New rules and more thorough record keeping could help find more murder victims, says NDP

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Stricter rules and more thorough record-keeping could help prevent instances where human remains are lost in landfills and families of murder victims face an additional layer of grief, the NDP said Wednesday. opposition from Manitoba.

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“At the end of the day, we have to give the… information to the police who help them do their job and get justice for the families,” Nahanni Fontaine, NDP justice critic, said in an interview. Fontaine is the Caucus Spokesperson for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls and Two-Spirit People.

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Fontaine’s comments came a day after Winnipeg police gave reasons why they decided not to search the Prairie Green landfill, where two Indigenous women – Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran – were allegedly abducted by a killer in presumed series.

The remains are thought to have been taken to the private dump north of Winnipeg in the spring. Many apartment buildings and condominiums in Winnipeg use private contractors to pick up waste. When police learned of the possibility several weeks later, the site had already seen an additional 10,000 truckloads of dumped waste along with around 1,500 tonnes of animal remains.

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The trucks involved did not have GPS units on board to track their location or video cameras, police said, and the landfill compacted its waste with tons of heavy mud and clay.

Fontaine said requiring GPS tracking and video cameras could help pinpoint an area to begin the search. She would also like to see extensive record keeping needed to track what is deposited.

“There are Manitoba families who are in incredible turmoil right now and are hurting in unimaginable ways,” she said.

Fontaine highlighted the search for Rebecca Contois, whose partial remains were found in the municipal Brady landfill in the south of the city in June. Garbage trucks used by the city have GPS tracking and video cameras. The materials in this landfill are also not compacted. As a result, the police had a starting point for this search and an easier time to sift through the documents. Less time had also passed in this case.

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Contois, Harris, Myran and an unidentified woman whom police and community leaders have named Buffalo Woman were killed weeks apart in the spring, allegedly at the hands of Jeremy Skibicki.

Skibicki has been charged with four counts of first degree murder. He has not yet pleaded guilty, but his attorney said last week that Skibicki maintains his innocence.

The district manager of the company that owns the Prairie Green landfill said the company was cooperating fully with the police and offered its condolences to the families of the women.

“The disappearance of these young women is an indescribable tragedy and we are all extremely upset,” said Barry Blue of Waste Connections of Canada.

The company does not know full details of the ongoing police investigation, Blue added.

“We are not in a position to really comment on the ability to locate or recover victims at this time,” he said.

“I can tell you that the landfill is a dynamic and dangerous place with lots of moving parts…and so that makes locating extremely difficult.”