The news of possible human remains being found at a landfill north of Winnipeg has landed hard, even though it’s what was hoped for, says the cousin of a murdered woman believed to have been dumped at the site.
“That scary movie we’ve been living for the last couple of years has become a reality. I think the shock of everything has finally hit me, because I woke up this morning and I just don’t feel right,” Melissa Robinson, a cousin of Morgan Harris, said at a news conference in Winnipeg on Thursday.
“Usually takes a lot to break me, but I’m pretty emotional today.”
Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26, were killed in May 2022 and their remains were placed in garbage bins by serial killer Jeremy Skibicki. After a long fight to search the Prairie Green landfill for their remains, work started at the landfill north of Winnipeg late last year.
Jorden Myran, Marcedes Myran’s sister, also seemed shaky and overwhelmed as she spoke at the news conference.
“I want to thank all the supporters … that believed that those women were in there and helped us fight to get to this point,” she said.
“We knew those women were in there, and this is the day that we’ve been waiting for. Although it’s a good thing that we found the remains, it’s also very, very hard.”
The women spoke at a news conference organized by the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs one day after the province announced possible human remains were found at Prairie Green, where technicians have been sifting through material since December.
Harris and Myran, both originally from Long Plain First Nation, are two of four women murdered by Skibicki in 2022.
Robinson said she keeps thinking back to when police and the previous Manitoba government said no to a landfill search, “that it couldn’t be done and that it wouldn’t be done.”
“To hell with all you guys, because it got done. And it’s just beginning,” she said.
Activity at the landfill search site was paused following the discovery on Wednesday but resumed Thursday, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew told CBC Manitoba Information Radio host Marcy Markusa on Thursday.
The finding has strengthened the searchers’ determination but also underscored the need for patience, he said.
“[We are] trying to ensure that we do every single step here in the most meticulous fashion, so that we can give confidence to the families, if we are moving forward on their healing journey, that it will be in a good way — but also to the public who’ve been rightfully paying so much attention to this issue.”
Patience is also required as people wait to learn whether the remains are human, and whose they might be, he said.
“On identification, we’re looking at up to two weeks, and that’s because it’s a joint process with the chief medical examiner and the RCMP. And there are obviously some technical things that need to be worked through,” Kinew said.
“Best-case scenario, it will move ahead much quicker than that, so we can move on to the next step.”
In addition to the murders of Harris and Myran, Skibicki was also found guilty in the deaths of Rebecca Contois, 24, and a still-unidentified woman who has been given the name Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, by community leaders.
Contois’s partial remains were found in a garbage bin in Winnipeg in mid-May in 2022. More of her remains were found at the city-run Brady Road landfill in June 2022.
On the same morning Contois’s remains were found in the Winnipeg garbage bin, the remains of Harris and Myran, in a dumpster a few blocks away, were picked up by a garbage truck, court heard during Skibicki’s trial last year.
Activity at the landfill search site was paused following Wednesday’s discovery but will resume Thursday, Kinew said.
“That was to make sure that the families had time to get to the site and to go through their process. It’s very meaningful and emotionally impactful,” he said.
“But also because the RCMP needed time for their process and then to do their transportation and hand-off to the chief medical examiner.”
The discovery has made searchers and technicians, many of whom are university students studying to become forensic anthropologists, more determined than ever, Kinew said.
“I heard directly from some of the search technicians who made the actual identification. They’re motivated to get back into the search facility and to continue this work, because they’ve now seen some very direct evidence of how they can potentially bring closure for these families and for our province, and country, too.”
Kinew said he hopes the discovery begins a healing process on multiple levels.
“I mean, first and foremost healing for the families, who’ve been through a very difficult period of losing their loved ones and then having the issue play out so publicly and become very divisive at some points,” he said.
The call for government to search the landfill resulted in protests and blockades around the city, sometimes with heated confrontations.
“Again, there’s a lot of uncertainty right now and we have to wait for this identification process to play out, but if this is in fact one of the women that we’re searching for … I hope the fact that we have had tense moments on this topic over the past few years … that this helps to bring healing and closure on that level, too, and that we can move forward as one province,” Kinew said.
There’s going to be more clarity and answers as the process to identify the remains moves forward in the next couple of weeks, he said.
If they are indeed remains of one of Skibicki’s victims or someone else entirely, “I do hope that Manitobans just recognize this is a value statement about who we are,” Kinew said.
“This is about us as Manitoba and saying who we want to be as a province. And in my mind, we’re a province where if somebody goes missing, we go looking.
“Even if it’s difficult and even if there are long odds, we work hard.”
