‘Not waiting for police,’ says missing woman’s family

By: Gabrielle Giroday

Posted: 05/28/2011 1:00 AM |

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JOHN WOODS/WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Bernice and Wilfred Catcheway are criticizing the RCMP’s communication skills as the police launch Project Devote.

There were two groups in Winnipeg dealing with the issue of murdered and missing women Friday.

One was at the RCMP headquarters, a highly orchestrated announcement featuring the top brass of both the Winnipeg Police Service and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The other was a quieter and less controlled gathering of families that have been impacted by those crimes, like Bernice and Wilfred Catcheway, who sat in the lobby of a city hotel pouring their hearts out over their endless search for their missing daughter Jennifer.

Winnipeg Police Service Chief Keith McCaskill and RCMP Assistant Commissioner Bill Robinson told reporters they're planning to continue the work of a joint task force originally struck in August 2009 dedicated to cases of murdered and missing women.

The Catcheways, by contrast, said they hadn't been told about the police announcement and don't plan to wait on officers to find their missing daughter.

"We just go on searching," said Bernice Catcheway, who spent $10,000 to excavate a dump in Grand Rapids in the search for the Portage la Prairie teen after she went missing in June 2008.

"We're not waiting for the police. They say, 'Oh, we're with you, we're with you.' We don't see that, we have no communication," said Bernice Catcheway.

Their daughter's case garnered intense media coverage after it happened, with the family organizing searches and gathering tips. Their experience with police had been frustrating, they said, and that frustration continues.

"For myself, for ourselves, I don't think enough is being done as far as communication. The only time I hear from the RCMP is when I phone to give information on things that I've heard, so there's no communication. They don't call me to say where they're at. Never, not once," said Bernice Catcheway.

Seven officers and two civilian analysts had been dedicated to work on the task force. Police said the task force will now move into another phase called Project Devote, where officers will take information gathered from the task force's review and apply it to investigating unsolved cases.

There's been some success so far. In July, police announced they'd made an arrest of 40-year-old Theodore Herntier for the 2004 homicide of sex trade worker Divas Boulanger.

"I want you to know that our commitment to the victims, their families, and the community at large remains steadfast," said Robinson at the news conference at D Division headquarters.

"The entire Project Devote team is sensitive to the families' distress and frustration, and understands the families' need for ongoing communication."

An announcement by both police forces last February said the task force had uncovered similarities among 84 cases. However -- more than a year later -- police did not say the number of cases they're now pursuing, or identify specific cases where they're looking for leads from the public.

The Catcheways, for example, said they don't know if their daughter's case is included.

"By designating a number to this, an offender who may or may not be watching this, may think, 'Well, gee, they may not be looking at the case that I may or may not be responsible for,' " said Robinson.

gabrielle.giroday@freepress.mb.ca

Where are Manitoba’s missing women?

Global News: Friday, May 27, 2011 5:12 PM

For the past year and half, police have been sifting through paperwork, reviewing dozens of cases of missing and murdered women in Manitoba, some of which date back to 1926.

"We really want to bring closure to these families as much as we possibly can,” said Winnipeg Police Chief Keith McCaskill

Now, they’re ready to take the next step in their investigation.

"We are now preparing to move into the investigative stage, which we have called, ‘Project Devote,’” explained RCMP Commissioner Bill Robinson.

So far, 84 cases have been reviewed by Manitoba’s Integrated Task Force, but police won’t say how many of those cases will move onto the next phase, and be probed even further, because they fear it could jeopardize the investigation.

“By designating a number to this, an offender … may think, ‘Well gee, you know, they may not be looking at the case that I may or may not be involved,’” Robinson explained Friday.

“I wouldn’t want to give that number out because we’re in a situation where, given the number 84, we want to do our priority-setting,”

“Project Devote” will focus on cases where foul play is suspected, involving exploited women.

But some family members say the task force hasn’t been open enough about their missing loved ones, so far.

"I was really hopeful in the beginning when they did announce it, but then there was no transparency in terms of communication with families,” said Bernadette Osborne.

Her sister, 21-year-old Claudette Osborne, has been missing since the summer of 2008, when she was working on the streets. Her family says she was a bubbly young mother who planned on turning her life around.

“I just love her and miss her so much, she’s like a piece of my heart is missing.”

Relatives of Mildred Flett, who has been missing since last year, are also frustrated.

"They haven’t investigated, they haven’t even got to the point to know exactly where the last time Milly was seen,” said Terry Nelson, chief of the Roseau River First Nation, where Flett lived.

Authorities say they plan to add more officers to the unit when the Project Devote lauches in the fall.

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Funding refusal for missing women inquiry shows what B.C. thinks of probe

BY ETHAN BARON, POSTMEDIA NEWS MAY 26, 2011 10:03 PM

Robert "Willie" Pickton had plenty of government-funded lawyers for his serial-killing trial. In the Missing Women Inquiry, groups representing the populations from which Pickton chose his victims, won't get one publicly funded lawyer.

Photograph by: Global TV, CanWest News Service

VANCOUVER — Willie Pickton had more than 10 government-funded lawyers for his serial-killing trial.

In the Missing Women Inquiry intended to prevent such crimes from happening again, groups representing the populations from which Pickton plucked his victims will get not a single publicly funded lawyer. Families of the women Pickton murdered will share one government-funded lawyer. Government and police agencies will have more than a dozen.

The B.C. government's unprecedented decision to refuse funding to official inquiry stakeholders shows it puts a very low value on this probe.

Pickton is serving life for murdering six women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside, but had boasted to a police officer of killing 49. Many of his victims were native.

No. 1 on the list of the inquiry's "terms of reference" is a probe of the police investigations from 1997 to 2002 into disappearances of women from the Downtown Eastside. Highly paid police lawyers will defend the conduct of officers and commanders during controversial Vancouver police and RCMP investigations. Without legal representation for women's and First Nations groups working in the Eastside, the probe will be little more than an echo chamber for back-patting and inter-jurisdictional finger-pointing.

No. 2 on the inquiry's list is a determination of why the B.C. government's Criminal Justice Branch decided to stay attempted-murder, assault with a weapon, forcible confinement and aggravated-assault charges against Pickton, after he attacked a prostitute in his trailer in 1997. Without hard questions from lawyers representing non-government organizations, the province will escape accountability for this decision, which freed Pickton to carry on his killing spree.

The province's move to deny legal funding to these stakeholders defies public-inquiry convention, and defies inquiry commissioner Wally Oppal, who recommended the province fund lawyers for 13 groups to whom he'd given official standing.

"My intention was to ensure that no group with standing before the inquiry would be denied legal counsel at the evidentiary hearings due to lack of funds," Oppal said in a statement this week. Oppal later told Vancouver Province reporter Suzanne Fournier that it would be "really unfortunate if only the policing side was there."

Oppal, who should be receiving the full support of the B.C. government, is instead engaged in damage control, trying to preserve the credibility of the inquiry by highlighting public-input opportunities during the informal "study-commission" gatherings at which anyone can speak.

"People at the study commission don't need to cross-examine witnesses," Oppal told Fournier.

No, lawyers at the inquiry table need to cross-examine witnesses, and those lawyers must include representatives of groups who have in-depth knowledge of what was happening in the Eastside as women were going missing, and who have similar awareness of what is happening there now, and in Northern B.C., where almost 20 women have been murdered or disappeared along the "Highway of Tears" between Prince George and Prince Rupert.

Vancouver Province

© Copyright (c) The Province

Marginalized B.C. groups withdraw from Missing Women Inquiry over lack of funding

BY SUZANNE FOURNIER, THE PROVINCE MAY 25, 2011 4:02 PM

Critics are calling on Commissioner Wally Oppal, seen in the January 2011 file photo, to "speak up" to ensure maginalized groups are funded to participate in the Missing Women Inquiry.

Photograph by: Gerry Kahrmann, PNG

The B.C. government’s refusal to fund the groups most affected by the deaths of marginalized women calls into question the credibility of the upcoming Missing Women Inquiry, community groups charged Wednesday.

Inquiry head Wally Oppal, a former judge and B.C. Attorney General, “must speak up” to tell the government the inquiry will be meaningless without full participation, says the B.C. Civil Liberties Association (BCCLA).

Therefore, all of the groups representing women, First Nations, sex-trade workers and the BCCLA have announced they are pulling out of the inquiry.

“Without public interest groups there to represent the very people this Inquiry is designed to protect, it is starting to feel like another case of the police investigating themselves and calls into question the legitimacy of this inquiry,” said Douglas King of the Pivot Legal Society.

The groups are calling on Oppal to stand up to the B.C. government, saying it is unprecedented for an inquiry head’s funding requests to be denied.

BCCLA director David Eby agreed. “As Marlene George (of the Feb. 14 Women’s Memorial March group) said this morning (Wednesday), the denial of funding has just replicated the barriers to marginalized women that led to these deaths in the first place,” said Eby.

“There will be large numbers of top lawyers representing the RCMP, Vancouver police and the B.C. Criminal Justice branch and on the other side there will be Cameron Ward representing some victims’ families,” said Eby.

The police and justice branch lawyers all are paid out of public funds.

“The groups most likely to critique the police or government’s behaviour have been shut out of the inquiry. They have to be at the table and we need Commissioner Oppal to step up and tell the government to heed his advice.”

B.C. Attorney General Barry Penner said last week that only the families of women killed by serial murderer Robert Pickton will get funding to share one lawyer, Cameron Ward.

Oppal did recommend to Penner that 18 groups get full funding for legal counsel for the evidentiary hearing but that recommendation was ignored.

“My recommendation to the provincial government was to fund all the groups that satisfied me that they would not be able to participate fully without financial support,” Oppal said in a statement Tuesday.

“My intention was to ensure that no group with standing before the inquiry would be denied legal counsel at the evidentiary hearings due to lack of funds.”

However, Oppal has not yet responded to the announcement that all groups except the lawyer for a few of the victims will boycott his inquiry.

Oppal did say that he has asked commission counsel Art Vertlieb to again meet with groups denied funding “to see what can be done to meet their clients’ needs.”

Oppal’s inquiry had hoped to head up to northern B.C. in June to hold study sessions, which are not part of the recorded evidentiary hearings.

The formal hearings are slated to begin in September, 2011 and Oppal hopes to report to government by the end of 2011, covering the police handling of the disappearance and death of at least 69 marginalized women.

Serial killer Robert Pickton, convicted in the death of six women, has beenlinked by DNA to the death of at least 32 women.

Pickton preyed at will for decades on desperate and drug-addicted Downtown Eastside sex trade workers, disposing of their remains at a rendering plant and on his Port Coquitlam property.

sfournier@theprovince.com

twitter.com/suzannefournier

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Growing caseload a challenge for task force

BY SHERRI ZICKEFOOSE, CALGARY HERALD MAY 15, 2011

Sgt. John Respet at Project Kare's headquarters in Edmonton.

Photograph by: Leah Hennel, Calgary Herald, Calgary Herald

Inside Project Kare's downtown Edmonton operations room, the many faces of a killer stare out at police investigators.

Stamped across the collage of Thomas Svekla headshots reads the word "CONVICTED" in red letters.

The capture and conviction of Svekla, a suspected serial killer sentenced to life in prison in 2008 for the murder of Theresa Innis but acquitted in the death of Rachel Quinney, is Project Kare's greatest triumph.

Two more Edmonton area men -Joseph Laboucan and Michael Briscoe -are charged with first-degree murder and are awaiting trial.

But despite those successes, many more of the task force's cases of 70 dead or missing people -including about a dozen from the Calgary area -remain unsolved.

"Certainly, we would like to have more (cases solved). I don't think there's any secret about that," said RCMP Insp. Bob Williams.

"These files are very complex and we're working on different areas."

Last Monday, RCMP and Edmonton police were seen searching a densely wooded Edmonton park for evidence related to an ongoing Project Kare investigation.

Police stayed tight-lipped about what they were looking for during the three-day search, or which case it relates to.

Task force investigators won't say which Calgary area cases they have included in their database.

They say they want to give families privacy and not offer false hope.

But the silence is unbearable for some.

"I would say there needs to be a more clear disbursement of resources in Alberta," said Dawn Pepper, whose cousin, Jennifer Joyes, is believed to be on the list.

"What's the allocation? What's fair? We thought we'd hear of more success. I would like my mother to know that Jennifer's case is still being investigated and that someday her family would see justice. I want to see that for her."

"I'm not sure that's going to happen."

The task force grew out of a 2002 high-risk missing persons project after Alberta police watched with growing horror the scope of Vancouver's investigation into missing and murdered women on Robert Pickton's pig farm.

Since 2006, the year of Svekla's arrest, Project Kare has been bolstered by $16.8 million. The task force makes use of about 20 investigators.

Funding for Project Kare comes from existing RCMP funding under the provincial policing service agreement. Alberta covers 70 per cent of the cost of the RCMP while the federal government covers the remaining 30 per cent.

While it originally intended to catch killers responsible for multiple slayings of high-risk women in the Edmonton area, Project Kare has expanded its mandate to create an integrated RCMP and Edmonton Police Service homicide unit in a permanent capacity to investigate unsolved historic homicides, missing high risk persons, and serial offenders.

With provincial dollars paying for much of the task force, victims' advocates wonder how much, if any, attention is given to the unsolved historic southern Alberta cases.

"I think it's a great start but I don't think it's what we could be seeing," said Suzanne Dsuz, an organizer for the Memorial March for Missing and Murdered Women Calgary.

© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald