cara's remains were found in a canola field near Strathmoor Way in Sherwood Park on Sept. 1, 1997.

Problems ensnare safe site for sex workers

ROBERT MATAS
Globe and Mail

December 1, 2006

VANCOUVER -- They were thrilled to receive funds to open Vancouver's first 24-hour drop-in centre for women who sell sex on the streets. They assumed a donation of $1-million from members of Vancity Credit Union was enough to turn a dream into reality.

But three years later, little has happened. Money to buy a building for a drop-in centre sits in the vault; the centre remains a dream.

With jury selection for the Robert Pickton trial to begin within days, the plight of Vancouver's sex-trade workers is once again moving into the spotlight.

But those involved in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighbourhood say the women who work the streets remain as vulnerable as ever.

Problems that might have disappeared if the centre had been completed have not changed.
"It's an outrage," said Ann Livingston, whose sister-in-law, Elsie Sebastian, disappeared in the early 1990s.

Society is interested in the DNA of the women's relatives after they vanish, Ms. Livingston said in a recent interview, referring to police efforts to match family DNA profiles with DNA samples found during the Pickton investigation.

"But when you are alive and need a bathroom, and a place to get warm, or any kind of service, there is nothing," she said.

Kate Gibson, executive director of the group that received the $1-million donation, said she has not yet found a location for the new drop-in centre, despite strenuous efforts. She has looked at about 20 sites in the past three years and seriously pursued at least five locations that did not work out.

The project has stalled despite a lot of public support from city hall, the police and many others in Vancouver.

"There are plenty of people in the community who know it is necessary to have this facility," she said.

But at every turn, new obstacles seem to appear. "And regardless of what we do, the women are still out there," she said. The women cannot escape violence on the street without a safe place to go, she said.

The women continue to add names to the bad-date list, which identifies violent men who buy their services; posters about missing women continue to pop up in the neighbourhood; the women continue to wander during the day looking for a bathroom.

The project began with the best of intentions. Members of Vancity Credit Union decided in the fall of 2003 to give $1-million to WISH, an acronym for Women's Information and Safe House. The group, which serves only those working in the sex trade, has been active in the Downtown Eastside since the 1980s.

WISH runs a drop-in centre for sex-trade workers based in a neighbourhood church. But the service is available only in the evening and only six days a week. Funds from Vancity were intended to enable the organization to acquire a building for a 24-hour operation that would provide a place for a safe retreat, showers and a bathroom. The new centre would also provide hot meals, access to nurses and referrals to shelters. Women would not be allowed to sleep at the centre.

The drop-in centre is a place close to where the women work, where they can have a coffee and find someone to talk to, Ms. Gibson said.

WISH received the award on its second application, Ms. Gibson said. "Clearly the climate changed. People were starting to recognize how vulnerable the women on the street were," she said.

But the search for a site hit several dead ends. Residents in the neighbourhood, businesses and police insisted the drop-in centre should not change the character of an area. Police ruled out a promising location that they said was not well enough lit and in an area that already required intense policing.

WISH has looked at all kinds of buildings, including a funeral home and derelict hotels, she said. As the organization searched, property values increased and the purchasing power of the $1-million donation dropped. Some sites sold quickly at inflated prices as parts of the neighbourhood gentrified; other sites required renovations the group could not afford.

Ms. Livingston, who is the executive program director of a drug-user group called Vandu, said WISH has been too quiet in its efforts to find a site.

"Who are they trying to please?" Ms. Livingston asked, adding that their critics may never say "okay."

WISH should not let police have any say over its location, she said. Residents should be assured that the centre will be a good neighbour that may make the neighbourhood safer.

"We all need to say WISH provides proper services; they are properly run; they are responsible people," Ms. Livingston said.

The Pickton case was dominating headlines around the time that Vancity Credit Union members were voting on their choice for the $1-million award. "With all the publicity around Pickton in the media, people see this as an issue and something to support," Vancity CEO Dave Mowat said at the ceremony to award the funds.

Jury selection for the Pickton trial on six of the murders begins Dec. 9. As the Pickton trial returns to the headlines, Ms. Gibson said the lengthy search for a site has been frustrating. But she remained optimistic.

By January, she said, she hopes she will have something to announce.

There are plenty of people in the community who know it is necessary to have this facility. And regardless of what we do, the women are still out there. Kate Gibson, director of WISH

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