Children’s DNA confirms death of Indigenous woman missing since 2023

Partial human remains recovered from an alleyway in Winnipeg’s North End last fall have now been linked to an Indigenous woman who disappeared from the neighbourhood nearly three years ago.

Homicide detectives launched an investigation on Nov. 26 after partial remains were found in a lane behind the 600 block of Selkirk Avenue. DNA testing confirmed they belong to Leah Faye Keeper, a 32-year-old woman from Sagkeeng First Nation who was last seen in July 2023, the Winnipeg Police Service said Wednesday.

Keeper’s family was notified of the discovery, and the death has been deemed suspicious, police said.

“Leah was a bubbly person. She could come into a room and she’d have this squeaky little laugh,” Keeper’s aunt, Marilyn Courchene, said during a news conference organized in partnership with the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.

“I want answers. What happened within those three years, what happened with those remains?”

Courchene said she suspected the remains might belong to her niece when police first announced they had been recovered in November. Investigators later approached the family and requested DNA samples from Keeper’s children, ages 6 and 12.

“I remember sitting at home and watching the news and thinking, ‘What if it’s our Leah?’ Little did I know it would be confirmed yesterday that is was her,” Courchene said.

She said police told the family Keeper’s death is suspected to involve foul play, but have revealed little more about the ongoing investigation.

Keeper was last seen in Winnipeg, near Salter Street and Selkirk Avenue, on July 25, 2023, but wasn’t reported missing until Nov. 21 of that year.

Courchene said it was not uncommon for Keeper not to contact her family for periods of time, but after months passed, they realized something was wrong.

“We were used to her taking off, but not for that long time,” she said.

Her disappearance sparked numerous searches from a variety of First Nations-led citizens groups, including Bear Clan Patrol, Morgan’s Warriors and the Evelyn Memorial Search Team, Courchene said.

Darryl Contois, who participated in searches, said he encountered Keeper inside a tent near Pritchard Avenue in October 2023, about one month before she was reported missing.

“I want answers. What happened within those three years, what happened with those remains?”

Contois said she was with a man who was “very aggressive,” but when he asked if she needed help, she said no.

“She didn’t give me any indication she was in trouble,” he said. “If I knew what was going to happen, I would have taken her out of harm’s way.”

Contois said he later returned to the area where he last saw her and — although the tent remained — she was nowhere to be found.

He spoke with detectives about the encounter at some point in the investigation, he said.

Courchene described her niece as an outgoing and kind person who had no difficulty making friends and spent a lot of time socializing on Facebook.

Courchene’s sister, Beverly, adopted Keeper when she was a child through an informal agreement with Keeper’s biological mother.

Police said Keeper was born in Little Grand Rapids First Nation and raised in Sagkeeng.

Keeper graduated high school and was training to become a nurse’s assistant when she fell in with the “wrong people” and developed issues with addictions, Courchene said.

One year before she disappeared, Keeper spent the summer with Courchene in Sagkeeng engaging in traditional Indigenous practices in an attempt to get sober, her aunt said.

Courchene brought her back to Winnipeg to get vaccinated for COVID-19, and Keeper remained in the city.

“Today, we want everyone to know that she was deeply loved by her family.”

At one point, she was living in a Manitoba Housing unit, but Courchene believes she was “couch surfing” around the time she disappeared.

“We acknowledge how heavy this is for everybody,” AMC Grand Chief Kyra Wilson said, alongside Courchene.

“Today, we want everyone to know that she was deeply loved by her family.”

Wilson described the number of missing Indigenous people in Manitoba as an ongoing crisis.

That was echoed by Sagkeeng Chief E.J. Fontaine, who said many of the people who disappear come from his community, which is located about 100 kilometres north of Winnipeg.

“Sagkeeng is one of the most, if not the most, impacted community from the missing and murdered woman crisis,” Fontaine said. “Every time we hear of one of women being impacted by that phenomena it hurts even more.”

WPS Chief Gene Bowers is in the process of reaching out to Indigenous community leaders regarding the investigation, police said.

The disappearance of Indigenous women in Winnipeg has remained a concern in Manitoba for decades.

The issue was at the forefront of the provincial election in 2023, when the NDP government campaigned on the promise of searching area landfills for the remains of four Indigenous women slain by convicted serial killer Jeremy Skibicki.

The New Democrats made good on that promise after winning the election, recovering the remains of two victims from the Prairie Green Landfill north of Winnipeg last February.

A second search for the remains of other victims, believed to be buried somewhere at the city’s landfill on Brady Road, began in December.

On Wednesday, the province declined to provide any updates on the search, including how many hours have been worked, how many tonnes of material have been moved or whether searchers have uncovered anything of value.

”Given the sensitivity around the landfill search, we won’t be providing any one-off responses. When there is an update available it will be provided to all media at the same time,” a spokesperson said.

— With files from Erik Pindera

tyler.searle@freepress.mb.ca