Missing and Murdered Women: Missing person

Showing posts with label Missing person. Show all posts

Monday, March 8

NamUs Missing Person Database Goes Unused by 93 Percent of Law Enforcement

03.07.10

Since 2009, families and medical examiners have had access to a free online database that's designed to assist in the identification of more than 40,000 sets of unidentified remains across the country. Dubbed "NamUs," short for the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, the program allows both parties to enter identifying characteristics of a missing person or unidentified body in the hopes that this information exchange will help match a face to a fate.

It's a grim consolation for those whose friends or families have been affected by violence or accidents. Nevertheless, the Associated Press reports that the free service has helped solved 16 cases since the cross-matching feature went live in July of last year. The numbers don't end there: the service is home to around 6,200 unidentified sets of remains, 2,800 missing people, and--according to The Crime Report--has been accessed (on the missing persons front) by more than 185,000 people as of January 2009.

What's the problem? According to the AP, only 1,100 of the nation's 17,000 law enforcement agencies, or 6.5 percent, are registered with the service. That's partly a publicity issue, as numerous law enforcement agencies simply don't know the service exists. Others are more leery about using limited resources to participate in the service.

That doesn't sit well with Janice Smolinski, sponsor of the "Billy's Law" bill that aims to encourage wider use of the NamUs system. If passed--it's already received House approval and remains pending in the Senate--the bill would generate $10 million in annual grants for law enforcement agencies to both train new users and help them resource the data entry process of adding new details to the system. The bill would also allow for an annual grant of $2.4 million to keep NamUS, as a whole, up-and-running.

As for how the system actually works, NamUs profiles are rated based on a one-to-five star system. A one-star profile contains scant details about a person: perhaps a name, or the location where they disappeared, but that's it. A five-star profile is the whole kit-and-caboodle, with a full swath of details and identifying characteristics, as well as a picture or rendering of a person's likely image.

According to The Crime Report, there's currently no mandate that forces law enforcement to database details about a 21-or-over missing adult. Billy's Law won't change that aspect of the system, but it will allow the database to link up with the National Crime Information Center Missing and Unidentified Person File database in hopes that this could increase the detail of NamUS profiles (or, conversely, fill out the system with more.) Similarly, law enforcement will be required to submit missing persons reports for children (21-and-under) to the NamUs database.

For Smolinski, the legislative victory would be bittersweet. She remains confident that the NamUs database will give her the details she needs to close her own case--that of her son, Billy, who went missing in Connecticut in 2004.

Sunday, March 7

Hunt to determine if a serial killer is preying on females along B.C. highways

The official list of missing or murdered young women on B.C. and Alberta highways contains 18 names. But many more victims may have left anguished families behind.

By LORI CULBERT and NEAL HALL, VANCOUVER SUN

March 7, 2010

RCMP Staff Sgt. Bruce Hulan stands along the long row of "highway of tears" documents, some that go back 40 years in Surrey, December 10, 2009.

Photograph by: Bill Keay , Vancouver Sun

In their hunt to determine whether a serial killer is preying on girls and women along B.C. roadways, investigators have identified 2,000 “persons of interest” in the so-called Highway of Tears investigation.

Project E-Pana, the joint RCMP-Vancouver police unit probing missing and murdered women along B.C. highways, previously has been tight-lipped about the high-profile investigation.

In his first extensive media interview, team commander Staff Sgt. Bruce Hulan has revealed new details to The Vancouver Sun about a case that has generated much emotion and debate across this province.

Until now, it has not been clear what criteria the RCMP used to draw up its list of 18 “Highway of Tears” victims, how they chose the geographical scope of their project, and what headway has been made on possible suspects — including a person of interest targeted during a mysterious search this summer of a Prince George property.

E-Pana began in 2005 with a review of three unsolved 1994 murders along northern B.C.’s Highway 16, but would soon expand its scope.

“We started doing the review but very early into it we recognized that, if we are looking for this serial killer, we’ll have to broaden our scope and have a look at other files,” Hulan said this week.

“I don’t think we’ll be able to say [whether there is a serial killer at play] until we’re at the point where we are satisfied that we have been successful in solving or charging in all 18 of the files, or the majority, or having determined what the circumstances were that led to the murders.”

To zero in on a suspect or suspects police examined 619 unsolved files of violence against women along three highways, including murders and missing person cases, as well as sexual assaults and attempted sex assaults. A half dozen of the cases are in the Hinton area of Alberta, while the majority are from B.C.

That file review, which wrapped up earlier this year, identified the 18 cases of missing and murdered women included on the official police list, as well as an additional 16 sex-crime cases that appeared very similar because the women were targeted on specific highways.

“Our purpose in reviewing the [sex crimes] files is to identify elements common to our homicide cases which may assist us in identifying the person responsible,” said RCMP spokesperson Cpl. Annie Linteau, who attended The Sun’s interview with Hulan.

Victims’ families and women’s advocates argue the official list should be much longer than 18 names, suggesting up to twice that number of girls and women have met similar violence in northern and central B.C. over the past 40 years.

A Vancouver Sun investigation has uncovered 13 other victims who went missing or were murdered near a major roadway in B.C. or Alberta, who appear to be similar to the 18 on the official list and, in some cases, had been linked in the past to the “highway murders” by previous police investigations. The stories of these additional cases will be told in our series “The Vanishing Point” over the next five days.

In some of the additional cases identified by The Sun, Hulan argued the victims don’t meet the criteria the RCMP set for inclusion on the list. Victims must be female and match at least one of the two following scenarios: they were involved in a high-risk activity such as hitchhiking or the sex trade, or they were last seen — or their body was found — within a mile or so from three specific B.C. highways.

Hulan conceded other victims might potentially be linked to one or more of the women on the official list, but he added the RCMP had to make its investigation manageable, so it focused on a certain geographical area.

“There are other investigations out there that, when you look at them, would cause you to be concerned whether there are connections between them, but as I said before, we are constrained by resources,” Hulan said. “We couldn’t look at the entire province.”

The cases that are on the official list span Highway 16 from Prince Rupert all the way to Hinton, Alberta; Highway 97 from Prince George to Kamloops, and Highway 5, which includes Merritt.

In addition to the 2,000 persons of interest identified in the cases reviewed by police, there is a secondary list of 5,000 people whose names surfaced in the files for various reasons. There have been common names in some files, Hulan said.

“With anyone identified in the files as a person of interest we do a background check and analysis on them, their criminal history, and when they were in and out of custody, and if they had the opportunity or not to commit the homicide.”

None of the 2,000 persons of interest has been identified, but in August police said a previous owner of a Prince George-area property they were searching was a person of interest in the disappearance of Highway of Tears victim Nicole Hoar. Convicted murderer Leland Switzer, who has been in jail since 2005, previously owned the property.

While Hulan wouldn’t confirm Switzer as a person of interest, he revealed evidence was seized from the property and from a vehicle found at a nearby dump. The evidence is being analysed for DNA and undergoing other testing.

E-Pana has also sent evidence recovered during the historical homicides to modern-day labs, which in some cases has created new leads and in other cases has ruled out past suspects.

It is often inaccurately reported that Nicole Hoar was the only non-native person on the Highway of Tears list, but The Sun has determined eight of the 18 women and girls are non-native. Hulan estimated the list was half native and half non-native.

“These victims weren’t targeted because they were white or native or any other race, for that matter.

“They are victims because ... they were engaged in high-risk activity,” he said.

Many of the relatives of women on the list cringe at the description of their loved ones doing something high-risk, arguing some were just walking or cycling on a highway, or were hitchhiking in the 1970s, when it was a commonplace activity.

The $6-million E-Pana investigation, which employs 60 people — including 17 RCMP and two Vancouver officers, as well as civilians and retired police officers — is not investigating all 18 files at once.

“We prioritized files based on the risk of losing evidence and the potential threats to the public” he said.

Hulan said it is possible detectives could provide some future answers for the families, but given that some files are four decades old, the perpetrators may no longer be alive.

“Is it likely we will be able to charge on all 18 of them? I’m doubtful about that.”

For some relatives such as Kevin MacMillen, whose sister was killed near 100 Mile House in 1974, being included on the Highway of Tears list has meant hope that the case is getting new attention.

“It was a great relief,” said MacMillen, who said he has always suspected the person who murdered Colleen had killed again, either before or after.

Brenda Wilson doesn’t like her sister Ramona’s name being on the list because of the negative connotations that her sister was doing something wrong the day she vanished from Smithers in 1994.

“I think if there’s any justice that we receive it would be in finding answers to who did this to Ramona and why, and how can we prevent it from happening again, and just to see a change in the ways things are done with the investigation, and [police] having better relationships with families,” Brenda said in a recent interview.

lculbert@vancouversun.com; nhall@vancouversun.com

Highway of Tears case began with three teens

Police realized a serial killer may be at work after bodies of young women found near Highway 16

By Lori Culbert and Neal Hall, Vancouver Sun

March 7, 2010

Ramona Wilson

Photograph by: Family photo, Vancouver Sun

How did the police investigation, commonly referred to as the Highway of Tears case, begin?

What was behind the RCMP's decision to create a team of officers to re-investigate unsolved cases of missing and murdered women in northern and central B.C., some of which date back decades?

Police have been tight-lipped about this high-profile operation, but its team commander, Staff Sgt. Bruce Hulan, sat down with The Vancouver Sun to explain why and how it all started.

It began with three teenage girls who were killed in the span of six months in 1994: Ramona Wilson, Roxanne Thiara and Alisha (Leah) Germaine.

In the fall of 2005, B.C.'s Unsolved Homicide Unit, which also falls under Hulan's command, was asked to examine the three cold cases because RCMP behaviour-science experts -- also known as profilers -- had looked at those files and found some similarities.

"We reviewed the files with the view of whether we could identify or say the homicides had been committed by the same person, or whether there was a reason to believe there were three separate killers," Hulan said during an interview last week.

"There was rumour, speculation and media reports in the north suggesting that a serial killer was responsible for these and other files," he explained.

"So part of our mandate was to determine if there was a serial killer responsible and also trying to identify investigative strategies to move those three files forward."

Ramona was 16 years old when she vanished June 11, 1994 in Smithers, after telling her mother she was going to meet some friends and attend a dance in a nearby community. The Grade 10 high school student never made it to her friend's house and her body was found near the Smithers airport, within a short distance of Highway 16, in April 1995.

Roxanne, 15, supported a drug addiction by selling sex in Prince George. She was last seen working the streets on the July long weekend in 1994. Her body was found the following month near Burns Lake along Highway 16.

Leah Germaine was also 15 and working the streets of Prince George when she disappeared on Dec. 9, 1994. Her body was found a few hours later near an elementary school on the outskirts of Prince George, close to Highway 16.

Those three cases marked the birth of Project E-Pana, which was named by one of the investigators after the mythological Inuit god Pana, who cared for souls in the afterlife until they were reincarnated. The operation is now an integrated one, including members of the RCMP and Vancouver police.

But, Hulan said, the officers soon realized that if they were looking for evidence of a possible serial killer, they would have to broaden the scope of their probe beyond three files.

The criteria for the addition of any more cases was that the victims were female and had to match at least one of the following scenarios:

- Involvement in a high-risk activity that would expose them to danger, such as hitchhiking or prostitution.

- They were either last seen or their bodies were found within a mile of Highway 16.

The officers looked through their databases, such as ViCLAS [Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System] and CPIC [Canadian Police Information Centre], and decided in the spring of 2006 to review six more files.

They were mainly unsolved murders or missing person files involving young women between 1990 and 2006, stretching from Prince Rupert to Prince George.

The public has dubbed Project E-Pana as the Highway of Tears case.

Many of the victims' families have been critical of the treatment they received from the RCMP when their loved ones first went missing, and question how thorough those original investigations were.

"That was then," Hulan said, insisting all victims are treated equally by E-Pana.

He said a modern-day investigation also has access to new technologies, such as DNA testing, that the original investigators did not.

Project E-Pana started with a whimper, rather than a roar, because officers decided all the paper files associated with the historical cases needed to be entered into the RCMP's evidence and reports database. That was necessary, Hulan said, because there were more than 200 boxes of paperwork associated with the nine cases and there was no other way to track whether a suspect's name surfaced in box No. 3 and box No. 133 unless it was all computerized.

Hulan had hoped the data input work could be done in about three months, but the tedious job took close to a year.

And then the files had to be thoroughly reviewed by investigators looking for similar suspects and other common links.

In the meantime, current and retired investigators were providing the names of other potential victims for E-Pana to check out, beyond the nine they had identified. That prompted an expansion of the review to include unsolved cases along Highway 97 and Highway 5 into communities such as Quesnel, Williams Lake, Kamloops and Merritt.

By October 2007, the RCMP had announced the list had doubled to 18 victims, spanning nearly four decades: from 1969 to 2006. The geographical scope had also expanded, into B.C.'s Interior and as far east as Hinton, Alberta.

Investigators reviewed more than 600 files and by February 2009 decided no other cases would be added to the list.

That has been a controversial decision for some family members and advocates, who believe other victims should be included in the Highway of Tears case.

Hulan said the provincial government has committed to funding the project until all the identified files are thoroughly reviewed for any new evidence and all leads are pursued, which could take another three to five years.

lculbert@vancouversun.com

Wednesday, March 3

Teresa Heather Chenery is missing.

Have you seen our sister

Teresa Heather Chenery

also known as

Teresa Heather Linclon

street name is

“Baby Girl”

has been Missing since

being released from

Alouette River Correctional Facility

On January 6, 2010.

Please contact Sylvia Fee @ 250-298-0657

Email:

Siby1133@gmail.com

maggygislemoon@yahoo.ca

Wednesday, October 21

Hope remains

By Florence Loyie, Edmonton Journal

October 21, 2009

Delores Dawn Brower told people she had a plan to get off the streets she had worked on for close to 15 years. The 33-year-old woman disappeared in May 2004. Her family reported her missing in October 2005, and since then they have waited for news.

Photograph by: Edmonton Journal, Canwest News Service

EDMONTON — Hope. It is the only thing the families of Edmonton's missing women have left.

Hope that their missing loved ones simply decided to leave their former lives behind and start new ones somewhere else, without telling anyone of their plans.

Hope that one day they will return, even though the chances of that happening are remote.

Delores Dawn Brower told people she had a plan to get off the streets she had worked on for close to 15 years. The 33-year-old woman disappeared in May 2004. Her family reported her missing in October 2005, and since then they have waited for news.

Brower is one of three Edmonton sex-trade workers listed as missing with the RCMP's Project Kare. There are at least eight other women listed as missing with the Edmonton Police Service, nine if you count seven-year-old Tania Murrell, who disappeared on Jan. 20, 1983, while walking home from her elementary school for lunch.

Those listed with Project Kare lived high-risk lifestyles. Brower was the third sex-trade worker to go missing in 2004. Corrie Renee Ottenbreit, 27, went missing on May 9 and Maggie Lee Burke, 23, disappeared on Dec. 4.

"We are still hopeful that Miss Ottenbreit has chosen to make a change in her lifestyle and, after seeing this in the media, will pick up the phone and call investigators," Cpl. Wayne Oakes, spokesman for RCMP K-Division, said at the time of her disappearance.

"We also have to, however, face reality and investigate other avenues along with this."

One year after Burke was listed as missing, there were rumours she had been seen walking along a street in Vancouver. There was hope the five-foot-seven woman with a marijuana leaf tattoo on her upper left arm might be found, although Project Kare investigators have long believed foul play led to her disappearance.

Although Sangeet Khanna is listed with the EPS missing persons unit, investigators think the 41-year-old single mother was killed and her body dumped somewhere along the highway between Edmonton and Meadow Lake, Sask.

Khanna disappeared on April 17, 2006. That evening she told her 15-year-old son she was going to the bank and would bring some ice cream when she returned. Police found her vehicle in a bank parking lot after her son notified them of her disappearance the next morning.

Michelle Louise Mercer, 46, was a street person with no fixed address whose life was written up in articles by Alberta Vue Magazine and Reader's Digest. Both articles were published within days of her disappearance on Feb. 6, 2009.

Police have no idea what happened to her.

"I haven't seen Michelle Mercer in the downtown inner city in a long while," a friend posted on the Unsolved Murders/Missing Persons Canada website. "I hope she has taken off somewhere, and living a better life."

Annette Margaret Holywhiteman was reported missing to police last March by a social service agency. The 41-year-old was known to lead a high-risk lifestyle and has not been seen since Aug. 25, 2008.

Downtown resident Diana Gregory, 44, never showed up at her sister's home as planned on Feb. 26, 2006 and has had no contact with family since. Foul play is not suspected in her disappearance, but the woman who also went by the nickname Daya did require medication for an illness.

Rene Lynn Gunning, 19, and 16-year-old Krystle Ann Julia Knott were not from Edmonton, but the teenagers are believed to have last been seen together at West Edmonton Mall on Feb. 18, 2005. They told friends they were hitchhiking back to British Columbia. The teens are not believed to be involved in prostitution, but the files of both girls were added to Project Kare's caseload in July 2007.

Kamloops mother Glendene Grant has not given up hope she will find her missing daughter, although she admits that after more than three years she is "not one step closer to finding Jessie."

Jessica Foster was 21 when she disappeared in March 2006, four months after moving to Las Vegas. Jessie told her parents she was engaged to a man who was a "trust-fund baby," but Grant later found out Jessie was working as prostitute for an escort agency and the "fiance" was actually a pimp. Foster, who was born and raised in Calgary, is currently listed by the FBI as a missing person.

Grant has created a website dedicated to Jessie, a Facebook page and done numerous media interviews. She has posted YouTube videos and montages, made countless calls to police investigators and armed herself with as much information as she can find on the issue of human trafficking, because she is convinced Jessie was a victim.

"I have decided that if I can't find her, I can at least tell the world about her. If I can't do anything more for Jessie, I can keep her name alive," said Grant.

Grant said she will never give hope that Jessie will be found. "I don't want to ever give up on getting her back. Even if she is not alive, we want her back home."

Edmonton Journal

Maggie Lee Burke

‘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

‘I miss my daughter’

By Barb Pacholik, Regina Leader-Post

October 21, 2009

Patsy Favel disappeared from the lives of her mother and son on Sept. 30, 1984, four days after Cody’s first birthday.

Photograph by: Regina Leader-Post, Canwest News Service

REGINA — Time is fixed in the photo — an attractive, young mother proudly holding her infant in her arms.

Both are looking at the photographer, no small feat as any parent who has posed for photos with a wriggling infant knows. The mother has a sweet smile that heightens her cheekbones and carries through to her eyes. Her nine-month-old son clutches at the front of her blouse.

If only time had stood still at that joyous moment for Patsy Favel and her baby boy, Cody Blue Favel.

Twenty-five years later, other pictures overwhelm Patsy's mother, ugly images that creep into Alice Berger's thoughts during the day and interrupt her sleep at night. They are graphic images, of two men shooting her daughter in cold blood — a story she has heard about her daughter's fate.

Years ago, the images that filled Berger's dreams about her daughter were optimistic — that she was happy and healthy, a new start, a new life.

There's no telling if any of the dreams or nightmares or stories hold any truth. There's really no telling anything about Patsy. She disappeared from the lives of her mother and son on Sept. 30, 1984, four days after Cody's first birthday. Vanished.

The photos of Patsy with her son are the last ones of her.

Berger's memories of that time are fading with the years, but of one thing the 75-year-old is certain: "She was very, very proud of her boy." Berger later adds, "She just loved him."

A mother, a daughter, a sister — loving and loved and valued.

"I miss my daughter. Lots."

While Patsy Favel is Regina's oldest reported case of a missing woman, many other parents like Berger walk the line between hope and dread.

Across the province, the list of long-term missing women — gone six months or more — stretches to 29 names, five from this city and about one-third from the southern half of the province. While they are outnumbered by missing men more than two to one, the men are more often victims of misadventure, lives lost while boating, swimming, or hiking in the bush. Foul play is suspected in 70 per cent of the missing women's cases, but in only 21 per cent of the men's, according to a provincial report on missing persons.

In its report to the Provincial Partnership Committee on Missing Persons, the Saskatchewan First Nations Women's Commission Secretariat noted that aboriginal females are going missing at a disproportionate rate. Of Saskatchewan's missing women, 12 are Caucasian and 17 aboriginal. Aboriginal people make up only 14 per cent of Saskatchewan's population.

"Higher-risk lifestyles, transitions from reserve to urban without a strong support system, lack of proper transportation — such as hitchhiking from a reserve to urban centre — all contribute to risks that a person may or may not go missing," says the secretariat's report.

"By identifying that some First Nation women may go missing because of who they are, a stronger response can be put in place if a person is thought to be missing," it adds.

In recent years, there's been far more attention on missing persons, with the creation of special police units, committees, and awareness campaigns. Berger admits she's angry that focus was absent when her daughter vanished.

"Now it's too late. Why didn't they do that right away when a person goes missing?" she asks.

"Darn it, why do they leave us behind? Why don't they do something to help with our children?" she asks.

Berger and her husband of 40 years live in a tidy little house — they won a contest for their yard with its flower baskets and trimmed lawn this summer — on the Piapot First Nation, where her youngest brother is the chief, she notes with pride.

Walls of her home are given over to photos of her children, grandchildren and what she affectionately refers to as her "greats" — great, and great-great-grandchildren. There is one picture, slightly out of focus, of a very slender Patsy smiling beside a Christmas tree — the last Christmas with her family.

Patricia Maye Favel, who would be 43 today, is the youngest of Berger's six children. "When I wanted to baby her, I called her Pa-a-tsy," says her mother, dragging out the syllables.

Her mother remembers a quiet girl who enjoyed reading while growing up on Kawacatoose First Nation. "I thought she was going to be a quiet girl the rest of her life."

Patsy was close to her sister, Maxine, a few years older. By age 18 and then living in Regina, Patsy had followed her sister into a lifestyle that reduces their mother to tears even today. Both were addicted to what was the favoured street drug in 1980s Regina — "poor man's heroin," a mix of the prescription pills Talwin and Ritalin. Patsy occasionally found the cash to support her habit on what was then dubbed the "low stroll," a few downtown blocks where mostly poor, aboriginal women sold their bodies to buy drugs, and bought drugs to dull the reality of selling their bodies.

"I tried to stop her, talk to her. We tried everything," says Berger. "Once you get hooked on something like that, it's hard to quit." At five-foot-seven, Patsy had dwindled to 45 kilograms.

When Berger hadn't seen Patsy for a few days, she went looking for her at Maxine's apartment. She spotted Patsy in her brown 1975 Camaro, but her daughter waved her off, as if she didn't want her to come near.

"That was the last time I seen her," says Berger.

Later that Sunday, around 10:30 p.m., Patsy, who had bleached her curly, dark hair blonde a week before, stood two blocks from the Regina police station. According to witnesses who talked to police after family reported her missing on Oct. 2, she had been seen that Sept. 30 night getting into a smaller, red or orange, Japanese-made car, possibly a Datsun or Toyota, driven by a man.

A woman who was also working that night told the Leader-Post in 1984 that she was approached by an Asian man driving such a car. She recalled a Chinese pagoda hanging in the window. When that woman turned him away, he headed towards the street where Patsy was waiting. Like so many other things about the case, there's no way to know if it's true. "It's possible, but it's nothing certain," police said back then.

Even today, the cold case detective in charge of the file can't rule out anything, including a possible link to another mystery. Nearly a year before Patsy vanished, 19-year-old Annette Kelly Peigan disappeared from the downtown on July 29, 1983. Badly burned remains, found three weeks later in a ditch on the city's eastern edge, were subsequently linked to her. It was impossible to determine a cause of death, and Peigan is among the RCMP's cold cases.

After realizing her daughter was gone without any explanation, Berger and her husband searched alleys, drove streets, picked through garbage cans, and consulted with an elder who had a vision of Patsy — all to no avail. Berger believes police could have done more.

Tears glisten on her cheeks as she speaks about the disturbing story she heard a few years ago, that Patsy was taken and killed by two men in the street wars over drugs, prostitution and turf.

"That shot wasn't meant for her. . . . They mistook her as Maxine," she says, relating the tale she heard second-hand. Clearly, Berger fears there may be some truth to it, as she weeps and is comforted by her husband.

"That was the last story I ever heard about Patsy."

Today Maxine is also missed, dead from her addiction, while her sister Patsy is just missing. A victim of a bad date or street violence? Drifted away from a life she didn't want? Alive or dead? Not knowing is the hardest part, says Berger.

"I still have hopes for her coming back. I hope they find her some day."

Patsy's baby boy, Cody, is now a man of 26. Berger cared for her grandson for a time after Patsy disappeared until the child never returned home from a visit to his paternal family. He did keep in touch over the years, and Berger did her best to keep the mother he never knew alive, telling him, "she loved you."

As a young man, Cody found another family, the Native Syndicate street gang, and paid dearly for its acceptance. In December 2006 the then 23-year-old was shot in the upper left chest and lost a lung as punishment for failing to obey the gang.

Despite the risks, Cody testified last year against the men responsible. By then, he was looking to turn his life around.

Like Patsy, Cody too may disappear from Berger's life. At the time of his testimony last year, he spoke of entering a witness protection program.

Sunday, September 6

Missing girls’ families accuse police of racism, incompetence

By Brendan Kennedy, Ottawa Citizen
September 5, 2009

KITIGAN ZIBI ANISHINABEG FIRST NATION, Que. — Lisa Odjick is stalked by nightmares of her missing granddaughter.

“One time I dreamt she was being held against her will,” she says. “I could hear her calling me.”

Maisy Odjick, 16, and her friend Shannon Alexander, 17, disappeared from the Kitigan Zibi-Maniwaki area, about 130 kilometres north of Ottawa, on Sept. 6, 2008. The house where they were last known to be was locked. There were no signs of foul play. The teens left behind purses, clothes, electronics, identification and even medication.

On the reserve, rumours abound of human trafficking, prostitution, drug use, even possible sightings of the teens in Montreal, Toronto or as far away as Arizona.

The girls’ parents accuse the Kitigan Zibi police of incompetence. They’ve called the Surete du Quebec, the provincial police force, complacent and racist. (Maisy lived on the reserve; Shannon resided in the nearby town of Maniwaki. It is a joint police investigation.) The parents say the investigation was botched from the start because the provincial police assumed the girls were runaways.

The provincial police won’t discuss the case. Const. Steve Lalande will say only that police are doing “everything humanly possible”_to find the girls.

And while that force says the girls ran away, Kitigan Zibi police say they have no such evidence.

“We didn’t really want to commit (to saying that they were) runaways right away,” explains Kitigan Zibi Police Chief Gorden McGregor. “They (the Surete du Quebec) felt that the information that they had — which is the same as ours — they felt that they were able to commit to that notion.”

Maisy’s mother, Laurie Odjick, says there was no ground search in the days after the girls went missing, for example, and it took police more than a month to seize the girls’ computers.

McGregor understands the families’ frustration, but says there has never been anything solid to investigate.

“We’re dumbfounded.”

Jurisdictional questions only add to the confusion: Maisy is registered to the Kitigan Zibi band; Shannon is Inuit and not registered to the band. Maisy’s mother says every time she asked the provincial police for updates, they referred her to reserve police.

At the outset, the girls’ files were kept apart, even though they went missing from the same place and were believed to be together. Kitigan Zibi police took Maisy’s file, while the provincial force had Shannon’s.

McGregor insists this was only the case with paperwork; police collaborated from the start.

“No matter what: We open up a file on Maisy; they open up a file on Shannon. We still work together on the file,” he said. In any case, after a couple of months, the files were formally joined.

Shannon’s father, Bryan Alexander, believes the provincial police wanted to wash their hands of the case so they gave it to the Kitigan Zibi police — a community force of eight officers.

“This happened in town, not on the reserve. They don’t care if a million . . . Indians go missing,” he said,

echoing the criticism that has been made of police forces across the country in what advocates say are hundreds of missing and murdered women cases.

The circumstances surrounding when the girls were last seen are not entirely clear. Alexander says that on Friday, Sept. 5, 2008, he left the teens at his home — just outside the reserve in Maniwaki — and went to Ottawa for the weekend to help his son paint his apartment.

Later that day, the girls mowed the lawn at Maisy’s grandmother’s home. When the work was done, Maisy announced plans to spend the night at Shannon’s house.

Later that evening, the girls hung out with friends in a park, across the street from the Polyvalente high school, where a dance was being held. A 15-year-old boy who was with the girls that night says the girls claimed they’d just smoked crack. He thought they might be joking, though they did seem drunk or high.

At some point between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., Shannon got into a fight with a boy in the group. Shortly after, Shannon and Maisy left together — the last anyone saw of the girls.

Maisy’s Facebook account was last active at 10:31 p.m. that night.

When Alexander returned from Ottawa on Monday, the girls were nowhere to be found.

On Tuesday, Alexander called police. He’d assumed you had to wait 24 hours to file a missing person’s report.

Four days passed between the last sighting of the girls and that first contact with the police.

• Shannon’s story

Bryan Alexander raised his daughter alone. He explains that his wife, a crack addict, left when Shannon was about a year old. The father and daughter lived in Ottawa until Shannon was about six, moved to Hull, then settled in Maniwaki, where they have family.

As a child, Shannon enjoyed the outdoors where she and her father would ride three-wheelers or go fishing.

In her later teens, she grew argumentative and angry. After a fight with her principal, she quit school.

Sixteen at the time, her father says she enrolled at the adult education centre the following day. While attending night school, she struggled unsuccessfully to find work. She tried grocery stores, restaurants, tobacco shops.

“My daughter’s not stupid,” Alexander says, “she just looks native.” She became increasingly frustrated.

Almost two years before she disappeared, Shannon decided to find her mother. Although warned she might not like what she found, she took a bus to Ottawa and found her mother in a crack house. “She flipped out” and was never the same, he says.

Alexander is himself a former crack addict who struggles with alcoholism. He says he attends AA and NA meetings and hasn’t smoked crack since his daughter’s birth. He knows he wasn’t always the best father, but says he gave his daughter everything she needed.

Alexander says his daughter would sometimes leave home for a few days, but not without calling or leaving a note. She spent some months in a foster home at some point in the past few years, but he isn’t clear on the details.

At the time of her disappearance, Shannon was completing her last high school math credit and was enrolled in a nursing college in Mont-Laurier, where she planned to move.

• Maisy’s story

Laurie Odjick still remembers the day Maisy, the first of her four children, was born. “She was the hardest labour,” she says with a teary smile. “She was always thinking she could do things on her own.”

Maisy became an independent and rebellious teen who fought with her mother.

Almost a year before she disappeared, Maisy dropped out of school. Laurie knew Maisy was experimenting with marijuana and alcohol.

At 16, Maisy moved in with her 18-year-old boyfriend, an arrangement that lasted about a month. She next moved in with her grandmother.

Maisy’s grandmother convinced her to try to finish high school. She had re-enrolled at Maniwaki’s adult education centre and was scheduled to resume her studies days before she disappeared.

Maisy made no secret of her desire to get away from Kitigan Zibi. She often spoke about moving back to the Saugeen Shores-Port Elgin, Ont. area, where she lived from 2003 to 2006, and where she still has friends and family.

In any case, Laurie says, Maisy would have taken her favourite possessions — family photos, and her camera, clothes and jewelry.

Laurie Odjick has been vocal and proactive in her hunt for answers. With the help of her sister-in-law, Maria Jacko, Odjick has organized searches and raised $12,000 in reward money. Every month she sends posters of Maisy and Shannon to women’s shelters across the country.

Sunday, July 26

CUE Center NATIONAL ROUND TABLE CONFERENCE FOR MISSING PERSONS

NATIONAL ROUND TABLE CONFERENCE FOR MISSING PERSONS - Coming March 2010

Who Should attended? Families of the missing, advocates, law officers, coroners, forensic specialist, search personnel (all types), non profit missing person organizations, government agencies, private investigations and more.

National Round Table Conference Goals: * Sharing a trained and professional view for solving cold case and search there of; missing persons * Understanding the resources available to be deployed when needed, what their capabilities are and how to obtain them. * Exploring the relevant positive and negative experiences of people who have experienced a missing loved one. * Creating new approaches to missing persons cases, and effectively deploying available resources; building communication and support * Developing a high-level view of the modifications needed to our current resources and organizational community over the next five years.

Wednesday, July 15

Remember Their Names (Janis Cole)

Documenting grief and pain
By Fran Schechter

The notorious serial killer never appears in Remember Their Names, an installation by NOW contributor and documentary filmmaker Janis Cole about the prostitutes, many of them aboriginal, who disappeared from Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. Cole doesn’t need to remind us how they met their end; instead, she focuses on the women and the grief of friends and relatives who searched for them.

In a darkened room, two projections feature missing-persons posters: The larger screen switches from group to individual mug shots, the floor below it strewn street-memorial-style with flowers, photos, stuffed animals and native smudge bundles. The smaller projection is overlain with police quotes justifying their inaction. Some paper posters are crumpled on the floor.

You can’t help wondering what terrible life experiences put these women here. In a short video on the third wall, Sarah Jean DeVries, one of the dead, speaks frankly about heroin as she shoots up. A desk nearby holds a photo of her daughter and photocopied pages from DeVries’s diary, wrenching words of self-loathing and rage at the men who used her.

Though this documentary work doesn’t pack the angry, visceral punch of Vigil, Rebecca Belmore’s performance on the same subject, it’s still a moving cry of pain for those lost in this ugly chapter of our recent history.

At Trinity Square Video, to August 8. Cole gives a master class Saturday (July 18) from 3 to 5 pm.

NOW | July 15-22, 2009 | VOL 28 NO 46
Copyright 2009 NOW Communications

NOW Magazine
Remember Their Names

Thursday, June 11

Missing persons website adds new hope

Posted By Bobby Roy
Posted 1 hour ago

Every family’s worst nightmare is to hear that a loved one has gone missing, and going through every waking moment worrying about where they could be isn’t easy.

In the every missing persons case, closure is what the family and friends connected to them want and with a help of a new tool, giving the stricken family members and friends closure will be easier to do.

A new website designed to work with the public’s help is hoping to bring some much needed closure to the families of missing persons.

“We have started a website called albertamissingpersons.ca as a new tool for both the public and police to help close missing persons cases,” said Camille Fedoruk, research analyst for Project KARE.

According to kare.ca Project KARE is an investigational unit, created with the highest priority to examine the deaths of several “High Risk Missing Persons” who have been found in the surrounding rural areas of the City of Edmonton. One of the objectives of Project KARE is to investigate all leads, capture and prosecute the person(s) responsible for these crimes.

The new website has been launched with the help of Law Enforcement Agencies and Alberta Medical Examiners to profile the 300 plus missing persons that have been reported in Alberta so that either they will be found alive or their remains can be identified.

“So far I’ve put about 180 of the missing person cases on the website along with seven or eight unidentified human remains cases,” said Fedoruk.

The website contains brief but important verification information about each missing person in hopes that someone out there looking at the site can identify a missing person or unidentified human remains. Each case can contain a photo of the missing person, how long they have been missing for, physical descriptions, where they were last seen, a recent photo, and who to call. Fedoruk along with Cst. Kay Vera and Cst. Roland Mislk were out at the Leduc Scale on June 3 for the Driver Appreciation barbeque to help spread information about the website.

The scale is located on the QEII highway, south of Leduc.

“It takes just one phone call and the trucking industry has such an exposure on the highways.

“A lot of these individuals who go missing lead a high risk lifestyle and that’s why we’re here. Hopefully it might jog someone’s memory,” said Fedoruk.

The website has already had success in British Columbia where a man who had been missing since 2000 was identified through some human remains that someone had seen on the website.

“Just by using one word, like a tattoo, a certain piercing, birthmark or a fracture it makes it easier to identify a person,” said Fedoruk.

“These missing people all have a dad, a mom, a brother and all they want is some sort of closure even if it the worst possible scenario and by launching this website it definitely gives the public and police another tool to help solve these cases,” said Fedoruk.

Anyone who has any information in regards to a missing person is asked to

call the investigating agency for each

missing person that can be found on the newly launched website albertamissingpersons.ca or call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS.

© 2009 , Sun Media

Friday, April 24

Vanished, but not forgotten: The stories behind some of Saskatchewan's 95 missing people

By Barb Pacholik, Leader-Post
April 24, 2009 9:02 PM

For nearly a year, Blaine Nokahoot and his wife Harriet Kahnapace have been waiting — for a knock at the door, a phone call, some word, just about anything that might ease their minds, or at least put the questions to rest.

Chief among those questions: Where is Wilson Grant Nokahoot. May 30 will mark a year since anyone has seen the 43-year-old Regina man, one of the last people to be added to the list of this province's 95 long-term missing persons.

"He used to always phone or pop around," says Blaine, Wilson's cousin. "He kind of went off the face of the earth."

Wilson often stayed with the couple at their Regina home — located only three blocks from the house where five-year-old Tamra Keepness, perhaps the city's best-known missing person, disappeared in July 2004.

It's but one of the tragic coincidences; Wilson isn't the only one to have simply vanished from their lives. Danita Bigeagle, the daughter of Blaine's cousin, disappeared in February 2007 from the 800 block of Victoria Avenue and has yet to be found. "She'd always phone her mom . . . then just no more phone calls," says Kahnapace.

Moments later, she remembers her friend, Elaine Dumba, and wonders at her fate. Formerly of Regina, Dumba was last seen around 1989 in Vancouver's downtown eastside, although she wasn't officially listed among the missing until nearly a decade later. Her friends suspect she was among Robert Pickton's victims at his now infamous B.C. pig farm.

Today, the couple tries to make sense of the rumours they've heard about Wilson — how he is a victim of murder.

"You hear stories all over, and you don't know what to believe," says Kahnapace. "He's really friendly. Maybe he got friendly with the wrong people," she adds, hoping someone "with a conscience" might step forward.

The couple describes Wilson as a slightly built, quiet, harmless guy, who never bothered anyone. Originally from White Bear First Nation, he spent most of his life in Regina except for the time he was at Gordon's Indian Residential School, one of the more notorious boarding schools that sparked hundreds of residential school claims. Like so many residential school survivors, Wilson never liked to talk about his time he spent there. But it clearly took a toll; at times, he lost himself in substance abuse.

In recent years, he'd begun collecting cheques from a trust set up when he received compensation for his years at Gordon's. He used some of his money to buy an engagement ring for his girlfriend in the months before he went missing. His absence was noticed when he stopped turning up to collect his cheques.

Blaine has resigned himself to the possibility that he may never see his cousin again. "I know he's gone. It's not like him just to disappear."

Still in the absence of any evidence, it's hard not to cling to hope.

"It seems when you hear a knock at night, it might be him," says Kahnapace.

———

From the most recent — 52-year-old Gordon Harvey, last seen swimming in the Saskatchewan River near Saskatoon in July — to the oldest — 29-year-old farm hand Anker Ljungren, who left home to find work in the midst of the Depression and was never seen again — Saskatchewan police agencies have 95 open files of long-term missing persons.

That's seven decades of heartache for families left to ponder what-ifs. Usually those missing for more than six months are added to the list, although exceptions are occasionally made when it's clear the person has not vanished of their own accord.

For some, traces left behind hint at the person's fate: A snow machine found in a hole in the ice (William Kacuiba, 1933, on the North Saskatchewan River near Prince Albert), a swamped canoe (Garry Stuart Allen, 1978, Turtle Lake near Glaslyn), or an inoperable boat and abandoned fishing nets (Louis Haineault, 1987, Cree Lake).

But many others are all the more puzzling because the people have seemingly disappeared without leaving any trail: For example, Draper Lee Jim, a 27-year-old who was dropped off on the side of Highway 4, about 20 kilometres north of North Battleford, on Feb. 21, 2006, and never seen again; Grace Johnston, 26, who vanished on Oct. 20, 1953, after getting off a city transit bus in Saskatoon on her way to work at a downtown cafe; and Emily Osmond, a 78-year-old recluse who lived on a small acreage on the northern edge of Kawacatoose First Nation. Last seen by her hired helper in September 2007, Osmond uncharacteristically left behind her vehicle and personal belongings, including medication, and her dogs unattended.

Fifteen of the missing are adolescents and teens, aged 13 to 18, like 14-year-old Myrna Montgrand who never made it home from a party in La Loche in 1979, or 15-year-old Norman Louison who vanished walking to a house on the Cowessess First Nation in 1977, and 13-year-old Courtney Struble, last seen walking towards her residence in Estevan on July 9, 2004. That was only four days after Regina was grappling with the puzzling disappearance of Keepness. She is among the four children under aged 12 on the list of long-term missing, with the youngest three-year-old Jonathan Uriah Molina. He was last seen travelling with his mother Maria and two-year-old brother Benjamin, all of Winnipeg. Their burned-out Thunderbird was found Oct. 29, 1985, in a slough on the White Bear First Nation near Carlyle. Police believed the car had become stuck, overheated and caught fire. Personal belongings, including bags of clothing, a suitcase, and the car keys were found in the bush, about 100 yards from the vehicle nearly six months later. Then on Oct. 1, 1986, the skeletal remains of his mother and sibling were discovered nearby, but not Molina. It remains a mystery why the family was in the Carlyle area or ended up on a remote road, two kilometres off the highway.

At the other end of life's spectrum, are seniors, like Tersilla Catterina Bonthoux. From her black-and-white photo on a police website that profiles the province's long-term missing, the diminutive, bespectacled 79-year-old strikes a kindly smile, posing in a Sunday-best print dress, its white lace collar complemented by a broach at her neck. Born in 1875, she disappeared on Oct. 25, 1954, while walking from Duck Lake towards the farm homestead where she used to reside, about 13 kilometres away.

For years, whenever family gathered, the topic often turned to Bonthoux and what became of her, says RCMP Staff Sgt. Fran Stevenson, who retires this month as NCO in charge of the Saskatoon RCMP's major crime and historical case unit. The case was brought to the RCMP's attention in recent years by Bonthoux's grandson.

"There was always a rumour that she was buried on a particular piece of property (in a cellar) close to where she used to walk."

Stevenson, who was a member of the Provincial Partnership Committee on Missing Persons, uses the case to illustrate two points: Firstly, the importance of documenting old cases, so that if remains are ever found, a link can possibly be made; and secondly, how investigative work can still be done on even the coldest of cases. Last year, investigators and Saskatoon archaeologist Dr. Ernie Walker, who has assisted police on a number of historic cases, used ground-penetrating radar on what is today a farm field to find that suspect cellar and dig it up.

"They didn't find her, but at least it satisfies the family, that 55 years later, the police will still look for her and eliminate that misinformation," says Stevenson.

Det.-Sgt. Brent Shannon, whose business card for the Regina Police Service reads simply "cold case," echoes that sentiment. In the past, cold cases were revisited by major crimes officers as time permitted. Today, there are 13 officers (eight RCMP and five with municipal forces) around the province dedicated to historic or cold cases, delving into unsolved homicides, long-term missing person files and cases of unidentified human remains. The officers meet regularly to compare notes and suggest possible avenues for further investigation.

"By going to cold case, it does not go in some cold, dark room and sit endlessly forever and ever," says Shannon. But he adds that unlike television, there isn't a team of people who jump into a vehicle and go off to solve a case in an hour.

"Unfortunately, they're not easy files to solve or they would have been. It requires long-term persistence."

A file falls into his domain when "it's really been exhausted at that point and there are no more current or hot leads."

However, both he and Stevenson say there is still plenty of work that can be done, even when the trail has grown cold.

The file gets a new set of eyes, removing any potential for so-called "tunnel vision," by officers who get entrenched in one theory. And the passage of time can actually work to an investigator's advantage.

"Sometimes a little time off really does help . . . because motivations and reluctances and relationships change," says Shannon. "Maybe they're in a close relationship with a husband or a wife and years later, after separation or divorce or years of unhappiness, you have different motivations now. You're more willing to talk about perhaps what that person did, said, saw."

Stevenson says the officers of old worked with the tools of the day. "Today we have new things. And technology is number one."

From DNA analysis, which can positively identify remains, to tools like ground-penetrating radar, and additional resources, such as criminal or geographic profilers (particularly useful with serial killers) and trained search teams, cold case units are simply better equipped.

Cold case investigators were the impetus behind a comprehensive database as well as a publicly accessible website (www.sacp.ca/missing/) that profiles every long-term missing person in the province as well as unidentified human remains, like those of a young drifter who killed himself on the train tracks near Regina in July 1995 and now lies in a grave marked "John Doe."

"He's missing from somewhere, we just unfortunately can't tell you from where," says Shannon.

Launched on the Saskatchewan Association of Chiefs of Police site three years ago, today the missing persons website attracts as many as 4,000 hits per month from countries around the world.

"It shows the families that there is a record, there is a police report, there is a department or agency responsible for investigating their loved one's case," says Stevenson, who is also optimistic the site will one day generate a tip that might unlock some of those mysteries. He notes Saskatchewan was a leader in creating the site, and other provinces have since followed suit. Long-term plans are for police forces across the country to create a common, national, missing persons database and website. Cold case officers hope one day for a missing persons DNA databank, that could be checked when remains are discovered.

Nine cases have been marked "located" since the website's creation. Unfortunately, only one person was found alive, a Regina man who chose to cut off ties with his family. The remainder are all deceased, including Mary Catherine Shanahan, a Moose Jaw woman who was found buried in a Toronto cemetery under a name she had assumed after leaving Saskatchewan 23 years earlier.

As a result of the found remains, five of those cases turned into homicide investigations, with murder charges laid in three — Daleen Kay Bosse, Victoria Jane Nashacappo, and Amber Tara-Lynn Redman. Two of the homicides remain unsolved: 19-year-old high school student and mother Marie Lynn Lasas, whose remains were found under a pile of lumber behind a vacant Saskatoon house in June 2007, nearly a year after she was last seen; and Melanie Dawn Geddes, a 24-year-old Regina mother of three found in the Qu'Appelle Valley near Southey in December 2005, four months after she disappeared while walking home.

Asked what proportion of the outstanding cases might involve foul play, Stevenson replies, "Through discussions with investigators . . . there's a high probability of foul play being involved in approximately 32 of those cases."

But he's quick to add that it's an educated estimate and not a firm figure. "Until the person is actually found or some very accurate or verifiable information is located, we can never really say for sure." He uses the example of a Saskatoon woman, Jacqueline Late, who mysteriously disappeared in January two years ago. She was subsequently found three months later in a garage, where she had apparently gone to seek shelter from the cold and died of hypothermia, no foul play involved. At other times, "the more the case is investigated, the more suspicious it can get."

Resolution of any sort is remote in some instances. Shannon mentions the case of Jaroslav Joseph Heindl. The 72-year-old Regina house painter disappeared in 2002 from a grocery store parking lot, where his vehicle was found. He was known to collect reusable cast-offs from dumpsters. Police later searched the Regina landfill — to no avail.

"I think there's a very good chance that unfortunately he fell into that dumpster or climbed into that dumpster, and whatever happened at that point, and I'm not suggesting foul play — how are we ever going to find him if that was the scenario? And without finding him, how are we ever going to truly know (what happened)?"

Even if they can't resolve all the cases, officers like Shannon and Stevenson hope families can find some comfort in knowing the lost loved hasn't been forgotten by authorities. "Someone is still working on the file, albeit maybe not every single day. But somebody still keeps that file and works on it and follows up and when information comes in, they know somebody's addressing it . . . It would be nice to solve several of them," says Shannon.

After her daughter's killer was sentenced earlier this year, Amber Redman's mother Gwenda Yuzicappi spoke of the draining, emotional toll of simply not knowing. Three long years passed before the remains of the murdered 19-year-old, who disappeared after leaving a bar in Fort Qu'Appelle in July 2005, were found.

"It's unbearable pain. Your mind is racing. You're thinking is my daughter being hurt? Is she being harmed? Is she being fed? Is she being tortured? Is she being raped? The nightmare. A mother's nightmare. It's living that every second of the day. Sleeping. You're constantly thinking, 'Maybe I should go looking again,' because I constantly searched. The whole family, we all did our own searches."

The pain didn't end when Yuzicappi finally got her answers, but she found solace in being able to lay her daughter to rest.

Too many others, like the family of Wilson Nokahoot, are still waiting.

bpacholik@leaderpost.canwest.com

© Copyright (c) The Regina Leader-Post

Proposed memorial would be place for reflection and healing

By Barb Pacholik, Leader-Post
April 24, 2009 8:48 PM

REGINA — When someone dies, there is often a gravesite, a place to gather and remember; when someone vanishes, there is a void.

Lori Whiteman would like to fill that emptiness with a special place for reflection, healing and hope. The "Place of Reflection," as it's proposed, would be dedicated to those missing, but not forgotten — people like her mother, Delores "Lolly" Whiteman.

"There is a very real possibility that I may never find my mom, and never, therefore, have a place to go visit a gravesite. And there are other family members who are like me, who may never have that place to go. And the family members who have found their loved ones still need that healing," explains Whiteman. Her mother, originally from the Standing Buffalo Dakota First Nation near Fort Qu'Appelle, was last seen in the Edmonton area in 1987. Today she would be almost 64.

Inspired by a sculpture owned by Whiteman, the proposed memorial, which organizers hope to locate on the RCMP Depot grounds in Regina, is for a stone sculpture of a grandmother by Cree sculptor Lyndon Tootoosis. It's based on a legend about an elderly woman who becomes separated from her family and is expected to die. When they later reconnect, the family remembers her words: "I'll wait here."

"The foundation of (the memorial) comes from the idea of missing women, but it is intended for all of those people who are waiting or who require that strength or who have experienced loss and need a place to go to draw that strength and healing," says Whiteman.

Just as aboriginal women have been the catalyst for the memorial, they have been the impetus for putting all missing persons on the public agenda.

Whiteman is part of Saskatchewan Sisters in Spirit, a grassroots organization formed after Amnesty International raised the alarm about Canada's missing and murdered aboriginal women in a report. Stolen Sisters stated "the (Native Women's Association of Canada) has estimated that over the past twenty years, more than five hundred indigenous women may have been murdered or gone missing in circumstances suggesting violence." Women who largely carried on their lives unnoticed — until they were gone — became a rallying point for public awareness walks, conferences, studies, and monuments like the one envisioned by Whiteman.

With the spotlight focused on missing aboriginal women, the fact more men go missing in this province has been relegated to the shadows. Among the 95 people in Saskatchewan identified by police as long-term missing, 67 are men and 28 women. Overall the split between aboriginal versus non-aboriginal missing is nearly 50-50. Specifically for men, 36 are caucasian and 29 of aboriginal descent (two are unknown), and among the 28 women, the breakdown is 16 of aboriginal descent to 12 caucasian.

But those working in the area say the raw numbers tell half the story.

RCMP Staff Sgt. Fran Stevenson, who was a member of the Provincial Partnership Committee on Missing Persons, notes a larger proportion of the men reflected in those figures are more likely to be victims of misadventure. For example, 14 of the missing are suspected drownings, and only one of those 14 are women.

"(The men) are out in the bush, they're out hunting — those kinds of things . . . In the north with the terrain and men are more likely to be out in those conditions — hunters and fishermen, which are predominantly male," he adds.

According to the final report of the Provincial Partnership Committee on Missing Persons, released in 2007, foul play is suspected in 70 per cent of the missing women's cases, but in only 21 per cent of the men's disappearances. Five missing women found in the last three years turned into homicide investigations.

What's more, while aboriginal people make up 48 per cent of the missing — they form only 14 per cent of the population. So they are disappearing at a disproportionate rate.

"It is an alarming number of indigenous women that have been missing and those who are missing have been discovered murdered, statistically," says Brenda Anderson, a Luther College professor, who created what's believed to be the first-of-its-kind university class focused on missing indigenous women.

"If we draw attention to one thing, does that mean that we're paying less attention or that that other group is less valuable? Of course, the answer would be no. But statistically, are the men showing up murdered and raped and brutalized in that fashion?" she adds.

"You can't look at it as just a race issue. You can't look at it as just a sexist issue. It's a combination. And violence against women gets played out when people are disempowered, when they're frustrated, when they want to strike out. They're going to look for the weakest one. They're going to look for the one that people won't notice. They're going to have bought into those stereotypes that this really isn't a human being."

The slayings by Robert Pickton in B.C. or the Project KARE task force examining the deaths and disappearances of numerous Alberta women have fuelled fears that a serial killer targeting women may also lurk in the land of the Living Skies.

Stevenson, from Saskatoon RCMP's major crime and historical case unit, said cold case investigators regularly ponder that possibility. "If we see two people going missing from a similar area, or two people who have a lot of similar characteristics going missing from an area — of course, we look at those to see if there's any commonalities.

"We do keep looking at it. And we hope to prevent any serial offenders from operating."

Det.-Sgt. Brent Shannon, in charge of cold cases for the Regina Police Service, says there are "unique circumstances" in each of the city's 11 outstanding long-term missing persons cases. In recent years, they include Danita Faith Bigeagle, a 22-year-old last seen in February 2007 on the 800 block of Victoria Avenue. Two years earlier, Melanie Geddes, 24, never came home after going to a party Aug. 13, 2005, in the 900 block of Robinson St. Her remains were found four months later in the Qu'Appelle Valley near Southey. Her death is now an unsolved homicide.

In the wake of those disappearances, plus five-year-old Tamra Keepness vanishing from Regina in 2004, the provincial government created a province-wide strategy in 2005 for missing persons, including money for officers who focus on those cases.

"You can always compare and draw some similarities, but to say there's a pattern, we don't feel that at all, not in Regina, not even on a provincial level," says Shannon.

The disappearance of another young woman, Amber Redman, in that same time frame provided the impetus for Anderson's class. A month after Geddes vanished, 19-year-old Redman disappeared after leaving a Fort Qu'Appelle bar. Three years passed before she was found when her killer unwittingly led undercover RCMP officers to her remains on a nearby First Nation.

Spotting a missing persons poster for Redman in 2005 and thinking "not another one," Anderson decided to develop her class providing a global perspective on missing indigenous women, showing Canada's experience is not unique, and helped organize an international conference in Regina last year that focused on the issue.

"If you're going to recognize that brown-skinned women go missing more often than those who are not brown-skinned, then you have to ask the question of how does race play into this," she says. "Why are they targeted? What are the messages that we hear from our media, from our government, from our police. What are the stereotypes and biases?

"Obviously the First Nations and Metis populations have suffered from the past of residential schools, so there's a higher percentage that are in poverty. But the idea that they're all taken because they're involved in a high-risk lifestyle is not accurate at all. And there's often that assumption or inference," says Anderson.

"If they are in a high-risk lifestyle, why are they in it? That points to our abysmal treatment and conditioning, and so a higher percentage of people in those high-risk (activities) means there's going to be more taken. My other question would be, 'Well so what if they're in a high-risk lifestyle, what kind of statement is that that we think that makes it OK then for it to happen, and that a sex trade worker's life is of less value than anyone else's life?' That's a pretty sad look at the world. It's kind of a way to dismiss it, and to distance ourselves from it: 'Well they were asking for it. It's not going to hurt me, so why should I be concerned about it?' It's kind of a way to disconnect from the sadness, the horror of it."

Anderson doesn't want students leaving her class thinking the blame lies with any one group or thing.

"It is the structure of how we think and we have to challenge that at every level and understand that if you hear a story and you flip the channel because it doesn't affect you, then maybe we need to think about how do we see community?"

In the words of Stevenson, "One missing person is too many."

bpacholik@leaderpost.canwest.com

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