After the discovery of Rebecca Contois’s partial remains in a North Kildonan garbage bin, city police moved quickly to suspend all pickups in the area, only to learn another garbage truck containing more remains had emptied its load at the Brady Road landfill that morning.
“Our initial request was to have all garbage collection in that area stopped immediately,” Winnipeg Police Service Const. Brian Neumann testified Friday in the trial of admitted serial killer Jeremy Skibicki. “Unfortunately, there were bins that had already been emptied by the time we were able to close all that down.”
Police began a search for Contois’ remains the morning of May 17, 2022, after a man searching for scrap metal found the woman’s severed head wrapped in a plastic bag in a garbage bin in the 200 block of Edison Avenue, around 5:30 a.m.
Victims of admitted serial killer Jeremy Skibicki (left to right): Morgan Beatrice Harris, Marcedes Myran, Rebecca Contois.
Skibicki, 37, has pleaded not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder in the 2022 slayings of Contois and two other Indigenous women — Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran — as well as a fourth still-unidentified woman given the name Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe (Buffalo Woman) by Indigenous leaders.
Skibicki admits killing the women, but is arguing he should be found not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder.
Neumann, who at the time was assigned to the forensic identification unit, said he found more of Contois’s wrapped remains in the same bin where her head was discovered, and additional remains in a second garbage bin a short distance away.
SUPPLIED – Photo from security video shown to Jeremy Skibicki during questioning.
Security video showed a man now agreed to be Skibicki disposing of packages in a garbage bin behind a Midas Muffler shop a short walk away on Henderson Highway. Neumann said police learned garbage trucks had picked up the bin contents at 9:25 a.m. that morning for delivery to the Brady Road landfill.
The garbage truck was equipped with both GPS and cameras, allowing staff at the landfill to cordon off the area where the truck’s load would have been deposited, Neumann said.
“From the time (Brady staff) were notified that we would be interested in a particular truck that was dumped in a particular place at that time, no more trucks were allowed to enter that area,” Neumann said.
When police arrived, orange traffic cones and flags marked out a three-acre search area containing multiple mounds of fresh deposits. “It’s not just one pile, it’s individual piles from every truck as it pulls away,” Neumann said.
Neumann supervised the search and recovery team, telling members they were looking for “something of a small suitcase size, that we were looking for a torso, possibly wrapped in plastic or some other material that would assist a person in being able to transport it.”
Search and rescue team members wore protective suits, masks, boots and gas monitors to warn them of exposure to dangerous fumes. Drones were used to map out the search area and heavy equipment contractors moved debris to be searched.
The morning of June 14, 2022, “the search team radioed me to come out because they had found something of interest,” Neumann said. It was a human torso, wrapped in a sheet of black plastic, a bedsheet and an afghan.
After consulting with a pathologist, the torso was transported to St. Boniface General Hospital for an autopsy, Neumann said.
SUPPLIED Winnipeg Police Service powerpoint pdf from press conference discussing search for Marcedes Myran and Morgan Harris.
Some of Contois’s relatives left the courtroom during the officer’s testimony.
Following Skibicki’s May 17, 2022 arrest and police statement admitting to killing four women, investigators reviewed security video believed to show a man now known to be Skibicki leaving Harris’s wrapped body in a garbage bin behind the same Midas Muffler shop, May 3, 2022 at 12:18 a.m. A second security video recorded May 6 at 2:35 a.m. showed the man returning to the same area and leaving what is believed to be a bag containing Myran’s dismembered remains in a garbage bin.
Neumann said police didn’t learn until June 20 that the bins were emptied by a different garbage contractor on May 16 and taken to the Prairie Green landfill, north of the city.
Family members and Indigenous groups have mounted rallies and protests garnering national attention calling on the province to search the landfill for Harris’s and Myran’s remains. Earlier this year, the federal and Manitoba governments committed $20 million each to a search.
Neumann told court that Prairie Green staff advised police that by June 20, 2022, more than 10,000 loads of waste would have been emptied at the landfill site since May 16, raising the elevation by 40 feet over an area of three acres or more.
At Brady, “we were quite literally working on the surface with items that had never been disturbed,” Neumann said.
Neumann said he was tasked with assessing what “potential hurdles” police might face in searching Prairie Green, compared to “successes we had at Brady.” Part of that process included consulting with a forensic archaeologist who said Myran’s and Harris’s remains would have started decomposing earlier after prolonged exposure to heat, sun and insect activity while in the garbage bins.
Neumann said trucks delivering waste to the Prairie Green landfill were not equipped with GPS capability and it was not possible to determine which truck or trucks delivered waste from the garbage bins suspected to have contained Myran’s and Harris’s remains.
As well, some of the trucks delivering waste to Prairie Green were equipped with compactors, Neumann said, which could have crushed or compressed whatever remains were inside, increasing the likelihood of decomposition and bone breakage.
The hearing concluded Friday with testimony from pathologist Dr. Raymond Rivera, who performed the autopsy on Contois’s remains.
Rivera said he could not provide a “definite” cause of death, but said bruising to her head and other injuries were consistent with Contois having been strangled.
The trial resumes Monday with a focus on security video evidence documenting Skibicki’s alleged course of travel when he disposed of his three identified victims’ remains.
dean.pritchard@freepress.mb.ca
Dean Pritchard
Courts reporter
Someone once said a journalist is just a reporter in a good suit. Dean Pritchard doesn’t own a good suit. But he knows a good lawsuit.