MINNEAPOLIS – A new online database promises to crack some of the nation’s 100,000 missing persons cases and provide answers to desperate families, but only a fraction of law enforcement agencies are using it.

The clearinghouse, dubbed NamUs (Name Us), offers a quick way to check whether a missing loved one might be among the 40,000 sets of unidentified remains that languish at any given time with medical examiners across the country. NamUs is free, yet many law enforcement agencies still aren’t aware of it, and others aren’t convinced they should use their limited staff resources to participate.

Janice Smolinski hopes that changes — and soon. Her son, Billy, was 31 when he vanished five years ago. The Cheshire, Conn., woman fears he was murdered, his body hidden away.

She’s now championing a bill in Congress, named “Billy’s Law” after her son, that would set aside more funding and make other changes to encourage wider use of NamUs. Only about 1,100 of the nearly 17,000 law enforcement agencies nationwide are registered to use the system, even though it already has been hailed for solving 16 cases since it became fully operational last year.

“As these cases become more well known, as people learn about the successes of NamUs, more and more agencies are going to want to be part of it,” said Kristina Rose, acting director of the National Institute of Justice at the Justice Department.

Before NamUs, families and investigators had to go through the slow process of checking with medical examiner’s offices one by one. As the Smolinski family searched for clues to Billy’s fate, they met a maze of federal, state and nonprofit missing person databases that weren’t completely public and didn’t share information well with each other.

NamUs, the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System, allows one-stop sleuthing for amateurs, families and police. Anyone can enter all the data they have on a missing person, including descriptions, photos, fingerprints, dental records and DNA. Medical examiners can enter the same data on unidentified bodies, and anyone can search the database for potential matches that warrant further investigation.

So far, about 6,200 sets of remains and nearly 2,800 missing people have been entered, said Kevin Lothridge, CEO of the National Forensic Science Technology Center in Largo, Fla., which runs NamUs for the Justice Department.

Detective Jim Shields of the Omaha, Neb., Police Department hadn’t heard about NamUs until he saw a presentation at a conference in 2008. He then had a local volunteer associated with NamUs input his data on several missing people.

Among them was Luis Fernandez, who had been missing for nearly a year before his family went to police in 2008. Shields didn’t have a lot on Fernandez, a known gang member who’d been in and out of jail — only gender, race, height, weight, age and some data on his tattoos.

It proved to be enough. Just a few weeks later, similarities were spotted with the unidentified remains of a homicide victim found in a farm field in Iowa in 2007. In January, a lab informed Shields it had a DNA match — and that he could break the news to Fernandez’ family.

“I could say fairly certainly that this would never have been solved if not for NamUs,” Shields said.

Some other recent successes:

• Paula Beverly Davis, of the Kansas City, Mo., area, had been missing for 22 years until a relative saw a public service announcement on TV in October for NamUs and told her sister, who gave it a try. Among the 10 matches her sister found were a body dumped in Ohio in 1987 that had the same rose and unicorn tattoos as her sister. DNA tests confirmed the body was Davis.

• Sonia Lente disappeared in 2002. Last June, an amateur cybersleuth with the Doe Network, a nationwide volunteer group that helps law enforcement solve cold cases, noticed similarities between Lente’s description in NamUs and an unidentified body found near Albuquerque, N.M., in 2004. Dental records later established it was Lente.

Detective Stuart Somershoe of the Phoenix Police Department said his agency, which has over 500 open missing persons cases, just finished entering 100 cases into NamUs. He’s hopeful his department can make a match.

“It’s kind of time-consuming but I think it’s a worthwhile program,” Somershoe said.

NamUs grew out of a Justice Department task force working on the challenge of solving missing persons cases. One need that the task force identified was to give people who could help solve cases better access to database information.

“Billy’s Law” sailed through the House late last month and is pending in the Senate, where supporters are confident it will easily pass.

The bill would authorize $10 million in grants annually that police, sheriffs, medical examiners and coroners could use to train people to use NamUs and to help cover the costs of entering data into the system. It would also authorize another $2.4 million a year to run the system and ensure permanent funding.

The bill would also link NamUs with a major FBI crime database that’s now available only to law enforcement, partly because it contains sensitive information about ongoing investigations. That confidential data would be withheld from NamUs when necessary.

Billy Smolinski, of Waterbury, Conn., was last seen Aug. 24, 2004, when he asked a neighbor to look after his dog. His pickup truck was later found outside his home, though not where he usually parked it. His wallet and other belongings were still inside.

The Smolinski family first struggled to get police to take a missing adult case seriously. It took a long time for investigators to finally conclude Billy had been killed, perhaps as a result of a love triangle gone sour. The family put up reward posters, searched places where they thought his body might have been hidden and kept pressure on police.

Smolinski said she came to see how police were often overwhelmed, but to her NamUs is a “no-brainer.”

“If they find remains I’m hopeful they’ll identify him through NamUs,” Smolinski said.

On the Net:

National Missing and Unidentified Persons System: http://www.namus.gov

Well this certainly throws a spanner in the works:

Police are looking for another missing woman in the same city that Jessica Elizabeth Lloyd was from. Belleville authorities issued a release late Saturday asking for information about Deborah Rashotte, who was last seen about a month ago.

Rashotte’s disappearance came two weeks before Jessica Elizabeth Lloyd vanished on Jan. 27. Lloyd’s body was discovered two weeks ago and her death has now been linked to Col. Russell Williams, the former base commander of CFB Trenton.

Rashotte’s family reported her missing on Friday. Her last known location was St. Thomas Church in Belleville.

Ashley Clancey, a friend of Rashotte’s for about eight years, says her friend is a free spirit and for a long time, everybody in her life assumed that she was staying with somebody else.

It was the Williams case that alarmed Rashotte’s friends and family about the length of time she was missing, and they fear something is very wrong, Clancey said.

“She’s a very outgoing person, very friendly,” Clancey told CTV Ottawa. 

“She’d probably talk to about anybody. That’s the kind of person she is.”

Abandoned cell phone in bathroom

Rashotte’s cell phone was left in the bathroom of her father, where the 27-year-old was living. The last call on it was made on Jan. 23, and on Feb. 4 service was suspended due to non-payment, Clancey said.

Belleville police were not immediately available for comment. In the case of Lloyd, her cell phone and purse were also left in the house where she was staying prior to her disappearance and death.

Rashotte is described as five feet seven inches and 130 pounds. She has long, red hair and blue eyes and was last wearing a white jacket.

Anyone with any information should contact the Belleville Police Service at 613-966-0882.

New commander takes over at Trenton base

Lt.-Col. Dave Cochrane, a Toronto native, will take over Williams’ position at CFB Trenton. Williams is currently charged with causing the murder of Jessica Lloyd, whose funeral was on Saturday, and Cpl. Marie-France Comeau.

He is also accused of sexually assaulting two women in Tweed, a small town just outside of Trenton.

Police said in previous days that they are combing through cold cases in all of his previous locations, which include academics at Upper Canada College, the University of Toronto and postings at the Royal Military College, with postings in Portage la Prairie, Man., CFB Shearwater in Nova Scotia, the Middle East and Gatineau.

His name was Russell Sovka for part of his youth, when his mother divorced and then re-married his then-stepfather, Jerry.

Members of the Sovka family told CTV News Channel that the charges did not fit with the picture of the boy they knew.

His mother, Nonie, still lives in Toronto and works at Sunnybrook Health Centre. His wife, Mary-Elizabeth Harriman, is the associate executive director of the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada.

Court appearance set for Thursday

As investigators searched Williams’ Ottawa home, two properties his wife owns and a lakeside couple that belongs to the couple, reports said Williams was placed under a suicide watch at the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee, Ont., which is about 60 kilometres east of CFB Trenton.

The Ottawa police told CTV Ottawa that they and the OPP will share files as the scope of the investigation widens.

“To date, we’ve talked to people in break and enter and sex assault, but we’re merely in the preliminary stages of this invesigation,” said Insp. Al Tario of the Ottawa police.

With files from CTV Ottawa’s Kimothy Walker, Karen Soloman, CTV.ca and the Canadian Press

The Toronto Star has a story this morning that at least three provinces have contacted the OPP over cold cases that may have involved Russ Williams. Among them, Halifax who have inquired about Andrea King, Shelley Conners and Kimber Lucas:

Not bad for a 1/2 hour of amateur sleuthing, I suspected police would look at all three of these cases in my post last night. I’m sure there will be more to come.

On a personal note; some of you know I was born in Trenton. My family happened to be in Trenton celebrating Easter over the weekend that my sister, Theresa’s body was discovered, April 13th, 1979. I remember that day vividly. I came into my grandparents home, was given the news. I immediately went for a run all the way to the Trenton Air Force base and back. Which, to a 13-year-old, seemed like a very long way.

What indeed: there’s a new Facebook page for her set up that I have joined:

BARRINGTON, New Hampshire (NEWS CENTER) –

The family of a woman who disappeared after a car accident in Maine more than three weeks ago is searching for answers.

Sarah Rogers is a 29 year old mother, wife and daughter whose family says suffers from a bi-polar disorder which can cause her to go into a ‘manic state’.  On the morning of December 13th, Rogers was in the midst of one of these episodes when she took off in her car.  She has not been seen or heard from since.

“We all feel helpless,” said Sarah’s husband, Francis Coulombe.  “There is nothing we can do.  We want her to come home.  We want her to know that we love her.”  Coulombe says Sarah took off wearing only beach shorts, a tank top and a light jacket.

A tow truck driver heading north on I-95 in Clinton saw her car off the road in the median and stopped to provide assistance about 8 hours after she left her home.  When he got to the vehicle, he saw the door was left wide open with the keys inside.  He followed footprints from the car and found her purse nearby, but no sign of Sarah.

A Maine State Police Trooper showed up to help the tow truck driver and also went looking for the driver of the car.  He saw footprints meandering through the wooded median which stopped on the southbound lane.  When the trooper later learned the car belonged to a missing person, he enlisted other troopers to search in the area, but did not find any signs of Sarah Rogers.

“If she had family or friends from that area, then that would give us something to work from,” said Barrington Police Chief Richard Conway.  “We have no reason to understand why she went to Maine to begin with.”  Clinton is about 160 miles from Rogers’ home in New Hampshire.  Police have issued a missing persons bulletin and have flagged her credit cards in an effort to track her down.

Police are asking anyone who was driving through the area of mile 141 northbound on December 13th around 6 in the evening, and saw the accident or Sarah, to give them a call.  “Maybe they will remember and they will call the Maine State Police and let them know that they picked her up and dropped her off – whether it be further south or just into a neighboring town,” said Chief Conway.  “At least then that will give us all something to go on and that will let us know that she was all right when she left the accident scene.”

“It has been pretty hard,” said Coulombe.  ”I am still probably a lot in shock about it really, not knowing where she is.  When she has had a manic breakdown like this before, she has called me, and you know, she hasn’t called at all.  She hasn’t called any of her friends, or her father or mother, nobody.”

Anyone with any information is urged to call Maine State Police at 1-800-452-4664 or Barrington Police at 1-603-664-7679.

The Vanishing Point: Monica Jack headed home but she never arrived

It was a clear spring day that Saturday in 1978, when 12-year-old Monica Jack and her 14-year-old cousin Debbie John embarked on a childhood adventure: riding their bikes into the nearby town of Merritt to go shopping.

It was the first time Monica’s mother Madeline Lanaro had given her permission to do such a long trek. It was 12 km along Highway 5A from Monica’s rural Nicola Lake home to Debbie’s house in Nicola, and then the two rode another 10 km into Merritt, a city in B.C.’s Interior.

“It was going to be a good day. We had money to go shopping,” John said, the memory still eliciting tears more than 30 years later.

Monica, who was to turn 13 in a few days, had received money from her father to buy new shoes. She also purchased a birthday gift for her younger sister Liz, who had just turned 11.

The two parted ways close to John’s house. “I went home and then she went home,” John said softly.

But Monica never arrived.

Her body was not found until 1996. In October 2007 her name was added to the RCMP’s E-Pana investigation, which is probing the disappearances and murders of 18 girls and women along Highways 16, 97 and 5 over the last 40 years.

Thirteen of the 18 victims on the so-called Highway of Tears list were under 20 years old. Monica, 12, was the youngest.

Here is her story.

•

Monica was the third-youngest child in her family and was mainly raised by her mother, who is now a retired social worker. The girl’s father Philip Swakum owned a ranch nearby, where Monica liked to visit his horses.

She was a popular girl, both within her large family and among all the neighbourhood kids.

“Monica was beautiful, cool and sweet. She wore bell bottoms,” sister Liz Kraus recalls now.

“She always took care of me. She never let anybody hurt me.”

Added John: “Everybody loved her. . . She was always in good spirits. I don’t think I ever saw her get mad.”

She was a good student. “She had already decided what she wanted to be when she grew up. She wanted to be a social worker and work with kids,” Lanaro said during a recent interview at her Spences Bridge home, where she was surrounded by her close-knit family.

There are carefully cherished items in Lanaro’s home that the family proudly shows off: a clown-shaped wooden spoon holder and a yellow floral blanket, two of the last gifts Monica had given to her mother; the trophy the family won for their float in the 1977 Kinsmen parade in Merritt, when Monica wore her grandmother’s buckskin dress; and the intricate wooden native carving she made at school, which was photographed by the local newspaper at the time.

The family did not have a lot of money, but the girls have happy childhood memories of swimming in Nicola Lake and hiking the local mountains for picnic lunches. The kids collected errant golf balls and sold them back to the local course, using the proceeds to buy candy at the store.

Well-perused family photo albums show Monica blowing out birthday-cake candles, dressed in shorts with her arms around younger sisters Liz and Heather on a hot summer day, holding a Bible — a gift from a relative — smiling with a new pair of moccasins, sitting with Liz on the hood of Lanaro’s beloved yellow Mustang. Monica was just starting to get into sports, and was turning into a talented softball pitcher.

By the dining room table, where the family shares a meal to remember Monica, hangs a large, brightly coloured collage with three pictures of the pretty, slender teen, surrounding a native image of two loons, the sun and some feathers. A constant reminder of their loss.

•

Earlier on the morning of May 6, 1978, Monica had helped her mother bake Liz’s birthday cake before she set off on her bike ride.

Lanaro and the other adults in their large extended family were getting ready for a favourite tradition: fishing for trout on nearby Stoney Lake, an all-night affair. For generations, the adults caught fish by the bucketful, using bonfires and blankets to keep warm; this time the children stayed home — the teenagers looking after the younger cousins and siblings.

On her way to Stoney Lake that fateful evening, Lanaro saw her daughter riding her bike home from the shopping trip and offered to give her a lift for the last little way. Monica refused; she wanted to complete her journey on her own. “She didn’t want to ride in the car. She wanted to ride her bike,” Lanaro said quietly, wiping away tears.

The mother and the other adults continued driving to Stoney Lake and did not find out from the children, until they returned to the house the next morning, that Monica had never made it home.

“We didn’t know what to think and we called the cops right away. They came out pretty fast. They got boats and they searched the lake,” Lanaro said. “Then we started looking and looking.”

It was family members who found Monica’s prize bike thrown down a bank off the highway, not far from their house.

Neighbours had heard shouting from that area around the time Monica is believed to have disappeared but they dismissed the noise as a couple squabbling. “It took me years to be comfortable driving by there. I still cry,” said Lanaro.

Area residents reported earlier seeing a man standing in the area where the bike was found, as well as a light-green truck with a camper on the back.

That was the last year the adults went out as a large group for the traditional trout fishing, instead leaving some behind at the houses. And since Monica’s disappearance, children in the extended family have not been allowed to ride their bikes on the highway and are closely guarded by their parents.

The whole family’s innocence had been shattered.

Lanaro has overheard comments from people who, over the years, thought the family should be done grieving. “I have heard people say, ‘Her daughter probably just ran away. People don’t steal Indian kids,’ ” Lanaro recalled. “You don’t ever get over it.”

•

Then one day in June 1995, forestry workers came across some human remains in a ravine off a logging road on Swakum Mountain, about 20 km from where Monica’s bike had been found.

It took until February 1996, nearly 18 years after the girl disappeared, to confirm through DNA testing and dental records that Monica had been found.

A police officer phoned Lanaro at work. “He said, ’Madeline I want to talk to you.’ And I knew right away,” she recalled, crying.

Three of Monica’s sisters went to the police station to collect a box containing her clothes. They braced themselves before opening it, and Kraus was overcome by the small size of her big sister’s pink floral top, brown cords and blue running shoes.

“It was the little clothes of a little girl. She was small, but I never thought of her like that because she was my big sister,” Kraus said.

About 150 relatives and friends made a pilgrimage up the steep mountainous road, and along a rugged trail, to see where Monica had been all these years. It was a snow-covered trek, and people helped each other on the treacherous climb to the isolated spot. “It was so nice to see that kind of support from the community,” Lanaro said.

“We went and got her spirit,” John added, noting the turnout was a testament to how popular Monica had been nearly two decades earlier.

Burying a child is a traumatic event, but at least it put 18 years of uncertainty to rest.

“I guess the worst part of it, really, was the not knowing. We think of ourselves over the 18 years, and we hear of people who disappear and we know how the families feel because we have been through the same. The hurt never stops,” Lanaro said.

Police said in 1996 that they had a suspect but not enough evidence to lay charges. It isn’t clear if that person is still considered a suspect today. Investigators said at the time that the suspect was not a local man, and described him as someone who was once married and had also lived the life of a drifter.

Officers investigated the possibility that child killer Clifford Olson was responsible for Monica’s death, the family says, but determined he had an alibi on the day of her disappearance.

“We just have to find out who did it, but it still won’t go away,” Kraus said. “We wait and wait and wait. We waited that long to find her. We won’t give up.”

Lanaro is skeptical, however, that there will ever be an arrest in the three-decade-old case. “I honestly don’t think we’ll find out. [The killer] could be dead now.”

And, John wondered, “if we found out, would it make our lives any different? Because it won’t change what happened. I try to remember her the way Monica was a long time ago, and try to envision her the way she would be today if she were still here.”

Public inquiry demanded in deaths

Racism cited as a reason the murders and disappearances have not received more attention

B.C. needs a public inquiry and a multi-agency police task force to examine the many cases of girls and women who have met violence on B.C. highways, say two community leaders who have been vocal about the so-called Highway of Tears case.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, has repeatedly called for a public inquiry into why girls and women, many of them native, have disappeared from or been found murdered along B.C. highways over the past 40 years.

The provincial government has so far failed to commit to an inquiry. That isn’t good enough, Phillip argues, because the families have waited too long for answers.

“It infuriates me that these things have gone on for so long and there hasn’t been closure and these families have continued to suffer and there has been so much indifference,” Phillip said.

Solicitor-General Kash Heed, who has the power to call such an inquiry and fund a police task force, was not available to speak Tuesday about the case, his staff told The Vancouver Sun.

The newspaper has just completed a four-day series about the Highway of Tears, which has generated much debate.

Phillip and NDP North Coast MLA Gary Coons both believe B.C. should follow the lead of Manitoba, which has formed an inter-agency task force to investigate cases of missing and murdered women in that province.

Coons also pointed to Edmonton, where a $100,000 reward has been offered for information about similar unsolved cases. His requests for a reward here have been rejected by provincial government, he said.

The current RCMP E-Pana investigation is examining only cases of murdered or missing women along three specific B.C. arteries: Highways 16, 97 and 5. Similar cases on other highways in B.C. and Alberta are not included, police say, for funding reasons and to keep the investigation a manageable size.

Coons also argues the provincial government needs to provide funding to enact the 33 recommendations that stemmed from the 2006 Highway of Tears symposium in Prince George.

“We thought with the 33 recommendations that we would finally move forward and here we are, four years later, and people are feeling like it is not getting the priority it should,” he said.

There needs to be, Coons argues, better transportation options between northern communities, an improved public awareness campaign to keep girls and women safe, and more police patrols on Highway 16, especially in the uninhabited 140 km stretch between Prince Rupert and Terrace.

There also needs to be permanent funding for the Highway of Tears coordinator, a position created after the symposium called for better communication between police and the family members.

Funding for the position ended Dec. 1.

Heed’s staff sent an e-mail to The Sun indicating some action has been taken on the recommendations, including: community forums and family meetings; a handful of anti-hitchhiking billboards erected along Highway 16, and police officers are now required to stop to talk to hitchhikers “if duties permit.”

The government has provided $100,000 to implement the report recommendations, and one-time funding of $68,000 for the coordinator’s position.

Phillip argues much more action is necessary in B.C., where there are two high-profile missing women cases: the Highway of Tears and the 64 women who vanished from the Downtown Eastside, 26 of them alleged victims of serial killer Robert (Willie) Pickton.

A recent tally by the Native Women’s Association of Canada indicates there are 520 “known” cases of missing or murdered native women, and that B.C. has the most of any province with 137 victims.

Phillip called for a change in how police investigate these cases, noting that many victims’ families have complained over the years about how their initial missing-person reports were treated poorly by officers.

He hopes to plan a coalition in January, possibly involving NDP MLAs and MPs, civil libertarians, native leaders, women’s advocates and others to push the government for an inquiry.

With the world watching Vancouver during the Olympics in February, Phillip hopes a record number of people will take part in the annual missing women Valentine’s Day march in the Downtown Eastside.

“We wouldn’t have been out marching in the streets demanding public inquiries into the missing and murdered women in the Downtown Eastside for the last 12 or 13 years if we had more effective policing, and I don’t think that will happen until we have fundamental changes,” he said.

Phillip said The Sun’s series on the Highway of Tears case is also a crucial piece of the puzzle, so the unsolved cases are kept alive in people’s minds.

Highway of Tears coordinator Mavis Erickson has also met with B.C.’s solicitor-general and attorney-general to demand an inquiry into the Highway of Tears case, to try to answer questions such as: What’s happened? How did justice fail us? What do we need to fix the problem of women’s safety?

“These cases have been cold for too long and we want the conspiracy of silence to end. And we want to know why the justice system failed so miserably,” said Erickson.

“I just think an inquiry will go a long way for closure for some families, although not all families.”

While some families also back a call for a public inquiry, Brenda Wilson does not. Wilson’s sister Ramona, 15, disappeared in 1994 from Smithers, and her body was not found for a year.

Brenda Wilson believes her sister’s case would benefit from an individual review so that the family’s specific questions are addressed.

These include why police waited so long to search for Ramona after she was reported missing; why the phone company wasn’t asked to trace a tip by a caller who told police where Ramona’s body would be found; and why the town of Smithers didn’t rally behind the Wilson family, instead opting to hold a fundraising dance for Melanie Carpenter, victim of a high-profile kidnapping in the Lower Mainland.

“It broke my heart. I knew we had to fight hard,” Wilson said.

She is somewhat optimistic that, one day, she may find out what happened to her sister, but that won’t be easy either.

“Because we’ll have to deal with it all over again, and to see if there is forgiveness and if we can learn from the process.”

Sally Gibson, the aunt of Lana Derrick, 19, who went missing in 1995 from Thornhill, remains frustrated there are still no arrests in her niece’s case and doesn’t feel these rural files get the kind of attention as those in the Lower Mainland.

“I think it is racism-plus. I don’t know what it is about being up north, but we don’t get the attention that they get down south. It seems like things happen down south and people are all over it. With the Highway of Tears, people didn’t talk about it,” Gibson said.

The wondering and waiting has been horrendous.

“There are people out there who say, ‘Oh, you’ll get over it.’ And you don’t. There’s no answer, no closure, no nothing,” she said, wiping away tears.

“It’s just like an open wound that people poke at once in a while.”

Connie Menton has her own hunches about who killed her niece Alisha (Leah) Germaine in Prince George in 1994, and is curious about why no arrests have been made. She believes people on the street have information about her niece’s case.

“All I can do is put out a plea. Please, if anybody knows anything, help us. We need to close the book on this thing,” Menton said.

“They know but they are too afraid. It was 15 years ago — you’d think there would be a crisis of consciousness to come forward.”

Her niece, and all the others whose lives were cut short, deserve justice, she added.

“I’ll never give up hope. I believe on that highway, somebody is doing something,” Menton said. “They are all girls. They are somebody’s poor innocent. Nobody deserves to die that way.”

Cory Millwater continues to pray for answers regarding her daughter Tamara Chipman, who disappeared from Prince Rupert in 2005, and the other unsolved cases.

“It scares me. I think it’s criminal that this many girls have disappeared and they’ve never figured out who’s doing it. I believe that a lot of them are connected because of the similar scenarios and the places they have disappeared from. There’s just too many of these girls who have gone missing for there not to be a connection,” she said.

“I think that as long as people keep [speaking out] that police will be forced to work on it and hopefully figure out what is going on. I’d like not only our case but all the cases solved… We all need to know.”

A former Kamloops detective got excited about a possible break in the murder of Colleen Rae MacMillen, 16, when a U.S. man confessed to killing her.

MacMillen’s body had been found on a logging road about 25 kilometres south of 100 Mile House about a month after the she went missing in 1974.

But the man changed the details of how the murder was carried out, and police later concluded it was a bogus confession, said Ken Leibel.

The suspect, Edwin Henry Foster, 19, made the confession while serving an eight-year sentence for a gas station robbery. He hanged himself in a Washington state prison in 1976.

The prospect of resolution fizzled into yet another frustrating dead end in the unsolved murder of Colleen MacMillen.

Her brutal death is just one of a grim series of disappearances and murders of women in northern B.C. that have haunted Leibel and other detectives over the years.

Leibel said he got excited again when he began investigating another likely suspect, who lived outside of 100 Mile House in the 1970s.

“Somebody came to the detachment and said a man had tried to abduct them and they took down the licence plate,” Leibel recalls today.

Police ran the plate and saw that the man, Jerry Baker, had a history of sex offences, had done time in prison and had returned to the Williams Lake area around the time MacMillen was killed — the teenager was last seen hitchhiking to a girlfriend’s house about six kilometres away in Lac la Hache.

At the time, Leibel felt the man could have been responsible for other murders as well. His name had surfaced in several other investigations, including the murders of Pamela Darlington in Kamloops in 1973 and Gail Ann Weys in Clearwater in 1974.

He tried questioning Baker about MacMillen’s murder, “but he was extremely nervous and denied it.”

Fifteen years later, Baker became the prime suspect for the murder of a young girl named Norma Tashoots, 17, whose body was found on July 10, 1989 in a wooded area near 100 Mile House. She had been shot.

She was last seen about a month earlier being dropped off near 100 Mile House while hitchhiking to Vancouver.

A local resident suggested Baker was responsible for the Tashoots murder.

Baker, who had reported his Ruger handgun stolen to police the day after Tashoots was last seen, was interviewed and denied being involved. The investigation eventually dead-ended.

But it was re-opened in 2001 after a complete file review and a decision to try an undercover operation.

Baker eventually confessed to murdering Tashoots to an undercover officer and confided where he had disposed of the murder weapon — the gun he had reported missing — which was recovered. He was convicted in 2003 of the murder.

“Is he responsible for four or five [murders] or one? I don’t know,” Leibel said of Baker.

He said police considered the possibility of a serial killer being involved in the growing number of unsolved murders that occurred along highways in B.C.’s Interior.

“If you’ve got somebody driving, you could have one guy,” Leibel said. “You can cover a lot of ground in a day.”

‘It could be anyone’

There has been criticism levelled at police and RCMP over the years for failing to solve the majority of the highway homicide cases including those of the 18 girls and women on the Highway of Tears victims’ list.

Leibel said the cases were especially difficult to investigate because they seemed to involve a killer who was a complete stranger to the murder victims, many of whom were teenage girls trying to hitch a ride.

“It could be anyone,” he said of trying to find a suspect. “It’s different than when you’re investigating a jealous husband or boyfriend.”

There has also been criticism from native communities that police didn’t properly handle cases involving some of the aboriginal victims.

But Leibel said police treat every murder the same, regardless of the race, colour or socio-economic background of the victim.

“I always looked at the victim the same: You’re my client and I’m going to get some justice for you,” Leibel said. “You investigate it as if they were your own brother, sister or parent.”

He retired as a Mountie in 1992 and currently works on contract with the RCMP, interviewing people who apply to become Mounties. Even today, he still thinks about the unsolved murder of MacMillen.

“The odd time I’ll be walking with my morning coffee and I’ll think: Could I have done something different?” Leibel, now 58, recalled.

“I’m a proud sucker,” he said, adding he solved dozens of murders over his 21-year career. Those were the days when a murder file was kept in boxes, before computers and modern forensic science, including DNA testing.

“Overall, I had a pretty good success rate but there were ones that got away [with murder].”

Leibel says he still has his notebooks from those days, which he keeps in his basement, hoping one day to get a phone call, asking him to to testify about the cold case if it gets solved and goes to trial.

“One day, you hope for the call,” he said.

Keith Hildebrand, the commander of the Quesnel detachment until he retired last year, also finds it frustrating that he could never find the solution to the murder of Deena Braem, 16, who was last seen alive hitchhiking on Sept. 25, 1999. Her body was recovered three months later, on Dec. 10, northwest of Quesnel near Pinnacles Provincial Park.

Hildebrand said the unsolved murder file was already gathering dust when he arrived as detachment commander. He oversaw the Braem investigation and brought in detectives with the Surrey-based Integrated Homicide Investigation Team. They thoroughly went through the file and tried to find any tips that were not probed.

“We had some good leads but they ended in another dead end,” explained the 58-year-old retired officer, who now runs the community policing office in Quesnel.

“They are investigating tips,” he added about the state of the current investigation.

Hildebrand estimated that over the years, more than $1 million has been spent investigating Braem’s murder.

It was frustrating for him, when he retired in 2008, that the case remained unsolved.

“It bugs me the most of all my [36] years of service. It was like a loose end you leave behind,” Hildebrand said.

“Usually, when I took on a file, it had a good result to it,” he added.

“It was a frustrating investigation for everybody, including her parents,” he recalls. “It still bothers me.”

Asked if he believes a serial killer is operating along the highways of B.C.’s Interior, Hildebrand said he is uncertain.

“The evidence is that there is something,” he said. “Something unusual.”

‘They never leave you’

Retired Mountie Fred Bodnaruk, who was a staff-sergeant when he headed the investigations into the murders of Colleen MacMillan and Pamela Darlington in the early 1970s, admitted that even though he retired in 1977, he still thinks about the cases.

“They never leave you,” he said. “You dream about them, especially the ones you don’t solve.”

He always thought a serial killer could have been responsible for several “highway murders,” as they were called then.

At one time, Bodnaruk suspected U.S. serial killer Ted Bundy was responsible for Darlington’s murder.

The nude body of the 19-year-old was found at the edge of the Thompson River in 1973 with bite marks on her body — a Bundy trademark in some U.S. killings. But investigators concluded that although Bundy had been known to visit Canada, there was no evidence he was in the area at the time.

Bundy, a former Seattle resident, was caught and sentenced to death in Florida for three murders. Just before Bundy was executed in 1989, he confessed to committing more than 20 murders but investigators felt he was responsible for many more.

“Bundy didn’t confess anything until the end,” Bodnaruk said. “I felt police here should have gone down to talk to Bundy.”

Bodnaruk also compared notes “all the time” with Seattle detectives investigating the serial murder case known as the Green River killer. The man eventually caught, Gary Ridgway, pleaded guilty in 2003 to killing 48 women.

Now 78, Bodnaruk recently watched a TV documentary about a man named Wayne Clifford Boden and felt he might be a suspect. Boden was a travelling salesman who killed three women in Montreal before moving to Calgary, where he killed again and got caught in 1972.

He was known as the Vampire Killer because he left bite marks on all his victims, similar to Darlington.

The TV documentary detailed how Boden travelled through Kamloops to Vancouver.

Boden, however, was arrested in Calgary in 1972, convicted of four murders and died in prison in 2006.

Surrey private investigator Ray Michalko has been investigating the Highway of Tears cases on his own time since 2006.

“I was watching the news about the second anniversary of Tamara Chipman going missing [in 2005] and I complained to my wife that nobody seemed to be doing anything, and she said ‘You’re a PI, why don’t you do something’,” he recalled.

He started investigating the initial eight mysterious disappearances and murders along Highway 16. He estimates he spends up to 40 hours a month pursuing tips he receives by e-mail or on his toll-free line, which he publicizes using letters and posters, including some posted in federal prisons and provincial jails in B.C.

He said when he receives a paying job in the north, he stays a few days longer to do follow-up on the Highway of Tears tips.

Michalko, 62, a former North Vancouver Mountie, said there is no shortage of theories and rumours about who is behind the murders and disappearances.

Some say it’s a cop or a long-haul trucker preying on young girls walking along the highway alone, he said.

“I have seen no evidence of that,” Michalko said of the rumours. “There’s a million places to pull off and go undetected, but not in a tractor-trailer.”

One name popping up

He’s also been told that the girls were abducted and used in some sort of sex trafficking ring. Again, he discounts that theory because he has received no solid tips of it happening.

He initially believed there was a serial killer cruising the highway “but I don’t believe that now. But until you catch somebody, you don’t know.”

Despite “one name that keeps popping up” — he wouldn’t reveal the man’s name, other than to say he is linked to a community close to Prince George — there is little to link the unsolved cases together, other than the fact the girls and young women were last seen on the highway, many of them hitchhiking.

He now believes the murders were likely crimes of opportunity committed by various men living in the local communities where the tragedies took place or passing through those communities.

“That’s scarier than having a serial killer,” Michalko explained, adding it means more than a dozen men got away with murder and are still walking free.

60 people assigned

Currently there are 60 people, including retired homicide detectives working on contract, assigned to the Project E-Pana investigation, which is conducting homicide probes of 18 female victims along Interior highways.

Investigators descended last August on a piece of property in the Isle Pierre district west of Prince George looking for evidence related to the 2002 disappearance of Nicole Hoar, 25, who was from Red Deer and working as a tree planter when she was last seen hitchhiking near a gas station west of Prince George.

At the time of Hoar’s disappearance on June 21, 2002, the property searched by police was owned by Leland Switzer, a welder who told police in 2004 that the night Hoar disappeared he and a friend stopped and urinated near the Mohawk gas station — Hoar’s vanishing point.

Switzer told police about this because he said he didn’t know if police used a “fine tooth comb” to search the scene.

During his police statement, which was obtained by Global TV and provided to The Sun, Switzer provided the name of a friend and neighbour whom Switzer claimed had broken down crying when Switzer asked if he was responsible for all the “girls” going missing along Highway 16.

“My daughter heard a gun shot that night,” Switzer added. “When Nicole Hoar went missing, right?”

He said his wife and daughter were home that night but Switzer said he was at a dance and maintained 33 people saw him there.

Two days after Hoar’s disappearance, Switzer fatally shot and killed his older brother, Irvin Switzer, at his parents’ property, near his own home. He now is serving life for that murder.

Police confirmed last week that investigators seized a vehicle and other exhibits during the search related to Hoar. The exhibits now are being tested in the RCMP forensics lab.

nhall@vancouversun.com

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

In Loving Memory of Cynthia Feliks
Please remember Cynthia Feliks in your thoughts and prayers on this very
special and sad day for her mom Marilyn and family. Cynthia was born on
Dec 12, 1954 and would have been 55 years old this day. Cynthia
disappeared on the downtown Eastside of Vancouver in December of 1997.

For Marilyn Kraft.

Just because a corporate profiler says it’s so don’t make it right (remember, he’s working for his own interests). Still, it might be time to add Travis RaRagus Harrison to the map:

Profiler: Crossdresser likely a victim of same killer as women

By Mike Hixenbaugh

Rocky Mount Telegram
Wednesday, December 09, 2009

A crime psychologist says he believes a crossdresser found dead in Rocky Mount three years ago likely was the victim of the same killer who claimed the lives of seven area women between 2003 and earlier this year.

The parents of 24-year-old Travis RaRegus Harrison said this week that Rocky Mount police are looking into possible connections between their son’s death and the unsolved deaths of seven women, as well as three other missing women. A fisherman and his son found Harrison’s naked body on June 25, 2006, discarded in a thicket along the Tar River off East Virginia Street.

“I’m believing that this murder, more probably than not, is related to the others,” said John Kelly, profiler and president of the New Jersey-based System to Apprehend Lethal Killers.

Kelly has followed the Rocky Mount case closely since June, when investigators announced a state and local task force investigation into the series of missing women and murders in the community. Kelly said the fact that Harrison was a known crossdresser would have made him a potential target for a habitual killer who typically stalks women.

Like the seven other victims, Harrison was black, known to abuse cocaine and sometimes traded his body to pacify his addiction.

“The guy matches the profile of all the female victims,” Kelly said. “He had the same drug of choice, was out in the same areas around the same timeframe, and he was a crossdresser. I have to believe it was probably the same killer, because for that size population, how many sexual murderers could you possibly have in the same area?”

That’s the question Harrison’s mother, Lillian Clark, said she has been asking herself. Clark sat with her husband, Joe, in their Branch Street living room Monday and tried to explain how she felt when she realized her son’s body had been found, naked except for his socks and discarded by the river a few miles from their home. She couldn’t find the words.

The Clarks were surrounded by framed photos of Lillian’s three children. As his wife recalled stories from her son’s childhood, Joe Clark reached above the couch and pulled down a picture of Harrison, his stepson.

“We didn’t know what he was into,” Joe Clark said. “You know kids. They don’t tell you what they do when they leave the house. It wasn’t until afterward that we found out.”

It had been several months since the Clarks had heard from authorities regarding the investigation into Harrison’s death. That was until two weeks ago, they said, when investigators from the Rocky Mount Police Department showed up asking for a new photo of their son. Capt. Laura Fahnestock said the visit was part of the department’s recent effort to re-examine unsolved cases, declining to speak in further detail about the case.

“They said they didn’t know anything new, and that they were out of leads,” Lillian Clark said. “And they said they were investigating to see if his death had anything to do with the other killings.”

Federal, state and local investigators have been careful not to say whether or not they have evidence showing the deaths are linked, but authorities said they believe similarities in the victims’ backgrounds and the circumstances of their deaths are enough to at least raise the suspicion of a possible serial killer.

Kelly, who played a role along with his partner Frank Adamson in helping profile and catch the Green River Killer in Seattle earlier this decade, said he’s almost certain the deaths have come at the hands of a habitual killer.

If he’s right, Kelly said, Harrison’s death wouldn’t be the first time a serial killer known for stalking women attacked a female impersonator. Kelly referenced the Tamiami Strangler, a Miami man who killed six prostitutes in 1994, including one crossdresser.

“It’s rare, but there are a few cases out there,” Kelly said. “It’s very plausible.”

When asked a couple of weeks ago about any possible connections between Harrison’s death and the seven women found dead since 2003, Rocky Mount police declined to detail their ongoing investigation. Because most of the bodies were found outside city limits, Edgecombe County Sheriff James Knight is leading the probe, but Rocky Mount police are heading the investigations into the deaths of Harrison and Elizabeth Smallwood, both found within city limits.

“We investigate each case on its own, and we are not going to publicly link together any cases unless we have evidence showing that there is, in fact, a connection,” Fahnestock said. “Of course, we do consider other cases for any possible similarities when we investigate.”

Authorities in September arrested Antwan Maurice Pittman, 31, and charged him in one of the deaths, the March murder of 28-year-old Taraha Nicholson. Investigators won’t say if they believe the Rocky Mount man, a registered sex offender, might be involved in any of the other deaths.

N.C. Superior Court Judge Toby Fitch ordered that all arrest and search warrants related to the case be sealed from the public, making it difficult to surmise what evidence investigators might have linking Pittman to the murder.

The case, which grabbed national headlines this summer, has shined light on the city’s fight against the illegal sex and drug trade and has inspired a local coalition of community advocates working to raise awareness about murdered and missing women.

A $20,000 reward is offered to anyone with a tip leading to an arrest in the women’s deaths. Anyone with information about the case is asked to call Twin County Crime Stoppers at 252-977-1111.

Have you checked out the Maine State Police’s new web-section on cold cases? They finally joined the cyber world:

http://www.maine.gov/dps/msp/criminal_investigation/unsolved_homicides.shtml

Between this and New Hampshire’s announcement of a cold case bureau being formed I say, thank you.

Now if we could only get New York state to play along. Their State Police’s information is woefully stale (cases only date back to 1996). I have a friend in Buffalo who was instrumental in putting together that cities cld-case squad. I have a call in to him to see what’s up with the NY State Police.

In looking at a lot of these cases I beginning to think there might be more in common with unsolveds in New York than in Maine, and this generally is due to highway patterns. Maine was, and is still largely isolated without a major interstate in the upper portion of the state, while Upper New York is curious for route 87 which spans the state up into Montreal.