Family members of Rebecca Contois, one of the victims of an admitted serial killer, gathered Friday to remember the 24-year-old woman exactly two years after police announced her remains had been found at the Brady Road Landfill.
More than 30 family members and their supporters gathered in Kildonan Park at Rainbow Butterfly, an artfully designed shelter that evokes a red dress, a symbol of the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls movement.
Contois was one of four victims of 37-year-old killer Jeremy Skibicki.
Ruth Bonneville / Free Press The grandmother of Marcedes Myran, Donna Bartlett, makes statement with the support of the sister of Marcedes, Brandy Myran and friends, outside the CMHR at the Start of Landfill Search Thursday.
“She was a loving, caring, compassionate person,” said Travis Barsy, a friend of the Contois family who did not know the victim personally.
“What I have learned about her, she had a great sense of humour, she loved to laugh. I’ve seen many videos and pictures, and I think she’s smiling in every single one of them.”
Her family members, distraught with grief, took part in ceremonies at the memorial. Barsy spoke to reporters on their behalf.
Drummers sang and drummed, as the smell of burning sage filled the air, during a pipe ceremony led by advocate Leslie Spillet.
Family members of Contois placed cloth onto the burning fire, as the songs rang out.
Barsy said the gathering, held on National Indigenous Peoples Day, was a chance to share stories about Rebecca, who was a member of Crane River First Nation.
“We wanted to keep Rebecca’s name alive, and very much in the news, and just remember her — she was part of all of this as well (and) was the first one to have been found… (She) was the one that (shined) the light on this monster,” said Barsy.
Contois’s partial remains were discovered by a man searching for scrap metal in a garbage bin behind Edison Avenue, early on May 16, 2022. She had been killed a couple of days earlier.
The discovery sparked a homicide probe and a search for the rest of her remains. Skibicki was taken to Winnipeg police headquarters, where he confessed that he had killed four Indigenous women and disposed of them in refuse bins near his North Kildonan apartment.
After the May 16 discovery, police cordoned off part of the city-owned Brady landfill. The rest of Contois’s remains were recovered on June 14, 2022. The public was told one week later.
Barsy said Friday her family is going through a tough time as they wait for the judge to decide whether Skibicki can be held criminally responsible for the slayings of the four women. He’s charged with four counts of first-degree murder. The three other victims are Morgan Harris, 39, Marcedes Myran, 26, both of Long Plain First Nation, and a fourth unidentified woman known as Buffalo Woman.
Skibicki’s defence argues he cannot be held legally responsible due to a mental disorder.
The judge’s verdict will be delivered July 11.
Skibicki killed Harris and Myran earlier in May, while Buffalo Woman was slain in March.
The bodies of Myran and Harris were picked up from other garbage bins before the discovery of Contois’s remains on May 16.
Their bodies were discarded at the privately owned Prairie Green landfill, north of the city, which police learned about on June 20, 2022.
Police decided not to search the site, citing the huge amount of toxic debris, sparking widespread protest from family members and Indigenous leaders.
Provincial officials have since announced a search of the site will begin in the fall, and $40 million has been earmarked to conduct the search.
erik.pindera@freepress.mb.ca
Erik Pindera
Reporter
Erik Pindera is a reporter for the Free Press, mostly focusing on crime and justice. The born-and-bred Winnipegger attended Red River College Polytechnic, wrote for the community newspaper in Kenora, Ont. and reported on television and radio in Winnipeg before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Erik.
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