WARNING | This story contains details of violence against indigenous women.
Police say they do not believe that there are more victims not discovered from a Winnipeg serial murderer, after the investigators spent months reviewing thousands of hours of surveillance images, a web of their contacts and making a review of their entire life.
Jeremy Skibicki was sentenced by Four first -degree murder positions Last July, after a one -week trial, he addressed vulnerable women of the first nations in shelters for homeless people before killing them and getting rid of their remains.
Last week, Ashlee Shingoose, 30, was Publicly confirmed that she is the woman Previously known as Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo wife, a name that gave him members of the indigenous community before being identified.
She was one of the four women of the first nations killed by Skibicki Between March and May 2022Together with Morgan Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26, both originally from Long Plain First Nation, as well as Rebecca Contois, 24, a member of the first O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi nation.
A key evidence in the Skibicki trial was the video of an interrogation of approximately 20 hours by the police in May 2022, after he was arrested as a suspect in the murder of Controis, during which he not only confessed to killing her, but to three other women.
Skibicki research was one of the most complex in the history of the Winnipeg Police Service, says Deputy Director Cam Mackid.
That research included a working group that analyzed “each connection” that Skibicki had from childhood to his arrest, Mackid said. Untreated crimes and cases of missing persons near their residences were also explored, along with more than 7,000 hours of surveillance images.
“It seems surprising that someone has a level of violence like that in that short period of time, and that there would be no other victims,” Mackid said at Wednesday’s press conference where the police said that Shingoose was the previously unknown victim.
“I would never stop here and tell you that I can guarantee that it is not another victim. I can tell you that we scrub everything we could, and we didn’t find others.”
But Enzo Yaksic, Boston director of the Atypical Homicide Research Group, a network of academic researchers, law professionals and mental health professionals who maintain a database of serial murderers, says that the two -month time line of Skibicki’s murders is not surprising.
The database, which has tracked at least 5,000 serial killers around the world, defines a serial killer as someone who has killed more than one person for a period of time, Yaksic said.
The data indicates that the number of serial murders has decreased worldwide, but the deadlines of the murders are shorter than typically were at the end of the 20th century, he said, as it is more likely that the agencies of application of the best connected law be considered.
“Modern murderers cannot work in the same way as their counterparts from the past,” he said, but that can also mean the potential for more victims.
“What it really does is, the murder rate increases, since they try to overcome police efforts to stop them.”
DNA tests ‘almost unprecedented’
Police say it was a recent interview with Skibicki, along with new DNA evidence, which finally allowed them to identify Shingoose, a mother of three children originating from the Anisinine nation of St. Theresa Point in the northeast of Manitoba.
It was last seen in the center of Winnipeg on March 11, 2022, a schedule that fits when Skibicki told the police in his May 2022 interview that he had killed his first victim. He gave the police the name of a person who believed he was the woman, but that person was found alive, leaving the identity of Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe an unanswered question.
During his trial last summer, the court heard that the investigators found a DNA sample in a Phat Baby brand jacket that believed that the woman had killed the woman that Skibicki had killed, but that sample was never matched for anyone.
Mackid said the police now believe that while Shingoose used the jacket, the DNA found in it was that of another person.
A DNA sample of a pair of previously not proven pants led the police to finally confirm the identity of Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe earlier this month, after the investigators obtained new information from Skibicki during an interview in prison last December, Mackid said.
That pair of pants was among the 5,000 physical articles that the police confiscated during their investigation into Skibicki’s murders. Around 130 of these exhibitions were sent to the RCMP laboratory for their test, he said, an “almost unprecedented.”
Police also showed Skibicki a series of photos during the December interview, and identified Shingo as a victim, Mackid said.
Yaksic says he believes that Winnipeg police have done a good job in the Skibicki case, adding that serial murder investigations can be an incredibly difficult task for the application of the law.
“I think it is dangerous to believe that the police are not … doing everything possible to find additional victims,” said Yaksic. “I think they are doing a great job in this, at least now they are.”
Mackid said the police did not explore more possible victims outside of Manitoba because Skibicki did not travel much, he had never had a driver’s license or had a vehicle registered in his name, and there is no indications that he left the province or the country.
“He was a local person who tended to remain local.”
The researchers also found that Skibicki was “quite advanced and sincere” in the interview of May 2022 in which he confessed the murders, Mackid said.
“We didn’t have the impression that I was hiding things.”
Yaksic says that serial killers tend to be more communicative today because they want to claim credit, but not all confessions are an attempt to seek fame. Some may be driven by the fault, he said.
Serial murderers can also often obtain an unjustified sense of celebrities due to the extensive media exposure, said Yaksic. And although the true crime podcasts and Hollywood films can promote surveillance, they also tend to focus on an obsolete archetype of serial murderers that can stimulate public paranoia, he said.
Skibicki is a good example of how a modern serial killer looks, said Yaksic, because he had a history of violence against women and expressed motivations based on hatred in his murders.
“As we deepen their stories, we find abusive partners [and] Domestic violence, “he said.” Violence against others is really how they communicate with the world, and this is how they process their deep feelings of inferiority. “
It is more likely that homeless and sex workers be attacked by a serial killer because they are vulnerable, and there is a perception that is less likely to report missing, said Yaksic.
Discarding the garbage bodies, as Skibicki did, is also common for serial killers, he said. The partial remains of Contois were found in a garbage container near their apartment in northern Kildonan in May 2022. More than their remains were discovered the following month in Brady Road’s landfill in Winnipeg.
The remains of Harris and Myran were recently recovered in the Prairie Green landfill, north of Winnipeg.
The researchers believe that Shingoose’s body was placed in a garbage container behind a business in Henderson Highway before being taken to Brady Road’s landfill in March 2022.
Discounted the bodies of the victims in this way is “really symbolic from their point of view that their victims were worth nothing for him and society, and that is really a distinctive seal of how serial killers behave,” said Yaksic.
“I want to say that each criminal is unique, but the real and common thread that crosses them is that [sense of] superiority.”
Manitoba’s prime minister has promised that Brady Road’s landfill will be to look for the remains of Shingoose.
The support is available for any person affected by these reports and the question of the disappeared and killed indigenous people. Immediate emotional assistance and crisis support are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through a national line at 1-844-413-6649.
You can also access, through the Canada government, Health support services such as mental health advice, community support and cultural services, and some travel costs to see traditional elders and healers. Family members seeking information about a disappeared or murdered being can access Family Information Link Units.
