Search for Ashlee Shingoose, serial killer’s first victim, begins at Brady Road landfill By: Malak Abas Posted: 1:34 PM CST Monday, Dec. 1, 2025 Last Modified: 5:03 PM CST Monday, Dec. 1, 2025 Updates

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This article was published 01/12/2025 (286 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The search of Brady Road landfill for the remains of a First Nations woman who was the first victim of a Winnipeg serial killer began Monday morning.

Premier Wab Kinew said staff will search for Ashlee Shingoose at the landfill, and later mount a search there for Tanya Nepinak, who went missing in September 2011 at the age of 31.

Kinew said he held a pipe ceremony with Shingoose’s parents and sister at the landfill Monday morning.

“Today, we have begun the search, in the most intense phase, for Ashlee Shingoose, which I hope is successful,” Kinew told reporters at an unrelated news conference.

“More than anything, it just shows we’re a province that does what we say. Somebody goes missing, we go looking.”

“It just shows we’re a province that does what we say. Somebody goes missing, we go looking.”

Search organizers have narrowed down the area. Approximately 50 staff have been tasked with handling the search, a spokesperson from the province said.

The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs described the search for Shingoose and Nepinak as “a moment many said would never come.”

“Today we honour Ashlee and Tanya. We begin the search they said was impossible. For too long, our women have been dismissed, ignored, and treated as if their lives did not matter. That ends here,” said Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Kyra Wilson in a statement. “This search is about dignity. It is about truth. It is about bringing them home.”

Shingoose, from St. Theresa Point Anisininew Nation in northern Manitoba, was 30 in March 2022 when it’s believed she was the first of four women killed by convicted serial killer Jeremy Skibicki.

Shingoose was unidentified and referred to as Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, before her name was revealed last March.

Skibicki was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder in 2024 and sentenced to four concurrent life terms. His other victims were Morgan Harris, 39, Marcedes Myran, 26, and Rebecca Contois, 24.

The remains of Myran and Harris were discovered last March during a search of the privately operated Prairie Green landfill just north of Winnipeg.

St. Theresa Point Chief Raymond Flett, who was a teacher and principal at the community’s high school while Shingoose was a student, said Monday’s announcement came after years of grief for the community.

“We offer a lot of prayer to our Creator, so we’ve been doing that so we could get the search and have some closure,” he said.

He described Shingoose as a bright student who spoke to him about her future before she left for Winnipeg.

“My hope is that this doesn’t happen again to anybody,” he said.

Kinew said the search for Shingoose could take six months or longer, and will utilize the same funding earmarked to find Myran and Harris.

That search cost the province $18 million, one-tenth of the cost proposed in a feasibility study that suggested the search could cost $184 million and take three years. At the time, the federal and provincial governments each committed $20 million.

The search process for Nepinak’s remains will likely be different, given the amount of time that has passed, Kinew said.

Investigators believe her body was dumped in a garbage bin and taken to the Brady Road facility.

Sue Caribou, Nepinak’s aunt, joined the Shingoose family at the landfill Monday.

“When I was up there, I cried, because I was seeing papers and trash, I thought of my loved one laying in that puddle of trash, that’s what I felt when I was right at the Brady landfill,” she said.

She said it hurts to think of how long she’s had to wait for a proper search for her niece, but she remains hopeful evidence will be found.

“The only thing I ask for is my girl to come home and to go lay her beside our family,” Caribou said.

Police searched an area of the landfill for Nepinak in 2012 but the effort was called off after six days. Shawn Lamb was charged with second-degree murder in her death and those of two other women, Carolyn Sinclair and Lorna Blacksmith, in Winnipeg.

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He denied killing Nepinak and the charge against him in her death was stayed after the Crown cited a lack of evidence. He pleaded guilty two to counts of manslaughter in the other slayings.

He was released from prison last month after serving two-thirds of his sentence, imposed in 2013.

The Southern Chiefs’ organization expressed gratitude for the staff involved in the search in a social media statement.

“The (SCO) stands with Ashlee’s family and sends prayers as this emotional, but hopeful, search to bring her home begins,” the organization said.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca

Malak Abas
Reporter

Malak Abas is a city reporter at the Free Press. Born and raised in Winnipeg’s North End, she led the campus paper at the University of Manitoba before joining the Free Press in 2020. Read more about Malak.

Every piece of reporting Malak produces is reviewed by an editing team before it is posted online or published in print — part of the Free Press‘s tradition, since 1872, of producing reliable independent journalism. Read more about Free Press’s history and mandate, and learn how our newsroom operates.