Serial killer? Police to take another look

Every other weekend, Justice Minister Dave Chomiak goes for a bike ride in the North End neighbourhood where he grew up.

"I've only been shot at once," he says with a smile. "It was a pellet gun."

Chomiak shrugs off concerns for his personal safety on the rides through what is now gang turf. Instead, what concerns him -- even haunts him -- is what he sees every time he goes back there.

"There's teenage hookers," Chomiak says. "All aboriginal, all drugged-out."

And every time he sees them, he wonders the same thing:

"Which one is going to end up dumped?"

"ö "ö "ö

It's Monday afternoon and Chomiak and I are alone in his office. I have a long list of questions for him, including one he hears consistently from others.

Is there a serial killer preying on prostitutes in Winnipeg? And that's where our conversation gradually goes. Chomiak quotes statistics compiled by an agency devoted to helping women from the street, Transition Education Resources for Females (TERF).

Over the last 26 years, 26 Winnipeg women, children and transgendered sex trade workers have been murdered.

More than half were aboriginal.

There are also 23 "long-term" missing women, according to TERF.

The latest victim is Cherisse Houle, a 17-year-old who friends said had a million-dollar smile.

She was found face-down. In a ditch.

Chomiak says after her body was found, he met with senior officers from both the Winnipeg police and RCMP, as he usually does in these cases.

And, as he usually does, he asked the same question I asked. Could a serial killer, or serial killers, be responsible for some of these killings?

"I have been convinced by police that the evidence does not point to that," Chomiak says.

But he doesn't sound all that convinced.

Police acknowledged five years ago that there were similarities involving 12 of the murders going back more than two decades.

Some had been found in geographic clusters. Some had died in similar ways. Yet police said they had no hard evidence there was a serial killer at work. However, they couldn't say there wasn't.

"I'm paranoid about this. I mean, I don't want to be. I mean, I've read all the Pickton stuff."

Robert Pickton, the notorious pig farmer who became one of the most prolific serial killers in Canadian criminal history, preyed on women from Vancouver's East Side red-light district.

Eventually he was caught by chance. But for years, those in charge of the Vancouver police and the RCMP ignored public and media suspicions, and even an internal opinion, that there was a serial killer at work.

The internal opinion came from a now-former Vancouver police officer named Kim Rossmo, who had developed a geographic-profiling technique to identify serial killers' patterns. Rossmo believed there was a serial killer, but the Vancouver police higher-ups did not. He is now an internationally renowned serial-killer profiler working out of Texas State University.

Two years ago, Free Press reporter Bruce Owen contacted Rossmo. The body of a 17-year-old girl from the street had been found dumped on the outskirts of Winnipeg. Police confirmed that it was the same area where two other women involved in the sex trade had been found -- within metres of each other -- five years apart.

"The odds of a different offender picking the same location is highly unlikely," Rossmo told Owen back then.

On Monday, as Chomiak discussed the possibility of a serial killer, I could tell the justice minister needed to have another chat with police.

"ö "ö "ö

It's Friday and Chomiak and I are talking on the phone. I tell him I've spoken with Rossmo.

Rossmo said there have been serial killers in Vancouver, Toronto, Edmonton, Victoria and even Saskatoon.

"It would be shocking to think," Rossmo concluded, "that in a city the size of Winnipeg, that you wouldn't have one or more serial killers preying on prostitutes over a 30-year period."

Chomiak has something to tell me, too.

"The RCMP and Winnipeg police are going to take another look at it," the justice minister says. "They're going to take another look at all of the significant unsolved murders."

He expects police will announce the details next week.

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca

A large human toll

MURDERED and missing Winnipeg women, children and transgendered people involved in the sex trade, since 1983:

Murdered: 26 (including 16 aboriginal victims)

Unsolved: 21

Convictions: 3

Charges before the court: 2

Long-term missing: 23 (including 16 aboriginal people)

-- Source: Transition Education Resources For Females (TERF)/New Directions

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition July 25, 2009 B1