The Decibel - A murder conviction and the search for missing Indigenous women

Episode Date: July 25, 2024

A serial killer in Winnipeg has been convicted in the murders of four Indigenous women – Morgan Harris, Rebecca Contois, Marcedes Myran and an unidentified woman Indigenous elders have named Buffalo Woman. The case and decision garnered significant national attention, due to the graphic nature of the crimes and the families of the women fighting to have a search conducted for the missing remains of the women in city landfills.The Globe and Mail’s national reporter in Manitoba, Temur Durrani, joins the podcast to talk about the trial, the women at the centre of the case and the continued push for answers and justice for the victims.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

Before we begin, a warning that today's episode includes graphic imagery and references to violence and sexual assault. Please take care. I'm flooded with emotions. I'm extremely happy and I feel like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Justice was served today. That's Jordan Myron, reacting to the news that Jeremy Skibicki was found guilty of the first-degree murder of four Indigenous women. Jordan's sister, Mercedes, was one of them. That everyone's very happy that he got what he deserved and that he was guilty the whole time. Skibicki was convicted on July 11th, but the judge just released the full written verdict earlier this week. The case gained national attention when a debate arose over whether or not to search a local landfill for the bodies of the victims.

Everything will be towards search the landfill now. That's the next chapter. And just to bring my sister's remains home, the last bit of closure that we need. Globe and Mail reporter Tamora Durrani covered the trial in Winnipeg. So today, he's here to tell us what we know about the four murdered women, the significance of this verdict, and what comes next. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Tamora, thank you for joining me today. Thank you for having me again. Can you just start by telling us about these four women at the center of this trial? Who were they? So I've talked

to their families quite extensively. All of these women were women that were loved. They were very beloved members of their communities. Rebecca Contois, who was the last victim, she was, of course, only 24. Rebecca Contois was a member of Crane River First Nation. She had a daughter. And her brother, Jeremy Contois, told us, you know, about how much of a trusting, loving person she was and how they were just celebrating a birthday just a few days before it was discovered that she was murdered in this way. Morgan Harris, whose daughter Cambria Harris has told me so much about her. You know, she was silly. She was fun. People love to be around her. She had five daughters.

And in fact, Cambria, her daughter had just had a daughter. So she'd just become a grandmother to one. She had a huge spirit. She was fearless. Mercedes Myron was also someone who was so beloved in her community. Her sister, Jordan Myron, has told me so much about her, all the details about how they used to have just the big belly laughs about just the silliest of things and how their lives were going pretty normally. Nobody saw this coming, right? And that was another sort of why this was something that impacted the families the way it did. And then, of course, there is a fourth woman, but we don't actually know who she is. Yeah. Buffalo Woman was a name given to her by Indigenous community members, especially First Nations leaders. This was a name given to her so that she could have the dignity instead of being called Jane

Doe, as often you are when you're still yet to be identified. What we do know about her is all, unfortunately, that has come from Mr. Skibicki. And in the intro to more, we heard a little bit of Jordan Myron's reaction to the verdict. But what have other family members that you've talked to, what have they said about the verdict? Yeah, one of the things is that this has been something they've had to fight for from the beginning. It has been something that they have had to rally, to protest, to fly to Ottawa, fly to Montreal, get people to listen about this, to get to this point. It feels like it's a cathartic process almost. It feels like it's, that's why, you know, you heard Jordan Meyer and say that justice was served here. Part of that is because they want this to be the standard in which we look at cases against men who kill women like this, especially cases where missing and murdered Indigenous women are involved. So Tamora, you've followed this trial since the beginning, really. There's a lot of really difficult details that have come out through this process. But can we just talk through kind of the general things here? What do we know about what happened to these women? A lot of questions were left unanswered for us since 2022. Many of

these answers were answers that even the family members hadn't gotten about what exactly happened here. A lot of this was ultimately left up to the detectives and police that were involved with this case. And so those detectives, in fact, testified in the trial and finally told us about these details and what exactly happened here. Now we have a clear timeline, in fact, of how each and every single one of these victims were killed. Part of that is because of the fact that Mr. Skivecki actually admitted to many of these things when he was arrested, and there was a confession that actually had happened in the 20-hour interrogation within which he talked about these things in graphic details. In the words of the judge himself, these are all mercilessly

graphic killings, and they all fit a pattern. Mr. Skivecki stalked these women at shelters for vulnerable people. The way he found them was that a lot of them had frequented these shelters because of homelessness or drug issues that they were dealing with. They were seeking help for that. And he invited them back to his home to drug them, to sexually assault them, then kill them before engaging in further sexual acts on their bodies. And eventually he dumped them and dismembered their remains in garbage bins, such that they ultimately ended up in Winnipeg area landfills. And he was actually caught after someone found one of these women's bodies in a trash can, essentially, Timur. Can you tell us about that? A man named John Kinal started all

of this. He calls 911 in the very early morning hours of May 16, 2022. He's a salvager. You know, this is something that's common in Winnipeg. There's a lot of people that will go around looking in garbage, you know, just to look for something that's salvageable, right? And he finds a human head in a garbage bag in a bin outside an apartment building in Winnipeg. 911, what's the location of the emergency? I was walking down the back lane of Edison, and at 253 Edison, the apartment building in the bin, the garbage bin. I found a woman's head in a green, two green bags. This turns out to be the remains of Rebecca Contois. This is also the apartment building of Jeremy Skibeki.

And because of this, the next day they arrested Mr. Skibeki. And when they arrested him, they did a 20-hour interrogation. In that 20-hour interrogation in that 20-hour interrogation a lot came out at the time police were only under the belief that mr skebecki had killed one woman they didn't know that he had killed three other women he in fact admitted to all three other women in that confession and then he told them exactly where he dumped their remains so the different bins around the city in which he did this. The day on which Mr. Skibeki told them about this, they actually stopped all garbage collection in that

area specifically just to make sure that they could find some of these. But of course, by that point, it had already been emptied. So through GPS coordinates, they eventually found out where those remains were then dumped, which landfills and that kind of a thing. They found out that Ms. Contois' remains, in fact, were buried actually in a separate landfill than two of the other women, Brady Road landfill. They actually did search that landfill and they actually did find through a very, you know, right the next month in June of 2022, they found her torso there. When they found this, they had not found two of the other women's remains at this point, but they had gotten a lot of detail about it, which then led them to believe that these two women were buried in a separate landfill called Prairie Green Landfill in Winnipeg.

Those two women have yet to be found. Ultimately, the police had determined, and we heard this in trial, they determined that it was too unsafe and that it was not something they could possibly do. This is what really caused all of the family members to start rallying around this case, to start calling out the injustice of not looking for these women that, you know, because they were Indigenous, because they were First Nations women, they were not found for that reason. And we're going to talk a little bit more about the landfill search soon tomorrow, because I think this is a really important point to talk about. But I just want to ask you a few more details of the trial here, because you went through some, you know, some really horrific detail of what we learned

during the trial. But you mentioned something important, because before the trial, Skibicki confessed to killing these four women, but he didn't actually plead guilty, right? So what was his defense? So Skibicki had been pleading not guilty for two years. He kept pleading not guilty actually up until the eve of his trial when he said that he was not criminally responsible, which is a different thing because he was saying that he had voices in his head, he had schizophrenia. And for that reason, the court needed to find him not criminally responsible for the killings he has admitted to. In Canada, in fact, actually, we've compiled statistics. Statistics Canada got these numbers for us for the Globe and Mail,

and they told us that only 0.06% of all criminal cases, now, mind you, this isn't just murder charges. This is all criminal cases in the last 22 years of this being recorded have only ever been found NCR. That's very, very low. It tells you how little these cases are actually, they get to the point of reaching that verdict, but also it tells you about how uncommon this is to raise it, which is part of the reason why so many lawyers were also watching

this case for the kind of precedent it could send, the kind of messaging that it would give to people that in fact, NCR can be used as a real legitimate defense for more than one murder charges. And of course, though, ultimately, the judge found him guilty of four counts of first degree murder. So that is premeditated murder, right? So why didn't he accept the NCR defense? The judge found there was not enough evidence demonstrated by the defense to show that he, in fact, had a mental incapacity. The Crown had a rebuttal witness, and that rebuttal witness, according to the judge, did a fantastic job in explaining to the court that, in fact, he did not have schizophrenia.

He was never diagnosed with schizophrenia. You know, he'd never gotten proper medication for it. He'd gotten some medication over the years, but it was never enough to point out that he actually did have schizophrenia. And so based on that, there was no reasoning that the judge found for him to be, you know, he didn't have a mental incapacity, according to the judge. In fact, the very, very vast amount of graphic evidence that was shown by the prosecution to demonstrate that these were planned and deliberate murders pointed out to the judge that there was no doubt in his mind that this was a first degree murder charge. So we have the verdict, but has he actually been sentenced yet? In Canada, you get an automatic life sentence of 25 years with no chance of parole when you are facing a first degree murder charge, when you've been convicted of a first degree murder charge.

So that's what Mr. Skibeki is going with. But he's not been sentenced yet. Actually, his lawyers told me this week that he is now going to get a sentencing date next month on August 28, at which it will be decided exactly what his sentence will look like. We'll be back after this message. Before the trial began, there was a lot of disagreement over whether or not to search the Prairie Green landfill for the remains of some of the victims. We brought this up a little bit earlier about how much of an issue this landfill search was. It even became a political discussion at the time. Wab Kanu campaigned on the fact that he would have a search and he did win the provincial election last year. But it's now July 2024, Tamora.

Has the search of this landfill begun? No. Let's take you back a little bit into how it got to the point that it did. So when the election was happening last year, the provincial election of Manitoba, this became the issue at the heart of it, that across the country, actually, people were watching that election because it was almost a referendum on whether Manitoba wanted to do a landfill search or not for these women. The PC government at the time, the progressive conservative government, in fact, ran newspaper ads. You know, they ran billboards across the city, across the province. You would see these billboards. You would see these radio ads that were saying, if you voted

for us, we will not search for these women because it is unsafe, because it is, you know, too costly. That's the reasons we were getting from Premier Heather Stephenson at the time. So they actually campaigned on the fact that they would not do a landfill search. That's right. They were very explicit. They said, if you vote for us, we will not dig for these women. And so part of the reason that, you know, the election really went the way it did was because Premier Canoe actually said that that is the humane thing to do, to look for these women. And so that became really ultimately a big promise that he made, a pledge that he made to these women's families that he if he is elected, he will go out looking for them. OK, so Wab Canoe is the premier now. He says he's going to do this search.

But you said it actually we haven't actually got to a physical search at the landfill site yet, though, Tamora, right? So what stage are we at? Yeah, there's a five stage process now that the government has told us about in many technical briefings. In fact, at this point, we're currently technically in between stage two and stage three. Part of that is because in stage one, they were which was the initial search and planning for the search. That was them looking at specifics about where exactly these women are believed to be in, in this very, very large prairie green landfill. It's massive. I've been there and it just, the size feels enormous.

In fact, even the part that's supposed to be a targeted area search for the women where they're believed to be in, the cells of that landfill, those cells are about the size of four or five football fields. Right now, we're at a point where they are building a healing site for the family members there who want to be there, who want to make sure that this is being done right. But the next stage is, and at this point, they're testing out an area where the women are not believed to be buried, because they want to make sure that the consistency of the matter that's there, you know, the kind of problems that they might have to deal with over the course of very harsh weather conditions that Winnipeg does go through, that they're able to withstand that. And so that stage four is ultimately the biggest part of this. That's the part where they're going to fully start digging down in the area where these two women are believed

to be buried in. And it's a belief that it will start maybe around September, October. So that's what they've called it as fall 2024 to spring 2025. But Premier Canoe has told me that this search ultimately, and there's a stage five to it as well, could last until 2026. Very well so. OK, so it is it's a multi-stage process. We're in, as you say, stage two now. Looks like in the fall, we're actually going to see them digging and searching in specific parts of the landfill where they think these women might be. But it's still very much kind of in at the early stages then of this of this recovery process.

Absolutely. But for the family members, this is more than they've ever seen so far. Right. Like they've had to argue about this. They've had to go to so many places to make sure that governments are doing what they've asked them to do, which is to find these women and give them a dignified funeral. But there's a lot more to come with this landfill search. This will be something that will be very hard, very difficult. In fact, it's being done by hand for that reason, because of how hard this is going to be to find exactly these remains where they are. But it is something that, you know, has been talked about how it is the humane thing to do because it's, in the words of Cambria Harris, Morgan Harris's daughter, if you don't search for her mom and for Mercedes Myron, you are telling all Indigenous girls, all First Nations girls out there that if you go missing, we're not going to go looking for you. And that's why it's so important to do the search to the families. I think that's a really important point, just kind of the moral aspect of this in a way, Tamora.

Because, you know, the fact that not searching the landfill, you know, for, I guess, safety reasons or cost reasons, the fact that this was really debated, I guess, what have family members or advocates told you about, yeah, the fact that that was even an option, I guess. Yeah, you know, in Canada, this is our biggest blight in some ways. This is our biggest stain in our way of living, in the way we talk about missing and murdered Indigenous women, is that we don't treat them like any other people. We treat them in a way that they don't deserve the kind of rights that a lot of other women might, or a lot of other people might, a lot of other men might. And that's something the family members have gone out of their way to say that that's why it's important that we start talking about this issue in the way that it is. And so there needs to be a sort of a reason for why we're going out looking for them, because it tells the country that this is an important aspect for us to sort of reconcile with.

And in that way, it's important for us to go looking for them. It's this is why this case has become emblematic in so many ways of the big crisis that we're dealing with when it comes to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. And it's why so many people have rallied around it. Yeah, I'm glad you brought this up because I just want to read some numbers out to you here, some stats here, Tamar. Between 2009 and 2021, Indigenous women and girls were six times more likely to be murdered than non-Indigenous women and girls. That's according to Statistics Canada.

And police were less likely to lay or recommend a charge of first-degree murder when the victim was Indigenous, 27%, compared to 54% for non-Indigenous women. So yeah, Tamar, I mean, you know, in light of those numbers, the fact that this case we're talking about, it got a conviction of four counts of first degree murder. I mean, how significant is that? Right. And I mean, the numbers that you're citing in those same numbers, they said that actually second degree murder and manslaughter was more common. Part of it is because so many advocates have over the years talked to us about, and they've explained to us over and over again, that there are systematic problems in the way that we look at these things. There is a real system built around the idea in which, you know, missing and murdered Indigenous women, when these women go missing, when they get murdered, we are perpetually, through our historical mechanisms, not looking at them

as real people. We're discriminating against them. Our systems are almost designed to sort of not look at them as real people. In fact, Premier Wab Kanu, he gave me an interview right after this verdict on the day of, and he pointed that out, that this needs to be the standard. We need to set this as a standard, is what he's told me. And that's important, not just in Manitoba, because it's important, he said, to our national conversation around how we think of Indigenous peoples, how we think about the justice system when it comes to the way it handles these cases. Because if we talk about that in the right way, if we do it in the right way, it'll never happen to begin with.

It doesn't tell these people who keep doing these things and keep getting away with it that this is something you can do in Canada. Just lastly here, Tamar, we've talked about the landfill search, but you've been speaking with families of these victims throughout some of this process here. What else do they want to see happen as a result of all of this? There's a few things they want. One of the things that they've brought up over and over, especially after the trial, is that they feel it's important that a public independent inquiry happens into these killings. You know, right now there's a disconnect, right? The police told us in 2022 it was too unsafe to go looking for Mercedes, Myron and Morgan Harris. And now we have a premier, a government, and we have Ottawa telling us that actually it's suddenly safe now.

Why that disconnect happened is something they want to look into. That's what they want from the public inquiry. But then on top of that, they also don't want us to move away from this. They want this to be, Cambria Harris has talked about this with me over and over again. She wants everybody to understand that this is something that does keep happening over and over again in Canada. Our systemic problems are allowing this to happen in that way. So they don't want people to move on from this. They want them to keep talking about it.

And ultimately, the landfill search really is the third and the biggest thing that they want for that exact reason, because they want people to be reminded of the fact that Indigenous women are human beings. They deserve the same sort of dignity and the same rights that any other person would if they are killed in the way that they were killed in this way. Tamar, thank you for taking the time to be here today.

Thank you. Thanks for having me. That's it for today. I'm Mainika Raman-Wilms. This episode was produced by Kevin Sexton. Our producers are Madeline White, Rachel Levy-McLaughlin, and Michal Stein. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Chung is our senior producer, and Matt Frainer is our managing editor.

Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you soon.