Its been a long time waiting: Family, community react to identification of Mashkode Bizhikiikwe

Warning: This story contains disturbing content. Please read with care. Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe has her name back. The Anishinaabemowin title meaning Buffalo Woman belongs to Ashlee Christine Shingoose, the Winnipeg Police Service confirmed at a news conference Wednesday. “Our hearts go out to Albert and Theresa Shingoose, Ashlee’s parents,” said Gene Bowers, chief of the Winnipeg Police Service (WPS). “And all the members of St. Theresa Point First Nation who received this unbearable news. “Your daughter deserved to be named, and we offer our condolences.” Read More: Father of Ashlee Shingoose is heading home without his daughter, again Ashlee was 30 years old and the mother of three children.  She left St. Theresa Point, a remote fly-in reserve 500 kilometres northeast of Winnipeg, due to overcrowding in 2016 for a better life in the Manitoba capital, her parents told APTN News last summer. Bad weather prevented her parents from flying to Winnipeg on time to attend the news conference, the packed room was told. Shingoose was murdered three years ago this month by Jeremy Skibicki, a Winnipeg man convicted in July of killing four First Nations women between March 2022 and May 2022. “I’m concerned that the level of detail that I was prepared to provide I’m reconsidering,” Cam Mackid, deputy chief of investigations, told the crowd. “This has been a horrific tragedy.” ‘I cannot promise you that we will bring her home, but I can promise you that we are going to try,’ Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew told those gathered at the news conference Wednesday. Photo: Veronica Blackhawk/APTN. The news conference was moved to a larger venue in the Millenium Library across the street from police headquarters to accommodate family members of victims, their supporters, police officers and reporters. Buffalo Woman, a name gifted the unidentified victim by Winnipeg’s First Nations community, was the first to be nurdered and the last to be identified. Her remains are believed to be in the city’s Brady Road landfill, Mackid revealed. Manitoba Premier Wab Kinew, who attended the news conference, announced the site would be searched. “I cannot promise you that we will bring her home, but I can promise you that we are going to try,” he said to applause after repeating Ashlee’s name four times in Anishinaabemowin. “I think it’s very important we say her name. And, we remember her.” Kinew has presided over a successful search of the Prairie Green Landfill outside Winnipeg for the remains of two other Skibicki victims – Morgan Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26. The remains of fourth victim, Rebecca Contois, 24, were found in garbage bins outside Skibicki’s River East apartment and in the Brady landfill. The remains were trucked by city vehicles to its facility or the privately owned Prairie Green. Within three months of commencing the search on Dec. 2, Kinew announced Harris and Myran’s remains had been recovered and  identified. It was a significant victory in the two-year-long fight by the victims’ families to force a search after the former provincial government and WPS, under former chief Danny Smyth, rejected the idea. St. Theresa Point First Nation Chief Raymond Flett reading a message from Ashlee’s family. Photo: Veronica Blackhawk/APTN. Kinew asked police brass to stand with him and two of his ministers at the front of the room signalling they were working together now. “I know there will be many questions,” he added, “and those answers about what a search will look like, when we will begin, how it will be undertaken, will take time for us to sort out.” Skibicki was seen on surveillance video disposing of bulky garbage bags in his neighborhood. Police said he was putting the victims’ remains in residential and commercial garbage bins after killing and defiling their bodies in his home. He said his crimes were racially motivated and sentenced to life in prison in August 2024. Read More: ‘She was always a loving person’: Parents of Ashlee Shingoose share their grief All of the victims were described as vulnerable due to poverty, mental illness and addiction. Ashlee’s youngest child was seized by social workers a few years after she arrived in Winnipeg, her parents told APTN News last summer. She had been abused by her partner and was struggling, they added. Her two other children went to live with Albert and Theresa, who sent a message to the news conference that was delivered by St. Theresa Point Chief Raymond Flett. “It’s been a long time time waiting. I need to bring her home,” Theresa said in the message. “I need that closure. “Search the landfill as soon as possible.” Later, piped into the news conference via phone, Albert asked the premier to sing a traditional song, which Kinew did. Flett said the murder of Ashlee was another in a long line of Indigenous women killed in Canada. “It is an ongoing struggle for justice, especially for our young women,” he said. “Some are still out there missing.” ‘The person Skibicki described as murdering looked exactly like Ashlee Shingoose,’ says Cam Mackid, deputy chief of investigations for the Winnipeg police. Photo: Kathleen Martens/APTN. The WPS searched for about two weeks in October 2012 for the remains of Tanya Nepinak, a First Nations victim of an earlier Winnipeg serial killer, Shawn Lamb. Hearing they would embark on a search for Ashlee’s remains sent Nepinak’s aunt, Sue Cariboo, out of the news conference in tears. Mackid said Ashlee was positively identified on March 24 through DNA from a pair of pants – not the Baby Phat jacket police first reported. “The jacket was a dead-end,” Mackid told reporters in an interview following the news conference. “From there (in subsequent interviews with police), Skibicki offered a second item – this pair of pants (that was sent for testing). “… That identification was backed up by photos that we showed to him.” Skibicki targeted his victims at or near inner-city homeless shelters. He enticed them to his home with the promise of food, shelter and substances. Mackid said police found numerous items of women’s clothing in the apartment and garbage bins. “Ashlee hasn’t been seen or heard from since March 11, 2022,” he said, noting her DNA was found in the suite and “the person Skibicki described as murdering looked exactly like Ashlee Shingoose. “So, if you combine all that and then an additional identification that was made through photos shown to Skibicki … if you put all that together, there’s no doubt in our mind whatsoever that Buffalo Woman was Ashlee Shingoose.” Health and wellness support is available via the Hope for Wellness helpline at 1-855-242-3310 and the national MMIWG2S+ crisis line at 1-844-413-6649. Continue Reading