MISSING / MURDERED CASES IN NOVA SCOTIA
MURDERED
Jennifer Horne
Ms. Horne was reported missing by her father Dec. 30 when she didn’t show up for work at a nursing home. She was last seen by her family the night before at her mother’s house in Cole Harbour, where she changed her clothes before going out with Mr. Maguire to the Thirsty Duck bar in Halifax.
Her naked body was found Dec. 31, bound and in a rolled up carpet stuffed into the closet. She had been sexually assaulted and her throat slit. An RCMP criminal profiler contacted by Halifax police said the killing showed signs of sexual sadism.
Jennifer's stepmother said she wanted her to be remembered for the "beautiful gem" that she was, not the grisly attack that ended her life. "Her life should outlive the memories of her death," Kathy MacNeil said. "In life she just glowed; she was a treasure that will never be replaced." Horne's mother and father also attended the event. MacNeil spoke on their behalf.
Jennifer's best friend, Jenna Michaud, 19, reminisced about good times they had in high school. "You have to remember all the happy stuff you did with her as opposed to all the bad stuff that happened to her," she said. Michaud had known Horne since Grade Primary and said she was always laughing. "She was a sweetie pie; she had a great sense of humour and always had a smile," she said. She found out about her friend's fate just before 5 p.m. on New Year's day. "They said that they'd found her; I was hoping they'd say alive," she said. "I locked myself in my room for about two days."
Desmond Maguire, 37, and his pregnant common-law partner Ashley Haley, 20, re charged with first-degree of Jennifer. They are in jail pending trial.
MURDERED
Suzanne Dube
Suzanne left her children with a babysitter stating she had to "check something out" and would be back in a few minutes. There were reported sightings of Suzanne in the area of the "The Load of Mischief" and the Club 2000 in Lower Sackville during the evening hours of November 17, and in the early morning hours of November 18, 1988.
On March 25, 1989, Suzanne Dube’s decomposed body was found in the Bedford Basin, Bedford, Nova Scotia.
Any person with information regarding the person(s) responsible for the murder of Suzanne Elizabeth DUBE should call the Rewards for Major Unsolved Crimes Program at 1-888-710-9090. The reward is payable in Canadian funds and will be apportioned as deemed just by the Minister of Justice for the Province of Nova Scotia. Employees of law enforcement and correctional agencies are not eligible to collect this reward. The reward expires August 1, 2008.
UNSOLVED
MURDERED
Nora BernardNora successfully filed a landmark lawsuit against the federal government on behalf of Indian residential school survivors. She was well loved by all and instumental in the beginning of healing journeys for Indian Residential School Survivors world-wide.
Truro police received a call to her home at 2:47 AM and when they arrived fifteen minutes later found her dead.
Nora's 24 year old Grandson, James Gloade has been charged with first degree murder. He was known to have problems with drugs and it is believed that Nora may have been trying to convince him to get some help when she was beaten and stabbed to death by him.
MURDERED
Terrilynne Poulette
Terrilynne was described as shy and tomboyish, enjoys bike-riding, hanging out with friends and visiting pals in neighbouring native communities.
But she would always tell her brother or sisters where she was heading, says Natalie Doucette, her aunt.
"She had a real close bond with her siblings."
Extensive searches by community members and police in the rocky , wooded terrain around Eskasoni have turned up no traces.
Police were concerned Terrilynne, whose 18th birthday passed, had been a victim of foul play.
She is five-foot-five and 129 pounds, with short black hair. When last seen Terrilynne was wearing a navy blue jacket with a narrow red-and-white stripe running across the chest area, a grey hoodie, blue jeans, a dark-coloured ball cap with a knit cap overtop, and white sneakers.
The teenager delighted in looking after her little niece. Terrilynne's older sister gave birth to a second girl in July, naming the child after her missing sibling.
A man out duck hunting discovered the human remains on a small wooded island near the Eskasoni reserve on Dec. 7. At the time, police said it was too early to determine whether the remains were those of Poulette. Two forensic anthropologists were brought in to assist in the case. Now investigators are trying to determine how Poulette died and whether foul play was involved.
"In this type of situation the death is considered suspicious until we can gather further information, and this may take quite some time," said Insp. Myles Burke, with Cape Breton Regional Police.
Poulette, 17, was last seen leaving a friend's house in Eskasoni after a party one wintery night in February. Several ground and air searches of the area turned up no sign of her, prompting investigators to issue public appeals for help. The Eskasoni band council offered a $5,000 reward for information to help find Poulette. The investigation has now been turned over to the RCMP major crime section in Port Hawkesbury. Anyone with any information about Terrilynne's disappareance and murder, can contact the Eskasoni RCMP Detachment at (902) 379-2822 or Nova Scotia Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
Source: The Halifax Herald, Sunday, Sept. 18, 2005
UNSOLVED
MURDERED
Cheryl Ann Johnson
Earlier this week, the associate chief said Ms. Johnson's injuries were consistent with drowning and no foul play was suspected. An autopsy determined death by drowning. "You think if we didn't believe if there was one suspicion of foul play we wouldn't be working on it?" he told this newspaper at the time. "It doesn't matter who it is." Associate Chief Wilson said the woman may have removed her own clothes or tidal action may have done it.
Kevin Saccary, chairman of the regional police commission, said it hasn't received any formal complaints regarding the investigation. He said any complaints should be directed to the commission or Police Chief Edgar MacLeod.
UNSOLVED
MURDERED
Anna Mae Pictou Aquash
Her daughter Denise made a tearful plea for Canadian pressure to finally resolve the case.
Aquash had helped AIM, the American Indian Movement, in the standoff at Wounded Knee, South Dakota, in 1973. Two years later, she was at the nearby Pine Ridge Reservation when two FBI agents were killed in a fight with members of AIM. Aquash was arrested on weapons charges, but later released by a judge. Several months later her body was found in the Dakota Badlands.
Some people said the FBI wanted her dead, but her family says she was actually kidnapped, raped and killed by members of the Indian movement because she knew too much about who killed the FBI agents. Her cousin, Robert Pictou-Branscombe, has conducted his own investigation and he has publicly named three people as the killers -- a man and woman in the United States and the man who pulled the trigger, now in Whitehorse. Now Pictou-Branscombe wants the Canadian government to use its influence to finally wrap the case up. "We want it resolved. We want prosecution," he said. br>
The RCMP say the man in Whitehorse is not under investigation. Meanwhile, the American detective who took over the case this year says he, too, is close to laying charges"
On the afternoon of February 24, 1976 Rodger Amiotte, a mixed blood rancher whose land was in the northeast corner of the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation...found the body of a woman in a snow-covered ditch one hundred feet from the country road. She was wrapped in a blanket. The woman wore a maroon windbreaker, jeans, and blue canvas shoes. She had long fingernails. Her hands were adorned with fancy turquoise jewelry, including rings and a large bracelet.
The body was taken to the Pine Ridge hospital, where Dr. W.O. Brown performed an autopsy in the presence of FBI agents. The doctor said the unidentified woman died of exposure. She had frozen to death. There was no sign of violence. "
During the autopsy, an FBI agent asked Doctor Brown, "I need her hands. Sever them at the wrist, would ya, Doc?" Over the next days, the government agents approached mortuary after mortuary, asking to have the handless body buried. According to one undertaker, the FBI agents wanted the woman buried under a fictitious name. 'Can't do it,' he said. 'You guys ought to know. That's illegal.'
On March 3, the body was buried, nameless in the Holy Rosary Mission on the [Pine Ridge] reservation. That same day, the FBI notified its Rapid City office that the dead woman was Anna Mae Aquash." The Wounded Knee Legal Defense/Offense Committee (WKLDOC) demanded a an exhumation and a second autopsy. However, before this could take place, "The FBI filed its own request for exhumation and reautopsy. The reasons its affidavit gave were that Anna Mae might have been killed in a hit-an-run accident or that she might have been murdered by AIM as a suspected informer...there was no explanation as to how a person who might have been a victim of a hit-and-run accident could have been thrown one hundred feet from the highway, display no sign of contact with a vehicle, and end up in a ditch, neatly wrapped in a blanket." The autopsy was scheduled for March 11, 1976.
Anna Mae's family, through WKLDOC attorney Ellison hired Garry Peterson, an independent pathologist from St. Paul Hospital in Minnesota to observe. When he arrived, Dr. Peterson was the only Doctor there. The FBI had not bothered to have a pathologist at the autopsy it had requested. Peterson, who brought only the minimal equipment needed to observe, had to perform the procedure. It was not terribly complicated.
An obvious bullet wound, surrounded by an even more obvious 5 cm x 5 cm discoloration, adorned the rear of Anna Mae's head, exactly where the hospital staff had seen the thawing body leak the week before. She died of exposure to a small-caliber bullet fired from a gun placed near the back of her head. She had been executed.
Loud Hawk - The United States versus
the American Indian Movement
ANNA MAE'S QUOTES
"You are continuing to control my life with your violent, materialistic needs. I do realize your need to survive and be a part of this Creation - but you do not understand mine...I have traveled through this country and I have observed your undisciplined military servants provoke those whose rights are the same as yours...
I am not a citizen of the United States or a ward of the Federal Government, neither am I a ward of the Canadian government. I have a right to continue my cycle in this Universe undisturbed."
~Anna Mae Pictou Aquash, Micmac
Man Held in Decades-old Slaying of American Indian Activist
By DEBORAH MENDEZ Associated Press, April 3, 2003]
DENVER (AP) - The slaying of American Indian Movement activist Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash has gone unsolved for nearly 30 years, frustrating local and federal investigators.
But now, with a suspect in custody, they say the pieces may be coming together.
Arlo Looking Cloud, a 49-year-old homeless man, was arrested March 27 in Denver on a warrant issued by federal authorities in South Dakota. Looking Cloud and another man are accused of shooting Pictou-Aquash during a kidnapping in December 1975 near Wanblee, S.D.
Looking Cloud pleaded innocent to first-degree murder on Monday, U.S. Attorney James McMahon said Wednesday in Sioux Falls, S.D. A judge was expected to decide Thursday whether he should be sent to South Dakota to be prosecuted.
Pictou-Aquash's frozen body was found on South Dakota's Pine Ridge reservation in February 1976. The 30-year-old woman, who had been shot in the head, had disappeared from a Denver home several months earlier.
Looking Cloud worked as a security guard at AIM events during the 1970s, said Paul DeMain, editor of the bimonthly newspaper News From Indian Country in Wisconsin who has researched the case extensively.
Police in Denver were familiar with Looking Cloud because he has been cited for several misdemeanors, including trespassing and public drinking, during the years he has lived on the city's streets.
Denver detective Abe Alonzo, who was first assigned to the Pictou-Aquash case nearly 10 years ago, said Looking Cloud was known to loiter on Colfax Avenue, one of the city's main streets.
"It was almost like it was too easy," said Alonzo, who walked up to the suspect on the street before calling uniformed officers to make the arrest.
Looking Cloud, a Lakota Indian, was arrested on a trespassing charge and later seemed surprised to learn that he was wanted in the Pictou-Aquash slaying.
"I don't think he actually thought this was happening," said Alonzo, who last had contact with Looking Cloud in January. He would not elaborate.
According to a rap sheet released by police, Looking Cloud used as many as 23 aliases over the past nine years.
The man named along with Looking Cloud in a March 20 indictment has not been taken into custody. Authorities gave no detail.
Pictou-Aquash was a member of Canada's Mi'kmaq Tribe. She was among Indian militants who occupied the village of Wounded Knee in a 71-day standoff with federal authorities in 1973. There was some speculation she was killed by AIM members because she knew some of them were government spies. Others said Pictou-Aquash was killed because she herself was an informant.
Federal authorities repeatedly have denied any involvement.
Man indicted for 1975 Wounded Knee killing
Last Updated Wed, 03 Dec 2003 7:32:05
VANCOUVER - John Graham, charged with the 1975 murder of an aboriginal activist, was behind bars Tuesday in a Vancouver jail.
John Graham
Earlier this year, Graham was indicted in the U.S. for the murder but he had been at large until his arrest Monday.
The victim, Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash, a Mi'kmaq born in Pictou Landing, N.S., was shot in the head and her frozen body was found months later near Wanblee, S. Dakota.
The FBI believe Graham and Arlo Looking Cloud took Pictou-Aquash in a car from Denver, Colorado, to a ravine on the Pine Ridge Reservation, in South Dakota where they killed her.
It's believed Pictou-Aquash was killed for being a suspected FBI informant inside the American Indian Movement. She was among the Indian militants who occupied the village of Wounded Knee for 71 days in 1973.
Graham, a Yukon aboriginal, admits he was with Pictou-Aquash the last time she was alive, but in a 2000 interview with the CBC's The Fifth Estate, Graham denied any involvement in her murder.
"I wasn't there and I didn't witness it. And that's all I can say about that," he said.
Graham's bail hearing is set for Dec. 17.
The U.S. has 60 days to file an extradition request but in the meantime, Cloud, a Lakota Indian, will go on trial next February charged with first-degree murder.
Written by CBC News Online staff
American Indian Movement (AIM) Of Colorado Position On The Arrest Of Arlo Looking Cloud In The Murder Of Anna Mae Pictou Aquash !!! WITH SOME VERY IMPORTANT INFORMATION REGARDING THE ARRESTS
Please click on this link to read some important information regarding the FBI' s COINTELPRO.
MURDERED
Laura Lee Cross
LAURA LEE CROSS
'A sweet kid with a big heart,' Laura Lee Cross left home at 13 and got sucked into a violent life of prostitution and drugs. But in the months before her death a5 33, she tried to turn her life around.
A prostitute and drug addict since her teens, Laura Lee Cross didn't stand a chance.
But that doesn't explain why the Dartmouth woman's skeletal remains were found in October in a wooded area off Old Guysborough Road, about 17 kilometres from Halifax International Airport.
Lower Sackville RCMP used DNA evidence to identify Ms. Cross, last seen in Halifax on July 13, 2001, when she was 33.
The five-foot-five, 140-pound woman with short reddish-blond hair was a repeat offender for assault, theft and prostitution-related crimes.
The eldest of two children born out of wedlock, Ms. Cross was raised by her grandparents from the age of nine months.
"Laura Lee was a sweet kid with a big heart," her aunt, Barbara Doucette, said Tuesday.
"She would give you the shirt off her back. Maybe that was her problem."
Ms. Doucette and her husband sometimes took care of the young girl.
"Laura Lee always called me Mom," she said.
At age 13, Ms. Cross left her grandparents' home and lived in group homes before falling into a lifestyle of prostitution and severe drug abuse.
Ms. Cross had a lot of family support while growing up, Ms. Doucette said. "But she went on a different path and wore out her welcome everywhere she went." Court documents revealed Ms. Cross worked as a streetwalker in Boston before returning to the Halifax area about 17 years ago to continue plying her trade.
She bore four children over the years but was unable to support them and court documents show three were believed to have been put up for adoption. The fourth, Nathan, is in his mid-teens and lives with his father in the Preston area.
Ms. Cross had only a Grade 7 education but completed a hairdressing course and a food service program at Eastern Shore District High School in Musquodoboit Harbour. Before that, she attended Gaetz Brook Junior High.
"She wasn't into sports or anything like that," her brother, Douglas Cross, 22, said from the family home in Ostrea Lake. "I guess you could say she was an average student. She wasn't overly smart or anything."
In her early teens, she embarked on a destructive lifestyle for 20 years, starting with marijuana and moving on to crack cocaine and other drugs.
During the last eight years of Ms. Cross's life, she was spending $300 to $350 a day on drugs like Dilaudid and Valium, crack cocaine and alcohol.
In a presentence report prepared for one of her court cases, Ms. Cross told a probation officer that she had been shot, stabbed and beaten by clients while she was working as a prostitute. She claimed one of her worst beatings was by an ex-boyfriend in September 2000.
But in the months before her death, she tried to turn her life around. While living on social assistance benefits of $670 a month, she tried to upgrade her education and participated in a number of drug rehabilitation programs.
Ms. Cross had hopes of one day supporting herself as a hairdresser.
Her brother said the family is heartbroken.
Mr. Cross said he'll remember the excursions they shared around the family home whenever she came to visit. "Mostly when she came down here, we'd just take off on the four-wheelers or something like that," he said. "She was an outdoorsy kind of person. She liked to go clam-digging and whatnot." Despite her problems, Ms. Cross was a decent, jovial person "who always put a smile on your face," he said. "It was just the way she was, just happy-go-lucky sort of thing. Even if you were in a bad mood, she would put you in a good one."
got into a shouting match in central Halifax on July 12, 2001, with a man she used drugs with. The friend, who saw the dispute, told The Herald on Tuesday that he heard the man use expletives and threaten to kill Ms. Cross. "You (expletive), I'm going to kill you," the friend heard the man say to Ms. Cross.
The friend said the dispute was over a drug deal gone bad. "He told me it was for $200 or $250 for an eight ball. I think about $250," the friend said. An eight ball is a large rock of crack cocaine. Ms. Cross laughed at the man before going into the friend's apartment, where they spent about 45 minutes chatting.
She had been planning a trip to the Bathurst, N.B., area to meet a male friend. "She was excited like a little child about the trip," the friend said. On the night of July 12, the friend said, Ms. Cross left her Dartmouth home and was at his Charles Street apartment before heading out onto the street to earn a little money for her trip. "That was how she made money," he said. "She was a street prostitute."
The last time he saw her was at 8:45 p.m. as she headed out the door. She was wearing a sweater, denim shorts and sandals. "I said goodbye to her," he said. "She said she may be back. I said the door is always open."
It wasn't until weeks later that two Halifax Regional Police officers told him Ms. Cross was missing. That made him think about the dispute he had seen that night. He said he hadn't taken the threat seriously but now wondered if he'd been naive. "I took it as just hot air," he said. On Aug. 22, 2001, Halifax Regional Police issued an appeal in the missing person case. Police said Ms. Cross contacted her family from her apartment and said she would be catching the train on the 12th. She didn't make that train and was planning to catch one the next morning.
A search of her Penhorn Lake apartment revealed her suitcases were packed and her purse was still there, which the friend said wasn't unusual. Halifax RCMP aren't calling her death a murder. "I don't believe that we've determined the cause of death yet," said Sgt. Wayne Noonan, the RCMP's provincial spokesman. Ms. Cross's skeletal remains were found off a logging road 17 kilometres up Old Guysborough Road on Oct. 14.
RCMP broke the news to Ms. Cross's family on Monday morning that the body was hers but didn't tell them if she'd been murdered. "We are treating it as suspicious, obviously, just (because of) where the body was found in a wooded area out in the Dollar Lake area," Sgt. Noonan said. But family members say they're convinced Ms. Cross was murdered. "It just doesn't make sense," said her aunt, Barbara Doucette. "People know . . . and are keeping their mouths shut. Hopefully one of these days they will slip up and we will find out what happened and who did what. "Certainly, Laura Lee's death was foul play. I mean, she is not going to go up into the woods." Ms. Cross's brother, Douglas Cross, 22, said Tuesday he wants the person who did it strung up. "To tell you the truth, I would do it myself," he said. "If you were in my shoes, wouldn't you?" Ms. Cross's father said he's heard all sorts of stories and worries that a male friend of hers was involved in her death. "If he didn't do it, he knows something about it because he's well-known around here for stuff like that," Wilfrid Cross said of the man. "He's in and out of trouble, and trouble follows trouble." Police say Ms. Cross had stormy relationships with several men, including some clients. She told a probation officer that she was badly beaten by an ex-boyfriend in September 2000 and spent two months at Adsum House, a Halifax women's shelter, and the local YWCA. "I heard that (he) beat her up and put her in the hospital," her father said. "I didn't hear it from her, but she was scared to tell me anything like that because I would have went right after him, and I might be going after him yet." In a presentence report from April 2001, Ms. Cross told a probation officer that some of her clients had shot, stabbed and beaten her while she was working the streets. "To me, closure will not be until after the person who is responsible for her death is found," Ms. Doucette said. "I am still just so upset and angry. To me, the book won't be closed until all the pages are filled. "She was just a person like everybody else and we have a right to know what happened to her."
MURDERED
Jean Hilda Myra
If you have any information please contact Halifax Police.
UNSOLVED
MURDERED
Kimber Leanne Lucas
Her body was discovered behind a building on North Street near Agricola Street on November 23, 1994.
Please notify Halifax Police if you have any information UNSOLVED
MURDERED
Emma PaulAt approximately 2 p.m. on September 26, 1991, members of the Sydney Police Department were called to 83 Bentinck Street in Sydney. They were met by James Igoe, the apartment house manager, who informed them that there was a dead body in apartment number 4. The police found the body of Emma Paul lying face up in the bath tub with her knees bent upwards. She had been severely battered and there was what appeared to be a shoelace tied around her neck. The autopsy established the cause of death as strangulation.
Norman Woodrow Francis was charged and convicted of second degree murder The appellant has a substantial record which includes offences involving violence. He lost his appeal and is serving 20 years without parole.
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