The lonely dead: eight sets of unidentified remains in the Kamloops area

There is not much information about her, but a sketch was drawn of what she may have looked like.

In 2012, the remains of a man between 18 and 40 years old was found just below the Juniper Ridge neighbourhood. He’d likely been deceased for 10 to 50 years before his remains were discovered.

The remains of a baby girl — who couldn’t have been more than a year old — were found between one day and one week after she died. That was back in March, 1991.

“The reason that we share every unidentified human remains situation is we don’t know when somebody may come forward and have a piece of information any clue could be helpful,” BC Coroners spokesperson Andy Watson says. “Regardless of the age or the suspected age, we’re looking for answers, again, to provide closure and help us fulfill our mandate and the service that we provide to British Columbians to determine who died where, when, how and by what means, and in some cases we may even be able to make recommendations around preventing deaths in similar circumstances.”

He added that, to his knowledge, this software is the first of its kind in Canada.

Shelkie agrees that putting out information about unidentified remains is always done with the hope of closing a case.

“From our point of view, this is going to be beneficial in that seeing where the locations are and the time when the remains were found might trigger somebody’s memory, and they may call in with some leads or some information that could help us identify who the remains belong to,” she says.

The first thing police do when remains are located is check all of the missing persons files both locally, and then provincially.

“Depending on how old the remains are and how much of the body is located, it can sometimes be difficult to associate the remains to a missing person,” Shelkie says. “So for example if just a jaw bone is found, and there is no clothing, skin, hair or eye colour to match to a missing person… the sample has to be sent for analysis which can sometimes tell us then what the sex of the individual was and an age range. Also, if the remains do fit into a perameter of a missing person, we can then try to identify them by dental charts, or X-ray records, or DNA.”

The remains of a newborn were found in April, 1983, near Cooney Bay on Kamloops Lake. It’s not even known what gender the baby was — only that they likely died six months to five years before they were discovered.

A stone’s throw away from that location is where the remains of a 25- to 35-year-old Aboriginal man were found, in July, 1970.

He had brown hair, was about 5’10” and had died about one week to one month before being discovered. He had on a blue nylon jacket, black jeans and brown Italian shoes.

The level of description for these people varies, often because of how long their remains were there or what condition they were in. Some have far more information than others, like a white man between 30 and 50 years old whose remains were found in Frederick, along Kamloops Lake.

He was about 5’8″, wore a white t-shirt, cream or light coloured yellow shirt, off-white pants, blue boxers with flowers, a 36-inch dark blue narrow leather belt, and blue socks. He didn’t have any natural teeth when he was located in November 1970, but lower dentures were found.

Further up the lake at Red Point, a 30- to 40-year-old man’s remains were found in August 1988. He had brown hair, stood 5’9″, and had died about two to six weeks before being discovered.

And then in the middle of Kamloops Lake, a tattooed man somewhere between 30 and 40 years old was discovered in 1983. He had black hair, was about 5’9″ or slightly taller, and died one to six months before being found. He wore a blue checkered shirt.

His tattoos included the name “Edna” on his right arm, and on his left arm were “Mary C”, “Love”, “Marlene”, a crossed out “Karene”, a bird and a horseshoe.

In 1995 near Chase, the remains of a white man between 30 and 60 years old were found. He was short, between 5’5″ and 5’8″, and had died between one year and one month before being discovered. He wore South Channel brand 32-inch blue pants, size 10 brown loafers, Expo 86 guest services pins, and a blue baseball cap.

If you have any information or questions about these investigations, you can contact the Special Investigations Unit by email at BCCS.SIU@gov.bc.ca.

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by Ashley Legassic

The lonely dead: eight sets of unidentified remains in the Kamloops area

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