The remains of a second Indigenous woman murdered by a convicted serial killer have been found in a landfill in central Canada, authorities confirmed Monday, after another victim’s remains were identified earlier this month.
Marcedes Myran was one of the Indigenous women slain three years ago by Jeremy Skibicki, who is serving multiple life sentences after being convicted of four murders last year.
Skibicki met his victims in homeless shelters, in a case seen as a symbol of the dangers faced by Indigenous women in Canada, where they disproportionately fall victim to violence, termed a “genocide” by a national public inquiry in 2019.
Testimony at Skibicki’s trial said he raped, killed and dismembered Myran and another woman, Morgan Harris, in 2022.
Authorities believed their remains were dumped at the Prairie Green Landfill site, north of Winnipeg, the capital of the province of Manitoba. They had been searching the site for months.
Shay Conroy for The Washington Post via Getty Images
Last month, Manitoba authorities announced the discovery of two bodies.
Morgan Harris’s remains were identified on March 7.
Federal police in Manitoba on Monday confirmed the other set of “human remains found in the Prairie Green Landfill search have been identified as those of Marcedes Myran of Long Plain First Nation,” a statement said.
The families of Harris and Myran had pushed authorities in Manitoba to search for the bodies.
The body of another of Skibicki’s victims, Rebecca Contois, was found in a separate landfill and in a garbage bin, while the remains of a fourth unidentified victim in her 20s are still missing.
In December 2022, Winnipeg Police Chief Danny Smyth wrote an open letter to Indigenous leaders, acknowledging the “unimaginable” pain surrounding the case.
“The investigation involving the murders of Rebecca Contois, Marcedes Myran, Morgan Harris, and Buffalo Woman has been one of the most complex and important homicide investigations during my tenure,” Smith wrote. “I have heard the calls from the families, the Indigenous leadership, and the community. I understand your calls; the pain and sorrow is unimaginable.”
Indigenous women represent about one-fifth of all women killed in gender-related homicides in the country — despite comprising just five percent of the female population.
A similar crisis exists in the U.S., where Native American women are disproportionately targeted in murders, sexual assaults and other acts of violence, both on reservations and in nearby towns.
There were more than 5,700 reports of missing Native women and girls in 2016, according to the anti-sexual assault organization RAINN, which cites statistics from the National Crime Information Center. The Bureau of Indian Affairs estimated more recently that roughly 4,200 cases of missing and murdered Indigenous people remain unsolved.
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