In Winnipeg, central Canada, on Monday marked the start of the trial for a suspected serial killer who is charged with killing four Indigenous women and disposing of their corpses in a landfill.
In 2022, Jeremy Skibicki, then 37, was accused with first-degree murder. It is suspected that he preyed on homeless Indigenous women.
The accused, who has a lengthy goatee, small round glasses, and a shaved head, remained silent on Monday but has previously declared he will enter a not guilty plea.
The trial was set to span six weeks, and the first day was primarily devoted to a preliminary hearing.
In the contemplative tone of the courtroom, where Indigenous women had performed a ritual cleansing ceremony, families of the victims took their seats. The air smelled like burnt sage.
“It’s going to be very, very hard on me and my family. But we are looking to get justice for my sister and to hold him accountable,” said relative Jorden Myran before the trial.
It is thought that the 39-year-old Morgan Harris and the 26-year-old Marcedes Myran’s bodies were disposed of at the Prairie Green landfill, which is located north of Winnipeg, the provincial capital of Manitoba.
Another victim, Rebecca Contois, 24, had her partial parts discovered in another landfill; her body, that of a fourth victim, an anonymous woman known to Indigenous leaders as Buffalo Woman, has not been located.
Ottawa and the Manitoban government pledged Can$40 million (US$30 million) earlier this year to the search for the missing bodies.
The trial comes as Canada has been reeling from revelations that at least 1,200 Indigenous women were killed or went missing in recent decades, and the separate discoveries of hundreds of unmarked children’s graves at Indigenous residential schools across the country.
A 2019 inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women found that they were 12 times more likely to experience violence and seven times more likely to be killed than other women in Canada.
