A memorial with photos of Morgan Harris attached is shown as family and friends gather at a vigil in Winnipeg, on Dec. 1, 2022.JOHN WOODS/The Canadian Press
The Manitoba RCMP have identified human remains found at a Winnipeg-area landfill as those belonging to one of at least two First Nations women whose bodies the province has been searching for at the site.
In a statement late Friday, the Manitoba government confirmed that investigators at the Prairie Green landfill have matched some of the human remains to Morgan Harris, one of four women murdered in 2022 by a serial killer, who was convicted for the crimes last summer.
The province said a second set of human remains have also been recovered at the site, which have not yet been identified. Manitoba has been searching for the remains since last fall at Prairie Green, just north of Winnipeg in the Rural Municipality of Rosser, a multiyear effort that the provincial and federal governments have each committed $20-million toward.
In an interview, Cambria Harris said she finally feels like her mother, Morgan, can get the dignified funeral she deserves.
“It’s a bittersweet moment that I haven’t processed yet, and I hope brings us all healing. Our families have been fighting for this search for years now,” she said Friday. “We’ve been shouting from everywhere that anybody would hear us to do this for all our women that we’ve lost. Nobody should have to go through something like that to bring their loved one home.”
Last week, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew told The Globe and Mail that partial human remains had been found after workers at the landfill manually sifted through thousands of cubic metres of waste material. He said the province tasked the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and RCMP to identify the remains.
Mr. Kinew, in a social media post Friday evening, said: “Morgan Harris we honour you.”
Morgan Harris we honour you. pic.twitter.com/qfw3dcQCXX
— Wab Kinew (@WabKinew) March 8, 2025
In August last year, after a months-long trial, Jeremy Skibicki, then 37, was sentenced to life in prison for the first-degree murders of 39-year-old Ms. Harris, 26-year-old Marcedes Myran, 24-year-old Rebecca Contois and a yet-to-be-identified woman whom First Nations elders have named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, meaning Buffalo Woman.
After the killer’s arrest in May of 2022, Winnipeg police had located some of the remains of Ms. Contois, a member of Crane River First Nation, at a separate landfill. But while police obtained GPS information to confirm that the bodies of Ms. Myran and Ms. Harris, both from Long Plain First Nation, were at Prairie Green, they opted not to conduct a search of that landfill.
Police said the Prairie Green search would be too dangerous. That decision became the flashpoint issue of Manitoba’s election in 2023, with the ruling Progressive Conservative Party at the time paying for billboards, radio ads and newspaper spots to tell voters that “the answer on the landfill dig just has to be no.” But Mr. Kinew’s New Democrats, who eventually won the election, argued that the search was the humane thing to do.
Earlier this week, PC Opposition Leader Wayne Ewasko formally apologized to the families of the four women for the first time. “Our government erred. It’s as simple as that,” he said at the Manitoba legislature Wednesday.
“We went forward and followed advice to emphasize prosecution above all. We lost our way in regards to empathy, and also lost our way in regards to closure being brought forward to the families of the victims.”
Cambria Harris, daughter of Morgan Harris, speaks to supporters gathered at a rally calling for provincial funding to search two landfills for the bodies of Marcedes Myran, Morgan Harris and other missing people, at the Manitoba legislature in Winnipeg, on June 14, 2023.JOHN WOODS/The Canadian Press
Ms. Harris told The Globe that she believes Mr. Ewasko’s apology is disingenuous. “Did he apologize to our family directly before saying sorry at the legislature for everyone to hear? No. Absolutely not,” she said.
“It feels like his party just wants their voters to know about this now. I’m not sure if they actually mean it, if they actually even think we’re humans, or that we were right about this search from the very beginning. It was always something that could be done.”
The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, which represents 63 First Nations across the province, commended the families of the women for standing firm on their demands for a search and refusing to be silenced.
“This search has always been about love,” said Kyra Wilson, Grand Chief of the Manitoba Assembly, in a statement Friday. “We lift up the families in our hearts and hold space for their grief. This is their time and we stand beside them in whatever way they need.”