City police to give update on Buffalo Woman

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/03/2025 (207 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Winnipeg police will provide an update Wednesday on the investigation into Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, the lone unidentified victim of serial killer Jeremy Skibicki.

The Winnipeg Police Service announced the news conference in a media advisory, which provided no other information. Police said additional details will not be shared before the event.

Premier Wab Kinew will attend the news conference, a spokesperson told the Free Press.

After he was sworn in March 17, police Chief Gene Bowers said efforts to identify Buffalo Woman continued.

“Definitely, we’ve never stopped,” he told reporters. “We’ve been working hard to identify Buffalo Woman. We continue to try for everybody, and we won’t stop until we identify her.”

Indigenous community members gave her the name Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, in December 2022 — amid efforts to identify her and locate her remains — after police announced Skibicki was accused of murdering four Indigenous women in 2022.

Susan Caribou, an advocate for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, spoke about anguish in the community over the fact that Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe has not been identified, and hope that a family will get closure.

It has been especially difficult for the families of women who disappeared around the time Buffalo Woman was killed and remain missing, she said.

“People are having high anxiety,” said Caribou, whose 31-year-old niece, Tanya Nepinak, disappeared in September 2011.

City police believe Nepinak was slain by serial killer Shawn Lamb and her body put in a garbage bin that was deposited in the city-run Brady Road landfill. Nepinak’s remains have not been recovered.

“It’s really hard when you don’t have closure. (You’re) trying to be positive, but there’s nothing positive,” Caribou said. “I talk to families that don’t have closure, and they feel the same. People feel lost. I hope we get answers (for Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe).”

DNA samples have been compared in an attempt to identify Buffalo Woman. The family of a missing woman have said they provided a sample in 2023, but it did not match Buffalo Woman.

Skibicki, a self-proclaimed white supremacist, was convicted in July 2024 of killing Buffalo Woman, Morgan Harris, 39, Marcedes Myran, 26, and Rebecca Contois, 24, between March and May 2022.

He was sentenced to four concurrent life sentences with no chance of parole for 25 years.

At his trial, the Crown said the killings were racially motivated, and he preyed on vulnerable women at homeless shelters.

Skibicki, during an interview with homicide detectives, said Buffalo Woman was the first woman he killed, on or about March 15, 2022.

He gave investigators what he believed was her name. That woman, who was missing, was later found alive, Bear Clan Patrol said that year.

Police have said they believe Buffalo Woman was in her mid-20s, with an average build.

Skibicki’s trial was told items from the killer’s apartment were sent for testing, resulting in confirmations identifying Buffalo Woman, Contois, Harris and Myran.

The testing also found the DNA profiles of 12 additional women, nine of whom police had not been able to identify as of May 2024 because their genetic material is not in law enforcement databases, court was told.

DNA from a reversible Baby Phat brand jacket was the only evidence police found of Buffalo Woman, the trial heard.

Skibicki told police he took the jacket from his victim and sold it on Facebook Marketplace. Police recovered the jacket and shared photos of it in December 2022 as part of the first public appeal for information.

Partial remains of Contois were found in a North Kildonan garbage bin, and more were later found at the Brady Road landfill during a search by police in 2022.

Remains belonging to Harris and Myran were found at the privately owned Prairie Green landfill, just north of Winnipeg in the Rural Municipality of Rosser, in late February.

That search that was spurred by the women’s families and Indigenous leaders, including Cathy Merrick, the late grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.

The provincial NDP government and federal Liberal government each contributed $20 million for the search, after a First Nations-led committee concluded a search was feasible.

MMIWG advocates have called on the province, which is overseeing the search, to continue the effort in case Buffalo Woman’s remains are there.

“I’m really hoping they will continue searching,” said Caribou, who continues to advocate for a renewed search of Brady Road for her niece, and for searches of other Manitoba landfills.

Regarding calls to continue searching for Buffalo Woman, Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine said ​work is continuing at Prairie Green.

“What we know right now is that the search is still ongoing at Prairie Green landfill,” Fontaine told reporters after question period Tuesday.

“We’re so grateful that Marcedes and Morgan were found, and that the family has the opportunity to bring them home and to have a burial, to have a funeral. We’re very, very grateful for that and I think that all Manitobans can agree that that was the right decision.”

Manitoba Métis Federation president David Chartrand echoed calls for the search to continue.

“There is all type of speculation now from people that say they will probably find other potential bodies,” he said. “I think they should continue to search at the landfill until they can determine that for sure there are no more.”

He hopes Wednesday’s update will finally settle the question of who Buffalo Woman was.

“Presumably, if they come up with the identity — knowing who it is — that would be great news, I’m sure, for the families out there who are guessing, ‘Is it my family? Am I related?’” Chartrand said. “(Recovering remains) is truly essential in our culture. That’s why you see so many families that have never given up hope and searched themselves.”

— With files from Carol Sanders, Maggie Macintosh, Tyler Searle and Erik Pindera

chris.kitching@freepress.mb.ca

Chris Kitching
Reporter

Chris Kitching is a general assignment reporter at the Free Press. He began his newspaper career in 2001, with stops in Winnipeg, Toronto and London, England, along the way. After returning to Winnipeg, he joined the Free Press in 2021, and now covers a little bit of everything for the newspaper. Read more about Chris.

Every piece of reporting Chris 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.