Criminology - Amber Tuccaro

Episode Date: February 27, 2022

In August 2010, 20-year-old Amber Tuccaro disappeared near Edmonton, Canada. Her remains were later found by horseback riders in a field on a farm in a very rural area of Leduc County. The RCMP released audio of a phone call that recorded Amber talking with an unknown male, apparently as a passenger in this man's car. But, the authorities have only released about one minute of what is known to be about a 17-minute recording. Authorities eventually came out and said they believe Amber was murdered and many people have speculated that the determination is based on something found on that portion of unreleased audio. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss the mysterious disappearance and murder of Amber Tuccaro. The authorities have been heavily criticized over the investigation into Amber's disappearance and murder. Amber was an Indigenous woman and Canada has experienced a large number of disappearances and murders of Indigenous women in their history. And, many charges have been levied against the police that they have not always taken the cases of Indigenous women as seriously as they should. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Everyone and welcome to episode 196 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And I'm Mike Morford. Morph, what's going on with you? Not too much. Just getting excited about CrimeCon.

We were talking a little bit about that. And I'm excited that's coming faster than I thought it would. And excited to see some people and some listeners and hang out. So that's primary. me too. But what I will say is when you get our age, everything seems to come quicker than you think it will. Yeah. It's like when you're a kid, you don't realize how time passes by, but, you know, that's where we're at. But it's, you know, I don't know about you, but I just need to get out and do something. It's been, it feels like it's been years since I've been to crime con, even though it's been like two years. But I think a lot of people are probably in the same boat. So excited about that. Me too. Let's go ahead and give our Patreon shout out.

We had Annie Rousey, Simon Jones, Kevin Francis, and Chris. So some great new support. We really appreciate it. Yeah. Thanks so much for taking the time and effort to put in support for us. It means a lot. And anyone that would like to can go to patreon.com slash criminology to help support the show. All right, buddy.

We have everything out of the way. It's time to jump into this episode. And today we're heading to Canada. You know, we think this case is one that deserves some attention. There is an ongoing humanitarian crisis throughout Canada that has been getting more discussion in the news lately, but it's not a new situation at all. It's ingrained in the history of Canada itself. There is currently an incredibly high number of missing and murdered indigenous women

in Canada, maybe most famously. In British Columbia, Canada, there is a 450 mile long. area of Highway 16 that is known as the Highway of Tears, due to the number of families crying for their loved ones who went missing or were murdered on that road between Prince George and Prince Rupert, B.C. In this episode, we will be discussing one particular case. And though it's not on the Highway of Tears in particular, it shows us that the issue of crimes against indigenous women is not confined to one road or to one province. This issue of indigenous women and young girls going missing with basically no real investigation or concern is widespread. This is

just one of those stories, the still unsolved case of Amber Tuckero. Amber Alyssa Tuckero was born on January 3rd, 1990. She was part of the Mickey Sue Creef, First Nation in Fort Chippewan in the northeastern part of Alberta, Canada. Alberta is in southwestern Canada, though it's not on the western coast. British Columbia is between the ocean in Alberta. Amber's parents, Andrew and Vivian, known as Tutsi, Tuckero, adopted Amber just days after she was born, giving their four sons a little sister. Andrew and Tutsi eventually moved with their five children from Fort Chippewan to Fort McMurray, about four hours south, but still in Alberta. In 2010, Amber, when she was just 20 years old, went missing.

At the time, she was a struggling young mother, but she was very dedicated to her young son, 14-month-old Jacob. The two stayed at Unity House three times during Amber's search for independent housing that she could afford. Unity House is a shelter that takes in women and children in emergency situations or while they're transitioning to permanent home situations. The facility currently has 45-bedroom. rooms for their residence and stays or a maximum of 21 days. While they were there, Amber was looking

steadily to provide a home for her and Jacob, something she could afford only for them, with no roommates or housemates. Each time Amber moved, Tutsi would help transporting Amber and Jacob, and Tutsi and Amber were very close. During her last day at Unity House, Amber made a friend. Now, this friend's name has not been revealed, but she is very important to. to this case. In August 2010, 20-year-old Amber and her new friend decided to take a vacation. So on the 17th of August, Amber, baby Jacob, and Amber's unnamed friend flew to Edmonton International Airport from their home in Fort McMurray. Tootsie offered to watch Jacob while Amber went to Edmonton, like she always did when Amber needed her to. But Amber told her mom that

she didn't need for her to watch Jacob. She told her mom she'd be back in two days. Amber and her friend arranged hotel accommodations at the Niskew Place Motel in Niskew, about 35 miles south of Edmonton. Niskew is a mostly industrial area with cheap motels and gas stations. There's really very few houses there. According to Wikipedia in 2005, the only year that seems to have census data easily available. Just 30 people lived in the town. This seems like a place where

people visit when passing from one area to another. LaDuke County itself only has a little over 13,000 residents. Edmonton International Airport is actually just across Queen Elizabeth Highway from the town of Niskew, south of the city of Edmonton, Alberta. On August 18th, the day after the trio arrived, Amber and her friend went shopping in Edmonton and planned to do some sightseeing. When they got back to the motel in Niskew, Amber wanted to go back into Edmonton, so her friend offered to watch Jacob. Although the three of them were supposed to go back to Edmonton the next day as a group, Amber apparently couldn't wait. And around 7.30 p.m., she left the motel and went to the roadside to hitch a ride. I think we've talked many times about the dangers of hitchhiking, but for Amber and

for many First Nations women. Hitchhaking is just how many of them got around. There has been discussion and online theorizing and a lot of debate about exactly why. Amber went ahead without her friend and her son. The reason given in most articles is that the women wanted to save money, which maybe doesn't make a whole lot of sense since her friend and Jacob would still have to travel anyway. and they had obviously already paid for the hotel room. A few articles and some people online say that Amber had a doctor's appointment in Edmonton,

while others believe that she was trying to visit someone she knew. It doesn't help that we don't know who Amber's friend, the last person to see her before she left for Edmonton, actually is. And apparently she hasn't proven herself to be the most truthful person. This is something that we'll dive into further as we move along in this case and we discuss the events of that night. Because of this, there are some gaps in what we know, but there are some basic facts we can work with. Here's the known timeline of events. For whatever reason, on August 18, 2010, at 7.30 p.m., Amber hitched a ride with an unknown man headed north to Edmonton.

A description of this vehicle has never been released. And as far as we know, neither has the description of the man driving whatever car Amber got into. It's possible that no one actually saw Amber get into a car. It was just known that she was going to hitch a ride to Edmonton. And as we'll get into later, she got a ride with a man. That night, Amber's mother was worried because Amber just stopped replying to her text messages and she wasn't answering her calls. They were very close in the talk every day. It wasn't like Amber to just stop replying, even when she was busy.

Tutsi called Amber's friend at the motel, asking her if she knew where Amber was, but the friend lied. She said that Amber and Jacob were with her in the motel and that they were sleeping. Tutsi asked the friend to have Amber call her when she woke up. Now, just why the friend lied is unknown. And since Tutsi didn't know the friend wasn't telling the truth, she just waited for a call from Amber, a call that would never come. The next day, August 19th, Tutsi received a text from Amber's friend, but no calls. are text from Amber herself. The friend's text read

Jacob's grandma, question mark. This was a bit odd. And I think this would worry anyone who hadn't talked to their child. It seemed that the person that was sending the text didn't know your name. And I think that's obviously troubling for a couple of reasons, not only because it's odd for a friend

instead of your child to contact you, but not knowing your name would mean, mean that your child wasn't around for them to even ask. Understandably, Tutsi was immediately very concerned and called back Amber's friend. Only then did the friend reveal that Amber had left Jacob at the motel and gone back into Edmonton. The friend then admitted that when Tutsi called the night before, Amber had already been gone. For whatever reason, the friend had covered for Amber instead of admitting that she had

gone to Edmonton. This in itself, leaving Jacob at night, combined with not being in contact with anyone, worried Tootsie because this was completely unlike Amber. She called the RCMP to report Amber's disappearance because she knew something was wrong. But no search or investigation was started since she hadn't been missing for more than 24 hours. The authorities apparently believed that Amber was likely just out partying and that she'd be back eventually. But Amber did not return. And she was never seen again. I think that's got to be a pretty helpless feeling for Tootsie, knowing that her daughter's

missing and finding up this friend who's the last person to see her that's got the only link with information wasn't being forthright with her since the beginning and had lied to her when she reached out to her. That must have been very tough for her to know that and to not know the truth. And that might bring up questions. Why did she lie to me in the first place? And now she's missing. Yeah, I get it.

Definitely a helpless feeling in this particular situation that we're talking about. But I go back to, you know, all of the different disappearance cases that we've done. And, you know, just the helpless. the helpless type of feeling that any family member would get when you don't know where your loved one is. Oftentimes you reach out to the police. They say, well, we can't do anything for X number of hours. I mean, you know, thinking about that as a parent or, you know, even a brother or sister, that word helpless comes to mind because what can you do? Yes, you can go out and search. you can call friends and do things like that, but you don't have the resources that some of these

law enforcement agencies have. So, you know, your scope is kind of limited. And regarding the 24-hour waiting period, I don't know how many cases we've mentioned that was a factor. And unfortunately, that is crucial time. So if the search isn't started for 24 hours when someone's missing, you're losing a lot of time and you're really getting behind the eight ball when you go to start searching. Amber was a First Nations woman from Canada, and the RCMP had notoriously failed that very group of people. But it's not just a Canadian issue. In fact, just last October in 2021, the U.S. Government Accountability Office released a report that found that the total number of missing or murdered indigenous women is unknown because

federal databases do not contain comprehensive national data on all of the missing or murdered women. They also reported on the very serious issue that missing or murdered indigenous women may be underreported due to mistrust of law enforcement and other reasons. According to the Toronto Star's reporting on the Alberta Joint Working Group on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls, in Canada, as of January 2021, there are nine indigenous women, girls, and two spirit people who have been reported missing or murdered in the Fort McMurray Wood Buffalo area since 2004. Just last week, the Urock tribe in California declared a state of emergency due to an increasing number of missing women and suspicious deaths.

It doesn't seem to matter where a woman goes missing, but if they're indigenous, there may be no investigation at all. On August 28, 2010, a week and a half after Amber vanished, a constable from the RCMP received a report of a possible siding of Amber. and so he believed that she should be removed from missing persons list and that her case should be closed. And in fact, that's exactly what happened. Then about a week later, on September 4th, the media relations officer for the Leduc RCMP. He told various newspapers that Amber was in Edmonton and that she was fine. He publicly stated, we don't have any reason to believe she is in any danger. We know that she is in the Edmonton area. The glaring problem here is that no one had actually made contact with Amber and the reported sighting of her was not verified and her family and friends

had not heard from her. And I think the problem is even if it was Amber, even though it wasn't verified, if it was her, she could still be missing even if someone saw her. She could be in danger or have some kind of medical condition. Maybe she didn't know who she was. Maybe someone had forced her to be wherever she was against her will. So it still should have been checked out, I think, regardless, even if it was Amber, but they never even determined if it was. Yeah, I was kind of thinking something similar.

Okay, someone says that they saw her in Edmonton. Okay, what does that mean? that she's totally fine, that she's there of her own volition, of her, you know, her own free will. It doesn't necessarily mean any of that. To me, it just means that if it's true, she's in that area. But at the same time, more of her family has still not heard from her. They're worried about her. So shouldn't it be checked out?

Yeah, it's pretty easy. It seems to go find them and locate them. say, are you okay? And then if so, then, you know, they're an adult. And if they choose to be, you know, out someplace and not contact their family, that's one thing. But, you know, they didn't even bother to check. And this is something that, you know, crops up a lot in these types of cases. We'll probably talk about it more throughout the episode. A lot of people over the years have made this argument, which is because a person is an indigenous woman, the police just didn't take it as seriously as they would have if it would have been someone else, right?

They would have checked it out. They would have done this. They would have done that. This is the argument that you see made time and time again. And I think it's one of the reasons why, you know, people get upset. when they learn about certain actions or inactions on the part of the authorities in these types of cases that involve indigenous women. Yeah, it certainly doesn't make them look good,

the fact they would even take a little bit of time to go check and see if they could track her down and verify it. On September 23rd, after an entire month of pleading with the RCMP and advocating for Amber, Tutsi had Amber officially added back to the official missing persons list. In the month that Amber wasn't on the missing persons list, the Alberta RCMP destroyed all of Amber's belongings that she had left in the Niskew Place Motel. The items, including her suitcase, and everything inside of it, had been unclaimed for over a month. They didn't even notify her family or give them a chance to retrieve Amber's personal effects, and the items were destroyed without being processed for potential evidence or clues. As Amber's brother, Paul Tuckerow would later testify, her things were sitting with.

there and got thrown out with garbage. RCMP spokesperson, Mary Schlosser, would later state, let's just say that's not best practice and something that shouldn't have happened, but it did. It was not until December 2010, four months after her daughter disappeared, that anyone interviewed Tutsi about her daughter's case. You mentioned it more of the first 24 hours, you know, the first 48 hours. we all know that that time frame is critical in a missing person's case. But for Amber, no real investigation was started for the first four months.

So, you know, when you extrapolate that, that's over 2,500 hours. Unsurprisingly, as a result of the delay, in searching for Amber, there were no leads. There were no clues. Everything had been destroyed, lost, or clean. up in the month since Amber disappeared. It wasn't until August 28th, 2012, two full years after Amber vanished, that a recording was released by investigators in her case. At the time, authorities wouldn't reveal any information about the call, including why

it had been recorded, where or when they had gotten the recording, or who was on the call. We're going to play that audio for you here. Where are we by? We're just... south of Beaumont, or north of Beaumont. We're heading to North Beaumont. Yo, where are we going? No, they're gonna...

Are you fucking kidding me? I don't want to go. You better go to take me anywhere I don't want to go. I want to go into the city. Jay... Yo, we're not going in the city, are we? No, we're not. And we're not to look at these roads going to.

50th Street. 50th Street. Are you sure? Absolutely. So, where are we going? 50th Street. 50th Street? 15th Street. East, right?

East. They're over. Bound him. Bound me. R.C.MP staff sergeant, Sean LeMay, said at the time that authorities couldn't provide any more details about the audio because they didn't want to harm their investigation. It wasn't revealed until 2015 that what had been released was only a one-minute clip from an audio recording of a much longer call between Amber Tuckero and one of her brothers who was in prison at the Edmonton Remand Center.

At the time of that call that day, that Amber went missing. The call was 17 minutes in total. It was a break for investigators since the prison recorded all phone calls. Paul had called Amber, apparently while she was a passenger in a truck or car with whoever picked her up. up. And this call had picked up and recorded the voice of the unidentified man who was driving with Amber and quite possibly responsible for her disappearance. So, you know, let's break down this short piece of audio a little bit. I think as you heard from the recording, you can tell that Amber is scared, very uncomfortable, certainly concerned. At the same time, she wasn't screaming and she was reasonably calm. It seems as though Amber most likely had become suspicious of the driver and where they were actually headed and then received a call from her brother in prison, kept the call going possibly because she knew it would be recorded. Tutsi had often warned Amber about the dangers of hitchhiking and had suggested before that she pretend to be talking to someone on the phone as to scare off any would-be attackers.

So in recapping that call, in case the audio was low, it wasn't, you know, clear enough to hear, during the call, you hear Amber ask, where are we by? And the man responds, we're just heading south of Beaumont or north of Beaumont. Amber repeats for her brother or possibly whoever would later hear the recording. We're heading north of Beaumont. Sooner. after Amber says again, yo, where are we going? The two sort of stutter and stumble on their words as they argue with each other. It sounds like the man is telling her to just something. Trust him, be quiet, wait. It's kind of hard to hear. We don't know. But Amber replies, no. This is a, and then we don't know what she was going to say there. But we can hear the man say back roads, which,

angers Amber. She asks the man, are you fucking kidding me? The man's voice at that point sounds somewhat irritated as he replies, no, I'm not kidding you. It's hard to imagine just what Amber must have been feeling at that moment or what she was thinking. Amber says, you better not be taking me anywhere I don't want to go. I want to go into the city, okay? And the man responds, we're going into the city in a low tone that's hard to even hear. Amber then says, Yo, we're not going into the city, are we? This time her voice got a bit louder, higher pitched, and more urgent.

She and the man argue a bit, but you can't really hear him. Angrily, Amber asked, Where the fuck are these roads going to? A curt response from the male driver says, 50th Street. And Amber responds 50th Street? Are you sure? Again, we don't really know Amber's thinking, but it really doesn't sound like she believed the man.

Amber was assured multiple times that they were heading to 50th Street. And Amber asked to the east, right? And there is a 50th street in that area. It appears to be the main road in Loduk, south of Niske and Edmonton. There's also a 50th Avenue that intersects 50th Street in the middle of Ladook. But again, neither of these is anywhere near where Amber wanted to go. The last things we can hear on the call are garbled. They're faint.

We can make out Amber saying pull or pull. over now. But it's not clear if she's telling this man to pull over or asking why they are pulling over, presumably in the middle of nowhere. All you can hear the man reply with is gravel, possibly telling her he has to pull over due to the gravel or maybe refusing to pull over on a gravel road. The call ends. And that's the last anyone has ever heard from Amber Tuckerow. Again, it's worth pointing out that Amber is never screaming. She wasn't crying. And it didn't sound as if there was any type of physical struggle.

So it makes you wonder if maybe Amber knew this person or at the very least was somewhat comfortable with him and maybe didn't want to overreact if he wasn't in fact up to something nefarious. At the same time, you also have to think that perhaps the man knew that Amber had made the phone call and he was remaining calm as not to draw too much attention. Perhaps if he was up to something sinister and she hadn't made that call. He may have attacked her, but we just don't know. And again, this is only a portion of that call, a portion that police have chosen to release. who knows what other things are on that recording. Maybe things did take a violent turn or on the call, Amber became more frightened.

I don't know if Amber consciously knew that the phone call would be recorded and left it on that entire time, just keeping the phone down at the side, almost if you're like calling 911 and you have the phone down at your side if somebody's taking you and you'll leave the line open. hoping that it's going to give some kind of evidence of what's going on, and maybe Amber did do that, or maybe she didn't realize that the phone was even on at that point. I don't know if we don't know if she was in the middle of the conversation and jumping back on with her brother during this call, but just to have the phone call open is really the biggest clue in this case because we get to hear the voice of the person that was driving with her. And I think you mentioned it more if the call is roughly about 17 minutes long, usually there is a time limit on calls place from within a prison to the outside.

And I don't think they can go on indefinitely. So, you know, I wonder if the call was ended by one of the two individuals in the car or if it ended because that time limit, you know, elapsed. The problem is because there's about 16 minutes or so that we've not heard, there's a lot to this call that is unknown. Yeah, and I wonder why they didn't release more. You would think that there'd be a better chance with someone recognizing this person's voice if they heard even more talking from him. Now, it could be that it was, maybe it was garbled or it wasn't clear and it would just be a waste of releasing that much audio. Or perhaps there's some clues. maybe he says something that they think is a clue that they're holding back. But again, we just don't know what they're, what's in the rest of that audio.

Or possibly it became violent and, you know, it was something that they didn't want to release. You know, more to your point, maybe there's something on that call that only the two individuals in the car or the people on that call would know. and so investigators are fearful of putting it out there because if and when they get a suspect, they want to have that information to kind of hold back to help prove whether or not somebody knows what they're talking about. Amber's family came to learn that authorities knew of this recorded prison call for an entire year before they released it to the public. RCMP Sergeant LeMay said that the decision to release a portion of the call was finally made because they had determined that in the stage of the investigation they were in,

that releasing at the time they did would be the right thing to do for the investigation. And this was unprecedented. It's the only time the RCMP has ever released an audio recording during a homicide investigation. Yes, homicide investigation. Though Amber was still missing, by the time the recording was released, Tutsi says the RCMP had already informed her that their belief was that Amber had been murdered. And that is very interesting. You know, we just spent quite a bit talking about this call, possibly what could be on the 16 minutes or so that has not been released.

Well, that makes me think even more that there was something on that call that led to this notion by police that Amber had been murdered. Yeah, it's quite a about face from early on. basically dismissing her as a missing person and saying, well, someone saw her, so she's okay. And now here they, they've come to where they believe she was killed. So that's got to be pretty frustrating for her family. Well, they hadn't found her body. So, you know, really outside of this recording, unless there was a tip, there was, you know, some type of information that was provided, how could they come to that conclusion?

if it wasn't on the audio. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered. I wonder which emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts. If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor,

Moms and Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey, guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from heist to whodunit. We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. But releasing that audio definitely shook things up and leads flooded in.

Police reportedly had 8,000 hits to the website where they posted the call for people to listen to in the first 24 hours of its public release. Multiple women came forward to say that they recognized the man's voice. They believed they knew the man who was replying to Amber in that recording. each of the women believed it was the same man and they were certain one woman told cbc news i know that voice i've ridden with that voice before on several occasions there's no doubt in my mind that it's his voice the rcmp followed that lead they looked into a suspect but nothing came of it one of the women also told cbc news they didn't look very hard i don't think i don't think I knew the voice like I know the back of my hand.

So more if one of these women said that they had ridden with this man after hearing his voice before on several occasions, that leads me to believe that, you know, some of these women hitchhiked as well and possibly had taken rides from this man. And I don't doubt at all that these women believed they knew who. the man was behind this voice. The one thing that I would say is, you know, I wonder how accurate this type of voice recognition is. You and I have talked about this in a number of occasions when it comes to eyewitness accounts. And, you know, there are a lot of studies out there. You can find them on the internet. You know, eyewitness accounts are not as reliable as we, you know, we all once thought they were, and especially law enforcement. You know, back in the day, if you had an eyewitness, that was like the best possible

type of witness you could have. Well, we now know that eyewitnesses are not always correct. You know, the, the memory plays tricks on us sometimes. We think we saw something. We think we saw someone, but what we really saw was someone else. And I just wonder how that plays into hearing a voice on a recorded call that, let's face it, is not of great quality. And I think to your point, it's, although it's probably even less reliable than an eyewitness

citing, because at least you could say whether someone was tall, whether it were short, things like that, you could get some details wrong, but you could get a general description of an eyewitness citing right. but when you're listening to a voice and hearing a phone call and it's not the best quality, that's got to be even less reliable. And so you might think someone sounds younger when they're really older, vice versa. And the same thing, I think maybe your mind's playing tricks. Maybe you're listening to that and envisioning someone's voice in your mind

and putting two together that they sound like the same person. and in reality, that's not a solid identification. But I think the RCMP at least took it seriously enough that they did check this person out. Yeah, I don't want anyone to think that I'm, you know, casting aspersions on these women. I'm not even saying they're wrong. I'm just kind of bringing up the topic of, you know, how reliable can that type of evidence be? You know, can you go into court with that type of evidence? Yeah, and I don't know.

That's a good point because I don't know if a good attorney could probably get someone off if all they had was a voice on a recording. So that's hardly physical evidence. So while it might help in the investigation, it might not be something that actually is something that could prosecute someone in court. It's been theorized that the man in question was a local rancher. We're not going to say his name here because the RCMP says they have looked into him and he didn't kill Amber. If you're determined enough, he's quite easy to find online. There are many posts on various websites about this man, and there's even entire blogs dedicated solely to informing the public about him.

He apparently has a habit of using different aliases to post advertisements on site similar to Craigslist, but the content of his ads are generally the same. He looks for young women, sometimes young couples, to work on his horse ranch. Searching Google for just a few minutes brings plenty of results and posts on different forums, warning people to stay away from the horse ranch in Alberta. These posts include tales of weird, so-called healing rituals by the full moon, sometimes nude, the man's bedroom being connected to the only bathroom and his habit of lingering near the door when people were trying to use it.

There were odd videos left laying about. a search history including specific and possibly disturbing pornography and a string of people who trusted their gut and quickly made up a family emergency to get away from him. Even more troubling is that this man has a criminal history, which includes multiple instances of picking up underage sex workers and choking them. It was also reported that this man had served just two years for various sexual-related offenses against individuals he had hired at his ranch. This was at least his second conviction for a similar crime.

In 1994, he was charged with sexually assaulting a 21-year-old woman after he had hired her as a recreation coordinator. In April 2003, Randy White, a member of the Canadian Parliament, spoke about the Sex Offender Information Registration Act. During this speech, he spoke specifically. specifically about this man, this local rancher, among a few other people, stating he will be out on the streets in six months. And we do not know where. We don't know what name he will use.

We don't know anything about it. That's a frightening proposition, someone capable of such things being free to move around and use whatever name he comes up with. Just five years after White raised this concern about the rancher's upcoming release in 2003. The man pleaded guilty to assaulting yet another employee of his, this time a 23-year-old woman. For this attack, he was sentenced to just time served, and three years of probation with the requirement that he report the names of anyone working on the ranch to his probation officer. It's interesting because the posters online who have had encounters with this man are divided. Some of them believe that he is without a doubt the male voice on the phone call,

but others don't think they sound the same at all. There's also an entire rabbit hole you can go down. Some people think the man's voice on Amber's call sounds like the voice of the man who claims to be responsible for the West Mesa murders, which are also unsolved, but took place over 2,000 miles from Edmonton. And more if, you know, you talk about rabbit holes, you know, in any of these types of unsolved cases, you can go down a myriad of rabbit holes. Because let's face it, there are a lot of people who look into these. types of cases. There are quite a few people who have connections, as we've just talked about with cases. You know, I think you and I have talked about it before Zodiac gets put up as a possible suspect in many cases. High profile killers get put up as a possible suspect in many, many cases.

So, you know, those are just a few of the rabbit holes that you can go down. Yeah, and I think a lot of cases like this where there's an audio or a photo, I think that draws a lot of people that are sort of online detectives to jump in and look at these cases. You know, something like the Delphi murders where there's audio, video, that kind of stuff. It really seems to captivate people's attention and they spend time digging into these cases. And I think this case is no exception. Early on September 1st, just one week after the call was. released by the RCMP, skeletal remains were found by horseback riders in a field on a farm in a very rural area of Ladoot County near Range Road 241 and Highway 623.

This field was southeast of the Niskew Place Motel. The opposite direction from Edmonton, where Amber wanted to go when she had hitched that ride, authorities used dental records to identify the skeletal remains as Amber Tucker Rose. A very disconcerting fact here is that these remains were found 17 minutes from where Amber was last seen at the motel in Niskew disconcerting because that 61 seconds of audio released by the RCMP was just a fraction of the entire call. We mentioned it, right? It lasted about 17 minutes. I think to me, Morph, this even strange, strengthens my thought that Amber was in danger during this call and something awful likely

happened to her directly after she hung up the phone or maybe that you know the struggle had even started to happen on the call the call ended and soon after so did Amber's life. Officials chose not to share Amber's cause of death. Obviously the discovery was a sad thing. development for Amber's friends and family members who had been holding out hope that they would see her again. But the fine confirmed police suspicions that she was dead. Amber was laid to rest while police were tasked with finding her killer. It turns out that Amber isn't the only woman whose body has been found in that rural Luduk area. She's actually one of five women who disappeared only for the remains to be found there, all within five miles of each other. Some believe

that these women are the victims of a single serial killer. On September 22, 2002, Edna Bernard, the mother of six children, disappeared. Her body was found the next day in a wooded area in Ladook. On Range Road 245, north of Raleigh View Road, she had been strangled. In 2003, the remains of Katie Sylvia Ballanty were found in a field in Ladoop County near Range Road 235 and north of Township Road 500, Katie left behind four children. In 2004, the remains of Dolores Don Brower were found in Leduc County near Range Road 241 in Raleigh View Road. In 2015, it was announced that some of the remains found with Dolores Brower actually

belonged to a woman named Corey Ottenbright. Corey had been missing since 2004. She was identified thanks to the contribution of the RCMP's Care Project, which was established in 2002 to combat too many cases of missing and murdered women in that area of Canada. Care had an extensive collection of records on sex workers in Alberta. This was voluntarily given information that included pictures, biographical information, and a DNA sample of each woman. Over 1,200 throughout Alberta that are in CARES database.

Corey Ottenbrite was one of these women. She provided a hair sample to care. All of these women, except Amber, were sex workers. And all of them except Corey were indigenous. Rumors of a serial killer in the Edmonton area date back to the winter of 1987, although it remains to be seen if all of the victims over the past 35 years were the result of one lone serial killer. This is an issue that we have discussed in other episodes of criminology, where sometimes a place is known for a high number of bodies. not because there is one very active serial killer on the loose, but rather because that area is just the closest secluded area.

It's easy to dump a body there without being seen. Most killers have at least one thing in common, which is the need to hide what they have done. And more if you and I go back and forth on, you know, this issue quite a bit, I think it's natural for people to, you know, kind of point to this loan. serial killer theory. But I also think it's kind of hard to believe that one person could operate over 35 years and kill all of these women. It's not impossible, but is it more plausible to think there are a higher number of killers? To me, I think it is. And I don't know what's scarer, the thought that one person was doing all of this over that long. period of time or that there was more than one of these people doing that in such a small

sparsely populated area. That might be even more frightening. Yeah, that's a great point. I mean, I think they're both terrifying and the fact that they were getting away with it, not being caught, not being brought to justice. That very specific area seemed like a very dangerous to be placed for women to travel during that time. In November of 2013, the R.C. RCMP's care victim services placed two billboards in the Loduke area, hoping it would bring forth information. The billboard included the headline, Have You Heard the Voice, along with the care website, which at the time had the audio clip from Amber's phone call with her brother. It was felt that the more people that heard the voice, the better chance there was that the case would be

solved. But to this point, it hasn't led to the killer. On March 20th, 2014, Amber's family filed a complaint with the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission Chair, specifically about the way that Amber, her family, and the investigation into her disappearance and ultimately her death were handled. Though the RCMP admitted that they mishandled the case early on, they would not publicly apologize to the Tucker Roe family. In 2017, the Facebook page,

Justice for Amber Tuckero was, created near the seventh anniversary of Amber's disappearance as part of an ongoing effort to bring attention to her case. And in September of the following year, 2018, the Civilian Review and Complaints Commission, or CRCC for short, provided the Tuckero family with their report, which confirmed many of the family's beliefs. The report stated that the Ladoop detachment of the RCMP had been deficient in their investigation into Amber's disappearance and that mistakes were made. An entire month had gone by with Amber missing without any investigation into where she was despite the fact that her family was worried and they had relayed those

worries and reports to police. Her belongings had been disposed of without being analyzed for any evidence and were improperly destroyed without any regard for her family. Incredibly, it's been reported that as of 2019, the friend that Amber had flown to Edmonton with, the last person to have seen her besides her killer, had not been located or interviewed by the RCMP. In June 2019, the National Inquirer into missing and murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, final report was released. This report was titled, Reclaiming, Parenthood, power and place. In summary, it read in part, as many witnesses expressed, this country, Canada, is at war, and indigenous women are under siege. The report found that Canada breached seven

international conventions and declarations on human rights in its lack of response to the genocide of indigenous women throughout the country. In September 2019, the Tuckero family applied for permission to exhume Amber's body. It turns out that, they were so upset with the investigation into her disappearance in death that they started to doubt whether the remains they had laid to rest were even ambers. Authorities told the family that the remains were amber the very same day they were found and often exams and identification of skeletonized remains can take weeks or even months. The family wanted DNA testing done to verify whether Amber was indeed the person they laid to rest.

Unfortunately, there is nothing out there related to this case, indicating whether or not the body was exhumed, and if so, what the findings were. I think that really speaks to the level of how frustrated Amber's family were with the RCMP that they sort of doubted everything, whether the person they laid to rest was actually Amber. So that's got to speak to just how bad things were between her family and the RCMP. Yeah.

I mean, the word that comes to mind to me is distrust, right? It's a complete and utter distrust of the RCMP on the part of Amber's family to get to the point where you don't even believe them when they said that, yes, these remains. are Ambers. In January 2020, the Alberta RCMP issued a public apology to the Tuckeroe family. Alberta RCMP Deputy Commissioner Curtis Zablocki said, on behalf of the RCMP, I am truly sorry. Early that same year, someone contacted the RCMP about the man's voice heard in the audio. This man believed that the voice on Amber's recorded call belonged to his father. He also posted a long message on Facebook that detourable. The reason why he believed his father was involved in not only Amber's disappearance and murder,

but also the murder of other women as well. This wasn't the first time the man had accused his father of something nefarious. In early December of 2019, this man had called the RCMP in Banff and told him that he believed his father was behind a disappearance in the area. He soon deleted his post. It turned out that many of the cases that this man brought up, which he believed his father was involved in, had already been solved. And more, I think this is another thing that you see happen in many mysterious unsolved cases. You know, think back to the case of D.B. Cooper, the Zodiac. I mean, you can go down the list. There are always a number of people who come out and say, you know, I think it was my father.

I think it was my grandfather. And here are the reasons why. Now, you can be skeptical. and I think a lot of people are about the reasons people come out and say these types of things. You know, is it for publicity, 15 minutes of fame? Or do they truly believe that their loved one was a killer, was responsible for these types of crimes? And I think when you look at, you know, this person in particular bringing up a bunch of different cases that he believed his father was involved in. Okay, well, it turns out that a lot of them had already been solved. So there's really only two options there.

Either they were solved incorrectly or this person's not right about his father in at least those cases. Yeah, I think that's an interesting phenomenon when people come forward to accuse their family members of a heinous crime because I think usually, the opposite's true. People will defend their family and say there's no way my family could be involved in this. No way someone I love did something like this. You think that would be the more common thing.

But there is definitely a lot of people that come forward in these high profile crimes and point the finger at their family member. Well, and we're seeing it more and more with the genetic genealogy angle as well, right? people are coming forward to cooperate with authorities by giving DNA samples. Now, in those cases, I find them to be much different than what we're talking about here. This is a person who I think is speculating on the fact that their father is a killer. In the genetic genealogy cases, many of them, which we've talked about, people are coming forward to help the police by providing DNA. And that is either going to say my loved one was involved or they weren't. I don't think those people in any way are seeking fame, you know, the 15 minutes of fame.

I think they're just trying to do what's right. Often at great detriment to their family, themselves, their loved ones legacy. In August 2020, on the 10th anniversary of Amber's disappearance, her mother, Tutsi told CTV news, we're never going to give up, ever.

We're not going anywhere, and he needs to know that. The people who are not coming forward and know who he is, they're just as guilty. And as for the RCMP's apology, well, she says she does not accept it. Because they did that apology because they had to.

They were told to do it. And so because she doesn't believe it was all that sincere, it really doesn't mean that much to her. In July 2021, Tutsi posted a plea on Facebook. She was searching for someone who had found Amber's status card in Calling Lake, Alberta, around January to February 2013. A status card is like a license that proves. someone as part of a tribe.

Someone had put Amber's on the bulletin board of the Calling Lake Arena, almost three hours north of Niskew. After finding it in a hockey bag, some five or six months after Amber's remains had been discovered, someone realized Amber was the girl on the status card after recognizing her picture and contacted Tootsie. Tootsie is now raising her grandson, Jacob, since Amber's chance to raise her son was taken away from her by whoever took her life. according to what Tutsi has said to CBC News.

Jacob stands just like Amber sometimes, and he has the same witty attitude that she did. Paul remembers how much his sister Amber loved Jacob and says that he was her everything. The RCMP and Leduc has apparently changed their policies as a result of the mistakes made in Amber Tukuro's case. But they've not revealed exactly how those changes have been made or what they are. The Tuckera family is still fighting for justice for Amber.

As Tutsi told CBC News, it's kind of messed up because Amber's case is about the voice, the man's voice, and now I'm Amber's voice. Tutsi and her supporters will not stop until there's justice for Amber. If you recognize the man's voice in the call or have any information regarding Amber's murder, please contact the Alberta RCMP at 780412-5261, or crime stoppers at 8-8-8. 800-22-2-2 tips. You can remain anonymous. So morph as we wrap up this episode, you know, this is an interesting case. And I do think it's grabbed the attention of a lot of people, a lot of amateur slews. You mentioned it earlier. I think any time you have this type of evidence,

this type of recording, where you actually get to hear someone's voice who may be the killer, or at the very least was one of the last people to have seen Amber, that becomes fascinating. Okay. You have a piece of evidence if you're an amateur sleuth that you can work with. And I think a lot of people have. You also have a lot of people coming forward and saying, hey, I recognize that person's voice. Maybe they do. Maybe they don't.

But the key for me in this case is the lack of response, the lack of diligence in the investigation by the RCMP. I mean, they basically came out and admitted it. They apologized to the family. Again, as I said earlier, I think most people believe. And I think rightfully so that indigenous women in Canada are not given equal treatment as other women are when it comes to disappearances, investigations. I think the evidence is there. You know, you and I have done a number of cases on indigenous women in Canada. It's not hard to find case after case where it's come out later. It's basically proven that the investigation just wasn't all that.

I hate to put down law enforcement. I really do. But it's hard to get around this fact of it seeming as though the lives of indigenous women in Canada don't seem to matter as much when it comes to these types of investigations as other people do. I don't know how else to say it, Morph. Yeah, I think both you and I are big supporters of law enforcement. At the same time, I think we both have to call out bad police work when we see it and failures on their part. As we know, as we've discussed in this episode, that that area, much of Canada, but particularly that area, we know was a bad place for a long period of time.

And the cases of missing and murdered women there just stretched on for a period of time. again, I go back to this is not a huge, big city with tens of thousands of people living there. This seems like a relatively isolated area, and it seems like you could have almost dissected each person that lived there to see if, and checked each one out and really whittled down who could be responsible and then determine is this person an outsider that's coming in for work or passing through. But, you know, we talked quite extensively about the one guy that was there. He was no model citizen. That was for sure. He had some very disturbing things. When you have people like that in this very small area, it just makes for a dangerous, dangerous place.

Law enforcement personnel are human. They're going to make mistakes in this case or that case. There's just no way around it. Nobody is perfect in their job. Now, the stakes are much higher. right, in that profession. But what I think people point to most often is the fact that these types of shoddy investigations, if you want to call them that, seem to happen frequently when we're talking about cases of indigenous women. There's just no way around it. And that really burns me up

because I think as you and I have said quite often, every person deserves the same. And, same amount of respect, regardless of race, gender, even occupation, right? We've talked about cases involving sex workers. Okay. You might not like what they're doing for a living. But does that mean that their murder investigation should be taken any less seriously? No. To me, absolutely not.

Well, I think the RCMP really has. has a chance to redeem themselves here if they can catch this person. And the good news is they have that audio. So hopefully someday that does lead them to the right person that did this. And I wonder if they can hold that person accountable for Amber's case. Will it connect to any of the other cases in the area we discussed? Yeah, that's a good point. I also think they need to redeem themselves by treating the cases of indigenous women the same as they would anyone else. If they don't start doing that, they can never redeem themselves in my eyes. Thanks to Sunday Landon for her help with writing and research in this episode.

As always, if you love the show, but you haven't done so yet, take a minute, go out, give us a five-star rating. That helps the show quite a bit. And keep telling your friends about the criminology podcast. that word of mouth really goes a long way. If you want to find us on social media, we're on Twitter with the handle at Criminology Pod. You can also find us on Facebook by searching for Criminology Podcast or by joining

our Facebook discussion group, Criminology Podcast, Discussion and Fans. So more if that is it for our episode on Amber Tuckero. We'll be back with everyone next Saturday night with a brand new episode of criminology. So until then, for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone.