Ep. 128 | A Canadian Serial Killer Hiding in Plain Sight | The Winnipeg Butcher

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  A man picking through dumpsters behind an apartment building in Winnipeg, Canada, found something that wasn't supposed to be there. Nearby shelters open every night and close every morning. So people cycle through the same doors, the same cots, the same meals, week after week. And most of them are invisible to the city around them. And here, in the trash, the remains of one of those very people were discarded like they didn't matter. And their families were left to do the searching the system just wouldn't. But they do matter, and their lives were cut short by the man who took advantage of them. This is the story of the Winnipeg Butcher. Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder, all things that I love to consume,

• 2:09Speaker 02

  and I know you do too, you sick, twisted, beautiful, intellectually-minded freak. And today, we are getting into a case that not many people know about. Honestly, I didn't even know about it, and it's even up in my great home country, Canada. And I think this is a case that absolutely needs to be highlighted and talked about. So without further ado, let's unbuckle our sleepbelts, go muck-fight on the highway, slam on the brakes, and bust through the windshield into this multiple murder case together.

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  Thank you so much to Zocdoc for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel, and let's get back to it.

• 4:16Speaker 02

  So Jeremy Anthony Michael Skibicki was born around 1986, and he was adopted as a child. But beyond that, almost nothing about his childhood entered the public record. What is known about his formative years comes from medical records and child welfare files compiled over years of escalating crisis intervention. And combined together, they revealed a childhood defined by volatility, aggression, and violence that moved in every direction. But as Jeremy grew older, his parents became the ones reaching out for help. And every time the verbal and physical outbursts got worse, they went back to Child and Family Services. And they called again and again, each time more desperate for someone to step in,

• 4:59Speaker 02

  begging someone to help them manage it. And one incident from this period stands apart from everything else in his file. And that was that one night, allegedly while he was in his sleep, so sleepwalking, he walked into a female cousin's bedroom, grabbed her, and put his arms around her throat and covered her mouth. And when asked about it later, he claimed he'd been hearing noises in his head. But at this point, he was just a young boy, and he'd already put his hands around someone's neck in his sleep. And the pattern only grew from there. And throughout his teenage years, Jeremy's behavior was documented as cold, callous, apathetic, indifferent, aggressive, and depressive. And the specific incidents in those records read like a checklist of escalation.

• 5:41Speaker 02

  He struck his mother. He punched himself in the head constantly. He tried to overdose more than once. He destroyed property. He stole from his parents. He abused alcohol and drugs. He was hospitalized. He was arrested. And each time, he was released, and the cycle started over. And his parents kept calling for help, and the files kept growing thicker. But the trajectory never really changed. Yet the violence inside that household didn't flow in only one direction. Now, the files contained reports that Jeremy's parents also abused him. So it just moved through that home like a current, and no one inside it was untouched. So his early life is told through these crisis entries stacked one on top of the next.

• 6:24Speaker 02

  So doctors would prescribe Jeremy antidepressants, but they wouldn't work. Because even on medication, Jeremy kept cycling through violent episodes. And clinicians also flagged narcissistic personality traits that made every attempt at treatment harder to sustain. And his diagnosis accumulated over time. First depression, then borderline personality disorder, then persistent thoughts of suicide. And he used street drugs on top of whatever he was prescribed. And when therapy was offered, he would just turn it down completely. But Jeremy would be assessed repeatedly over the course of his teenage years and into adulthood. In one emergency room, doctor wrote a schizophrenia diagnosis into his chart, among the others. But that doctor never referred him for a psychiatric follow-up.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  So the diagnosis sat in a file and went nowhere. Talk about a broken fucking system. Not to mention his whole childhood, growing up in an abusive household, and clearly, you know, repeating that pattern to other people. And nothing being done about it is just terrible. And every time paramedics showed up after a self-harm incident or an overdose, Jeremy gave them the same rundown. Depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety. Now, whether those were confirmed diagnoses or labels he'd attached to himself along the way, the system never slowed down enough to really sort it out. And at one point, Jeremy would stab himself roughly 20 times in the chest with a fork. And he admitted to hospital staff that he'd gone off his medication at that point.

• 7:52Speaker 02

  And his medical records noted around 20 hospitalizations over the course of his life. So 20 admissions and 20 discharges. And not a single one of them bent his path in a different direction. And by 25, Jeremy Skibicki had no job, no home, no family still able or willing to intervene on his behalf. And he was living in Winnipeg shelters. So he was just one more face cycling through the city's emergency housing system. And behind him was a paper trail big enough to fill filing cabinets. So for most of his life, Skibicki struggled to hold any steady work. And by 2015, he had largely dropped out of the workforce and was living on disability support.

• 8:35Speaker 02

  But still, he managed to find a romantic relationship for himself. And both Skibicki's known partners were Indigenous women. And the first was his common law partner, but there was an incident, and she was pregnant. And on June 15, 2015, Skibicki grabbed a fistful of her hair and hit her in the face over and over. And then he attempted to strangle her. And he told her he'd kill her if she called the police. And by August of that year, he'd been convicted of assault. And the conviction only landed him two months behind bars. Which is fucking embarrassing, Canada. I mean, I know the US system's screwed too, but Canada's system, just all around. Like, how is that even a two months for attempting to kill someone?

• 9:22Speaker 02

  What? And when he got out, he was put on two years of probation and ordered into anger management and domestic abuse counselling. And at the assault hearing, Skibicki apologised to his partner, saying, quote, "This is something I've been thinking about every day. I almost killed myself following that happening. I thought at the time that it was an appropriate punishment for what I did. I really do need to get some help." Unquote. And on December 21st, 2015, his partner filed for a protection order. And in her application, she wrote, quote, "Jeremy has admitted fantasising about raping me, then choking me to death. He had smothered me so bad, my teeth started to bleed." Unquote. And she said she feared, quote, "He won't stop until I'm dead."

• 10:07Speaker 02

  But yeah, two months and a little, a little time at home under probation. Great job, justice system. And unfortunately, the protection order was dismissed and no one ever explained why. But his probation already barred him from going near her and contacting her for two years. And his other known partner was a 44-year-old Maitee woman he met in February of 2018 at Saloam Mission, an organisation dedicated to helping the homeless and people in poverty. And she was battling drug addiction at the time, and he had two other men with him that day they met. And the three of them invited her back to his place. And he very quickly said that, quote, "He really likes this one," referring to her.

• 10:52Speaker 02

  And Skibicki proposed to her in front of other customers at a pharmacy, and they would get married on September 4th, 2018. And she later said she only agreed because she felt stuck. And even on their wedding day, she was under the influence. And four days later, she checked into detox for methamphetamine. And the violence started almost immediately. He would hold her inside his apartment, force her to sit naked for days, spit on her, and laugh at her. And he tried at one point to smother her with a pillow. And she'd been prescribed sleeping medication for PTSD, and every night, he made her swallow the medication. And once she was unconscious, he would sexually assault her.

• 11:35Speaker 02

  And she'd wake up sore and bleeding, saying, quote, "His fetish was having me like a rag doll, limp and lifeless sexually." Unquote. And she referred to it as, quote, "sleeping beauty." And the abuse just kept escalating. He attacked her with a knife. He gave her a concussion. He made her watch violent pornography and pushed her to act out what was on screen. And he turned to scripture to tell her she owed him obedience. And in her protection order application, she wrote, quote, "He has suggested he would kill me, or that other gangs would abduct me and torture or kill me or traffic me." Unquote. And he told her, quote, "He would put me in a garbage bag."

• 12:19Speaker 02

  And the court thankfully granted her at least a three-year protection order on September 4th, 2019, exactly one year to the day from their own wedding. But that wouldn't stop him. And in January of 2021, she says he assaulted her again. And her mother told the story, saying, "He came after her daughter in the hallway with a knife, and he punched her in the head, and he hit her with a cane." And Skibicki would be charged with assault with a weapon and assault causing bodily harm. But on December 14th, a judge threw out a related charge for violating his court order, and the ruling came down to credibility. And the judge decided Jeremy's estranged wife's memory problems made her testimony unreliable.

• 13:02Speaker 02

  And her mother said the memory problems came from post-concussion syndrome caused by the very assault Skibicki was charged with. Again, the justice system in this whole case is abysmal. But nine days later, on December 23rd, the remaining assault charges were stayed. And at that hearing, his estranged wife described what it was like living with him, saying, quote, "When he is angry, it's like somebody else is in the room. I call him Scary Jerry. I don't even recognise the eyes anymore, but needless to say, I was afraid." Unquote. And she yelled at the Crown attorney after the charges were dropped, saying, quote, "I hope when you put your head down at night, you know you're letting somebody out." Unquote. Who might end up hurting or killing people.

• 13:47Speaker 02

  But he walked away from those charges. And sadly, she was right. So Skibicki had a Facebook page loaded with violent, antisemitic, misogynistic, and white supremacist material. Shocker, not a shocker at this point. And his bio declared him an official member of Holy Europe. And Helmut Harry Lowen, who researches anti-fascist movements and formerly taught criminology at the University of Winnipeg, placed Holy Europe inside what he called, quote, "a broader fascist ecosystem." Now, Holy Europe pushed for a return to Christian dominance across the continent and its former colonies. And at its core, there was a belief that white European bloodlines were under threat

• 14:29Speaker 02

  from immigration, interracial relationships, and multiculturalism, the celebration of diverse cultures in society, et cetera. And according to Evan Bolgord, who runs the Canadian Anti-Hate Network as its executive director, hate-motivated crime is rarely classified as such in Canada. And Winnipeg was the worst offender. And out of Canada's 13 largest police forces, the city had the lowest rate of laying hate crime charges, according to Globe and Mail Investigation. So around October of 2021, a friend of Skibicki's was in and out of his apartment regularly. And over the course of several months, the friend counted roughly half a dozen women passing through the unit, and he believed they were Indigenous. And Skibicki told him the number was closer to 30, and most of them showed up with bags

• 15:14Speaker 02

  that looked like they held clothes and personal items. And after they left, drug paraphernalia was often found in the apartment. And the friend said, quote, "Now that I look back, it's predatory behaviour. You know, he's looking for the absolute most vulnerable." Unquote. So on May 9th, 2022, Skibicki sent a Facebook message to his ex-wife, and he asked her to forgive him should he ever go to prison. And he said he couldn't explain what had happened, but whatever it was, telling her would mean he'd have to run. So by the end of 2022, Winnipeg had recorded 51 homicides, and at least 10 of those victims were Indigenous women. And Indigenous people make up just under 14% of the city's total population.

• 15:59Speaker 02

  But 1 in 5 of the city's murder victims that year was an Indigenous woman. Tammy Wolfe, a member of the Manitoba Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Coalition, put it plainly, saying, quote, "Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people are absolutely targeted. It's definitely shocking. It's devastating to our communities." Unquote. And none of this was new, by the way. The violence against Indigenous women in Canada has been documented and studied and officially acknowledged for years, but it's still not acknowledged enough. And on June 3rd of 2019, the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls was delivered to the federal government after it had taken more than three years to complete.

• 16:41Speaker 02

  And dozens of community meetings were held across the country, and more than 2,000 Canadians gave testimony. And the finished document was 1,200 pages, and what it found was staggering. The murder and disappearance rate for Indigenous women and girls was 12 times, 12 times, higher than for any other demographic group in the country. Compared to white women specifically, they were 16 times more likely to be killed or to disappear. And between 2001 and 2015, nearly 1 in 4 women murdered in Canada were Indigenous. And the report didn't mince words, calling what was happening a "Canadian genocide." And Chief Commissioner Marion Buller stated, quote, "This report is about deliberate race,

• 17:25Speaker 02

  identity, and gender-based genocide." Unquote. And attached to the findings were 231 calls for justice, and they targeted governments, institutions, and all Canadians, essentially. And Buller made clear these weren't suggestions, making sure to call them "legal imperatives." Because thousands of Indigenous women had already been lost to a cycle of violence. And Buller said these calls had to be acted on to break it. And among the findings was a specific indictment of how police handled these cases. And when Indigenous women were killed, the cases that followed carried a pattern the inquiry called, quote, "marked by indifference." And negative stereotypes shaped how disappearances and deaths were treated, and Indigenous cases

• 18:09Speaker 02

  were investigated differently than others. And the result was fewer solved cases and families left without answers. And one of the reports demands targeted policing directly. And every level of government was told to, quote, "immediately and dramatically transform Indigenous policing." Unquote. And it said the federal government's existing First Nations Police Programme needed to be scrapped and rebuilt from the ground up with a new legislation and new funding. And when the report was released, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made a public commitment, saying, quote, "You have my word that the government will turn the inquiry calls for justice into real, meaningful Indigenous-led action." Unquote. And three years passed, and by December of 2022, when Winnipeg's homicide numbers

• 18:53Speaker 02

  made headlines again, advocates confirmed that the same problems the inquiry had identified were still firmly in place. And Tammy Wolfe said it directly, saying, quote, "We're still having the same problems. When is it going to end?" Unquote. Yet more and more Indigenous women were still being killed three years after the final report that was supposed to change everything. And Wolfe called it horrific, but not surprising, which is so incredibly...

• 19:20Speaker 02

  Disheartening and sad. It's just sad. And the inquiry had given the country a blueprint for change, yet the country had shelved it. And in Winnipeg specifically, the women it was meant to protect just kept dying. And the man at the center of all of it lived in a one-bedroom apartment in North Kilbinen. Now, the unit was inside the Mar Joy Apartments on Edison Avenue, situated between Henderson Highway and Arby Bay. And it was a small place, a one-bedroom suite. Nothing about the building or the block drew really much attention. And he would eat his meals at shelters across the city. And every morning, he took the bus to Indanawemok. And most evenings, a ride to Salome Mission. And then back to his apartment. And that was his daily life.

• 20:05Speaker 02

  A triangle between two shelters and a quiet apartment in a neighborhood where nobody was looking. Now, Ashley Shingus was Anishininju, also known as Oji Cree, a member of St. Teresa Point, Anishininju Nation in northeastern Manitoba. Also, I am doing my very, very best to pronounce these, you know, in a flowing pattern. But if I am pronouncing them wrong at all, I am very, very sorry. I am trying. I have the pronunciations up, but I probably am still saying them wrong, so I just want to apologize for that. And Ashley was 30 years old, a mother of three. And Chief Raymond Flett, principal of the community high school, remembered her as "an upbeat kid." Quote-unquote, "I used to see her in the hallway, happy with her friends."

• 20:48Speaker 02

  And her parents, Albert and Teresa, described her as "very gentle and generous, quiet by nature, but never confrontational." Quote, "She would do anything to help other people," unquote, her father would say. Now, Ashley eventually left St. Teresa Point because there wasn't enough housing in the community, and she was trying to give her children the life that they deserved. But Winnipeg changed things. And Teresa watched her daughter fall in with people who pulled her in the wrong direction. And Ashley started using drugs and drinking. And the system unfortunately would have to take her kids. And they ended up back in St. Teresa Point in Teresa's care. And Ashley shared her struggle in a voice message to her parents, saying, quote, "Mom, I'm really trying my best, and I will never stop trying.

• 21:29Speaker 02

  But all I know is people who use, and it's not easy for me to just stand out. I feel lonely," unquote. And it was one of the last voicemails she'd ever leave. So one day, a shelter worker named Ronald Norman noticed Skabiki at the Disraeli Freeway Shelter in Winnipeg. And something about him just didn't fit. His clothes were clean, his face was shaved, and he didn't carry himself like someone who needed emergency housing. Norman said Skabiki told him directly that he had his own place and he didn't need to be there. And he said he was, quote-unquote, "just there to stalk his victims." Now, it was a daily routine. Skabiki would come in, move through the space, and look over everyone inside. And to Norman, the intent was clear. Skabiki wasn't drifting through.

• 22:14Speaker 02

  He had someone in mind. So in March of 2022, Skabiki crossed paths with Ashley near a shelter. And he took her back to his apartment. And inside the apartment, he would sexually assault her, then he would kill her. But then he took it a step further and violated her body. And he placed what was left of her in a garbage bin blocks from where he lived. So as far as we know, Ashley was his first victim. And police believe she ended up behind a Henderson Highway business in a garbage bin. And from there, the bin was emptied and its contents hauled to the Brady Road landfill sometime in the month she was killed. But for nearly three years, no one knew her name.

• 22:59Speaker 02

  And police just called her Jane Doe. Now, Morgan Beatrice Harris was 39 years old and a member of Long Plain First Nation, a community about 95 kilometers west of Winnipeg. And she was a mother of five and a grandmother. And she even had her children's names tattooed on her body. And her daughter, Cambria, called Morgan "happy-go-lucky and silly," the kind of person who drew others in without trying. Quote, "People loved to be around her," unquote. But that didn't stop the man who took advantage of her. Now, Morgan would go missing. And when Cambria went looking for her mother, she talked to people across the city. And everywhere she went, the response was the same. Quote, "There wasn't a single person that did not know who she was, and no one had

• 23:44Speaker 02

  a bad thing to say," unquote. And that's what made the search so painful. Because Morgan wasn't invisible. She was known and very well-liked and remembered by name. But still, she was gone. And Morgan had no fixed address when she crossed paths with Skabiki. And she'd been surviving on Winnipeg's streets. And her long journey from Long Plain to the sidewalks of downtown is largely unknown. But what is known, however, is the woman her family described. Warm, funny, impossible to forget. Now, police believe Skabiki killed Morgan on or around May 1st, 2022. And she'd last been seen near the intersection of Main Street and Henry Avenue in Winnipeg. And she was his second victim.

• 24:28Speaker 02

  And later, police would find out that Skabiki had sent Morgan outside for a cigarette first, one last smoke before he killed her. And Skabiki would say about it, "This is going to be her last smoke, so I'll let her enjoy that," unquote. And after she came back inside, Skabiki put her in a headlock. And Morgan would blackout and drop into the bathtub. And he had already filled it with water. And her remains were placed in a bin near his apartment. And it was the same disposal method he'd used before. So now we have a pattern. And from there, they were collected and transported to the Prairie Green landfill. And for weeks, nobody reported Morgan missing.

• 25:09Speaker 02

  But that changed on May 16th, 2022, when her missing persons report was filed on December 1st, 2022. And police officially identified Morgan as a murder victim. And Cambria, her daughter, would say to a crowd, quote, "My mother deserves to come home. We deserve to have her remains, and so do the other families," unquote. But at this point, no one suspected Skabiki. And Mercedes Myron was 26 years old. She was a mother of two. And her grandmother, Donna Bartlett, described her as "a young woman who lit up the people around her, happy, smiley, and trusting." And Bartlett said what she'd miss most were the jokes and that big smile. And her cousin, Felicia Fidler, who considered Mercedes a sister, remembered her the same

• 25:54Speaker 02

  way. Quote, "A very lovely person, always happy and always joking." So after Mercedes went missing, her sister, Jordan Myron, became a visible presence. Now, every visual, she showed up with a drum, her voice, and a shirt with Mercedes' face on it. And she carried Mercedes into every room where her name was spoken. Now, Mercedes was pulled onto the streets from the loss of her two children to foster care. And Bartlett said it hollowed her granddaughter out. Quote, "That's who I blame for being on the street. That broke her," unquote. And two of the four women Skabiki killed had ended up homeless after the foster care system took their children.

• 26:36Speaker 02

  So it was a pattern that kept repeating across families and generations. Women who lost their kids, lost their footing. And once they were on the street, they were exposed. And both Mercedes and Morgan were members of Long Plain, which defines kinship by generation. And anyone born around the same time as Morgan is her first cousin. And the same goes for Mercedes and every person her age. So two full generations of the same First Nation were torn apart by the same man's violence. I want to take a quick pause to talk about something pretty disturbing, and that is my cat's litter box. Now, Baby specifically, one of my cats, had over a year of scarf and barf.

• 27:17Speaker 02

  A pretty dull coat and a smell I could clock from the next room. But then we switch to Smalls. Now, Smalls is a fresh cat food, protein-packed recipes made with preservative-free, 100% human-grade ingredients you'd find in your own fridge. You could eat it yourself. I wouldn't recommend it because it's cat food, but you could. Not to mention, it's delivered right to your front door. And since switching, Baby's coat has been noticeably softer and shinier. She has more energy and she's not doing the scarf and barf thing, which I'm really appreciative of. And it's because more of those nutrients actually are digested and a lot less junk comes out the other end. And Forbes ranked Smalls the best overall cat food, and 88% of cat owners reported

• 28:02Speaker 02

  overall health improvements after switching. So stop serving your little carnivore a bowl of processed shortcuts. And for a limited time, because you are a crime, conspiracy, cult, and murder listener, you can get 60, that's six zero percent, off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to Smalls.com/CCCM. That's 60% off your first order, plus free shipping and free treats for life when you head to Smalls.com/CCCM. Take care of your little feline, okay? And go check out Smalls. Thank you so much to Smalls for sponsoring the video and supporting the channel. Now, let's get back to it. So the last time Mercedes had any contact with her family was March 15th, 2022. She'd been seen in Winnipeg's North End.

• 28:47Speaker 02

  And after that, silence. And police believe Skabiki killed Mercedes on or around May 4th, 2022, just three days after Morgan Harris. And the gap between victims was shrinking at this point. And he found her the same way he found the others. Homeless, vulnerable, and moving through a city that wasn't keeping track of her. And Skabiki complained that Mercedes was the heaviest of the four, and he had a tough time moving her body in and out of the bathtub. Speaking of her remains as a simple inconvenience. Task. But still Mercedes didn't go quietly and she actually fought back, but it wasn't enough. And Skibicki would go on to dismember Mercedes.

• 29:31Speaker 02

  And her remains were placed in bins near his apartment. And for months, her family heard nothing. And they didn't find a missing persons report until September 26, 2022, nearly five months after she was killed. And Bartlett explained that Mercedes' mother was afraid to go to the police. She didn't want to walk into a station and hear the things she already feared. So the family held on to hope instead. And they put up posters on September 27th and kept looking. And then on Thursday, December 1st, 2022, police arrived at the family's door and not one person in the family knew who Skibicki was before then. And Bartlett would relay the pain and say, quote, "I had hope until Thursday. Thursday shattered me, shattered the family." Unquote.

• 30:15Speaker 02

  Until that knock, they could still tell themselves she might walk back through the door. And after it, there was nothing left to hold on to. Now Rebecca Kontwa was 24 years old and she belonged to the Ochichaco Sipi First Nation. And the community goes by Crane River and sits on Lake Manitoba's western shore. And her childhood was in Winnipeg. Seven siblings, both parents, one house. And she was a mother to a young daughter. And her family described her as warm, creative, and full of life. Drawing, baking, laughing until she couldn't breathe. And her sister Stephanie remembered Rebecca as outgoing and adventurous. Someone who lit up when she was near art, open sky, or the people she cared about.

• 30:59Speaker 02

  Quote, "Rebecca was very adventurous. She was down to earth. She always had her hair really long. It was long and dark and she always had it pushed to the side all the time." Unquote. And Rebecca didn't like being cooped up inside. She wanted to be moving, outside, always exploring. Stephanie said it was just who she was. Quote, "She loved going for walks. She loved the outdoors. She didn't really want to be in all the time." Unquote. And one of her favorite things was the game Just Dance. She'd pull in her sister and the two of them would go at it, dancing and laughing until neither could keep going. And before she died, Rebecca had been looking forward. She'd been talking to Stephanie about going back to school. And she wanted to build something for herself.

• 31:42Speaker 02

  But Stephanie knew her sister had been spending time with the wrong people. But the family never held it against her. The door was always open for Rebecca and she'd come and go as she needed. And to her family, Rebecca was a butterfly. Beautiful and free. And they found a place to carry that image. And the Rainbow Butterfly Monument in St. John's Park honors missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and two-spirited people. And it became their place to remember her. And Stephanie said of her sister, quote, "She was more than what happened to her. I describe her as an angel who made us see the world differently." Unquote. Now Rebecca never mentioned Skibicki to her family. Stephanie believed they hadn't known each other long, but Rebecca, trusting as she

• 32:26Speaker 02

  was, had already started making plans with him. And she was trying to get her name on the lease at his apartment. Quote, "Because that's the kind of person she was. She was really trusting in people because she didn't see the bad in people." Unquote. But apparently, Skibicki and Rebecca were actually in a relationship. But what set Skibicki off the day that he killed Rebecca was that she just started talking back to him. And they would get in a massive fight and Rebecca would fight back. And she fought hard enough that Skibicki was surprised by it. He would say, quote, "She took so long to die. I probably crushed her throat. I tried not to allow her to suffer. She just wouldn't die." Unquote.

• 33:10Speaker 02

  And after Rebecca was deceased, Skibicki would dismember her remains and he placed them in garbage bags and left them in bins near his apartment. And Rebecca's family last saw her in May of 2022. She'd come home from her little sister Maxine's birthday party and she stayed for two days. And on her way out the door, Rebecca promised she'd come back for the party, but she would not come back. And two days later, police were at the family's door. And Stephanie answered and they told her they'd found her sister's body near a garbage bin. And Stephanie didn't say a word to the detectives. Quote, "They told me they found her deceased by a bin, a garbage bin. And then at that point, I just went running upstairs. I was in shock. I didn't even say anything to the detectives."

• 33:55Speaker 02

  Unquote. But the full scope of what had been done to Rebecca didn't come from the police. It had come from a headline on the internet. And Stephanie was scrolling online when she saw the story. Quote, "I was looking online and I had seen by the media that there was a really bad headline. And that's when I found out about the separation of my sister." Unquote. So that's how she learned her sister had been dismembered. So Rebecca was the fourth woman Skibicki had killed and the last in the sequence. But at this point in the timeline, she was actually the first one found. And the other three victims' remains had been collected by garbage trucks and carried to landfills before anyone knew to look.

• 34:39Speaker 02

  And Rebecca's were not. Hers were discovered in a neighborhood bin before pickup. And that single difference is the reason anyone ever learned what happened inside the apartment on Edison Avenue. And Travis Barcy is an MMIWG2S advocate and represented the Kontwa family publicly. And he said what everyone was thinking. Quote, "If it wasn't for Rebecca, because she was the first person found, we may still not know what happened to these women." Unquote. Because she was the crack in the wall. The one discovery that pulled everything else into the light. So in May of 2022, police responded to a man that was picking through dumpsters on the 200 block of Edison Avenue.

• 35:22Speaker 02

  And he was looking for clothing and copper to salvage. But what he found instead were human remains in a trash can near Skibicki's apartment. And a second bin nearby held more of the same woman's remains. And blood turned up in a third bin with no remains inside it. And that third bin is what pointed investigators toward Winnipeg's Brady Road landfill on the south end of the city. And the victim was identified as Rebecca Kontwa. And in June, investigators found more of Rebecca's remains at the Brady Road landfill. And at that point, investigators believed they were working a single homicide. So police would look at surveillance video in and around the last known sightings of where Kontwa was.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  And they would see Skibicki with Kontwa near his residence around the same time she disappeared. So on May 18th, 2022, two days after the discovery, police arrested Jeremy Skibicki. And he was charged with first degree murder for the killing of Rebecca Kontwa. And he was 35 years old at this point. And they got a warrant and tore his apartment apart. And because of the nature of what they'd found, homicide investigators made a public statement that there might be more victims. Now, the day before, on May 17th, detectives sat Skibicki down for questioning, where he spent roughly 20 hours in a gray interrogation room. And Detective Sergeant Adam Detolition led the questioning.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  And the only charge on the table was Rebecca Kontwa. And nobody in that room knew yet that three more women were dead. And in the early hours of the interview, Skibicki asked repeatedly for an Orthodox priest. And he told detectives, quote, "Even though I'm not, you know, necessarily guilty of anything, it's just something that I feel compelled to do because this is something that demands justice." Unquote. And he would deny all involvement. And when police showed him surveillance footage of a figure in the area of Edison Avenue, he said it wasn't him. But they put a photo in front of him, Rebecca's partial remains. And he pulled back. Quote, "I can't even look at that. It's just disturbing." Unquote. And then the wall cracked.

• 37:36Speaker 02

  And detectives pushed him again on what he was doing near the bins. And Skibicki went back to the priest. Quote, "I just want to get a priest to confess my sins." Unquote. And then, without being asked another question, he confessed. And his words came out measured, almost rehearsed. Quote, "At this point, I want you to express that you've done a very good job. You guys are obviously not stupid. I really just want to see how far, you know, I could take things because the criminal justice system is a joke. The world that we're living in is sick. I was driven to do stuff like this because I was so, so spent emotionally. I killed four people." Unquote. So detectives had walked into that room investigating one murder and now they were

• 38:19Speaker 02

  sitting across from a man admitting to four, a literal serial killer. Quote, "I did this because I believe that there should be capital punishment and that this is racially motivated." Unquote. And he would just keep talking, saying, quote, "This whole thing about racial purity, the extinction of the white race, you know, the great replacement theory, globalism, Bolshevism, in effort to eradicate white people. I don't believe that races are meant to be forced to live together. And this existence that I've had is just completely messed up because of liberalism." Unquote. Now, the first killing happened while he was coming off magic mushrooms, apparently. And for the next three, he said he was on meth. And on top of everything else, he claimed to suffer from what he called Savior Syndrome.

• 39:04Speaker 02

  And he admitted he was still using meth in small amounts. And he'd been on disability and out of work since 2015. And when asked specifically about Rebecca, the last woman he killed, Skibicki offered five words. Quote, unquote, "I guess I got sloppy." And during the ...interview, Skibicki provided the names of two of his victims. And he was unsure of the third woman's name, but gave enough details about her for investigators to eventually confirm she was Mercedes Myron through DNA. And during the interview, Detective Allen compared Skibicki to Jordan Peterson, calling him "well spoken", and Skibicki laughed. And 20 hours in, a detective gave Skibicki another chance to speak. Anything for the families. Quote, "Oh, that's a tough one.

• 39:49Speaker 02

  I guess I pray to Jesus. Nothing I could say as a human being can ever do justice. That's something that's going to have to come from God. That's all I say." End quote. So he offered no apology for his actions. But the confession laid a pattern repeated across all four killings. Skibicki had targeted vulnerable Indigenous women at Winnipeg's homeless shelters, bringing each one of them back to his North Kildonan apartment. And there, he sexually assaulted or forcibly confined the women before strangling them or drowning them in his bathtub. And after killing him, he performed sexual acts on their bodies. And then he dismembered some of the women, then disposed of the remains in garbage bins near his apartment.

• 40:33Speaker 02

  And inside Skibicki's apartment, investigators found what the confession had already promised. Earrings, clothing, and personal items belonging to the victims were scattered through the unit and in nearby garbage bins. And traces of the victims' blood and DNA turned up on surfaces throughout the unit. And the bathroom was the worst of it. Officers sprayed a chemical agent designed to make blood visible even after it's been cleaned away. And Constable Jan De Vries described, quote, "The bathtub was very fluorescent. So were the floor, the walls, the door. On the exterior side of the door, which implies that it was open when blood struck", unquote. And a combat knife with a 7.5-inch blade was found in the apartment as well.

• 41:17Speaker 02

  And the hilt carried biological material matching Mercedes Myron's DNA. And a Ziploc hospital bag with Morgan Harris's name printed on it was also recovered from the unit. But the forensic picture went even further than just the four women Skibicki admitted to killing. And investigators recovered DNA from approximately 12 other women. And those samples came from inside the apartment and garbage bin nearby. And a few of those women were tracked down, and one had been reported missing, and another had since died. And the rest have never been identified. And the search yielded 5,000 physical items. Roughly 130 went to the RCMP lab for forensic analysis.

• 41:59Speaker 02

  And Deputy Chief Cam McAd called the number, quote, unquote, "almost unprecedented". And he further said it was one of the most complex cases his department had ever worked. And a dedicated team went back to the beginning and mapped every relationship, every contact, every thread in Skibicki's life, all the way to the day he was arrested. And every cold case and missing persons file near anywhere he'd lived got a second look. And more than 7,000 hours of surveillance footage was examined. And McAd was careful when asked whether four was the final number, saying, quote, "I would never stand here and tell you, I can guarantee you there isn't another victim. I can tell you, we scrubbed everything we possibly could, and we didn't find any other ones", unquote.

• 42:44Speaker 02

  And one thing made the scope easier to define. No driver's license was ever issued to Skibicki, and no vehicle was ever registered in his name. So as far as investigators could tell, he'd never left Manitoba. Quote, "He was a local person who tended to stay local." And detectives described Skibicki as "quite forward and candid" throughout the interview. And McAd said they didn't get the impression he was hiding anything from them. And whether that candor came from honesty or from a man who enjoyed talking about what he'd done is a question the recording can't really answer. And investigators would focus on a reversible Baby Fat jacket recovered from Skibicki's home. Now, Baby Fat was a well-known label in the early 2000s.

• 43:27Speaker 02

  And police put the jacket photos out to the public, asking for anyone who recognized it to come forward. But the DNA pulled from the jacket didn't belong to anyone in particular, and multiple people had worn it over the years. And Deputy Police Chief Cam McAd later admitted, quote, "The Baby Fat jacket was basically a dead end", unquote. Meanwhile, a community member named George Robinson was doing his own work. Robinson had been canvassing with flyers featuring the jacket and bringing photos of missing women directly to shelter staff. And one worker looked at the photos and recognized someone: Ashley Shingus. Ashley Shingus was the woman who'd been wearing the jacket. So Robinson passed what he learned to the Winnipeg Police Service's Missing Persons Unit and the Crown Attorneys on the case.

• 44:10Speaker 02

  And they would shut it down, because the DNA from the jacket didn't point to Ashley. But the community saw what the system couldn't, but the system didn't listen. But still, before police ever confirmed her name, the Indigenous community had already given her one. And according to elder Thelma Mariso, a follower of Medawebin Lodge teachings, a buffalo spirit had revealed itself to her teacher. And that spirit is where the name came from. And they called her Mushkode Bezikiikue, or Buffalo Woman. Sorry if I absolutely butchered that. I tried my very best. And the community bestowed it through ceremony, which was to ensure she would be known when she crossed into the spirit world. So Skibicki's trial began on May 8, 2024. But the defense went with an unusual strategy.

• 44:56Speaker 02

  They never denied the killings, and they never challenged the facts, and they never questioned the existence, and they never offered an alternate suspect. Their argument was much simpler and far more controversial. Skibicki should be found not criminally responsible, or NCR, meaning he was too mentally ill to be held accountable for what he'd done. So, the insanity plea. And the entire defense rested on one witness, Dr. Sahom Das, a forensic psychiatrist based in the United Kingdom who also runs a YouTube channel called A Psych for Soar Minds. Now, the story Skibicki told Das was dramatically different from the one he'd told police

• 45:39Speaker 02

  two years earlier, because in the 2022 interrogation room, he'd said his motive was racial. And by April 2024, sitting across from Das just weeks before the trial, the motive had completely changed. And now, he said voices had told him to do it: angels, the Holy Spirit, God himself. And he claimed these voices had directly encouraged every killing. And according to Skibicki, God had shown him that his victims were "in some way impure". If a person refused to submit to God, he said, that person had to be physically destroyed. And he claimed a special power gave him the ability to judge whether a woman was loyal to God.

• 46:20Speaker 02

  And the test, he said, was having sex with her before he killed her. And he told Das, quote, "I was absolutely doing the right thing. It was a mission from God. I'm very clear on this", unquote. And as for the confession, where he'd cited race, not religion, Skibicki had an explanation for that, too. He said an entity had overtaken him during the police interview. How convenient. And it could have been God or the devil, he wasn't sure. Either way, it had spoken on his behalf. And even Das admitted Skibicki knew he was breaking the law, because the fact that he'd hidden the victims' remains proved as much. But in Skibicki's mind, Das argued what he'd done was morally right.

• 47:03Speaker 02

  And Crown Attorney Christian Vanderhoofd dismantled that testimony on cross-examination. And he pointed out that Skibicki had never mentioned voices to literally anyone, not to police, not to Das, during their first meeting in September of 2022, and not to a single person involved until just before the trial. And Vanderhoofd pressed further. And every psychiatrist who had ever evaluated Skibicki, going back years, had reached the same conclusion, except for an emergency room doctor who diagnosed him with schizophrenia, but never referred him to assessment. Remember when we talked about that? Two years in custody had produced zero symptoms of psychosis and zero psychiatric admissions.

• 47:47Speaker 02

  And Vanderhoofd put it to Das directly. Quote, "He's got a bit of a problem, doesn't he? He has to change the evidence to get to not criminally responsible", unquote. And Das conceded the point, quote, "Well, yeah, if he's making a conscious effort to fake to get to not criminally responsible, then yes", unquote. And Das suggested Skibicki might have been, quote, "masking", unquote, his symptoms in custody. And that was the only explanation he could offer for two years of silence. Sounds to me that the defense just gave him an out, his only out, and that is to plead insanity, which is... Insanity, basically. I want to take a quick pause because I want to tell you a little fact.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  And that is that over 75% of Americans are chronically dehydrated. And I was one of them. I was one of them. Technically, I'm still Canadian, but I live in America, so I was technically one of them. And about 90% of us don't get enough potassium, the electrolyte behind energy, muscle function, and clear thinking, which is why you can drink water all day and still feel tired or even like foggy or just kind of off. And that was truly me, especially on long recording days like these. And by about 3 o'clock, my brain was just done. And I'd just be reading the same case notes over and over again, just not processing any of it. But lately, I've been mixing instant hydration into my water. First thing in the morning.

• 49:13Speaker 02

  And truly, that afternoon wall just isn't there anymore. And it was honestly two things that sold me because I'm pretty wary about these kinds of things. But one, it's zero sugar, so there's no spike and no crash. And it actually tastes good, believe it or not. I've tried a lot of these types of electrolyte powders and they just taste like ocean water, basically. But instant hydration is refreshing, not salty or chalky. You know, that little weird film you get in your mouth after you drink an electrolyte drink, it's just nasty. But instant hydration doesn't have it. And that's the only reason I've stuck with it daily. Because they sent me a package before I even agreed to work with them. And I was like, okay, I'll try it. And I actually really liked it.

• 49:58Speaker 02

  I actually really, really liked it. And I was like, yeah, absolutely. So for a better way to stay hydrated, go to instanthydration.com/CCCM and use my promo code CCCM for over 40% off your first subscription order. It's instant hydration's best offer available. That's instanthydration.com/CCCM using promo code CCCM. Thank you so much to instant hydration for keeping me hydrated. And let's get back to the video. Now, the Crown's position was that Skibicki was not psychotic. He was calculating, racist, and fully aware of what he was doing. And the Crown played Skibicki's own videotaped confession. And in the recording, he admitted to the racially motivated killings of all four women

• 50:42Speaker 02

  and described performing sex acts on their bodies postmortem. And the Crown called Dr. Gary Heimowitz, who teaches at McMaster University in Ontario and has worked as a forensic psychiatrist on roughly 100 NCR cases. So he knows his stuff. And after evaluating Skibicki, the doctor said there was nothing in the clinical picture that pointed to schizophrenia. And he believed the hallucinations and delusions were invented or a strategy, not a symptom. Quote, "He saw this as an easier way out than the life sentence that he knew he was going to get." Unquote. And in the doctor's opinion, the killings were driven by something else entirely. Homicidal necrophilia, a sexual compulsion toward people he'd killed.

• 51:26Speaker 02

  And layered on top of that, he'd found antisocial personality disorder, substance abuse disorder, and what he called psychopathic features. And he pointed to the volume of Skibicki's medical history, which were dozens of interactions with the healthcare system over the course of his life. And not once had a treating clinician flagged schizophrenia, aside that one ER doctor who never followed up at all. And with that many encounters, real symptoms wouldn't have gone undetected. And what the doctor did notice, however, was how Skibicki presented himself. Soft spoken, outwardly gentle, and even thoughtful, and traits that didn't reveal danger, traits that disarmed the people around him. And he also noted who Skibicki chose as his victims.

• 52:10Speaker 02

  Women from a vulnerable accessible group whose disappearance unfortunately may go relatively unnoticed. So that wasn't psychosis selecting targets at random. It was pure calculation. And left unchecked, the doctor said, Skibicki would not have stopped on his own. And Skibicki himself had told police the same thing. And one piece of evidence landed harder than any expert opinion could. A social media post written by Skibicki himself, which said, quote, "Not schizophrenic, nor do I hallucinate." Unquote. Well, there you go. And the doctor responded, saying, quote, "That's one of the things that I actually agree with him on." Unquote. So the trial was held before Court of King's Bench Chief Justice Glenn Zoyle in Winnipeg without a jury.

• 52:56Speaker 02

  And evidence was heard across several weeks in May and June 2024. And on July 11th, 2024, Zoyle delivered his ruling, guilty on all four counts of first degree murder. And the courtroom erupted. And the gallery held nearly 100 people, every seat taken, more lined the walls with others spilled into the hallway, and all of them cheered. And Skibicki sat motionless, and he stared straight ahead the entire time, and his expression was completely unchanging. And Zoyle rejected the NCR argument entirely. And Das's testimony, Zoyle said, carried almost no weight. Can you believe it? And he also questioned whether Das had conducted himself professionally.

• 53:39Speaker 02

  And the Ontario psychiatrist, by contrast, was acceptable as a credible and reliable witness. And Zoyle found that Skibicki held, quote, "purely expressed racist views." Unquote. And the killings, the judge concluded, were planned and deliberate. Then Zoyle addressed what the case meant beyond the courtroom. And he said it would be, quote, "artificial and disingenuous to disregard the fact that this trial was emblematic of much of what is associated with the tragedies that underlie the very grim reality of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada." Unquote. And he called the facts, quote, unquote, "mercilessly graphic and at once jarring and numbing." And he spoke of cruelty and barbarism.

• 54:24Speaker 02

  And the weight of the case, Zoyle said, had been undeniable and profound for Indigenous women and non-Indigenous people alike. And he pointed to the families who had been there every day, sitting through details that no one should have to absorb, especially about their own family. And outside the courthouse, the relief turned into ceremony. And they burned a sacred fire, and people played music and sang, and cars passing by honked their horns. And hours later, a round dance filled the intersection of Portage Avenue and Main Street. So on August 28th, 2024, Skibicki was formally sentenced to four concurrent life terms with no possibility of parole for 25 years. And it was the mandatory sentence for first degree murder in Canada.

• 55:08Speaker 02

  Yet Zoyle made clear he didn't think it was enough. Quote, "Make no mistake, Mr. Skibicki, because of the current state of the law, the only available sentence that I can impose today, regrettably, not adequately, reflect the gravity of these offenses and your moral culpability." Unquote. And Skibicki said to that, "No, thank you." And sheriffs had to direct him to his feet. And Zoyle gave him a chance to speak, and he refused again, saying, "No." And for three and a half hours, not a single visible reaction was seen from him. And there were sheriffs on either side of him in the prisoner's box, but his eyes were locked forward the entire time. He never turned toward the families once. And a dozen relatives addressed the court.

• 55:51Speaker 02

  Elle Harris, Morgan's youngest daughter, spoke about what the process had cost her. Quote, "Do you know how many times I had to listen to how my mother was murdered in horrific detail? I am left with my confusion and my anger. I am left without closure. I am left with trauma. I am left feeling numb and hurt. And finally, I am left without my mother to help me get through it all." Unquote. And Cambria Harris got to her feet beside her partner and fixed her eyes on Skibicki. Quote, "Every moment he spends in this courtroom breathing, free even in shackles, is another moment my mother is not. While he gets to stay there, surrounded and protected, my mother continues to lay in a landfill, the very place he put her." Unquote.

• 56:35Speaker 02

  And Morgan had her children's names tattooed on her body. And Cambria told the court, it sickened her to think that her mother's killer saw those names and saw the proof that she was loved and went through with it anyway. And Donna Bartlett, Mercedes' grandmother, called Skibicki an evil monster, which is what he is. And she also said, "He has hurt this family, tore it apart, ripped our souls to pieces. That's going to be there forever." Unquote. And then she turned and faced him directly and said, quote, "As the last words of Buffalo Woman were to you, fuck you." Unquote. And applause would sweep through the gallery. And Stephanie Cuntre's statement was read aloud by her brother, Jeremy, saying, quote, "I can't look at a garbage bin.

• 57:20Speaker 02

  It makes me sick to my stomach." Unquote. And Jordan Myron, Mercedes' sister, said the life sentence would never be enough. Quote, "What he did to those women, he deserves a lot more than what was put on him today." Unquote. And the mother of Skibicki's ex-wife also addressed the court. "Her daughter," she told the court, "now deals with severe migraines, trauma-triggered seizures, and post-concussion syndrome." So the relationship and the trial had broken her health completely. An assembly of Manitoba's chief grand chief Cathy Merrick said Skibicki's crime had, quote, "left deep scars on First Nations communities." Unquote. And outside the courtroom, she was more direct, saying, quote, "They called him a monster in the courtroom, and he sat there.

• 58:04Speaker 02

  He did not blink an eye." Unquote. And Crown attorney Vanderhooft closed with a statement where he told the courtroom that in most sentencing proceedings, victims end up as, quote, unquote, "but a footnote. Not today. And he is the personification of indignity and deserves every second that he will spend incarcerated." Unquote. Back on December 6 of 2022, Winnipeg Police Chief Danny Smith stood before cameras and delivered news that the victims' families had been dreading. The department would not search the Prairie Green landfill for the remains of Morgan Harris and Mercedes Myron. And Smith said the assessment showed "no hope for a successful recovery." And Inspector Cam McAd, who'd been assigned to evaluate the site, explained the search

• 58:49Speaker 02

  area covered four acres. Investigators couldn't narrow that down any further. After the remains went in, the dump kept operating. Workers poured roughly 9,000 tonnes of wet construction mud over the area. Heavy equipment packed it down into solid wall of sludge 40 feet deep. And mixed throughout that mass were about 1,500 tonnes of animal remains and 250 tonnes of asbestos. So anyone who dug through it would be exposed to biohazards. And even if they reached something, telling human remains apart from animal remains in that environment was next to impossible. So McAd said that the department had "made the very difficult decision as a service

• 59:30Speaker 02

  that this wasn't operationally feasible to conduct a search of the site." And police pointed to the Brady Road landfill, where some of Rebecca Kontois' remains had been recovered successfully, as a contrast. The garbage there hadn't been compacted, and police learned about the remains quickly. And the truck that hauled them had a GPS locator and camera footage, so investigators could zero in on where to dig. And Prairie Green had none of those advantages. And the timeline told a brutal story. That May morning in 2022, while police were at the bins on Edison Avenue processing what they'd found of Kontois', the remains of Harris and Myron were in a dumpster just a few blocks away, and a garbage truck was about to carry them to Prairie Green.

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  By the time investigators realized on June 20th that those remains had been taken to Prairie Green, more than 10,000 loads of garbage had already been dumped on top of them. Now, in April of 2023, a woman named Linda Mary Beardy was found dead at the Brady Road landfill, and she was also Indigenous. And police investigated and ruled it not a homicide. And Beardy's family released a statement. She was 33, a member of Lake St. Martin First Nation, and a mother of four. "We believe that a more fulsome investigation must take place." And the family wrote, "And an opportunity for all tips to be followed up with. There are many unresolved questions that must be answered."

• 1:01:00Speaker 02

  Beardy's death had nothing to do with Skabicki. He'd been in custody for nearly a year by then, but it didn't matter. Another Indigenous woman dead at another Winnipeg landfill, while the city was still fighting over whether to search for the first ones. So the optics of the situation were devastating, and the pressure on police and politicians to act only intensified. So by the fall of 2023, the landfill question had crossed from tragedy into politics. And Manitoba's Progressive Conservative Party, or PC, bought a full-page spread in the Winnipeg Free Press to express where they stood on the issues. In front and center, in the biggest font on the page, was the refusal to search Prairie Green for the bodies of First Nations women.

• 1:01:44Speaker 02

  And they put up billboards carrying the same message. The ads stated that "for health and safety reasons, the answer on the landfill dig just has to be no." And New Democratic Party, or NDP, leader Wab Canu responded directly, saying that PC's attempts to discourage the search looked desperate. And at a separate press conference, Canu urged Manitobans to vote. "If you, as a Manotoban, do not like these American-style attacks, there's something you can do about it. You can go vote right now." And Paul Thomas, a professor emeritus of political studies at the University of Manitoba, called the PC campaign "nastier and more vicious and mean than usual." And on October 3, 2023, the NDP won a majority government.

• 1:02:29Speaker 02

  And Wab Canu became Canada's first First Nations provincial premier. And one of his government's commitments was to search Prairie Green. And after taking over as opposition leader, Obi Khan walked the ads back, and he apologized and said his party would change course. And Cambria Harris took it further, filing two human rights complaints. One targeted the PC party for the election ads, and the other targeted the provincial government for refusing to fund the search. So by October of 2024, heavy equipment was on-site at Prairie Green, and crews started clearing a path toward the zone where investigators believed Harris and Myron had been buried under years of waste. And the search officially launched on December 2024, and on February 26, 2025, searchers

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  recovered remains at the site. Two sets were found. And on March 7, the RCMP confirmed the first set belonged to Morgan Harris. And Cambria posted on Facebook, calling it "a very bittersweet moment." And 10 days later, on March 17, police confirmed the second set of remains were those of Mercedes Myron. And on July 9, 2025, the Prairie Green search officially concluded. And on July 14 and 15, the families of Harris and Myron gathered for private ceremonies to honor both women. And Premier Canu, the search team, and community supporters were there alongside them. And the final cost of the search came to $18.4 million.

• 1:03:55Speaker 02

  And back in 2023, a feasibility study had warned the worst-case scenario could reach $184 million and take up to three years. And a follow-up report brought the number down to around $19 million, assuming a one-year timeline. And the actual figure was a fraction of every projection that had been used to argue the search couldn't be done. And Sandra Delaurent had co-signed a letter to the federal government in December of 2022 alongside other Indigenous leaders, pushing for the search to be funded. And after the recovery, she gave the credit to the families. Because without their refusal to stop fighting, she said, without their insistence that their loved ones were respected as human beings, none of it would have happened. And she added that the Winnipeg Police Service and the previous provincial government have

• 1:04:39Speaker 02

  a lot of explaining to do. And it took a December 2024 interview with Skabicki to finally break a dead end. Because this time, he gave them something new. A specific pair of pants Ashley had on when she died. Because remember, at this point, nobody knows about Ashley. They know that there was another woman, but they don't know it's Ashley. And police pulled DNA from the pants and then compared samples from Ashley's family. And the results from RCMP lab came back on March 11 and March 24, 2025. And on March 26, 2025, police publicly confirmed that the woman who was unidentified for three years was Ashley Shingus.

• 1:05:22Speaker 02

  And her father, Albert, had already suspected. And he made the trip from St. Teresa Point to Winnipeg and spent months going block to block trying to find any trace of Ashley. And he said, "It felt like no one heard us, no one acted, and for the longest time, Ashley remained unidentified while we were out here, screaming into silence." And after homicide detective Sergeant Mike McDonald made the trip to St. Teresa Point with the official confirmation, Teresa immediately told Ashley's son herself. And roughly a year later, Ashley's daughter and another teenager died from the cold in St. Teresa Point. And according to her family, the grief of losing her mother had broken something in

• 1:06:05Speaker 02

  her that never healed, and the family as a whole was struggling to deal. So once Prairie Green wrapped up, everything shifted to Brady Road, and the same specialized equipment and personnel moved to the second landfill. And that's where Ashley Shingus's remains are believed to be. Canu made a second announcement, and the province would also use the Brady Road search to look for Tanya Nepanak, who disappeared at 31 years old more than a decade earlier. And investigators had already tried once in October of 2012, and they searched Brady Road for Nepanak for six days and came up empty. But Canu confirmed the Brady Road operation would run through at least 2026, but no end date has been locked in.

• 1:06:46Speaker 02

  And on March 17, 2025, the same day Mercedes Myron's remains were confirmed, Gene Bowers was sworn in as Winnipeg's new police chief. And he replaced Danny Smith, the man who'd stood in front of cameras years earlier, and said the search couldn't be done. So at this point, Skabicki is serving four concurrent life sentences in prison. And in 2022, the Supreme Court of Canada struck down stacked parole in eligibility periods, requiring that all life terms be served at once. So whether it's one murder or four, the time behind bars doesn't change. In that sentencing, Justice Zoil acknowledged the tension. Zoil didn't disagree with the Supreme Court, but he noted the justices had been purposely silent on one key point.

• 1:07:30Speaker 02

  They never said the law couldn't be rewritten down the road. And in Zoil's reading, that silence left room for Parliament to build something harsher, a penalty designed for cases exactly like this one, a serial killer case. And the families and advocates didn't see an open door. They saw a gap. But for the families, the principle matters as much as the result. Four women were killed, and the sentence should say so. Morgan Harris, Mercedes Myron, and Rebecca Kontois have all been laid to rest, and their families were finally able to hold funerals and ceremonies. After years of fighting to bring them home, that closure finally came. And Ashley Shingus's family is still waiting, though.

• 1:08:12Speaker 02

  The search for her remains at Brady Road landfill officially began on December 1, 2025. And Ashley's parents and her sister were there where the search began. And Premier Canu joined them at the landfill for Ceremony marking the launch and nobody knows when it will wrap up. And as of May 2026, the crews at Brady Road are still working. And Cambria Harris, Morgan's daughter, turned her grief into a career, actually. The Manitoba government brought her on in October of 2025 and her title is Special Assistant in the Finance Department, where she works with the Indigenous Reconciliation Secretariat. And that secretariat is responsible for reconciliation-focused policy and research. And she is in her mid-20s.

• 1:08:55Speaker 02

  And Morgan's cousin, Melissa Robinson, started something of her own. And she co-founded Morgan's Warriors, an organization built around protecting vulnerable people. And Robinson said the work isn't abstract for her. She knows what happens when women have nowhere safe to be or to go. Quote, "I feel like my cousin may still be around, you know, right now if that option was there. She was preyed upon, those other women were preyed upon, you know? How many more men out there are thinking that same thing?" Unquote. And Robinson has called for Winnipeg to open emergency shelters exclusively for women, spaces where the people most at risk aren't sharing a room with the people most likely hunting them. But, I mean, these women mattered.

• 1:09:40Speaker 02

  And the story of this case doesn't end with a conviction. It doesn't end with a landfill search or a policy announcement or a new premier taking office. It ends, if it ends at all, when the next woman walking through a shelter door is safer than the last one was. And until then, the families carry it. And they'll keep carrying it after the headlines move on. So my hope is that this actually changes. You know, politicians could say all they want, but it really needs to be demonstrated and actually done. And I think Canoe has made a big difference, which is wonderful. And I just hope there's more changes that will be made. But that is it for this case.

• 1:10:22Speaker 02

  I was completely unaware of this case and I'm from Canada. I feel like this is one of the, one of the bigger serial killer cases in Canada. And it's really sad that this was kind of pushed to the wayside. Like, I don't know. So thank you to the people that recommended this case. I read it about it in the comments, so please leave any other cases that I should look into in the comments. I always read them. And until next time, please stay safe out there and I'll see your beautiful face. All right. Bye.

• 1:10:49Speaker 01

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