Landfill search for slain woman’s remains could take weeks, police say

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This article was published 02/06/2022 (839 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The painstaking search for the remains of homicide victim Rebecca Contois through a huge swath of the city’s landfill could take up to a month.

The Winnipeg Police Service first cordoned off a section of the Brady Road garbage dump on May 16, the day the 24-year-old victim’s partial remains were found in a refuse bin behind an apartment on the 200 block of Edison Avenue, just east of Henderson Highway.

Jeremy Anthony Michael Skibicki, 35, was arrested two days later and charged with first-degree murder, which indicates the Crown attorney’s office believes the slaying was planned and deliberate.

The search area is the size of several football fields, police spokeswoman Const. Dani McKinnon told the Free Press Friday. Ten members of a trained police ground search-and-rescue team are combing the dump wearing respirators, methane-detection equipment and other protective gear due to biohazards.

The grid-search will also include the use of heavy equipment by contractors.

“It’s big, and that coupled with the weight of some of these machines — like a bulldozer, 80,000 pounds of tracks crushing the ground and the debris that we’re searching within, as well,” McKinnon said.

“It kind of creates a system of debris that almost turns into a clay-like compound that’s pressed down, so that, of course, is going to produce challenges.”

McKinnon said the search will not include the use of cadaver dogs, as the scents at the landfill are too overwhelming for the animals. Police may use an aerial drone.

No refuse has been dumped in that section of the province’s largest landfill since, but the search began only Thursday after wet weather delays and extensive preparation, as well as co-ordination with Contois’ family and Indigenous elders.

The investigation in the landfill could take three or four weeks depending on the weather, police Chief Danny Smyth said Friday.

Police have so far released few details of the grisly killing and the investigation.

A source has told the Free Press police believe there could be four additional victims. Police have acknowledged the possibility of more victims, but have not yet revealed why.

McKinnon noted Friday no further charges have been laid against Skibicki.

“That investigation is complex and there will be a lot involved before that can happen,” she said.

Arrest information recently obtained by the Free Press shows police believe Skibicki killed Contois on or around May 14. It also shows he was charged with failing to comply with conditions of a release order, specifically that he live at a West Broadway address.

A source previously told the Free Press a severed human head and leg were discovered in the apartment-block bin, prompting the homicide investigation.

“Any time there’s a dismemberment, it’s gruesome,” Smyth said Friday.

Full searches of the landfill are rare; the chief said he could only recall two in his decades on the force.

The last full-scale search police made public was for the remains of Tanya Nepinak, 31, in October 2012, as part of the service’s investigation into now-convicted killer Shawn Lamb.

A Winnipeg police team spent seven days searching at the Brady dump but found no trace of her — her body has never been found and the man suspected in her slaying, Lamb, wasn’t convicted in her death. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in connection to the deaths of two other missing Indigenous women. In 2013, he was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison.

On Monday, a sacred fire was lit at the landfill and tobacco was passed to a grandmother, who performed a traditional ceremony in honour of Contois, her family and her loved ones, and to support the officers carrying out the search.

Angie Tuesday, the Winnipeg Police Service family support and resource advocate, and members of Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak’s Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls liaison unit and Ka Ni Kanichihk’s Medicine Bear counselling program were all present at the ceremony.

Smyth said allowing ceremony during homicide investigations happens routinely, and in this case investigators were particularly sensitive.

“I’m pleased with the steps (investigators) took to include the family, even just notifying them of what’s going on and allowing for the elders to come in and offer a prayer and ceremony,” Smyth said.

Police have said they will continue to update the family as the search continues.

MKO Grand Chief Garrison Settee said city police have been proactive with his organization in communicating sensitive information related to issues involving missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, and that he appreciates the service’s efforts to work with First Nations, including the hiring of Tuesday in 2021.

“It is significant and essential to hold ceremony to honour and remember the spirit of the late Rebecca Contois. I commend all those who are carrying out and organizing these ceremonies, this is important work,” he said in a statement to the Free Press.

erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @erik_pindera