Stolen sisters

Waves lap on the shore of the Winnipeg River, which flows through the centre of the community.

Red dresses tied to trees sway in the wind outside a handful of homes — hollow reminders of the women and girls taken from their families, communities and kitchen tables.

For a long time, many families have kept their grief private.

"When these things happen, you don't talk about it," Gloria Guimond, 72, told CBC News.

But in recent years, this community of just 4,000 people has been thrust into the spotlight.

In April 2017, the death of Serena McKay made headlines around the world after a video suspected of showing the fatal beating of the 19-year-old was shared on social media.

Three years earlier, the killing of 15-year-old Tina Fontaine, a Sagkeeng girl whose body was bagged and tossed into the Red River in Winnipeg, gripped the country.

A CBC News analysis after Fontaine's death found that Sagkeeng, a community 100 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, has the highest number of unsolved cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls in Canada. There were six.

CBC News is now documenting five more cases dating back more than four decades. Two are unsolved. Three are unresolved, meaning families refute the police findings.

Gloria Guimond's mother, Frances May Ellah, was killed in 1975. She and other families are sharing their stories for the first time.

"Not just for [my mother]," she said.

"That leaves it open for the police, it may be one of the unsolved cases," the judge was quoted as saying at the October 1975 inquest.

He recommended police continue to investigate, but the case has remained unsolved.

To this day, Guimond said she still wonders what really happened.

"I kind of had a feeling that she was killed," she said.

In an email to CBC, a spokesperson for the Winnipeg Police Service said investigators will “examine the findings of detectives in the original investigation.”

Back in Sagkeeng, Guimond said the number of women and girls her community has lost is heartbreaking.

"You just can't shove these things under the rug, you know," she said. "There is more and more women that were never investigated, and it kind of makes you cry.”

Newspapers at the time reported the boat capsized and Marilyn drowned. An autopsy report revealed her death was consistent with drowning and made no mention of marks or bruises.

But Daniels was never convinced. He and other family members have long believed Marilyn’s boyfriend killed her.

"He made it look like a drowning," Daniels said.

At a party one night after his sister’s death, one of the men who had been on the boat spilled what happened, Daniels said.

"[He said] 'Your sister didn't drown,'" Daniels said. "The guy told us that her boyfriend hit her with a paddle in the forehead ... When she was laying in her casket, she had a blue forehead."

Daniels and other siblings believe she was either knocked out and left in the water, or held under.

Despite his father’s pleas to the band constable and RCMP, police never laid charges, Daniels said.

"We tried to charge him with murder, but his uncle was the band constable," he said. "My dad went to the RCMP. They didn't do nothing about it."

A spokesperson for the Manitoba RCMP told CBC they have no record of the investigation.

"If the file was concluded as a Fatality Inquiries Act investigation, in this case drowning, the file would have been destroyed after a set period of time," an RCMP spokesperson said in an email.

The man Daniels believes killed his sister went on to serve a life sentence for second-degree murder of another Sagkeeng girl. He is currently serving life in prison for first-degree murder of a fellow inmate.

Daniels wants RCMP to reopen his sister’s case.

“I hope I can get justice for my sister," he said. "That's the main thing I want for her."

He also wants the community to do more to keep his grandchildren and other youth engaged and safe.

“That's the only way they'll save these girls,” he said.

“There's no programs for our kids, our younger generation. I'd like to see them start stuff here for our kids.”

Karen Morrisseau was last seen 39 years ago in a beige, long-sleeved blouse with green flowers. She was 11.

She moved to Winnipeg from Sagkeeng First Nation in the '60s with her mother after her father left them.

"She was a loving little girl," said her mother, Caroline Morrisseau. "Every morning before she left to school, she came and kissed me."

On the morning of May 12, 1978, Morrisseau didn’t get a kiss. Karen was nowhere to be found in the family’s Dufferin Avenue townhouse. She was gone.

Morrisseau recalled going first to Karen’s school. No one had seen her. Next, she went to the store Karen liked to stop in at. The staff hadn’t seen her, either.

“It was just like it was just yesterday when I talk about it," her mother said, choking back tears. “I remember everything what we went through, looking and looking all over."

She called police that morning. By the following Monday, Karen's picture appeared in local newspapers.

A week later, Winnipeg detectives made a grim discovery at the West St. Paul dump: charred bones.

Karen’s cousin, Orton John Fontaine, 21, was charged with second-degree murder in her death.

At his trial, Manitoba's chief medical examiner told the jury of 12 he was "quite confident" the remains found by city police "were consistent with those of Karen Morrisseau."

Dental X-rays set the odds of the bones being someone else's at about one in 4,000, he said. He had signed the death certificate and the bones were cremated, the Winnipeg Free Press reported at the time.

But Morrisseau hasn’t found closure. She is not convinced the bones were Karen’s.

"I didn't believe it," she said. "There was no remains. That's why I believe she's still somewhere."

Karen was supposed to receive her first communion on Mother's Day — the weekend she disappeared.

"I bought her a nice white gown to put on and that's what I put in that casket," Morrisseau said.

Morrisseau doesn’t visit the grave, she said, because she knows Karen isn’t there. Instead, she keeps a photo of her daughter in her Winnipeg apartment and still talks to her.

"I tell her I love her so much and I miss her and, 'You should phone me and let me know where you are,'" she said. "Even in a dream."

Morrisseau said she has “mixed feelings” about the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

“I'm always worried for my other kids, for them to get hurt,” she said. “I don't think I'd be able [to cope] if something horrible happens like that again.”

Isabel Fontaine helped raise her younger sister, Sharon Nora Jane Abraham, while growing up with five siblings on Sagkeeng First Nation.

Fontaine said she best remembers her sister's friendliness and thoughtfulness.

“Her laughter, her sense of humour — she had a lot of sense of humour. She’d buy gifts and she’d know exactly what you want — she would have her eyes on stuff,” said Fontaine.

Abraham, 39, left the family to find work in Vancouver, which was difficult for Fontaine to accept. Abraham always stayed in touch with her family by phone.

Abraham started her own family, becoming a mother of five while working on her post-secondary studies. But she struggled with drinking, her family said.

One day, Abraham’s phone calls stopped.

Abraham went missing from New Westminster in January 2004, RCMP said. Her aunt Mary Lacroix went to search for her niece in Vancouver several times but never came home with any leads.

Even though she knew her sister’s life was "in shambles," Fontaine did not agree with police, who she said told family members Abraham was a sex trade worker and "probably out partying."

Then one day, another aunt, Grace Starr, arrived at Fontaine’s house.

"She drove over and said, 'I have bad news. They found Sharon,'" Fontaine said.

In November 2004, forensic evidence linked Abraham to Robert Pickton’s farm. The family said one of her fingernails was found on his property.

Pickton was a serial killer from Port Coquitlam, B.C., who was arrested in 2002 and charged with 26 counts of first-degree murder. He was convicted of six counts of second-degree murder in December 2007 and sentenced to life; charges in the other 20 cases were stayed in August 2010. The remains of 33 women were found on his farm, including Abraham, but charges were never laid in her case.

Abraham's case was one of six cases in which the Crown did not lay any charges.

"Despite this, we still believe that Pickton was responsible for her death," Cpl. Janelle Shoihet, a B.C. media relations officer said in an email. "The B.C. Coroner has issued a death certificate using information gleaned from the investigation but in the absence of new or different information, no further action will be taken by the project team."

Fontaine believes Pickton fed her sister’s body to his animals.

“Just imagine hearing your own sister screaming from way over there [in] B.C.,” she said.

She remembers the last phone call with her sister.

“She was starting to talk like something was going to happen to her,” Fontaine said. “She didn’t describe it but you could hear it in her voice, like fear — you know how fear sounds in a voice.”

Linda Arkinson, 61, Sharon’s aunt, lives in Sagkeeng and said she still struggles living without her special niece.

“It was very hard to hear where she had died, because I’ve heard how [Robert Pickton] tortured women and she must have gone through a lot being on that farm where she must have been tortured to death,” said Arkinson.

“We had a memorial service for her and we had nothing. We buried an empty box.”

Arkinson would rather remember her niece's smile.

“Her laughter was the one [thing] I remember the most,” said Arkinson. “When I see her picture, that’s what I hear from her, is her laughter."

Producers: Melanie Verhaeghe and Amber Hildebrandt
Editors: Lara Schroeder and Andre Mayer
Graphic designer: Duk Han Lee
Packaging: Bryce Hoye
Videographers: Jill Coubrough, Tyson Koschik and Jaison Empson