Missing and Murdered Women: Canada

Showing posts with label Canada. Show all posts

Friday, February 12

Media Invited to Stand with Missing and Murdered Women

Press asked to be part of the change, not perpetuate the problem

by Moira Peters →Original Peoples, →Media Analysis, →Politics, →2010 Olympics

"I grew up as a little girl not trusting those who were supposed to be looking after me. I was brought up to be ashamed of who I was. It took me years to feel good in this body, to accept that these brown hands are mine. Finally, I can say I am proud to be an Indigenous woman."

Carol Martin, a victim services worker at the Downtown Eastside Women's Centre, was one of four Indigenous women "honouring" the media this morning at the Carnegie Theatre on East Hastings Street in Vancouver.

Martin, along with Mona Woodward of the Rain City Housing Coalition, Fay Blaney, founder of the Aboriginal Women's Action Network and Dalannah Bowen, Director of Interurban Gallery, invited media to a press conference in lieu of including the press in the February 14 march to honour 3,000 murdered and missing women in Canada.

Journalists are not permitted to attend the ceremony in the Carnegie Theatre at noon on Valentine's Day, and are asked not to film or snap pictures during the march, when friends and families of murdered and missing women will stop to perform healing ceremonies at sites where women have died.

"Nineteen years ago, a Coast Salish woman's body was found in parts in Victoria. She had been mutilated. The memorial for her death lasted 10 minutes," said Blaney. "The community [of Indigenous women] here recognized there's a lot of that."

Eighteen years ago, the first women's memorial march was organized.

"We want to uphold the memorial part of it, to extend respect to the families," she said. Even the organizers of the march, many of whom are political activists, do not bring their politics to the march.

Owen, on behalf of the women giving the press conference and women everywhere, called on the media to "be part of the change, not perpetuate the problem."

The problem – that the list of murdered and missing women, most of them Indigenous, has reached 3,000 since the 1970s; that the list is growing; and that there has not yet been a public inquiry into any of the cases – is exacerbated, according to Owen, by a media that misrepresents the stories of women beaten, violated, kidnapped and murdered across Canada.

Indigenous women in Canada deal with more health problems and homelessness than any other demographic group. "Our children are being taken away from us; our women are being killed," said Martin. "We are homeless in the very country that gets rich on our land."

With billions being spent on the Olympics this year in Vancouver, Owens said, Canadians need to "examine the other side of the coin." Why, when so many public resources are being spent on the 2010 Games, has there not even been a public inquiry into the systematic violence suffered by the most vulnerable Canadians?

If we live in a democracy, said Owens, where is equality? Where is justice?

"Media is a powerful vehicle. We challenge you to give this profile its proper due. Stand with us," she said.

March organizers were asked whether the Olympics in Vancouver would draw attention to – or by the same token, detract from – attention to the march because people would be focused on Vancouver and the Games.

"Our march happens to fall on the same day as the beginning of the Olympic Games. We're not going to strain our brains over it," said Martin.

"We would suggest we will have more people than ever," said Owen. "Not only is the world watching, but women of the world know this issue."

The Vancouver Organizing Committee for the Olympics (VANOC) had suggested the march change its route, which has remained constant for 19 years. In response, 4,000 signatures in support of the march keeping to its original route were collected in less than three days.

Valentine's Day solidarity marches are expected in Toronto, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Sudbury, London, Montreal and Victoria.

"This is about living with dignity and respect in our daily lives," said Owen. "As long as we keep working, the story will be told."

---

The 19th annual Women's Memorial March will begin at 1pm on February 14 at Carnegie Theatre. March organizers will host a media scrum at 11:15 am on the Carnegie patio, and the march will end at Oppenheimer Park. Photograph by Murray Bush.

Vancouver Media Co-op

http://vancouver.mediacoop.ca/story/2671

Sunday, February 7

Totem Pole Memorial iPhone

A totem pole is carved in memory of Vancouver's missing and murdered Aboriginal women.

Monday, November 16

Women's advocates lobby for voice

Human-rights museum panel seeks advice on issues to highlight

By Andrea Sands, Edmonton Journal

November 16, 2009 7:16 AM

When officials from the Canadian Museum for Human Rights visit Edmonton this week, an Edmonton mother will push for an exhibit to highlight women's rights.

Kathy King, whose daughter, Caralyn, was found dead 12 years ago in a Sherwood Park canola field, has been eagerly awaiting a chance to speak to museum representatives about the human rights of women. She will get that chance on Tuesday when the museum's content advisory committee stops here on its cross-country tour to gather opinions on what the museum should ultimately look like.

"It's so incredibly ambitious, all the things that they're planning, so this is exciting," King said Sunday. "I'm pleased that they're finally coming here. It's something we've been looking forward to for a couple of years."

King will join Kate Quinn, executive director of the Prostitution Awareness and Action Foundation of Edmonton, in urging the museum to permanently display an art exhibition called A Roomful of Missing Women, a multimedia show that features paintings of 50 women from Vancouver's downtown eastside who are missing or have been murdered.

"We have talked about this for a couple of years, ever since I heard they were doing a museum for human rights," King said. "I thought, OK, whose human rights have been violated across history and across the world more than the rights of women? I thought, isn't this a good opportunity to create that awareness at a national level."

The meetings and roundtable talks Tuesday at Grant MacEwan University are part of an effort to gather personal stories to guide the design of the $310-million museum, slated to open in Winnipeg in 2012.

Longtime human-rights activist and educator, Lewis Cardinal, has also been invited to meet with museum officials. Cardinal has won the Alberta Centennial Medal for his work in human rights and diversity. He is on the board of directors for the John Humphrey Centre for Peace and Human Rights and does work with The Global Youth Assembly. Cardinal also works with numerous advocacy groups and is co-chairman of the Aboriginal Commission on Human Rights and Justice and a founder of Racism-Free Edmonton, a city project to end racism and discrimination.

Cardinal said he wants the museum to include exhibits on aboriginal and treaty rights within Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the United States. It should also address immigrants' rights, such as the rights of temporary foreign workers, many of whom have made their way to Alberta, Cardinal said.

"The museum itself has to be a showcase of our rights and history and the violation of those rights, but also, what is the future of Canada in human rights," he said, noting that designers will bring theatre and art into the space. "It's not a dusty museum of remembrance, but it's a living, dynamic reality, and that's what I want to see in this museum." He described the beautiful spire--the tower of hope--that will crown the building and give a wide view of Winnipeg. "It should inspire, and we should aspire to the values of human rights," Cardinal said. "That's what I like about it."

Angela Cassie, the museum's director of communications and public engagement, said the museum's physical design is meant to empower people to see beyond human rights failures and educate them on how to advance human rights in their communities. "We hope to also be able to inspire them with examples of people who have survived, people who have succeeded, people who have achieved and made a difference," Cassie said.

The museum's content advisory committee --made up of human rights scholars, specialists and leaders--started the public consultation sessions in May, and will visit 18 communities before the tour ends in February.

In Edmonton, approximately 50 people and groups so far have registered to participate, Cassie said. Museum officials will also hold public roundtables from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

"Whether it be issues of religion, whether it be issues of gender or orientation or language or economic and poverty issues--those are all topics that fall under the umbrella of human rights," Cassie said.

The 47,000 square-foot museum is the first national museum established in more than 40 years, and the first to be located outside the National Capital Region. The project will include exhibits related to Indian residential schools, Japanese internment camps and the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, Cassie said. Migration, as well as challenges for people with disabilities are other human-rights topics that have been raised across the country, she said.

asands@thejournal.canwest.com

Tuesday, November 10

Captain Trevor Greene

Josh Wingrove

From Wednesday's Globe and Mail Published on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009 10:39PM EST Last updated on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2009 10:49PM EST

In a room of dignitaries and political leaders gathered for a black-tie gala to benefit the families of fallen soldiers, a Cape Breton boy stole the show.

Three years after an Afghan insurgent attacked him with an axe, leaving him close to death, Captain Trevor Greene was an honoured guest at the fundraiser in downtown Toronto Tuesday night, and called on the crowd to support the families of troops who are injured or killed.

“They need money. The wounded soldiers and the families need help,” he said in halting, soft speech, the hand of his fiancée on his shoulder and a microphone close to his mouth. Applause broke out after each careful, determined sentence. He recalled getting a new assignment from his general after his devastating injury.

“He said, ‘Get better, we'll help you. We make these Canadian Forces, and walk shoulder to shoulder with me all the way,' ” Capt. Greene said, as the Chief of Defence Staff, General Walter Natynczyk, looked on.

“General, it's my intent to walk into your office some day, shake your hand, and say mission accomplished, sir.”

After its heartfelt conclusion, the speech – which came before addresses from dignitaries such as Prince Charles (a recorded video address) and Prime Minister Stephen Harper – was met with a standing ovation.

“When he paused in there, you could hear a pin drop,” said Captain Kevin Schamuhn, who led Capt. Greene's platoon on the day of the attack and joined him on stage last night. “There's a weird emotional awe around him. ... He is the real deal.”

Capt. Greene, who was born in Sydney, N.S., spoke at the inaugural gala for the True Patriot Love Foundation, which supports the families of Canadian soldiers through the Military Families Fund, founded two years ago by former chief of defence staff Rick Hillier.

Outside, Capt. Greene, 44, admitted he was a bit jittery in front of the well-heeled crowd, but was there on business.

“I want to convince them of the need of the combat troops that are injured, the desperation of the family,” he told The Globe and Mail. “Families need help.”

In March, 2006, Capt. Greene was in a community meeting with village elders, at which he and a colleague removed their helmets as a sign of respect. A villager stormed in and attacked the group, splitting Capt. Greene's head open with an axe.

It's a story he's recounted several times, including to his 4 1/2-year-old daughter, Grace.

“She wanted to know about the bad man who hit me, [asking] over and over,” he said. A year ago, he and his fiancée, Debbie Lepore, decided to tell her. “A bad man hit me on the head. He was confused,” Capt. Greene, still anxious to help the Afghan people, told his daughter.

His rehabilitation continues – “I call it a marathon of baby steps” – as he and Ms. Lepore, who met in 2001, prepare to get married next July. In the meantime, he's been busy, having accepted a medal on Monday from Governor General Michaëlle Jean, whom he found “warm and compassionate.” Today, he'll speak to high school students in west Toronto.

He and Capt. Schamuhn said they hope the True Patriot Love Foundation, which raised $2-million Tuesday night, will succeed in supporting the families of injured soldiers, and both were happy to share their stories.

“I've always found it therapeutic to get the message out there,” Capt. Schamuhn said, adding with a grin: “It helps when your audience is like the one out there.”

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/healing-from-vicious-attack-afghan-hero-stands-up-for-the-families/article1358714/

Thursday, October 29

Pickton charges will get “full scrutiny”

Crown says new Pickton charges will get "full scrutiny"

By Suzanne Fournier, The Province

October 29, 2009 6:02 PM

Troy Boen and his aunt -Debra Benning with the last photo of his mom Yvonne Boen, in Benning's Langley home on Wednesday october 28, 2009.Yvonne Boen, (in photo), is one of the missing women, who RCMP confirm will soon be named as subject of "new" murder charges against Pickton, along with five other women.

Photograph by: Les Bazso, The Province

B.C. criminal justice branch spokesman Neil MacKenzie said Thursday full scrutiny will be given to an anticipated RCMP report recommending six new charges be filed against serial killer Robert Pickton.

“I understand the RCMP will be providing a formal supplementary report with respect to these six counts,” said Mackenzie, a lawyer who speaks for B.C. Crown counsel, in an interview from Victoria.

“The Criminal Justice Branch will look at the material provided by the police and these six additional cases will go through the usual charge assessment process.”

RCMP Cpl. Annie Linteau said this week that police are recommending Pickton be charged with six more murders: Yvonne Boen, last seen in March 2001; Dawn Crey, who would have been 51 last Monday but disappeared in November, 2000; Sharon Abraham, who also disappeared in late 2000; Yvonne Boen, last seen in March 2001; Jacqueline Murdock who vanished in August 1997 and Stephanie Lane, who was 20 when she vanished in 1997, and Nancy Clark, who was last seen in Victoria on Aug. 22, 1991.

All of the women disappeared from Vancouver’s drug-infested Downtown Eastside, except for Clark.

Linteau would not say what evidence led RCMP to recommend the new charges but police labs across Canada still had more than 100,000 forensic samples to process at the time Pickton’s first trial on six charges began in 2007.

In December, 2007, Pickton was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Marnie Frey, Georgina Papin, Brenda Wolfe, Andrea Joesbury, Sereena Abotsway and Mona Wilson.

He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for 25 years.

Last June 25, Pickton’s conviction was upheld by the B.C. Court of Appeal in a 2-1 decision, which gave Pickton the automatic right to appeal the ruling to the Supreme Court of Canada.

That appeal is expected to be heard next March. If Pickton’s appeal is dismissed, the B.C. Criminal Justice Branch has made it clear that it will not proceed with an additional 20 murder charges, which were severed in August 2006 from the first trial.

However, MacKenzie said the charge approval process for these six new cases does not have to wait for the outcome of the Supreme Court appeal.

Linteau noted the RCMP’s recommendation was made “out of an abundance of caution” so that Crown counsel would be ready to immediately file up to 32 murder charges against Pickton, if his appeal should succeed.

Monday, October 26

They are the keepers of the flame for more than 500 missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada

Sisters of Spirit shines a light on missing aboriginal women

Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service: Monday, October 26, 2009 3:52 PM

Strengthening the Spirit, a committee of service providers that works to meet the needs of Aboriginal people affected by domestic and sexual violence, hosted their annual conference on March 26, 2009. Speakers (left) Bernice Williams-Poitras, and (right) Gladys Radek shared stories of their own and others who have lost family and friends.

Photo Credit: Dean Bicknell, Calgary Herald

Feds should renew funding for missing-women lobby: Liberal

They are the keepers of the flame for more than 500 missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada. And their crusade has become - for the moment, anyway - the whole country's crusade.

From a cramped, west-end Ottawa office decorated with dream catchers and infused with hope, the place where a great divide is bridged between hundreds of grieving communities across Canada and the powers that be on Parliament Hill, a small team of researchers and outreach workers is trying hard not to say: "We told you so."

But the people behind Sisters in Spirit, a five-year, federally funded initiative launched in 2005 by the Native Women's Association of Canada, have been saying all along what most Canadians are just now waking up to after a recent media blitz about murdered and missing women in Western Canada.

They've been telling Canadians that the dead and disappeared are almost everywhere across the country; that there is no single serial killer at work, except apathy; that the tragedy runs deep into the history of aboriginal dispossession and discrimination; that jurisdictional tangles and cultural blind spots help explain why so many killings and so many vanished women have been relegated to the cold-case file.

Among the startling statistics that Sisters in Spirit researchers have compiled - apart from the group's showcase figure of 520 missing or murdered Canadian aboriginal women since about 1970 - is that the toll would be equivalent to 18,000 dead or disappeared women from all ethnic groups for all of Canada.

The awareness of such facts is only dawning nationwide after a late-August splash of publicity about one of the 18 disappeared women along B.C.'s "Highway of Tears," and a coincident push by Manitoba police to re-energize a probe into the murders of two native women in Winnipeg.

The alarm blared again in early October when vigils were held across the country - including one on Parliament Hill - to remember the lost and to demand, yet again, more resources and more action to solve old cases and prevent new ones.

"We're dealing with a very marginalized, vulnerable community - I call it the cycle of distress," says Sisters in Spirit director Kate Rexe. "It's not just about violence. It's health issues, housing issues, economic security, drug and alcohol abuse, mental health, racism, and all of those social factors that create a situation of being marginalized or vulnerable."

The cruel irony, notes Rexe, is that it took renewed interest in the fate of the only white woman among the 18 who went missing along a lonely stretch of B.C.'s infamous Hwy. 16 - Red Deer student Nicole Hoar - to finally prompt broader questions and revelations about the national tragedy unfolding among Canada's native women.

Hoar's disappearance "put the Highway of Tears on the map," says Rexe, but the "17 other aboriginal women" were given footnote status.

And there's more cruel irony. Just when the message Sisters in Spirit has been spreading for years may finally be sinking in with politicians and Canadians in general, the project itself is facing a fight for survival - a potential victim of divided funding priorities.

Rexe and the eight other Sisters in Spirit employees at the Native Women's Association of Canada headquarters have applied for a fresh, five-year mandate and another $1-million-a-year funding promise from the current Conservative government. But they've been waiting months for federal approval of the project's next phase.

The funding commitment would match the original 2005 outlay made by Paul Martin's Liberal government and, says Sisters in Spirit, help the group sustain the momentum behind its research, prevention and publicity initiatives.

Those initiatives include tool kits - distributed to native communities throughout the country - to combat sexism, promote safety-conscious behaviour and generally help prevent violence against women.

But as a measure of the relentless sorrow gripping many aboriginal communities, another Sisters in Spirit tool kit offers grieving families advice on dealing with police and the media after a loved one has disappeared or been murdered.

"The best part about going to the communities is that we let them know this is a larger problem," says Sisters in Spirit outreach co-ordinator Jennifer Lord. "We go in as a third-party to say no, you're not alone. Trust me. Communities across the board are going through this. Urban, rural, aboriginal, non-aboriginal communities."

The driving force behind the creation of Sisters in Spirit, former Native Women's Association of Canada president Terri Brown, had been spurred by personal tragedy: the beating death of her own sister, Ada Elaine, in 2001.

"How many more of our sisters have to die before it matters?" she said at the time. "I guess people think, 'Just another dead Indian.' But she was our baby sister. She mattered to us."

In January 2008, Brown's successor - ex-Native Women's Association of Canada president Beverley Jacobs, who left the post in September - was also touched by a family tragedy. Her cousin, 21-year-old Tashina General from the Six Nations native community near Brantford, Ont., disappeared under mysterious circumstances.

At a police press conference to rally search efforts, Jacobs said: "I have been following stories like this for years, but this time I'm personally involved. I'd never thought it would ever affect me. We just want to know that she's safe."

But General wasn't safe. Her body, pregnant with the unborn son she'd planned to name Tucker, was found in the area that April.

Tashina General's biography is now part of a growing Sisters in Spirit library of heart-wrenching but inspiring "life stories" - published accounts of the achievements, qualities and unfulfilled promise of the lost.

The spectre of unfulfilled promise now haunts Sisters in Spirit itself.

The uncertainty about the group's future has arisen amid rumours that federal funding could be cut or dispersed more broadly - and less effectively, Rexe argues - among dozens of groups combating violence across the country.

Even further delays this fall before Sisters in Spirit's financial future is clarified means that the organization - even if funds finally come through next spring - "could potentially go for a year without funding and lose the continuity and staff and the knowledge," says Rexe. "We're in a very tricky position."

The government, so far, is providing expressions of support for the "great work" being done by Sisters in Spirit but no clear comment on the organization's fate as the end of its funding draws near.

The uncertainty has emerged despite the fact that Status of Women Minister Helena Guergis has repeatedly highlighted Sisters in Spirit's achievements to rebuff opposition charges that the Conservative government is doing too little to deal with Canada's epidemic of missing and murdered aboriginal women.

Liberal MP Anita Neville, the party's critic on women's issues, has called for a national investigation into the high rate of missing and murdered native women, and for stronger measures from the "so-called tough-on-crime" Tory government to combat human trafficking - the suspected crime behind some cases of missing aboriginal women.

In response, Guergis has hailed Sisters in Spirit as "an example of a partnership that works to create tangible benefits" for aboriginal women.

"Sisters in Spirit aims at quantifying the actual number of missing and murdered women by understanding the root causes of racialized and sexualized violence, and by implementing a public awareness strategy," she said in August, acknowledging that the group's $5-million allocation runs out in 2010.

She expressed similar sentiments in response to the October vigils: "We absolutely support the great work that Sisters in Spirit has done," Guergis said.

Sisters in Spirit, created by a Liberal government and kept alive - so far - by Conservatives, maintains a decidedly non-partisan posture.

But its director persists in asking hard questions of investigators and all parties and governments - federal, provincial and territorial - when it comes to the disturbing numbers of missing and murdered native women that the group generates in its yearly reports.

"Has there been a bias of some sort against aboriginal women?" Rexe wonders. "Have there been gaps that have essentially ignored the red flags and the warning signs when a woman goes missing or has been murdered?"

Sisters lead hunt for native justice

By Randy Boswell, Calgary Herald

October 25, 2009

Laura Florez, from left, Jennifer King, Kate Rexe, Jennifer Lord, Katharine Irngaut, Mallory Whiteduck and Joshua Kirkey of Sisters in Spirit, an Ottawa-based group raising awareness about native women who've disappeared, is also working to prevent further disappearances.

Photograph by: Jean Levac, Canwest News Service, Calgary Herald

They are the keepers of the flame for more than 500 missing and murdered aboriginal women in Canada. And their crusade has become--for the moment, anyway--the whole country's crusade.

Among the startling statistics that Sisters in Spirit researchers have compiled--apart from the group's showcase figure of 520 missing or murdered aboriginal women since about 1970--is that the toll would be equivalent to 18,000 dead or disappeared women from all ethnic groups for all of Canada.

The awareness of such information is only dawning nationwide after a late-August splash of publicity about one of the 18 disappeared women along B.C.'s "Highway of Tears," and a coincident push by Manitoba police to re-energize a probe into the murders of two native women in Winnipeg.

The alarm blared again in early October when vigils were held across the country--including one on Parliament Hill--to remember the lost and to demand, yet again, more resources and more action to solve old cases and prevent new ones.

"We're dealing with a very marginalized, vulnerable community -- I call it the cycle of distress," says Sisters in Spirit director Kate Rexe. "It's not just about violence. It's health issues, housing issues, economic security, drug and alcohol abuse, mental health, racism, and all of those social factors that create a situation of being marginalized or vulnerable."

The cruel irony, notes Rexe, is that it took renewed interest in the fate of the only white woman among the 18 who went missing along a lonely stretch of B.C.'s infamous Highway 16 --Red Deer student Nicole Hoar-- to finally prompt broader questions and revelations about the tragedy unfolding among native women.

Hoar's disappearance "put the Highway of Tears on the map," says Rexe, but the "17 other aboriginal women" were given footnote status.

And there's more cruel irony. Just when the message Sisters in Spirit has been spreading for years may finally be sinking in with politicians and Canadians, the project itself is facing a fight for survival -- a potential victim of divided funding priorities.

Rexe and the eight other Sisters in Spirit employees at the Native Women's Association of Canada headquarters have applied for a fresh, five-year mandate and another $1-million-a-year funding promise from Ottawa. But they've been waiting months for approval.

The funding commitment would match the original 2005 outlay and, says Sisters in Spirit, help the group sustain the momentum behind its research, prevention and publicity initiatives.

Those initiatives include tool kits --distributed to native communities-- to combat sexism, promote safety-conscious behaviour and generally help prevent violence against women.

"How many more of our sisters have to die before it matters?" she said at the time. "I guess people think, 'Just another dead Indian.' But she was our baby sister. She mattered to us."

In January 2008, Brown's successor --ex-Native Women's Association of Canada president Beverley Jacobs, who left the post in September--was also touched by a family tragedy. Her cousin, Tashina General, 21, from the Six Nations native community near Brantford, Ont., disappeared.

At a police news conference to rally search efforts, Jacobs said: "I have been following stories like this for years. . . . I'd never thought it would ever affect me. We just want to know that she's safe."

But General wasn't safe. Her body, pregnant with the unborn son she'd planned to name Tucker, was found that April.

Tashina General's biography is now part of a growing Sisters in Spirit library of heart-wrenching but inspiring "life stories"--published accounts of the achievements, qualities and unfulfilled promise of the lost.

The spectre of unfulfilled promise now haunts Sisters in Spirit itself.

The uncertainty about the group's future has arisen amid rumours that federal funding could be cut or dispersed more broadly -- and less effectively, Rexe argues -- among dozens of groups combating violence across the country.

The government, so far, is providing expressions of support for the "great work" being done by Sisters in Spirit but no clear comment on the organization's fate.

Wednesday, October 21

‘I love you’ – a missing mother’s last words to her son

By Lori Culbert, Vancouver Sun

October 21, 2009

It has now been more than three years since anyone — her husband of 30 years, her three siblings, her five children — has seen Shirley Cletheroe, who vanished June 9, 2006.

Photograph by: Vancouver Sun, Canwest News Service

VANCOUVER — Back in June 2006, Shirley Cletheroe was raising her five children, working at a mill in Fort St. John, and leading a middle-class life.

One night she didn't come home after attending a house party. At first, family members thought she was staying at her sister's place, which she did from time to time. Then she didn't show up for work.

It has now been more than three years since anyone — her husband of 30 years, her three siblings, her five children — has seen the aboriginal woman, who vanished June 9, 2006.

Cletheroe's file is classified as a missing person's case, although police say foul play has not been ruled out.

Cletheroe, 45 years old when she vanished, is one of more than 1,500 women across Canada — many of them aboriginal — who the RCMP has classified as missing.

Perhaps because there are so many of these women, or perhaps because British Columbia just lived through the Robert (Willie) Pickton murder trial, there has been little media attention to Cletheroe's case.

But she, like every other woman who has disappeared, leaves behind a trail of tears and questions.

"My dad's had a hard time since my mom went missing. For him to work and try to keep the family together is challenging," said Brent Cletheroe, Shirley's oldest child.

"My little sister just had her 14th birthday."

Brent Cletheroe, 29, said his faith in God has given him comfort over the last three years as he has grappled with dread and doubt.

"My brothers and sisters have wept on my shoulder and said, 'I know God is looking out for us,'" said Cletheroe, who is a youth pastor at the Fort St. John Pentecostal church and the Zamboni driver at the local ice rink.

The last time Brent spoke to his mother was just a few days before she vanished.

"She phoned and said, 'I love you.' It was really random. I said, 'I know you love me, Mom,'" he recalled. "She said, 'That girl that you're dating . . . That's the one that you need to marry.' My mom had never said that about any of my girlfriends. She said, 'I love you.' And that's the last time I heard her voice."

Brent, who did marry his girlfriend and is now the father of a one-year-old daughter, said his mother was a loving but no-nonsense parent who raised her children while their father worked on oil rigs. She would be proud today, he said, to see his four siblings navigating through life's difficult obstacles.

"In every single one of their lives, I can say I see her in them. And I know they have what I have, what has steered me through the hard times on my path in life. And I owe it all to my mother," he said.

His mother, he said, does not fit the stereotypical profile that many people think of when they hear about an aboriginal woman going missing: she was not a drug user or a sex-trade worker.

She was, however, going through a depression and drinking a bit too much in the weeks before she vanished, he said. The family does not believe Cletheroe disappeared intentionally, but that something bad happened to her at the house party she attended across the street from her sister's house — the last place any one saw her alive.

Brent Cletheroe said he understands his mother had an argument with the owner of the home where the party was held, who the family claims meticulously cleaned up his house and car after the party. However, Brent said police will only tell the family that the case is under investigation, a response he finds frustrating.

"It's three years now and (the police) have given up, really. That's how we feel."

The RCMP appealed to the public for more tips in the case in June, saying they had followed all the leads they had received from the family and the public.

"Nobody just disappears. I think there's somebody out there that has information that can help us. I think somebody could have heard something," said Fort St. John RCMP Const. Jackelynn Passarell.

"There is hope that this can be solved, but it will require that piece of information to come forward."

She said Cletheroe is still considered a missing person, unless "hard fact evidence" is uncovered to suggest otherwise.

"Because foul play hasn't been ruled out, that means it is something that might have occurred here, so we have to keep all avenues of investigation open," Passarell said.

She would not say whether police believe Cletheroe is still alive.

Officers have conducted numerous searches, some in the rural areas surrounding Fort St. John.

"Shirley's family has been holding on for three years, just having that looming question: Where is Shirley? We'd like to solve that for them," Passarell added.

Brent Cletheroe maintains some hope that his mother may still be alive but he cannot, he said, be consumed by "the anxiety of always wondering if she is going to call." Through his faith in God, he has also found the ability to face the fact she may never come home.

He does not, however, have the strength to join other members of his family, who have conducted their own searches of forests and rivers looking for clues.

"I would never want to find my mom like that . . . I apologized (to my auntie) that I was not a part of it, but I was not strong enough," he said. "I have peace. I know that we've done all that we can do."

lculbert@vancouversun.com

Tuesday, October 20

Part I: Our national tragedy

By Randy Boswell, Canwest News Service October 20, 2009

Dozens of women have gone missing along the so-called Highway of Tears.

Photograph by: Mikael Kjellstrom, Calgary Herald

They disappear from small towns and big cities, from native reserves in the north and affluent suburbs in the south. They drift away and they abruptly vanish. And they leave, in their wake, broken-hearted families, confounded investigators and gaping holes in the communities where they grew up, forged friendships, held jobs, raised children.

At this moment in Canada, there are 1,573 missing women on file with the Canadian Police Information Centre, a national case-tracking database maintained at the RCMP's Ottawa headquarters.

The number sheds only a partial light on this dark story. It doesn't include the lost or stolen girls under the age of 18 who may have lived to become missing women. It doesn't account, anymore, for those who were once missing but have since been proven dead.

It doesn't embrace women who are gone but not reported missing.

Yet great depths of misery and mystery underlie even this imperfect figure. The stories of Canada's lost women — enough to equal the population of a small town, or the entire staff of a large urban hospital — would fill many mournful volumes.

The stories include some particularly shocking narratives in which a multitude of the missing disappear from a single area — such as B.C.'s "Highway of Tears," a lonely stretch of road between Prince Rupert and Prince George where five of those women were last seen and 13 others are known to have been murdered.

A high-profile search in late August for the remains of Nicole Hoar — one of Hwy. 16's 18 unsolved cases — sparked extensive news coverage and prompted some nationwide soul-searching, at least briefly, about Canada's missing women.

Then, within days, came an overdue pledge by Manitoba RCMP and Winnipeg city police to more closely collaborate in probing a series of disappearances and deaths of aboriginal women in that province.

Similar concentrations of missing or murdered women in Alberta and Saskatchewan were noted, too, along with the single most horrific chapter in the whole sorrowful saga: the dozens of vanished women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside linked to the predatory B.C. pig farmer Robert Pickton.

But there are tears staining village streets, rural sideroads and inner-city avenues across the country. No province or territory is beyond the scope of a tragedy that encompasses every corner of Canada and which — for all of the individual instances of anguish — is made especially plain with a single, breathtaking number: 1,573.

There are thousands of missing men in the country — more than 5,000, in fact, are listed at CPIC — but the spotlight has turned to Canada's lost women because of the clusters of disappearances throughout the West and the sense that predatory men lurk behind the grim statistics.

Even 1,573 strikes Gladys Radek as a low estimate.

A member of the Gitksan Nation of northern B.C. who now lives in Vancouver, Radek has emerged as a leading voice for the lost. It's an angry voice, and the word "racism" rolls easily from her tongue as she discusses the pain of her own family's loss and the disproportionate toll among aboriginal communities like hers.

But the 59-year-old activist, now studying aboriginal law at a Vancouver native college, has called for governments, police agencies and the public to devote more attention to all of Canada's missing women — "red, black, white and yellow," as she puts it — with greater investigative resources to solve existing cases and strengthened social services to prevent new ones.

"It pissed me off that these women were going missing without anybody saying or doing anything about it," says Radek, recalling her gathering awareness of the crisis in the wake of her own niece's unexplained disappearance in September 2005 along the Highway of Tears.

Tamara Chipman — 22 at the time, and the mother of a two-year-old boy — was hitchhiking outside Prince Rupert when she vanished.

"She was just beginning her life," says Radek. "Tamara was a beautiful, spunky girl."

The tragedy sparked a vision. Radek imagined a cross-Canada pilgrimage linking families and communities across the country struggling to cope with missing and murdered women.

Last year, with a Vancouver-to-Ottawa trek she called Walk4Justice, Radek's vision was realized, drawing widespread media coverage and galvanizing public awareness of Canada's lost women.

The number 4 in the name "covers all the races, and all four directions," says Radek. "Before we did that walk, there wasn't really that much attention paid to the missing and murdered women. That's when the families started coming together more and more.

"It was a pretty powerful journey."

Earlier this year, Radek organized a second Walk4Justice between Vancouver and Prince Rupert to spotlight the suffering of families — including her own — who've lost loved ones along the Highway of Tears.

She isn't convinced police in B.C. or elsewhere are doing enough to probe the hundreds of unsolved cases, or that governments are sufficiently seized by the need to invest more in vulnerable communities and demographic groups — native and non-native — to prevent numbers like 1,573 from growing larger.

"We need better services so women don't get caught in such desperate situations," she argues. "We're pushing for a lot more shelters, even in the smallest communities. There's often nowhere for women to go when they're running from violent situations."

RCMP Staff Sgt. Wayne Clary defends the efforts of police in B.C. and across the country in probing missing-women cases. In his experience, he says, police agencies "bend over backwards" to co-operate across jurisdictional boundaries, comparing notes and sharing clues to try to solve what are often the toughest cases in police work to crack.

But he does agree with Radek about one thing when it comes to the CPIC total of 1,573 missing women in Canada.

"I thought it would be higher," he says.

Perhaps it's a worldview shaped by his immersion in scores of missing-women cases — most notably the Pickton-linked disappearances of up to 60 sex-trade workers and other high-risk targets in Vancouver — during a 29-year career as one of B.C.'s leading investigators.

The province has emerged as the country's main stage in this long-running tragedy, and Clary wonders aloud if Vancouver's history as a key Pacific port — a magnet not just for tourists and immigrants who've brought prosperity to B.C., but also for criminals — has contributed to the crisis.

Resources, he notes, are not boundless when it comes to investigating missing women, or any crime for that matter. But as a key player in the high-profile and well-funded Project Evenhanded investigation that ultimately unraveled Pickton's crimes, Clary says he sympathizes with isolated investigators across the country, who inevitably have a multitude of other open files on their desks in addition to time-consuming missing-person cases.

"If you have a crime scene and no body — no person — that's easy. You just roll it out like it's a homicide. It's when you don't have a crime scene, it's harder. Because obviously you're adjusting resources and files just never stop coming in," he says.

"I've been on a project here, so we just deal with the one issue — which is easier to handle because there's dedicated resources. But when you're investigating with a detachment or a municipal PD, there's stuff coming your way every day. And, of course, it never ends."

The principal strategy for probing the case of a missing woman is simple enough, he says.

"You identify who their associates are, where they work, and you just start asking questions. Generally, that will lead you somewhere. But there's many cases where you just don't know, and where do you go next?"

Bank accounts, credit cards and cellphones are probed because they're likely to record a person's movements, says Clary.

"You can see them existing in society, and then all of a sudden everything stops," he says. "Whether it's the methadone clinic, or their doctor, or their welfare cheque — it just stops. And you have to ask yourself, why did that happen?"

In so many cases, he says, it's what you can't do for desperate families — the anguished ones seeking closure years or decades after a sister or daughter has vanished — that haunts him and other officers assigned to search for the missing.

Too often, he says bluntly, "you can never give it to them. It's difficult to convey to them that there's nothing more you can do."

And the sad reality, he says, is that the disappeared — in many or even most of the cases on file — are dead.

But without evidence to prove that a missing woman was murdered or otherwise lost her life, families are naturally reluctant to turn the page. The word "missing," for all of its horrifying connotations, preserves at least a shred of hope.

One weekend in September, in the remote woods near Thunder Bay, an Ontario family and a team of volunteer searchers were clinging to such hope.

They scoured the forests of Rainbow Falls Provincial Park looking for clues that might point to the whereabouts of Christina Calayca, a vivacious, 20-year-old childcare worker from Toronto who disappeared — literally "without a trace," a police spokesperson says — after setting off for a morning jog from a campsite on Aug. 6, 2007.

Was the young Filipina-Canadian woman snatched by an unknown assailant or human trafficker? Did she intentionally vanish to create a new life and identity? Or did she simply lose her way in the trees, slip into a stream, fall from a rock ledge?

Police do not have evidence pointing to foul play, says Ontario Provincial Police Sgt. Shelley Garr, but they just don't know.

"There are a number of possibilities," she says, "but we don't speak to hypotheticals."

There's a website, www.findchristinacalayca.com, that details a 2008 fundraising gala, holds a cache of news stories, promotes a CD — "Missing You" — that's dedicated to Calayca.

The site exudes affection for the lost woman.

"Each day since her disappearance months ago, Christina's loved ones have hoped and prayed that she would return to us safely," a message states. "If hope alone were enough, she would already be home; but she unfortunately is not."

There have now been six searches — three led by the OPP, three organized by Calayca's family, including one with sniffer dogs supplied by a benevolent search-and-rescue specialist from the U.S.

"She went missing and there's been nothing since," Garr said in a recent interview. "Christina's mother was up again this past weekend. They are still actively searching for answers. But it must be frustrating for them."

The best chance for discovery, she adds, might have been during the initial 17-day search in August 2007, a full-scale operation involving aerial crews and extensive grid-pattern sweeps by emergency personnel on the ground.

"But then we got into fall," says Garr, "and fall turns into winter."

Thursday, September 10

Pickton to appeal pig farm murders to top court

By Keith Fraser, Vancouver Province
June 26, 2009

VANCOUVER — A day after he lost a bid to overturn his six murder convictions, serial killer Robert Pickton has decided to appeal his case to Canada's highest court.

Pickton's lawyer Gil McKinnon confirmed on Friday that his client will "soon" file an appeal to be heard in the Supreme Court of Canada.

The 59-year-old former pig farmer from the Vancouver suburb of Port Coquitlam was given the automatic right of appeal because the B.C. Court of Appeal ruling upholding the convictions on Thursday was a split decision.

McKinnon said the appeal would be based on the dissenting opinion of B.C. Court of Appeal Justice Ian Donald. He did not say when the appeal might be heard in Ottawa.

In a lengthy ruling, the majority opinion of the B.C. Court of Appeal found that the evidence strongly suggested that Pickton was the killer or one of the killers on all of the murder counts and rejected his appeal arguments.

Donald admitted that the Crown had a "powerful case" but found that errors by the trial judge amounted to a miscarriage of justice and called for a new trial.

McKinnon represented Pickton at the nine-day Appeal Court hearing earlier this year.

In December 2007, a B.C. Supreme Court jury found Pickton guilty of six counts of second-degree murder after being found not guilty of six counts of first-degree murder. Pickton lured the women, all sex-trade workers from Vancouver's drug-plagued Downtown Eastside, to his pig farm and murdered them.

Pickton was initially charged with 26 counts of murder but the Crown has said it will not proceed with the remaining 20 counts if the murder convictions are upheld.

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Saturday, June 27

Letter to a monster. Hello Willie.

Ethan Baron, The Province Published: Friday, June 26, 2009

Hello, Willie.

I know you're reading this, because it's all about you.

Just like the trial.

After four years of working on your story, after sitting in that courtroom for months on end, watching you through bullet-proof glass, I know you far better than I'd like to.

For these four years, you have been an unwelcome guest in my world.

You have strewn my dreams with carnage, gruesome castoffs from your world of suffering, dismemberment and death.

I dream of killing. I dream of watching people die.

Once, I even dreamed of you.

We were in a room together. I don't know why. And, in my nightmare, I was overcome by fear, not that you'd suddenly attack me - I'm bigger and smarter than you - but that I would fall asleep, and would wake to feel your strange, monkey fingers around my neck.

I felt, for the first time, what every female who is familiar with your case felt from the very outset: the fear every woman lives with everyday, of crossing paths with someone like you.

A remorseless killer.

I do not hold you responsible. You are a biological aberration, an obscenity of nature.

Remember the story you told that undercover cop in jail, that you killed 49 people? I do.

Sometimes, sitting through those endless hours of testimony about which DNA swab was used on which wall in your slaughterhouse, and which sock was found in which bag in your filthy trailer, I used to think about killing you.

It wasn't that I actually wanted to, or even thought you deserved it. I would sit and examine the courtroom security procedures in place for your protection, and my mind would wander. I figured that, if I sat in the gallery seat closest to the doorway for the courtroom, I could rush through the door when a witness went in, before one of the burly, ever-vigilant sheriffs could grab me.

I would have been in front of you in a flash, my hands around your throat, squeezing. The sheriffs in the courtroom didn't carry guns, but I concluded that those who did, in the gallery, would be through the door as I began to throttle you. Friendly as they were, they were serious about their job, and I have no doubt they would have shot me before your life expired.

It was fun to think about, though.

I remember thinking once, after some particularly gruesome evidence came before the court, that it was interesting that this stuff didn't seem to disturb my mind. Then I got up at a break, and realized I felt nauseous almost to the point of vomiting.

I never cried, except for once, on the day you were sentenced, when the Crown read a statement from Brenda Wolfe's mother. She'd written that if all the tears she'd shed made a path to heaven, she would walk along it and bring her daughter home.

You might not remember that part.

I have to admit there was a lot of laughter, too. We all got a kick out of your attachment to your late horse, Goldie, especially when we found out that, when you'd taken her head to the taxidermist, you rode the bus.

I hope you're not upset they wouldn't let you have Goldie's head in your jail cell. Institutional authorities can be so cruel.

I'm not supposed to talk about the plasticine figurines some of us made during the trial, but I can tell you I have my version of your pig-butchering buddy Pat Casanova sitting on my desk. You'd get a chuckle out of how his thumb is covering up that cancer-surgery hole in his throat. I can send it to you if you want. I'm not that attached to it.

You're more clever than you look, I'll give you that. You knew enough to prey on people who wouldn't be immediately missed, women of such low social status that the police wouldn't pay attention when they started to vanish. And you even let some go free, so they could tell people Willie Pickton wasn't the reason so many women were going away and never coming back.

You got sloppy at the end, you admitted that. When the police came to your farm, they found a little snapshot of your process.

Heads, hands and feet in buckets. A jawbone in the pig manure. You had it all down to a routine, didn't you?

And what you didn't dispose of at the farm went to the rendering plant. That driver from the plant testified that he'd pick up barrels of burnt-black chunks of meat from your farm.

Did you just pour gas into barrels of human remains and set them on fire, so the pieces of people wouldn't look like pieces of people?

You will be remembered as an awful human being, worse than worthless.

Still, you have one shot at redemption, Willie, one chance to be seen in a different light.

You can come clean.

Forget about any appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada.

You need to tell the world what you did, and why.

You can go down in history as a nasty bit of human trash.

Or you can have the last word, and be forever remembered as a terrible monster who, in the end, did the right thing. It would be - almost - heroic.

Do you have the courage, Willie? Do you have the strength?

Maybe.

Do you have the humanity?

I don't think so.

ebaron@theprovince.com

http://www.nationalpost.com/news/story.html?id=1735663

Thursday, June 25

B.C. Appeal Court denies appeal for convicted serial killer Robert Pickton

Sunny Dhillon, THE CANADIAN PRESS
June 25, 2009, EDT

VANCOUVER, B.C. - Convicted serial killer Robert Pickton's appeal on six counts of second-degree murder has been dismissed by B.C.'s high court, but a potential second trial hangs in the balance as the former pig farmer's legal odyssey trudges on.

In a two-to-one decision, the B.C. Court of Appeal Thursday rejected claims from Pickton's defence that the trial judge made numerous significant errors while instructing the jury.

"The judge acted correctly in providing the jury with instruction that embraced the law . . . , " Justice Richard Low wrote in a decision that sets the stage for Pickton's case to potentially be heard in the Supreme Court of Canada.

"In my opinion, there was no procedural error," Low said.

In a second ruling, this one on a Crown appeal, the judges unanimously agreed that if Pickton is successful in a Supreme Court referral, then the Crown could proceed with either a trial on six counts of first-degree murder, or the 26 counts Pickton originally faced.

The court also placed a conditional stay on any new trial if and when Pickton's defence team decides to take the case to the high court, saying there was no need for the "enormous demands" of another trial if Pickton's conviction isn't overturned.

The ruling essentially preserves the Crown's right to proceed to trial on a charges of first-degree murder on either six or 26 charges.

Pickton was arrested in February 2002, setting off a massive search of his property in Port Coquitlam, B.C., where investigators found body parts, blood samples, fragments of bone and the belongings of victims.

He was originally to face 26 charges but six months before the trial began, the judge divided the case in two, proceeding with just six first-degree murder charges in January 2007 after deeming the case to be too large for a jury to digest.

The court decisions disappointed Susie Kinshella, whose sister Wendy Crawford is among the outstanding 20 murder charges.

"It's just unbelievable when you sit in that courtroom and you hear the evidence that's gone on and that plays in your mind," she said, adding that all she wants is justice for her sister and recognition of her death.

Before Thursday's decision several family members had said they actually wanted Pickton to win his appeal, so a new trial could be heard into all 26 deaths.

The B.C. Crown had said it wouldn't proceed with the remaining 20 murder charges if Pickton lost his appeal, because he was already serving a life sentence

Lynn Frey, whose stepdaughter Marnie Frey is among the six women Pickton is convicted of killing, said she was also hoping for a new trial of first-degree murder on all 26 counts.

Frey, who has been fighting to reclaim her stepdaughter's remains from the massive collection of evidence in the Pickton case, said she's no closer to that goal after the decisions.

"When somebody you love passes away you get to go to their gravesite, you get to grieve the day that they passed away," she said.

"You do the proper steps as you grieve. This way, there are no proper steps. We're grieving every day."

All 26 of the missing women on the Pickton indictment were young and had vanished between 1995 and 2001 from the Downtown Eastside.

Most were sex-trade workers, addicted to illegal drugs and a disproportionate number of the victims were aboriginal.

One element of the Crown's appeal was that the trial judge erred by severing the 26 counts into two separate trials. The Crown said the move hindered their ability to use similar-fact evidence - similarities between the different murders - to show Pickton had a scheme to kill prostitutes from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside

The appeal court agreed, ruling that the trial judge committed extricable legal error in ordering that 20 counts of first-degree murder be removed from the indictment.

The judges left the door open for the Crown to drop a second trial, if Pickton loses at the high court.

"I am persuaded that the Crown's position on this issue is sound," wrote Chief Justice Lance Finch.

"If Mr. Pickton remains convicted of second-degree murder on those six counts after all appeals are concluded, there would be no useful purpose in a retrial on those same offences as charges of first-degree murder," Finch said.

B.C. Crown spokesman Neil MacKenzie if Pickton chooses not to go to the high court, or loses there, that will be the end of the legal proceedings.

"The Crown's position has been and remains that if Mr. Pickton exhausts all of his available appeals on the six convictions and remains subject to the sentence of life in prison with no parole eligibility, the Crown will not proceed on the remaining 20 counts," MacKenzie said.

"We understand that it's a decision that some family members are disappointed with. However, the Branch has to keep in mind that any additional convictions beyond the six that he's received will not result in any further penalty or punishment being imposed."

That possibility of a second trial still exists, with the split B.C. Appeal Court decision meaning Pickton's lawyers have the right to take the case to Canada's highest court.

Pickton's lawyer, Patrick McGowan, said no decision has yet been made on how to proceed.

"It's going to take some time for defence counsel to consult and review these materials and decide on the course of action that we're going to take," McGowan said just before leaving the courthouse to share the news with his client.

Pickton was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years in the killings of Frey, Mona Wilson, Sereena Abotsway, Andrea Joesbury, Georgina Papin and Brenda Wolfe.

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© Corus® Entertainment Inc. 2009

'Insensitive' coroner's staff rub more salt into victims' wounds

Family told murdered woman's remains would be returned by post

By Suzanne Fournier, The Province
June 25, 2009 6:35 AM

Anxiously awaiting a court decision today on the fate of convicted serial killer Robert Pickton, Britney Frey is hoping she will finally be able to lay to rest the remains of her mother, Marnie Frey.

Britney, who is only 16 but has been designated Marnie's next-of-kin for legal purposes, says she is angry that "the coroner's office told me they would put my mother's remains in the mail — there's no way I'd let them do that."

Britney will be in court today to hear if Pickton's conviction for the second-degree murder of her mother and five other women will be upheld, or whether more legalities will delay the release of her mother's remains.

Britney and her late mother's stepmother, Lynn Frey, will be up at dawn today to catch a ferry from Nanaimo and then a bus to get to court in Vancouver. Both called the coroner's remarks "insensitive."

"I thought it was disgusting, and I told them not to do that, because I will come and get my mother," said Britney.

Lynn Frey, who attended many days of the lengthy legal proceedings against Pickton, said yesterday: "I got a call from Victims' Services and they said, 'Don't bother coming to court, it will only be a minute,' and they refused to give us any funding to attend court.

"I said, 'I want justice and don't tell me there's no point in me coming down.'

"This decision is important," she said, "because we want to bring Marnie home. We want Marnie's remains back.

"We have got a death certificate now, but when I talked to the coroner, I was told when it comes time to release the remains, 'We'll put it in the mailbox for you.' This is the kind of insensitivity we've had to deal with all along."

Marnie Frey gave birth to Britney in 1992, when she was 18. Marnie, who grew up in Campbell River, was introduced to hard drugs in her teens. She moved to Vancouver, but called home regularly, up to eight times a day.

On her 25th birthday, she called home, but was never heard from again and, in 1997, she was reported missing.

In November 2002, the Freys were told an RCMP forensics team had found Marnie's remains on the Pickton farm. At Pickton's lengthy trial, evidence showed only Marnie's jaw and three teeth had been recovered.

On Dec. 9, 2007, a jury found Pickton guilty of the second-degree murder of Marnie Frey and five other women: Andrea Joesbury, Sereena Abotsway, Mona Wilson, Brenda Wolfe and Georgina Papin.

The Freys will likely still have to wait for the end of legal proceedings against Pickton. Both prosecution and defence are expected to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, leaving all the victims' families waiting to bury their loved ones.

B.C. Coroner's Service spokesman Jeff Dolan confirmed "we've had ongoing discussions with them [the Freys and other victims' families] and they've been told [victims'] remains will be released at the end of legal proceedings."

Dolan said the coroner makes decisions on each case in consultation with prosecutors.

Dolan could not confirm who spoke with the Freys.

He said human remains, "whether complete or a smaller portion, are released in a way to guarantee the dignity of the deceased." He said he had not heard of any coroner ever mailing human remains.

"In the history of the coroner's service, I can't say it's never happened, but we treat all remains with the same dignity."

E-mail: sfournier@theprovince.com

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http://www.theprovince.com/Insensitive+coroner+staff+more+salt+into+victims+wounds/1729932/story.html