Crime, Conspiracy, Cults and Murder - Ep. 127 | A Canadian Serial Killer Hiding in Plain Sight | The Winnipeg Butcher
Episode Date: September 9, 2026Taking care of your health just got easier – start here with Zocdoc: https://zocdoc.com/cccm #sponsored For a limited time, get 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life..., when you head to https://Smalls.com/CCCM. For a better way to stay hydrated, go to https://instanthydration.com/CCCMand use my promo code CCCM for over 40% off your first subscription order - it’s Instant Hydration’s best offer available. A string of disappearances in Winnipeg would uncover a horrifying truth - and a killer whose crimes earned him the name “The Winnipeg Butcher.” But how did he go undetected for so long? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
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A man picking through dumpsters behind an apartment building in Winnipeg, Canada,
found something that wasn't supposed to be there.
Nearby shelters open every night and close every morning.
So people cycle through the same doors, the same cots, the same meals,
week after week, and most of them are invisible to the city around them.
And here, in the trash, the remains of one of those very people
were discarded like they didn't matter.
And their families were left to do the searching the system just wouldn't.
But they do matter and their lives were cut short by the man who took advantage of them.
This is the story of the Winnipeg Butcher.
Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder, all things that I love to consume and I know you do too,
you sick, just and beautiful, intellectually minded, freak.
And today we are getting into a case that not many people know about.
Honestly, I didn't even know about it.
And it's even up in my great home country, Canada.
And I think this is a case that absolutely needs to be highlighted and talked about.
So without further ado, let's unbuckle our sleep belts go mock fact on the high,
I'll slam on the brakes and bustle the windshield into this multiple murder case together.
Let's take a quick pause because I want to ask you something. Be honest. How long have you been
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Thank you so much to Zococ for sponsored
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and let's get back to it.
So Jeremy Anthony Michael Skabicki was born around 1986,
and he was adopted as a child.
But beyond that, almost nothing about his childhood
entered the public record.
What is known about his formative years
comes from medical records and child welfare files
compiled over years of escalating crisis intervention.
And combined together, they revealed a childhood
defined by volatility, aggression, and violence that moved in every direction.
But as Jeremy grew older, his parents became the ones reaching out for help.
And every time the verbal and physical outbursts got worse,
they went back to child and family services.
And they called again and again, each time more desperate for someone to step in,
begging someone to help them manage it.
And one incident from this period stands apart from everything else in his file.
And that was that one night, allegedly while he was in a night.
his sleep, so sleepwalking, he walked into a female cousin's bedroom, grabbed her and put his arms
around her throat and covered her mouth. And when asked about it later, he claimed he'd been hearing
noises in his head. But at this point, he was just a young boy and he'd already put his hands around
someone's neck in his sleep. And the pattern only grew from there. And throughout his teenage years,
Jeremy's behavior was documented as cold, callous, apathetic, indifferent, aggressive, and
depressive. And the specific incidents in those records read like a checklist of escalation. He struck
his mother. He punched himself in the head constantly. He tried to overdose more than once. He destroyed
property. He stole from his parents. He abused alcohol and drugs. He was hospitalized. He was
arrested. And each time he was released and the cycle started over. And his parents kept calling for help
and the files kept growing thicker. But the trajectory never really changed. Yet the violence inside
that household didn't flow in only one direction. Now, the files contained reports that Jeremy's
parents also abused him. So it just moved through that home like a current, and no one inside it
was untouched. So his early life is told through these crisis entries stacked one on top of the
next. So doctors would prescribe Jeremy antidepressants, but they wouldn't work. Because even on
medication, Jeremy kept cycling through violent episodes, and clinicians also flagged narcissistic
personality traits that made every attempt at treatment harder to sustain. And his diagnosis
accumulated over time, first depression, then borderline personality disorder, then persistent thoughts of
suicide. And he used street drugs on top of whatever he was prescribed. And when therapy was
offered, he would just turn it down completely. But Jeremy would be assessed repeatedly over the
course of his teenage years and into adulthood. And one emergency room doctor wrote a schizophrenia
diagnosis into his chart, among the others. But that,
doctor never referred him for a psychiatric follow-up. So the diagnosis sat in a file and went nowhere.
Talk about a broken fucking system. Not to mention his whole childhood growing up in an abusive household
and clearly, you know, repeating that pattern to other people. Just, and nothing being done about it is just
terrible. And every time paramedics showed up after a self-harm incident or an overdose,
Jeremy gave them the same rundown. Depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety. Now,
whether those were confirmed diagnoses or labels he'd attached to himself along the way,
the system never slowed down enough to really sort it out. And at one point, Jeremy would stab
himself roughly 20 times in the chest with a fork. And he admitted to hospital staff that
he'd gone off his medication at that point. And his medical records noted around 20 hospitalizations
over the course of his life. So 20 admissions and 20 discharges. And not a single one of them
bent his path in a different direction.
By 25, Jeremy Skibicki had no job, no home, no family still able or willing to intervene
on his behalf. And he was living in Winnipeg shelters, so he was just one more face cycling
through the city's emergency housing system. And behind him was a paper trail big enough to fill
filing cabinets. So for most of his life, Skibiki struggled to hold any steady work. And by
2015, he had largely dropped out of the workforce and was living on disability support.
But still, he managed to find a romantic relationship for himself. And both Skibicki's known
partners were indigenous women. And the first was his common law partner, but there was an
incident and she was pregnant. And on June 15, 2015, Skibiki grabbed a fistful of her hair
and hit her in the face over and over. And then he attempted to strangle her. And he told her
he'd kill her if she called the police.
And by August of that year, he'd been convicted of assault.
And the conviction only landed him two months behind bars,
which is fucking embarrassing, Canada.
I mean, the US system screwed too, but Canada's system,
just all around. Like, how is that even a, two months for attempting to kill someone?
What? And when he got out, he was put on two years of probation and ordered into anger,
management and domestic abuse counseling. And at the assault hearing, Skabicki apologized to his partner
saying, quote, this is something I've been thinking about every day. I almost killed myself
following that happening. I thought at the time that it was an appropriate punishment for what I did.
I really do need to get some help, unquote. And on December 21st, 2015, his partner filed for
protection order. And in her application, she wrote, quote, Jeremy has admitted fantasizing about
raping me, then choking me to death. He had smothered me so bad my teeth started to bleed, unquote.
And she said, she feared, quote unquote, he won't stop until I'm dead. But yeah, two months and a little
a little time at home under probation. Great job, justice system. And unfortunately, the protection
order was dismissed. And no one ever explained why. But his probation already barred him from
going near her and contacting her for two years.
And his other known partner was a 44-year-old Métis woman
he met in February of 2018 at Salaum Mission,
an organization dedicated to helping the homeless and people in poverty.
And she was battling drug addiction at the time,
and he had two other men with him that day they met,
and the three of them invited her back to his place.
And he very quickly said that, quote,
he really likes this one referring to her.
And Skibicki proposed to her in front of,
other customers at a pharmacy, and they would get married on September 4th, 2018.
And she later said she only agreed because she felt stuck. And even on their wedding day,
she was under the influence. And four days later, she checked into detox for methamphetamine.
And the violence started almost immediately. He would hold her inside his apartment,
force her to sit naked for days, spit on her, and laugh at her. And he tried at one point to smother her
with a pillow. And she'd been prescribed sleeping medication for PTSD, and every night he made her
swallow the medication. And once she was unconscious, he would sexually assault her. And she'd wake
up sore and bleeding, saying, quote, his fetish was having me like a rag doll, limp and lifeless
sexually, unquote. And she referred to it as, quote unquote, sleeping beauty. And the abuse
just kept escalating. He attacked her with a knife. He gave her a convales. He gave her a convales. He gave her a
inccussion, he made her watch violent pornography and pushed her to act out what was on screen.
And he turned to scripture to tell her she owed him obedience.
And in her protection order application, she wrote, quote, he has suggested he would kill me
or that other gangs would abduct me and torture or kill me or traffic me, unquote.
And he told her, quote unquote, he would put me in a garbage bag.
And the court, thankfully, granted her at least a three-year protection.
order on September 4th, 2019, exactly one year to the day from their own wedding.
But that wouldn't stop him. And in January of 2021, she says he assaulted her again. And her mother
told a story, saying he came after her daughter in the hallway with a knife, and he punched her
in the head, and he hit her with a cane. And Skibiki would be charged with assault with a weapon and
assault causing bodily harm. But on December 14th, a judge threw out a related charge for violating
his court order, and the ruling came down to credibility. And the judge decided Jeremy's
estranged wife's memory problems made her testimony unreliable. And her mother said the memory
problems came from post-concussion syndrome caused by the very assault Skibicki was charged with.
Again, the justice system in this whole case is abysmal. But nine days later, on December 23rd,
the remaining assault charges were stayed. And at that hearing, his estranged wife described
what it was like living with him, saying, quote,
when he is angry, it's like somebody else is in the room.
I call him Scary Jerry.
I don't even recognize the eyes anymore,
but needless to say, I was afraid, unquote.
And she yelled at the crown attorney after the charges were dropped,
saying, quote, I hope when you put your head down at night,
you know you're letting somebody out, unquote,
who might end up hurting or killing people.
But he walked away from those charges.
And sadly, she was right.
So Skibicki had a Facebook page loaded with violent, anti-Semitic, misogynistic, and white supremacist material.
Shocker, not a shocker at this point.
And his bio declared him an official member of Holy Europe.
And Helmut Harry Lowen, who researches anti-fascist movements and formerly taught criminology at the University of Winnipeg, placed Holy Europe inside what he called, quote unquote, a broader fascist ecosystem.
Now, Holy Europe pushed for a return to Christian.
dominance across the continent and its former colonies. And at its core, there was a belief that white
European bloodlines were under threat from immigration interracial relationships and multiculturalism,
the celebration of diverse cultures and society, etc. And according to Evan Bulgord, who runs the
Canadian Anti-Hate Network as its executive director, hate-motivated crime is rarely classified as such
in Canada. Winnipeg was the worst offender. And out of Canada's 13 largest police forces,
the city had the lowest rate of laying hate crime charges,
according to Globe and Mail investigation.
So around October of 2021,
a friend of Skibikis was in and out of his apartment regularly.
And over the course of several months,
the friend counted roughly half a dozen women passing through the unit,
and he believed they were indigenous.
And Skibiki told him the number was closer to 30,
and most of them showed up with bags
that looked like they held clothes and personal items.
And after they left,
drug paraphernalia was often found in the apartment.
And the friend said, quote, now that I look back, it's predatory behavior. You know, he's looking for the absolute most vulnerable, unquote. So on May 9th, 2022, Skabicki sent a Facebook message to his ex-wife, and he asked her to forgive him, should he ever go to prison. And he said he couldn't explain what had happened. But whatever it was, telling her would mean he'd have to run. So by the end of 2022, Winnipeg had recorded 51 homicides. And at least
10 of those victims were indigenous women. And indigenous people make up just under 14% of the city's
total population. But one in five of the city's murder victims that year was an indigenous woman.
Tammy Wolf, a member of the Manitoba Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls'
Coalition, put it plainly saying, quote, indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people are
absolutely targeted. It's definitely shocking. It's devastating to our communities, unquote.
And none of this was new, by the way. The violence
against indigenous women in Canada has been documented and studied and officially acknowledged for years.
But it's still not acknowledged enough. And on June 3rd of 2019, the final report of the national
inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls was delivered to the federal government
after it had taken more than three years to complete. And dozens of community meetings were
held across the country, and more than 2,000 Canadians gave testimony. And the finished document
was 1,200 pages, and what it found was staggering.
The murder and disappearance rate for indigenous women and girls was 12 times, 12 times higher
than for any other demographic group in the country.
Compared to white women specifically, they were 16 times more likely to be killed or to
disappear.
And between 2001 and 2015, nearly one in four women murdered in Canada were indigenous.
And the report didn't mince words, calling what was half.
happening a Canadian genocide. And Chief Commissioner Marion Buller stated, quote, this report is about
deliberate race identity and gender-based genocide, unquote. And attached to the findings were
231 calls for justice. And they targeted governments, institutions, and all Canadians, essentially.
And Buller made clear these weren't suggestions, making sure to call them legal imperatives.
Because thousands of indigenous women had already been lost to a cycle of violence.
and Buller said these calls had to be acted on to break it.
And among the findings was a specific indictment of how police handled these cases.
And when indigenous women were killed, the cases that followed carried a pattern the inquiry called, quote unquote, marked by indifference.
And negative stereotypes shaped how disappearances and deaths were treated.
And indigenous cases were investigated differently than others.
And the result was fewer solved cases and families left without answers.
And one of the reports demands targeted policing directly.
And every level of government was told to, quote,
immediately and dramatically transform indigenous policing, unquote.
And it said the federal government's existing First Nations police program
needed to be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up
with a new legislation and new funding.
And when the report was released,
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a public commitment,
saying, quote,
you have by word that the government will turn the inquiry calls for justice
into real meaningful indigenous-led action, unquote.
And three years passed, and by December of 2022,
when Winnipeg's homicide numbers made headlines again,
advocates confirmed that the same problems the inquiry had identified
were still firmly in place.
And Tammy Wolf said it directly, saying, quote,
were still having the same problems.
When is it going to end?
unquote.
Yet more and more indigenous women were still being killed
three years after the final report
that was supposed to change every.
And Wolf called it horrific, but not surprising, which is so incredibly disheartening and sad.
It's just sad.
And the inquiry had given the country a blueprint for change, yet the country had shelved it.
And in Winnipeg specifically, the women it was meant to protect just kept dying.
And the man at the center of all of it lived in a one-bedroom apartment in North Kildenon.
Now, the unit was inside the Marjoy apartments on Edison Avenue, situated between his.
Henderson Highway and RV Bay.
And it was a small place, a one bedroom suite,
nothing about the building or the block
drew really much attention.
And he would eat his meals at shelters across the city.
And every morning he took the bus to Indanaway Mak.
And most evenings, a ride to Salome Mission.
And then back to his apartment.
And that was his daily life,
a triangle between two shelters and a quiet apartment
in a neighborhood where nobody was looking.
Now Ashley Shingoos was a Nishininnu,
also known as Oji Cree, a member of St. Teresa Point,
a Nishinineu Nation in northeastern Manitoba.
Also, I am doing my very, very best
to pronounce these in a flowing pattern,
but if I am pronouncing them wrong at all,
I'm very, very sorry.
I am trying, I have the pronunciations up,
but I probably am still saying them wrong,
so I just want to apologize for that.
And Ashley was 30 years old, a mother of three,
and Chief Raymond Flett,
principal of the community high school,
remembered her as an upbeat,
kid. Quote unquote, I used to see her in the hallway happy with her friends. And her parents,
Albert and Teresa, described her as very gentle and generous, quiet by nature, but never confrontational.
Quote, she would do anything to help other people, unquote, her father would say.
Ashley eventually left St. Teresa Point because there wasn't enough housing in the community,
and she was trying to give her children the life that they deserved. But Winnipeg changed things.
And Teresa watched her daughter fall in with people who pulled her in the wrong direction.
Ashley started using drugs and drinking.
The system unfortunately would have to take her kids,
and they ended up back in St. Teresa Point in Teresa's care.
And Ashley shared her struggle in a voice message
to her parents saying, quote,
Mom, I'm really trying my best,
and I will never stop trying,
but all I know is people who use,
and it's not easy for me to just stand out.
I feel lonely, unquote.
And it was one of the last voicemails she'd ever leave.
So one day, a shelter worker named Ronald Norman
noticed Skibicki at the Disrael
freeway shelter in Winnipeg.
And something about him just didn't fit.
His clothes were clean, his face was shaved,
and he didn't carry himself like someone who needed emergency housing.
Norman said Skibicki told him directly that he had his own place and he didn't need to be
there.
And he said he was quote unquote just there to stalk his victims.
Now it was a daily routine.
Skibiki would come in, move through the space and look over everyone inside.
And to Normand, the intent was clear.
Skibiki wasn't drifting through. He had someone in mind. So in March of 2022, Skabiki crossed paths with
Ashley near a shelter, and he took her back to his apartment. And inside the apartment, he would sexually
assault her. Then he would kill her. But then he took it a step further and violated her body.
And he placed what was left of her in a garbage bin blocks from where he lived. So as far as we know,
Ashley was his first victim.
And police believe she ended up behind a Henderson highway business in a garbage bin.
And from there, the bin was emptied and its contents hauled to the Brady Road landfill
sometime in the month she was killed.
But for nearly three years, no one knew her name.
And police just called her Jane Doe.
Now, Morgan Beatrice Harris was 39 years old and a member of Long Plain First Nation.
A community about 95 kilometers west of Winnipeg.
And she was a mother of five and a grandmother.
And she even had her children's names tattooed on her body.
And her daughter, Cambria, called Morgan Happy Go Lucky and Silly,
the kind of person who drew others in without trying.
Quote, people love to be around her, unquote.
But that didn't stop the man who took advantage of her.
Now, Morgan would go missing.
And when Cambria went looking for her mother,
she talked to people across the city.
And everywhere she went, the response was the same.
Quote, there wasn't a single person that did not know who she was, and no one had a bad thing to say, unquote.
And that's what made the search so painful.
Because Morgan wasn't invisible.
She was known and very well liked and remembered by name.
But still, she was gone.
And Morgan had no fixed address when she crossed paths with Skibiki.
And she'd been surviving on Winnipeg Street.
And her long journey from long plane to the sidewalks of downtown is largely unknown.
But what is known, however, is the woman her family described.
Warm, funny, impossible to forget.
Now, police believe Skibiki killed Morgan on or around May 1, 2022.
And she'd last been seen near the intersection of Main Street and Henry Avenue in Winnipeg.
And she was his second victim.
And later, police would find out that Skibiki had sent Morgan outside for a cigarette first.
one last smoke before he killed her.
And Skibiki would say about it,
this is going to be her last smoke,
so I'll let her enjoy that, unquote.
And after she came back inside,
Skabicki put her in a headlock,
and Morgan would black out and drop into the bathtub,
and he had already filled it with water,
and her remains were placed in a bin near his apartment.
And it was the same disposal method he'd used before.
So now we have a pattern.
And from there, they were collected
and transported to the prairie green landfill.
And for weeks, nobody reported Morgan missing.
But that changed on May 16th, 2022,
when her missing persons report was filed on December 1st, 2022.
And police officially identified Morgan as a murder victim.
And Cambria, her daughter would say to a crowd,
quote, my mother deserves to come home.
We deserve to have her remains, and so do the other families.
unquote.
But at this point, no one suspected Skibiki.
And Mercedes Myron was 26 years old.
She was a mother of two.
And her grandmother, Donna Bartlett, described her as a young woman who lit up the people around her.
Happy, smiley, and trusting.
And Bartlett said what she'd miss most were the jokes and that big smile.
And her cousin, Felicia Fiddler, who considered Mercedes sister, remembered her the same way.
Quote, a very lovely person, always happy and always joking.
So after Mercedes went missing, her sister, Jordan,
Myron became a visible presence. Now, every visual she showed up with a drum, her voice,
and a shirt with Mercedes face on it. And she carried Mercedes into every room where her name was
spoken. Now, Mercedes was pulled onto the streets from the loss of her two children to foster care.
And Bartlett said it hollowed her granddaughter out. Quote, that's who I blame for her being on the
street. That broke her, unquote. And two of the four women Skibicki killed had ended up
homeless after the foster care system took their children. So it was a pattern that kept repeating
across families and generations. Women who lost their kids lost their footing and once they were
on the street, they were exposed. And both Mercedes and Morgan were members of Long Plain,
which defines kinship by generation. And anyone born around the same time as Morgan is her first
cousin. And the same goes for Mercedes and every person her age. So two full generations of the same
First Nation were torn apart by the same man's violence. I want to take a quick pause to talk about
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Now let's get back to it.
So the last time Mercedes had any contact with her family was March 15th, 2022.
She'd been seen in Winnipeg's North End.
And after that, silence.
Police believe Skibiki killed Mercedes on or around May 4th, 2022, just three days after
Morgan Harris.
and the gap between victims was shrinking at this point, and he found her the same way he found the others.
Homeless, vulnerable, and moving through a city that wasn't keeping track of her.
And Skibicki complained that Mercedes was the heaviest of the four, and he had a tough time moving her body in and out of the bathtub.
Speaking of her remains as a simple, inconvenient task.
But still, Mercedes didn't go quietly, and she actually fought back, but it wasn't.
enough and skibicki would go on to dismember Mercedes and her remains were placed in bins near his
apartment and for months her family heard nothing and they didn't file a missing person's report until
september 26th 2022 nearly five months after she was killed and bartle explained that mercedes's
mother was afraid to go to the police she didn't want to walk into a station and hear the thing
she already feared so the family held on to hope instead and they put up posters on september 27th
and kept looking.
And then on Thursday, December 1st, 2022,
police arrived at the family's door,
and not one person in the family knew who Skibiki was before then.
And Bartlett would relay the pain and say, quote,
I had hope until Thursday.
Thursday shattered me, shattered the family, unquote.
Until that knock, they could still tell themselves
she might walk back through the door.
And after it, there was nothing left to hold on to.
Now, Rebecca Contois was 24 years old,
And she belonged to the Ocichikosipi First Nation.
And the community goes by Crane River and sits on Lake Minotoba's western shore.
And her childhood was in Winnipeg.
Seven siblings, both parents, one house.
And she was a mother to a young daughter.
And her family described her as warm, creative, and full of life.
Drawing, baking, laughing until she couldn't breathe.
And her sister, Stephanie, remembered Rebecca as outgoing and adventurous.
someone who lit up when she was near art, open sky, or the people she cared about.
Quote, Rebecca was very adventurous.
She was down to earth.
She always had her hair really long.
It was long and dark, and she always had it pushed to the side all the time, unquote.
Rebecca didn't like being cooped up inside.
She wanted to be moving, outside, always exploring.
Stephanie said it was just who she was.
She loved going for walks.
She loved the outdoors.
She didn't really want to be.
in all the time." And one of her favorite things was the game, just dance. She'd pull in her sister,
and the two of them would go at it, dancing and laughing until neither could keep going. And before
she died, Rebecca had been looking forward. She'd been talking to Stephanie about going back to school,
and she'd wanted to build something for herself. But Stephanie knew her sister had been spending
time with the wrong people. But the family never held it against her. The door was always open
for Rebecca, and she'd come and go as she needed. And to her family, Rebecca was a butterfly,
beautiful and free, and they found a place to carry that image. And the rainbow butterfly monument in
St. John's Park honors missing and murdered indigenous women, and girls, and two-spirited people. And it became
their place to remember her. And Stephanie said of her sister, quote, she was more than what happened to her.
I describe her as an angel who made us see the world differently, unquote. Now, Rebecca never mentioned,
mentioned Skibicki to her family.
Stephanie believed they hadn't known each other long,
but Rebecca, trusting as she was,
had already started making plans with him
and she was trying to get her name on the lease
at his apartment, quote,
because that's the kind of person she was.
She was really trusting in people
because she didn't see the bad in people, unquote.
But apparently Skibicki and Rebecca
were actually in a relationship.
But what sets Skibicki off the day that he killed Rebecca
was that she just started talking back to him.
and they would get in a massive fight, and Rebecca would fight back, and she fought hard enough
that Skibicki was surprised by it.
He would say, quote, she took so long to die, I probably crushed her throat, I tried not
to allow her to suffer.
She just wouldn't die, unquote.
And after Rebecca was deceased, Skibiki would dismember her remains, and he placed them in
garbage bags and left them in bins near his apartment.
And Rebecca's family last saw her in May of 2022.
She'd come home from her little sister Maxine's birthday party,
and she stayed for two days.
And on her way out the door, Rebecca promised she'd come back for the party,
but she would not come back.
And two days later, police were at the family's door.
And Stephanie answered, and they told her they'd found her sister's body near a garbage bin.
And Stephanie didn't say a word to the detectives.
Quote,
they told me they found her deceased by a bin, a garbage bin, and then at that point,
I just went running upstairs.
I was in shock.
I didn't even say anything to the detectives, unquote.
But the full scope of what had been done to Rebecca didn't come from the police.
It had come from a headline on the internet.
And Stephanie was scrolling online when she saw the story.
I was looking online and I had seen by the media that there was a really bad headline.
and that's when I found out about the separation of my sister, unquote.
So that's how she learned her sister had been dismembered.
So Rebecca was the fourth woman Skibicki had killed,
and the last in the sequence.
But at this point, in the timeline, she was actually the first one found.
And the other three victims' remains had been collected by garbage trucks
and carried to landfills before anyone knew to look.
And Rebecca's were not.
Hers were discovered in a neighborhood bin before pickup.
And that single difference is the reason anyone ever learned what happened inside the apartment on Edison Avenue.
Travis Barsey is an MMIWG2S advocate and represented the Kuntwa family publicly.
And he said what everyone was thinking, quote,
If it wasn't for Rebecca because she was the first person found, we may still not know what happened to these women, unquote.
Because she was the crack in the wall.
the one discovery that pulled everything else into the light.
So in May of 2022, police responded to a man that was picking through dumpsters on the 200 block of Edison Avenue.
And he was looking for clothing and copper to salvage.
But what he found instead were human remains in a trash can near Skopiki's apartment.
And a second bin nearby held more of the same woman's remains.
And blood turned up in a third bin with no remains inside it.
And that third bin is what pointed investigators toward Winnipeg's Brady Road landfill on the south end of the city.
And the victim was identified as Rebecca Contois.
And in June, investigators found more of Rebecca's remains at the Brady Road landfill.
And at that point, investigators believed they were working a single homicide.
So police would look at surveillance video in and around the last known sightings of where Contois was.
And they would see Skibicki with Contois near his.
residents around the same time she disappeared. So on May 18th, 2022, two days after the discovery,
police arrested Jeremy Skibicki. And he was charged with first-degree murder for the killing of Rebecca
Contois. And he was 35 years old at this point. And they got a warrant and tore his apartment
apart. And because of the nature of what they'd found, homicide investigators made a public
statement that there might be more victims. Now, the day before on May 17,
detectives sat Skibicki down for questioning, where he spent roughly 20 hours in a gray
interrogation room. And Detective Sergeant Adam Dedalician led the questioning. The only charge on the
table was Rebecca Contois. Nobody in that room knew yet that three more women were dead. And in the
early hours of the interview, Skibicki asked repeatedly for an Orthodox priest. He told detectives,
quote, even though I'm not, you know necessarily guilty of anything,
it's just something that I feel compelled to do,
because this is something that demands justice, unquote.
And he would deny all involvement.
And when police showed him surveillance footage of a figure in the area of Edison Avenue,
he said it wasn't him.
But they put a photo in front of him, Rebecca's partial remains.
And he pulled back, quote,
I can't even look at that.
It's just disturbing, unquote.
And then the wall crack.
And detectives pushed him again on what he was doing near the bins.
and Skibicki went back to the priest.
Quote,
I just want to get a priest to confess my sins, unquote.
And then, without being asked another question, he confessed.
And his words came out measured, almost rehearsed.
Quote, at this point, I want you to express that you've done a very good job.
You guys are obviously not stupid.
I really just want to see how far you know I could take things
because the criminal justice system is a joke.
The world that we're living in is sick.
I was driven to do stuff like this because I was so, so spent emotionally.
I killed four people, unquote.
So detectives had walked into that room investigating one murder,
and now they were sitting across from a man admitting to four,
a literal serial killer.
Quote, I did this because I believe that there should be capital punishment
and that this is racially motivated, unquote.
And he would just keep talking, saying, quote,
this whole thing about racial purity, the extinction of the white race,
you know, the great replacement theory, globalism, Bolshevism, an effort to eradicate white people,
I don't believe that races are meant to be forced to live together. And this existence that I've had
is just completely messed up because of liberalism, unquote. Now, the first killing happened while
he was coming off magic mushrooms, apparently. And for the next three, he said he was on meth.
And on top of everything else, he claimed to suffer from what he called savior syndrome.
And he admitted he was still using meth in small amounts, and he'd been on disability and out of work since 2015.
And when asked specifically about Rebecca, the last woman he killed, Skibicki offered five words, quote unquote, I guess I got sloppy.
And during the interview, Skibiki provided the names of two of his victims, and he was unsure of the third woman's name, but gave enough details about her for investigators to eventually confirm she was Mercedes Myron through DNA.
And during the interview, Detective Allen compared Skibicki to Jordan Peterson, calling him well-spoken, and Skibicki laughed.
In 20 hours in, a detective gave Skibiki another chance to speak, anything for the families.
Quote, oh, that's a tough one. I guess I pray to Jesus.
Nothing I could say as a human being can ever do justice.
That's something that's going to have to come from God.
That's all I say, unquote.
So he offered no apology for his actions.
But the confession laid a pattern repeated across all four killings.
Skibiki had targeted vulnerable indigenous women at Winnipeg's homeless shelters, bringing each one of them back to his North Kildonan apartment.
And there, he sexually assaulted or forcibly confined the women before strangling them or drowning them in his bathtub.
And after killing him, he performed sexual acts on their bodies, and then he dismembered some of the women, then disposed of the remains in garbage.
bins near his apartment.
And inside Skabiggy's apartment, investigators found what the confession had already promised.
Earrings, clothing, and personal items belonging to the victims were scattered through the
unit and in nearby garbage bins.
And traces of the victim's blood and DNA turned up on surfaces throughout the unit.
And the bathroom was the worst of it.
Officers sprayed a chemical agent designed to make blood visible even after it's been cleaned
away. And constable Jan de Vries described, quote,
The bathtub was very fluorescent.
So were the floor, the walls, the door.
On the exterior side of the door,
which implies that it was open when blood struck, unquote.
And a combat knife with a seven and a half inch blade
was found in the apartment as well.
And the hilt carried biological material
matching Mercedes-Mirin's DNA.
And a Ziploc hospital bag with Morgan Harris's name printed on it
was also recovered from the unit.
But the forensic picture went even further
than just the four women's,
Skibicki admitted to killing.
And investigators recovered DNA from approximately 12 other women.
And those samples came from inside the apartment and garbage bin nearby.
And a few of those women were tracked down, and one had been reported missing, and another
had since died.
And the rest have never been identified.
And the cert yielded 5,000 physical items.
Roughly 130 went to the RCMP lab for forensic analysis.
And deputy chief, Cam Mechid,
called the number, quote unquote, almost unprecedented. And he further said it was one of the most
complex cases his department had ever worked. And a dedicated team went back to the beginning and mapped
every relationship, every contact, every thread in Sikibiki's life all the way to the day he was
arrested. And every cold case and missing persons filed near anywhere he'd lived got a second look.
And more than 7,000 hours of surveillance footage was examined. And Macad was careful when asked
whether four was the final number, saying, quote,
I would never stand here and tell you,
I can guarantee you there isn't another victim.
I can tell you we scrubbed everything we possibly could
and we didn't find any other ones, unquote.
And one thing made the scope easier to define.
No driver's license was ever issued to Skibiki
and no vehicle was ever registered in his name.
So as far as investigators could tell,
he never left Manitoba.
Quote, he was a local person who tended to stay local.
And detectives described Skibicki as quite forward and candid throughout the interview.
And Mac had said they didn't get the impression he was hiding anything from them.
And whether that candor came from honesty or from a man who enjoyed talking about what he'd done is a question the recording can't really answer.
And investigators would focus on a reversible baby fat jacket recovered from Skibicki's home.
Now, baby fat was a well-known label in the early 2000s.
and police put the jacket photos out to the public, asking for anyone who recognized it to come forward.
But the DNA pulled from the jacket didn't belong to anyone in particular, and multiple people had worn it over the years.
And Deputy Police Chief Cam Mackett later admitted, quote, the baby fat jacket was basically a dead end, unquote.
Meanwhile, a community member named George Robinson was doing his own work.
Robinson had been canvassing with flyers featuring the jacket and bringing photos of missing women directly to shelter staff.
And one worker looked at the photos and recognized someone, Ashley Shingoose.
Ashley Shingoose was the woman who'd been wearing the jacket.
So Robinson passed what he learned to the Winnipeg Police Service's missing persons unit
and the crown attorneys on the case.
And they would shut it down because the DNA from the jacket didn't point to Ashley.
But the community saw what the system couldn't.
But the system didn't listen.
But still, before police ever confirmed her name, the indigenous community had already given her one.
And according to Elder Thelma Mariso, a follower of Medewa bin Lodge teachings, a buffalo spirit had revealed itself to her teacher.
And that spirit is where the name came from.
And they called her Mushkoede Miziki Ikjkjkwe or Buffalo Woman.
Sorry if I absolutely butcher that.
I tried my very best.
And the community bestowed it through ceremony, which was to ensure she would be known when she crossed into the spirit world.
So Skibicki's trial began on May 8, 2024.
But the defense went with an unusual story.
They never denied the killings and they never challenged the facts and they never questioned the existence and they never offered an alternate suspect.
Their argument was much simpler and far more controversial.
Skibicki should be found not criminally responsible or NCR, meaning he was too mentally ill to be held accountable for what he'd done.
So, the insanity plea.
And the entire defense rested on one witness.
Dr. Saham Das, a forensic psychiatrist based in the United Kingdom, who also runs a YouTube channel called A Psych for Soar Minds.
Now, the story Skabicki told Das was dramatically different from the one he told police two years earlier,
because in the 2022 interrogation room, he'd said his motive was racial.
And by April 2024, sitting across from Dawes just weeks before the trial, the motive had completely changed.
And now, he said voices had told him to do it.
angels, the Holy Spirit, God himself. And he claimed these voices had directly encouraged every killing.
And according to Skibiki, God had shown him that his victims were in some way impure.
If a person refused to submit to God, he said, that person had to be physically destroyed.
And he claimed a special power gave him the ability to judge whether a woman was loyal to God.
And the test, he said, was having sex with her before.
he killed her. And he told Das, quote, I was absolutely doing the right thing. It was a mission from
God. I'm very clear on this, unquote. And as for the confession where he'd cited race, not religion,
Skibiki had an explanation for that too. He said an entity had overtaken him during the police
interview. How convenient. And it could have been God or the devil he wasn't sure. Either way,
it had spoken on his behalf. And even Das admitted Skibiki knew he was breaking.
the law because the fact that he'd hidden the victims remains proved as much.
But in Skabicki's mind, Das argued what he'd done was morally right.
And Crown Attorney Christian Vanderhoofed dismantled that testimony on cross-examination.
And he pointed out that Skibiki had never mentioned voices to literally anyone,
not to police, not to Doss during their first meeting in September of 2022,
and not to a single person involved until just before the trial.
And Vanderhoofe pressed further.
And every psychiatrist who had ever evaluated Skibicki going back years had reached the same conclusion,
except for an emergency room doctor who diagnosed him with schizophrenia,
but never referred him to assessment. Remember when we talked about that?
Two years in custody had produced zero symptoms of psychosis and zero psychiatric admissions.
And Vanderhoft put it to DAS directly.
Quote, he's got a bit of a problem, doesn't he?
He has to change the evidence to get to not criminally responsible, unquote.
And Das can see to the point, quote, well, yeah, if he's making a conscious effort to fake to get to not criminally responsible, then yes, unquote.
And Das suggested, Skabicki might have been, quote, masking, unquote, his symptoms in custody.
And that was the only explanation he could offer for two years of silence.
Sounds to me that the defense just gave him an out, his only out, and that is to plea insanity, which is insanity, basically.
I want to take a quick pause, because I want to tell you a little fact, and that is that over 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated, and I was one of them.
I was one of them. Technically, I'm still Canadian, but I live in America, so I was technically one of them.
And about 90% of us don't get enough potassium, the electrolyte behind energy, muscle function, and clear thinking.
which is why you can drink water all day and still feel tired, or even like foggy, or just kind of off.
And that was truly me, especially on long recording days like these.
And by about 3 o'clock, my brain was just done.
And I'd just be reading the same case notes over and over again, just not processing any of it.
But lately, I've been mixing instant hydration into my water.
First thing in the morning.
And truly, that afternoon wall just isn't there anymore.
And it was honestly two things that sold me because I'm pretty wary about these kinds of things,
but one, it's zero sugar, so there's no spike and no crash, and it actually tastes good, believe it or not.
I've tried a lot of these types of, you know, electrolyte powders, and they just taste like ocean water, basically.
But instant hydration is refreshing, not salty or chalky, you know?
That little weird film you get in your mouth after you drink an electrolyte,
drink, it's just nasty, but instant hydration doesn't have it. And that's the only reason I've stuck
with it daily, because they sent me a package before I even agreed to work with them. And I was like,
okay, I'll try it. And I actually really liked it. I actually really, really liked it. And I was like,
yeah, absolutely. So for a better way to stay hydrated, go to instanthydration.com slash cccm and use my
promo code CCCM for over 40% off your first subscription order. It's instant hydration's best offer
available. That's instanthydration.com slash ccccm using promo code cccetm. Thank you so much to instant
hydration for keeping me hydrated. And let's get back to the video. Now the crown's position was that
Skabicki was not psychotic. He was calculating, racist, and fully aware of what he was doing. And the
crown played Skibicki's own videotaped confession. And in the recording, he admitted to the racially
motivated killings of all four women and described performing sex acts on their body's
And the crown called Dr. Gary Heimowitz, who teaches at McMaster University in Ontario and has worked as a forensic psychiatrist on roughly 100 NCR cases. So he knows his stuff. And after evaluating Skibicki, the doctor said there was nothing in the clinical picture that pointed to schizophrenia. And he believed the hallucinations and delusions were invented or a strategy, not a symptom. Quote, he saw this as an easier way out than the life sentence that he knew he was going to get.
unquote. And in the doctor's opinion, the killings were driven by something else entirely.
Homicidal, necrophilia, a sexual compulsion toward people he'd killed. And layered on top of that,
he'd found antisocial personality disorder, substance abuse disorder, and what he called psychopathic
features. And he pointed to the volume of Skibicki's medical history, which were dozens of
interactions with the healthcare system over the course of his life. And not once had a treating
clinician flagged schizophrenia, beside that one ER doctor who never followed up at all.
And with that many encounters, real symptoms wouldn't have gone undetected. And what the doctor did
notice, however, was how Skabicki presented himself, soft-spoken, outwardly gentle, and even
thoughtful, and traits that didn't reveal danger, traits that disarmed the people around him.
And he also noted who Skubicki chose as his victims, women from a vulnerable, accessible group
whose disappearance, unfortunately, may go relatively unnoticed.
So that wasn't psychosis selecting targets at random.
It was pure calculation.
And left unchecked, the doctor said Skabicki would not have stopped on his own.
And Skibiki himself had told police the same thing.
And one piece of evidence landed harder than any expert opinion could.
A social media post written by Skibiki himself, which said, quote,
not schizophrenic, nor do I hallucinate, unquote.
Well, there you go.
And the doctor responded saying, quote, that's one of the things that I actually agree with him on, unquote.
So the trial was held before Court of King's bench chief justice Glenn Zoyle in Winnipeg without a jury.
And evidence was heard across several weeks in May and June 24.
And on July 11, 2024, Zoyle delivered his ruling, guilty on all four counts of first-degree murder.
And the courtroom erupted.
And the gallery held nearly a hundred people, every seat taken.
More lined the walls with others spilled into the hallway, and all of them cheered.
And Skabicki sat motionless, and he stared straight ahead the entire time, and his expression
was completely unchanging.
And Zoyle rejected the NCR argument entirely, and Das' testimony, Zoyle said, carried almost
no weight.
Can you believe it?
And he also questioned whether Das had conducted himself professionally.
And the Ontario psychiatrist, by contrast, was acceptable as a credible and reliable witness.
And Zoyle found that Skibicki held, quote, purely expressed racist views, unquote.
And the killings the judge concluded were planned and deliberate.
Then Zoyle addressed what the case meant beyond the courtroom.
And he said it would be, quote, artificial and disingenuous to disregard the fact that this trial was emblematic of much of what is associated with the tragedies that underlie the very
grim reality of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls in Canada, unquote. And he called the
facts, quote unquote, mercilessly graphic, and at once jarring and numbing. And he spoke of cruelty and barbarism.
And the weight of the case, Zoyl said, had been undeniable and profound for indigenous women and
non-indigenous people alike. And he pointed to the families who had been there every day
sitting through details that no one should have to absorb, especially about their own family.
And outside the courthouse, the relief turned into ceremony.
And they burned a sacred fire.
And people played music and sang.
And cars passing by honked their horns.
And hours later, a round dance filled the intersection of Portage Avenue and Main Street.
So on August 28, 2024, Skubicki was formally sentenced to four concurrent life terms with no possibility of parole for 25 years.
And it was the mandatory sentence for first-degree murder in Canada.
Yet Zoyle made clear he didn't think it was enough.
Quote, make no mistake, Mr. Skibicki, because of the current state of the law, the only available sentence that I can impose today, regrettably, not adequately reflect the gravity of these offenses and your moral culpability, unquote.
And Skibiki said to that, no thank you.
And sheriffs had to direct him to his feet.
And Zoyle gave him a chance to speak, and he refused again saying, no.
And for three and a half hours, not a single single.
visible reaction was seen from him.
And there were sheriffs on either side of him
in the prisoner's box.
But his eyes were locked forward the entire time.
He never turned toward the families once.
And a dozen relatives addressed the court.
El Harris, Morgan's youngest daughter,
spoke about what the process had cost her.
Quote, do you know how many times I had to listen
to how my mother was murdered in horrific detail?
I am left with my confusion and my anger.
I am left without closure.
I am left with trauma.
I am left feeling numb and hurt, and finally, I am left without my mother to help me get through
it all."
And Cambria Harris got to her feet beside her partner and fixed her eyes on Skabicki.
Quote, every moment he spends in this courtroom breathing, free even in shackles, is another
moment my mother is not.
While he gets to stay there, surrounded and protected, my mother continues to lay in a landfill,
the very place he put her, unquote.
and Morgan had her children's names tattooed on her body.
And Cambria told the court it sickened her to think that her mother's killer saw those names
and saw the proof that she was loved and went through with it anyway.
And Donna Bartlett, Mercedes, grandmother called Skabicki an evil monster, which is what he is.
And she also said, he has hurt this family, tore it apart, ripped our souls to pieces,
that's going to be there forever, unquote.
And then she turned and faced him directly,
said, quote, as the last words of Buffalo Woman were to you, fuck you, unquote.
And applause would sweep through the gallery.
And Stephanie Cuntwa's statement was read aloud by her brother, Jeremy, saying, quote,
I can't look at a garbage bin.
It makes me sick to my stomach, unquote.
Jordan Myron, Mercedes sister, said the life sentence would never be enough, quote,
what he did to those women, he deserves a lot more than what was put on him today, unquote.
And the mother of Skibicki's ex-wife also addressed the court.
Her daughter, she told the court, now deals with severe migraines,
trauma triggered seizures, and post-concussion syndrome.
So the relationship and the trial had broken her health completely.
An assembly of Manitoba's chief grand chief Kathy Merrick said Skibicki's crime had, quote,
left deep scars on First Nations communities, unquote.
And outside the courtroom, she was more direct, saying, quote,
they called him a monster in the courtroom and he sat there.
He did not blink an eye, unquote.
And Crown Attorney Vanderhoof closed with a statement
where he told the courtroom that in most sentencing proceedings,
victims end up as, quote, unquote,
but a footnote, not today.
And he is the personification of indignity
and deserves every second that he will spend incarcerated, unquote.
Now back on December 6th of 2022,
Winnipeg Police Chief Danny Smith stood before cameras
and delivered news that the victim's families had been dreading.
The department would not search the prairie green landfill
for the remains of Morgan Harris and Mercedes Myron.
And Smith said the assessment showed, quote, unquote,
no hope for a successful recovery.
An inspector Cam Mackett, who'd been assigned to evaluate the site,
explained the search area covered four acres.
Investigators couldn't narrow that down any further.
After the remains went in, the dump kept operating.
Workers poured roughly 9,000 tons of,
wet construction mud over the area. Heavy equipment packed it down into solid wall of sludge
40 feet deep. And mixed throughout that mass were about 1,500 tons of animal remains and 250 tons of
asbestos. So anyone who dug through it would be exposed to biohazards. And even if they reached
something, telling human remains apart from animal remains in that environment was next to impossible.
So Mac had said that the department had, quote, made the very difficult decision as a certain
that this wasn't operationally feasible to conduct a search of the site."
And police pointed to the Brady Road landfill, where some of Rebecca Contois' remains
had been recovered successfully as a contrast. The garbage there hadn't been compacted,
and police learned about the remains quickly, and the truck that hauled them had a GPS locator
and camera footage so investigators could zero in on where to dig. And Prairie Green had none
of those advantages. And the timeline told a brutal story.
That May morning, in 2022, while police were at the bins on Edison Avenue processing what they'd found of contours,
the remains of Harris and Myron were in a dumpster just a few blocks away, and a garbage truck was about to carry them to Prairie Green.
By the time investigators realized on June 20th that those remains had been taken to Prairie Green,
more than 10,000 loads of garbage had already been dumped on top of them.
Now, in April of 2023, a woman named Linda Mary Beardy was found dead at the Brady Road landfill,
and she was also indigenous.
And police investigated and ruled it not a homicide.
And Beardy's family released a statement.
She was 33, a member of Lake St. Martin First Nation, and a mother of four.
Quote, we believe that a more fulsome investigation must take place, unquote.
And the family wrote, quote, and an opportunity for all tips to be followed up with.
there are many unresolved questions that must be answered."
Bierty's death had nothing to do with Skabicki.
He'd been in custody for nearly a year by then,
but it didn't matter.
Another indigenous woman dead at another Winnipeg landfill
while the city was still fighting over whether to search for the first ones.
So the optics of the situation were devastating,
and the pressure on police and politicians to act only intensified.
So by the fall of 2023, the landfill question had crossed from
tragedy into politics. In Manitoba's Progressive Conservative Party, or PC, bought a full-page spread
in the Winnipeg Free Press to express where they stood on the issues. In front and center,
in the biggest font on the page, was the refusal to search Prairie Green for the bodies of First
Nations women. And they put up billboards carrying the same message. The ads stated that,
quote, for health and safety reasons, the answer on the landfill dig just has to be no. A new
Democratic Party or NDP leader Wob Kanoo responded directly saying that PC's attempts to discourage the search looked desperate.
And at a separate press conference, Kanoi urged Manitobans to vote.
Quote, if you as a Manitoban do not like these American-style attacks, there's something you can do about it.
You can go vote right now.
And Paul Thomas, a professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba, called the PC campaign.
Quote, nastier and more vicious and mean than usual, unquote.
And on October 3, 2023, the NDP won a majority government.
And Wob Canoe became Canada's first First Nations provincial premier.
And one of his government's commitments was to search Prairie Crane.
And after taking over as opposition leader, Obie Khan walked the ads back.
And he apologized and said his party would change course.
And Cambria Harris took it further, filing two human rights complaints.
One targeted the PC party for the election ads.
And the other targeted the provincial government for refusing to file.
fund the search. So by October of 2024, heavy equipment was on site at Prairie Green,
and crews started clearing a path toward the zone where investigators believed Harris and
Myron had been buried under years of waste. And the search officially launched on December
2024, and on February 26, 2025, searches recovered remains at the site. Two sets were found.
And on March 7th, the RCMP confirmed the first set belonged to Morgan Harris. And Cambria posted on
Facebook calling it a very bittersweet moment. And 10 days later on March 17th, police confirmed
the second set of remains were those of Mercedes Myron. And on July 9th, 2025, the Prairie Green
Search officially concluded. And on July 14th and 15th, the families of Harris and Myron
gathered for private ceremonies to honor both women. A premier canoe, the search team, and community
supporters were there alongside them. And the final cost of the search came to $18.4 million.
And back in 2023, a feasibility study had warned the worst-case scenario could reach $184 million
and take up to three years.
And a follow-up report brought the number down to around $90 million, assuming a one-year timeline.
And the actual figure was a fraction of every projection that had been used to argue the search
couldn't be done.
And Sandra DeLeron had co-signed a letter to the federal government in December of 2022,
alongside other indigenous leaders, pushing for the search to be funded.
And after the recovery, she gave the credit.
to the families. Because without their refusal to stop fighting, she said, without their insistence
that their loved ones were respected as human beings, none of it would have happened. And she added
that the Winnipeg Police Service and the previous provincial government have a lot of explaining
to do. And it took a December 2024 interview with Skibiki to finally break a dead end. Because this
time he gave them something new. A specific pair of pants, Ashley, had on when she died.
Because remember, at this point, nobody knows about Ashley.
They know that there was another woman, but they don't know it's Ashley.
And police pulled DNA from the pants and then compared samples from Ashley's family.
And the results from RCMP Lab came back on March 11th and March 24th, 2025.
And on March 26, 2025, police publicly confirmed that the woman who was unidentified for three years was Ashley Shingus.
And her father, Albert, had already suspected, and he made the trip from St. Teresa Point to Winnipeg and spent months going block to block trying to find any trace of Ashley.
And he said, quote, it felt like no one heard us, no one acted, and for the longest time, Ashley remained unidentified while we were out here, screaming into silence, unquote.
And after homicide detective sergeant Mike McDonald made the trip to St. Teresa Point with the official confirmation, Teresa immediately told Ashley's son herself.
And roughly a year later, Ashley's daughter and another teenager died from the cold in St. Teresa Point.
And according to her family, the grief of losing her mother had broken something in her that never healed.
And the family as a whole was struggling to deal.
So once Prairie Green wrapped up, everything shifted to Brady Road.
And the same specialized equipment and personnel moved to the second landfill.
And that's where Ashley Shingoose's remains are believed to be.
Canoe made a second announcement, and the province would also use the Brady Road search to look for Tanya, Nipanak, who disappeared at 31 years old more than a decade earlier.
Investigators had already tried once in October of 2012, and they searched Brady Road for Nepinac for six days and came up empty.
But canoe confirmed the Brady Road operation would run through at least 2026, but no end date has been locked in.
And on March 17, 2025, the same day Mercedes-Mirons remains were confirmed,
Gene Bowers was sworn in as Winnipeg's new police chief, and he replaced Danny Smith,
the man who'd stood in front of cameras years earlier and said the search couldn't be done.
So at this point, Skibicki is serving four concurrent life sentences in prison.
And in 2022, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down stacked parole ineligibility periods,
requiring that all life terms be served at once.
So whether it's one murder or four, the time behind bars doesn't change.
And at sentencing, Justice Zoyle acknowledged the tension.
Soil didn't disagree with the Supreme Court,
but he noted the justices had been purposely silent on one key point.
They never said the law couldn't be rewritten down the road.
And in Zoyle's reading, that silence left room for parliament to build something harsher,
a penalty designed for cases exactly like this one, a serial killer case.
The families and advocates didn't see an open door.
They saw a gap.
But for the families,
The principle matters as much as the result.
Four women were killed, and the sentence should say so.
Morgan Harris, Mercedes Myron, and Rebecca Contois have all been laid to rest.
And their families were finally able to hold funerals and ceremonies.
After years of fighting to bring them home, that closure finally came.
And Ashley Singoose's family is still waiting, though.
The search for her remains at Brady Road landfill officially began on December 1, 2025.
and Ashley's parents and her sister were there where the search began.
And Premier Canoe joined them at the landfill for a ceremony marking the launch.
And nobody knows when it will wrap up.
And as of May, 26, the crews at Brady Road are still working.
And Cambria Harris, Morgan's daughter, turned her grief into a career, actually.
The Manitoba government brought her on in October of 2025,
and her title is special assistant in the finance department,
where she works with the indigenous reconciliation.
Secretariat. And that secretariat is responsible for reconciliation-focused policy and research.
And she is in her mid-20s. And Morgan's cousin, Melissa Robinson, started something of her own.
And she co-founded Morgan's warriors, an organization built around protecting vulnerable people.
And Robinson said the work isn't abstract for her. She knows what happens when women have nowhere
safe to be or to go. Quote, I feel like my cousin may still be around, you know, right now, if that
option was there. She was preyed upon, those other women were preyed upon, you know, how many more
men out there are thinking that same thing, unquote. And Robinson has called for Winnipeg to open
emergency shelters exclusively for women. Spaces where the people most at risk aren't sharing a room
with the people most likely hunting them. But, I mean, these women mattered. And the story of
this case doesn't end with a conviction. It doesn't end with a landfill,
or a policy announcement or a new premier taking office.
It ends, if it ends at all,
when the next woman walking through a shelter door
is safer than the last one was.
And until then, the families carry it.
And they'll keep carrying it after the headlines move on.
So my hope is that this actually changes.
You know, politicians could say all they want,
but it really needs to be demonstrated and actually done.
And I think Canoe has made a big,
difference which is wonderful and I just hope there's more changes that will be made.
But that is it for this case. I was completely unaware of this case and I'm from Canada.
I feel like this is one of the bigger serial killer cases in Canada and it's really sad that this was kind of pushed to the wayside.
Like I don't know. So thank you to the people that recommended this case. I read it about it in the comments.
So please leave any other cases that I should look into in the comments. I always read them.
And until next time, please stay safe out.
there and I'll see your beautiful face. All right. Bye.
