Manitoba landfill begins excavation for remains of First Nations women murdered by serial killer

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Manitoba’s Premier says the excavation of a Winnipeg-area landfill where the bodies of at least two First Nations women were disposed of by a convicted serial killer has now begun.

Joined on Wednesday by the families of victims, 26-year-old Marcedes Myran and 39-year-old Morgan Harris, both members of Long Plain First Nation, Wab Kinew provided a tour of the two-hectare section at the Prairie Green landfill, north of the provincial capital in the rural municipality of Rosser, where the high-profile search is under way.

Mr. Kinew addressed a small group of invited journalists, each wearing helmets and safety vests, in front of a towering mound of refuse. He explained that a building is expected to be completed on the asphalt that he stood upon by December. At that new site, all the excavated material, 10 metres below the hill behind him, will be manually sifted, he said.

The Premier emphasized how the remains of Ms. Myran and Ms. Harris should have been located in 2022, when the investigation into their murders and that of two other women first started.

“The search of the Prairie Green landfill was always feasible. It was always possible. It required political will,” Mr. Kinew told The Globe and Mail.

This past August, Jeremy Skibicki, 37, was handed four concurrent life sentences for the first-degree murders of Ms. Myran, Ms. Harris, 24-year-old Rebecca Contois and an unidentified woman whom Indigenous elders have named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, meaning Buffalo Woman.

Although Winnipeg police located the body of Ms. Contois shortly after the killer’s arrest in 2022, the remains of the other three women have never been found.

The bodies of at least two of those women – Ms. Myran and Ms. Harris – are believed to have been dumped at Prairie Green, based on GPS information obtained by police from several garbage trucks. But Winnipeg police refused to conduct a search of the landfill, considering it too dangerous.

Mr. Kinew blames that lack of action on the former Progressive Conservative government which, in last year’s election against his New Democratic Party, campaigned on not searching the landfill.

“Let everyone remember that if premier Heather Stefanson had started this, when she was asked, the search could be done by now,” Mr. Kinew said. (Ms. Stefanson, who is now part of the board of directors at WestJet Airlines, did not respond to requests for comment.)

At the briefing, Amna Mackin, a Manitoba assistant deputy minister who is running the operation for the government, said the hiring of dozens of workers for the search, which could stretch into 2026, is nearly complete. She said job offers will be sent out in the next few weeks for two teams of at least 12 full-time workers each, along with many other part-time positions.

Over the past few months, a pilot project on a test area at the landfill, where the bodies are not believed to be buried, was completed to refine techniques for the excavation, Ms. Mackin said. Access roads were also built and engineering assessments were conducted, she said.

Additionally, Ms. Mackin said, multiple contractors were lined up to build a healing lodge as a communal and private space near the landfill for the victims’ family members, who are part of an oversight committee for the search, along with Indigenous elders. That space is now ready to be furnished, Mr. Kinew said.

Betsy Kennedy said the search is also paying homage to the legacy of the late Grand Chief Cathy Merrick of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, who died suddenly last month. “We continue to honour her by carrying forward this heartfelt work,” said Ms. Kennedy, who took over from Ms. Merrick as the interim leader of 63 First Nations in the province.

Ms. Myran’s family, standing next to the Premier, did not speak with media. But Cambria Harris, daughter of Morgan Harris, said recent efforts have shown her a light at the end of the tunnel after years of advocating to find her mother’s remains.

“I think about the grief that my family had to go through,” she said, “and it’s something that no one, no human being, should ever have to go through. We’re only human and so are our women in those landfills.”

The Manitoba and federal governments have each committed $20-million for the search.