Investigators haunted by cold case files

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This article was published 06/05/2022 (1231 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Three years after his disappearance, Eduardo Balaquit’s body still has not been found.

But now that a jury has convicted Kyle Pietz of manslaughter in the 59-year-old family man’s death, investigators will return their focus to finding his remains, Winnipeg Police Service Sgt. Wade McDonald said Wednesday night following the verdict.

Balaquit’s disappearance is one of many cases that continue to haunt investigators.

McDonald, head of Winnipeg police’s homicide unit, said of the 175 deaths police have investigated in the last five years, 16 remain unsolved.

While he wouldn’t provide specific details on those investigations, he said the files are still open.

“These cases are constantly being assessed regularly and continually,” he said. “We continue to look at them with new investigators and with DNA.”

What drives investigators is the knowledge each of the victims is remembered and loved by people who knew them — and it is especially difficult when there isn’t a body.

“The disappearances are always challenging and overwhelming,” McDonald said. “The loss is felt by family and friends.”

McDonald said he has worked in other WPS units, but homicide is unique because of the connections forged between officers and victims’ families.

“I still get families who have called me from cases 10 years ago — even when we have made an arrest on them,” he said. “I cannot imagine what these families go through.”

McDonald said homicide investigators aren’t looking only at unsolved cases; they continue to review historical files that went to trial — in some cases repeatedly — but did not, ultimately, produce convictions.

Including the slayings of Barbara Stoppel and Christine Jack.

Stoppel, 16, was strangled at the St. Boniface doughnut shop where she worked in December 1981. Thomas Sophonow was tried three times for murder. His first trial ended with a hung jury. He was convicted in the other two, which were later overturned on appeals.

Sophonow spent 45 months behind bars before his second conviction was overturned in 1986 by the Manitoba Court of Appeal, which ruled he couldn’t be tried again unless the Crown brought new evidence. The Supreme Court of Canada upheld the acquittal and he was released. He later received $2.3 million in compensation for the miscarriage of justice.

Jack, 33, disappeared in December 1988. The Crown alleged her husband Brian Jack, who had played for the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, killed her. His lawyer argued that the mother of two simply left her husband by driving off and never returning.

After three trials and appeals, the Supreme Court finally ruled a fourth trial would be an abuse of process and Jack was released.

Manitoba RCMP currently have two prominent unsolved homicide investigations from 2008, both originating in the Portage la Prairie area.

Amber McFarland, 24, vanished after last being seen leaving a nightclub in that city in October 2008. Her boyfriend and another man were arrested a year later, but released without charges.

Jennifer Catcheway phoned her mother on June 19, 2008, to say she was on her way home in Portage to celebrate her 18th birthday. She never arrived, and police and her family have been searching for her ever since.

RCMP spokeswoman Tara Seel said both investigations are ongoing and police encourage anyone with information to come forward. She said there are other cases that remain open from past years.

“We have 77 unsolved homicide investigations that date back to 1962,” she said.

“To provide some context to that, our solve rate for homicide investigations for the past four years is 85 per cent. The homicide investigators in RCMP major crime services are truly dedicated officers who work extremely hard to find answers for victims and their families.”

Other unsolved Manitoba homicides:

• Thelma Krull left her home for a walk on July 11, 2015, and was last seen strolling past a surveillance video camera in her Grassie Boulevard neighbourhood. A hunter in the RM of Tache found the 57-year-old grandmother’s skull in the fall of 2018 and. Police identified a suspect, a heavy-set man with a bowl-shaped haircut, but there have been no arrests.

• Claudette Osborne called several family members from a payphone at Selkirk Avenue and King Street on July 25, 2008 sometime after leaving a McPhillips Street hotel, but she hasn’t been heard from since. Her family continues to organize vigils in the city’s North End for the woman who was 21 when she disappeared.

• Sunshine Wood was 16 when she was last seen holding the door at the former St. Regis Hotel in downtown Winnipeg on Feb. 20, 2004. Wood, a member of the Manto Sipi Cree Nation, had come to Winnipeg to attend high school.

• Colten Pratt hasn’t been seen since leaving the Marlborough Hotel on Nov. 6, 2014, on his way home in St. Vital. Police said the 26-year-old man may have been seen early the next morning at a bus shelter near Main Street and Redwood Avenue.

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca