The Decibel - The search for First Nations women in Winnipeg landfills

Episode Date: April 11, 2023

On April 4, the body of Linda Mary Beardy, a woman from Lake St. Martin First Nation, was discovered at a Winnipeg landfill. It’s the same landfill where, less than a year ago, the victim of an alleged serial killer was found. Police say Ms. Beardy’s death is not being considered a homicide, but it has brought renewed attention and outrage over the deaths of First Nations women in the area.In the last year, the remains of four First Nations women, believed to be victims of a serial killer, have been discovered or are believed to be in Winnipeg landfills. The outrage from the women’s communities is not just over their deaths, but also over what they say is failure and inaction from Winnipeg Police.The Globe’s crime and justice reporter Molly Hayes joins The Decibel to discuss why police have refused to search one of the landfills and the renewed fight for answers from the families and friends of missing and murdered Indigenous women.Questions? Comments? Ideas? Email us at [e-mail]

A warning today. This episode is about missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. So please take care. I want to bring attention to awareness that Indigenous people are not trash and normalizing having their bodies found in dumpsters is disgraceful. Chris Travers is the chief of Lake St. Martin First Nation in Manitoba. Earlier this month, workers at a Winnipeg landfill found the body of a woman. Her name was Linda Mary Beardy. She was 33 years old and originally from Lake St. Martin First Nation. And while police say her death is not a homicide, where she was found is a reminder of how other Indigenous women have also been left in landfills.

I should not have to stand here today and I should not have to come here and be so mad and beg and beg so that you will find and bring our loved ones home. Cambria Harris spoke in Ottawa in December. Her mother, Morgan, is among four First Nations women who police say were the victims of a serial killer. Their bodies have been discovered in, or are believed to be in, Winnipeg landfills. Their families are outraged about their deaths, but also about how the police initially said they were not going to search the landfills to find them. My mother didn't pass away with a home. So let's pay her the respect that she deserves by finally giving her one that's not a

resting place at the Prairie Green landfill and for these other women as well. I think it's disgusting. Today I'm speaking with Molly Hayes who covers crime and justice for the globe. Molly will help us understand what's been happening in Winnipeg and how the victims' families are fighting to search these landfills. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms, and this is The Decibel from The Globe and Mail. Molly, thank you so much for being here today. Thanks for having me on. So we learned on Thursday last week that the police are not considering Linda Mary Beardy's death a homicide.

She's the woman who was found at Brady Landfill, of course, last week. But she's not the only woman who's been recovered from this landfill. And in order to understand this, Molly, we have to go back actually to May 2022. So tell us what happened then. So on May 16th, 2022, the remains of a woman were found first in a garbage bin behind a Winnipeg apartment building, and then a short time later at the same landfill, the Brady Road landfill. Within a few days, a man named Jeremy Skibicki is arrested. He was charged with the murder of that woman who was identified at that time as Rebecca Contois. Jump six months forward in time to December,

and Winnipeg police hold a press conference. And they announced that the same man charged with Rebecca's murder is now facing three more first degree murder charges. So basically, police are now alleging this is a serial killer. Yeah. And do we know who those other women are? Yeah. So his other three victims we now know are believed to include Morgan Harris, a 39-year-old woman, a 26-year-old woman, Mercedes Myron, and then a fourth woman who they haven't been able to identify, but whom elders have called Buffalo Woman. Okay. Police have said they don't know where Buffalo Woman's body is, in addition to not knowing who she is.

But they have said that they believe Morgan and Mercedes are at another landfill in the city known as the Prairie Green Landfill. So they believe their bodies have been dumped there, essentially. Mm-hmm. And just to be clear, these are all First Nations women? Mm, essentially. Mm-hmm. And just to be clear, these are all First Nations women? Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Was this man who was arrested, this alleged serial killer, was he known to police before the deaths of these women?

Because, I mean, these are massive crimes. Yeah, so this was someone with a record and with a record of violence against past partners. So, you know, including an ex who'd been granted an order of protection against him in, I think, 2019. Okay. So in December 2022, this is when these three additional first degree murder charges were laid against this man. But when exactly do police believe that these women were killed? So there's four women killed in total. What's the timeline here? Yeah, so we don't learn about it. And when I say we, I also include the families there until December. But it actually was, police believe, around the same time that Rebecca

Contwell was killed. So I think it was a period of like six weeks between March and May 2022 that all four of these women were killed. Okay, March and May 2022. And it's December that year. That's when police are actually making these announcements. So that's, I mean, that's like at least seven months between when he actually killed these women and when police are announcing this to the public. Like, why did it take so long? Yeah, I mean, I'm not sure.

I think that's a big question that people still have. And it's pretty devastating to look back, you know, even just for media reports in that six-month window. You know, there's videos of the family taping up missing person posters around the city. And, you know, we see other family members posting very desperate pleas to Facebook looking for any sign of their whereabouts. And so, you know, it's quite getting to realize now in hindsight that during that period that they were so desperately searching for them, the police believed already that they were in the landfill. Wow. So police believe both Morgan Harris and Mercedes Myron are at this landfill, Prairie Green landfill, just north of Winnipeg. What about the recovery effort here? Like what have police said around this? So at the time that they announced this in December, they also say that they're not going to recover them. That back in June, I think it was, that they

had made this determination. They decided already that it was too difficult. They said too much time had passed, basically, that it would be too difficult and dangerous to attempt a recovery. You know, in June, the factors they were citing as these sort of insurmountable hurdles were asbestos. You know, they said that that would pose a danger to searchers at the site. They mentioned animal bones strewn through the site, that it would, there's, you know, such a high volume of them that it would make it very difficult to discern human from animal bones and then also you know one of the main things was just the volume of debris that they would have to sift through so that was already a challenge in June never mind in December and never mind now in April. Okay so in December the police said that that it wasn't feasible to search for these women in the landfill.

We're doing our best to bring justice to the families, and that's what we hope to do. A successful search and recovery in this circumstance isn't feasible. So, Molly, what was the reaction from the community and from family members specifically to that decision from police? There was immediate outrage. Very quickly after this news broke, family members of the victims, along with Indigenous leaders in the province, went to Ottawa to demand a search. And one of the people who spoke there was Chief Kyra Wilson of Long Plain First Nation, where Morgan Harris and Mercedes Myron were both from.

We have 231 calls to justice. We need searches, we need supports, and it needs to start now. There hasn't been much that has been done when it comes to missing and murdered women and girls in Two-Spirit. There has been money identified for these supports, for these searches, and something needs to be done today. She messaged the inquiry into missing and murdered women and girls in this country and about the calls for justice and all the work that has not been done

and still needs to be done in order to stop having cases like this. We also heard from, at that same press conference, Morgan Harris's daughter, Cambria. And they say that they can't search because it's not feasible. Is human life not feasible? Time and time again, our Indigenous women and brothers and sisters have to come here and we have to shout and we have to raise our voices begging for change and begging for justice for our people. And that is wrong. And Cambria is one of the loudest voices really calling for this search to happen. Molly, you actually spoke with her. What does what does Cambria want people to know here? So, you know, she spoke about her mom as a person, about the difficulty she faced in her life and about the ways she always managed to show her love to them despite it. And so, you know, Cambria is, she's young, she's grieving,

but she's also very angry. She has a daughter herself who has been robbed of her grandmother, and their whole family really has just been robbed of closure. We'll be back after this message. So, I mean, it sounds like the victims' families and their community here have really been pushing for action to try and find these women. So what came out of all of this? search this, you know, what it would entail, what it might cost, how much time would it take. And so it would be looking at some of those challenges that police had cited to sort of, you know, figure out what's possible. And so that has been underway since December. And we should say the federal government announced $500,000 towards this feasibility study. So they've put up a little bit of money now to try to essentially see if this is workable. This isn't the first time that the community has been outspoken about a landfill search though, right? I mean, this has

been an issue before. So, you know, especially in Winnipeg, this, you know, in Canada, missing and murdered indigenous women and girls is a crisis. And in Winnipeg, you know, they have been seen as sort of the epicenter of this. And this is something that the city's gone through before. In 2012, police searched the Brady Road landfill for the body of Tanya Nepenak, who they believed had been killed and dumped there. And they didn't find her. And at the time, her family felt that that search was inadequate, that they didn't try hard enough to find her. So I think this has resurfaced a lot of those same feelings and that trauma for these families in the community. And just last week, StatsCan put out a report on the gender-related homicide of women and girls in Canada. And it

found that in 2021, the femicide rate of Indigenous women and girls was more than triple that of the femicide rate overall. And despite compr was more than triple that of the femicide rate overall. And despite comprising 5% of the female population that year, indigenous women and girls accounted for 17% of all femicides in that year. Well, I mean, those numbers really show you then how much more at risk indigenous women and girls are. Yeah, these aren't one-offs, and I think that's the thing. Also, Molly, you talked to some experts in the field about what it would actually take to do a search like this. So what did they tell you about the difficulties of actually searching a place, a landfill in this way?

Yeah, so I spoke with three forensic anthropologists about the specific difficulties of landfill searches because they are very complicated. It's a unique type of search to do. One of the forensic anthropologists I spoke with was actually a lead on the search of the Picton farm. So Robert Picton, of course, you know, Canadian serial killer, he claimed to have killed 49 women and a number of whom were indigenous. Okay. And there was a massive search for these women on his farm in BC.

Yeah. So that is known still today as Canada's largest crime scene. And it's worth noting too, that's one of the things the forensic anthropologists pointed out that that farm, you know, a 14 acre plot of land took a year and a half to search. The landfill police have described as four acres. So that pales in comparison to that search. You know, they certainly agreed this would be a complicated search. This would likely be a very expensive search. But one of the most interesting things to me was that they said, you know, it depends

on who you envision doing this search. If you picture police officers doing it, then yeah, some of this might be very difficult. But that's why they said you don't use police officers for these searches. You use experts who are trained to do this and to look for the things you're looking for. And what kind of things would they look for? Like if we have forensic anthropologists actually doing this searching, what are the clues, I guess, that they use? Yeah, so landfills, I learned, are basically divided into cells. And so you're not just going in and dumping sort of,

you know, freely wherever you want. They're organized facilities. And so the main challenge is to narrow in on the cell that you need. And so the way that they do that is they look for clues with what's buried there. And so, for example, once they have a rough idea of where they're supposed to be, they'll look for milk cartons and look at the expiry dates

and make sure they're sort of within the timeframe that they need to be looking in. And then they'll also use mail. So discarded bills or whatever that have dates and addresses on them and make sure that they're looking for the materials from the location they're looking for. So there's actually clues sort of within our own trash that will help them to potentially find these women. Yeah, that makes sense. And then something else that you mentioned before that the police were citing as an issue is animal bones in the trash and finding that difficult to discern. But

I'd imagine if you've got someone who specializes in this, they'll be able to figure that out pretty quickly. Where this bone comes from. Oh, yeah, they absolutely were like, that would take seconds. That's our job. That's our expertise. Has this kind of search actually been done before? Like have forensic anthropologists searched a landfill to find someone? It's definitely been done. It's, again, you know, they're not always successful. They're very complicated. But there are stories and there's recent stories of successful searches in landfills.

So, you know, in August 2021, Toronto police searched a London, Ontario landfill, which is owned by the city of Toronto, for the body of a suspected murder victim, a 57-year-old man. And they did find him. And that was eight months after they believed that he'd been transported there. So it's certainly possible. So just lastly here, Molly, I mean, it sounds like we're waiting for the results of this feasibility study. Do we have a sense of which way that'll go? Do we know if these searches will actually happen for these women? It does seem like a search is going to happen.

So a report from the feasibility committee is still about four to six weeks away. The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs has said they're leading this study. But they did say that basically it's possible something's going to happen. It's unclear exactly, you know, what this will look like, but it will be searched. And so, Molly, we've talked around this a little bit, but I just want to kind of address this point directly. Like, why is it so important for the family members of the victims who are believed to be in these landfills? Why is it so important that the search for these women actually happens?

Part of it is about closure, for sure, for the families, but it's also bigger than that. Cambria has said that, you know, she does not think that a search should even end with Prairie Green. She also wants to see Brady Road searched and also potentially landfills beyond that. You know, she said to me, yes, this affects her family and it affects Mercedes Myron's family, but also who knows how many others, you know, like there are so many missing and murdered women in this country. So, you know, Cambria said to me, if four ended up here, then where are the rest? Yeah, it's almost like this could, we're talking about this one specific situation, but it sounds like this could actually be a much broader conversation here. Yeah, and I think that's exactly the conversation, you know, she's so committed to having. And also

leaving them there sends a message she believes that it's okay. You know, she said, and I quote, the message you're sending to the greater indigenous community and the greater society of Canada is that it's okay to continuously murder our women and it's okay to continuously dump them like trash because no one will look for them. Yeah. So it sounds like from the experts you talked to, you know, something like this, it's not, it's not easy, but it's, it's possible. It sounds like from the experts you talked to, you know, something like this, it's not easy, but it's possible, it sounds like. I think it's not, you know, they stress that it's not just that it's possible. It's that there are also very critical human reasons to try. You know, it might not be successful.

Sometimes they're not. But I think one of the things that, you know, so deeply offended the families in particular was that they weren't even going to try. And so that's what the experts said, is that at the very least, we need to try to find these women. Molly, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. Thanks for discussing this. That's it for today. I'm Maina Karaman-Wilms.

Our producers are Madeline White, Cheryl Sutherland, and Rachel Levy-McLaughlin. David Crosby edits the show. Adrian Cheung is our senior producer, and Angela Pachenza is our executive editor. Thanks so much for listening, and I'll talk to you tomorrow.