The Prairie Green Landfill in Stony Mountain, Man., on Feb. 26.David Lipnowski/The Canadian Press
Manitoba has found what are believed to be human remains at a Winnipeg-area landfill where the province has been searching for the bodies of at least two First Nations women disposed of by a convicted serial killer.
In an interview late Wednesday, Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew told The Globe and Mail that experts on-site at the Prairie Green landfill have identified potential human remains in the search material obtained from dozens of feet below the surface.
He said the RCMP and Manitoba’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner are now working to identify the potential remains uncovered from thousands of cubic metres of detritus. That investigation, Mr. Kinew said, will help confirm whether the possible remains belong to the victims – Marcedes Myran, 26, and Morgan Harris, 39 – whose bodies have not been found since they were murdered in 2022.
Mr. Kinew said the new development in the search, a multiyear effort that the Manitoba and federal governments have each committed $20-million toward, marks a significant moment of healing for the victims’ families and the entire country.
“Many Canadians always understood that this was the right thing to do to search the landfill,” he said.
“But now, we can also say with confidence, that this was also the realistic and reasonable thing to do.”
After a months-long trial last year, Jeremy Skibicki, then 37, was sentenced to life in prison in late August for the first-degree murders of Ms. Myran, Ms. Harris, 24-year-old Rebecca Contois and an unidentified woman whom First Nations elders have named Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, meaning Buffalo Woman.
In 2022, Winnipeg police had located some of the remains of Ms. Contois, a member of Crane River First Nation, at a separate landfill shortly after the killer’s arrest in May of that year. But the remains of the other three women had never been found.
The bodies of Ms. Myran and Ms. Harris, both from Long Plain First Nation, are believed to have been dumped at Prairie Green based on GPS information obtained by Winnipeg police from several garbage trucks.
Winnipeg police had not conducted a search of the landfill, considering it too dangerous. That decision became the flashpoint issue of Manitoba’s election in 2023, with the ruling Progressive Conservative government 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.
In early December last year, Mr. Kinew told The Globe that a targeted section of Prairie Green, operated by Waste Connections of Canada just north of Winnipeg in the Rural Municipality of Rosser, had pinpointed the most probable location of the bodies of Ms. Harris and Ms. Myran. That began the most critical stage of the search, the Premier said.
Multiple teams of more than 40 part-time and full-time workers – engineers, forensic anthropologists, managers and technicians – had been removing 18,000 cubic metres from the top of the target area below a towering mound of refuse since October, 2024. Two months later, they started to work in shifts to move and manually sift through the material at a large purpose-built facility, one of several new buildings erected at the landfill for the search.
“They were able to basically move a mountain,” Mr. Kinew said Wednesday, commending the staff. “What we believe are partial human remains is a testament to their good work.”
Gary Anandasangaree, the federal Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister, had told The Globe last October that Winnipeg police’s handling of the case was a “complete failure,” showing systemic issues.
“Words are cold comfort,” Mr. Anandasangaree wrote in a statement Wednesday, adding that he is committed to supporting the victims’ families through the next steps of the search, and “doing everything possible to combat this national crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQI+ people.”
The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, which represents 63 First Nations across Manitoba, said Wednesday’s development highlights the long-term struggle for Indigenous justice in Canada.
“While this discovery brings grief, it also reinforces our commitment to ensuring that no family is left without answers, and that justice is served for our stolen sisters,” said Kyra Wilson, Grand Chief of the Manitoba Assembly.
“It is about affirming that Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people matter. That when they go missing, we look for them. That we do not let their final resting place be a landfill.”
Cambria Harris, daughter of Morgan Harris, said she was on the landfill site earlier on Wednesday when she learned about the possible human remains being found. Speaking by phone through tears, she said she thought of all the years she spent “screaming at Manitoba’s legislature, Ottawa’s Parliament Hill and anywhere that anybody would listen” to find her mother’s remains.
“It finally seems possible now to give my mum that dignified funeral she deserves,” she said. “We all deserve the same, to be all treated as human.”
Jorden Myran, sister of Marcedes Myran, requested privacy to process the news. “We all just want this to be over with and bring our girls home,” Donna Bartlett, their grandmother, said.
“These family members have become important people to me,” Mr. Kinew said. “I just really admire their resilience and their courage, and now their patience to have taken this big step forward in front of the public eye, while still knowing that they’re going to have to wait to find out whether this is one of their loved ones or potentially someone else.”