Starting landfill searches within 'magic' 30-day window key to finding remains, study suggests

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

A comprehensive analysis of landfill searches for human remains suggests if searchers don't start within a month of a body ending up in a landfill — and commit to spending at least as long looking — the potential for recovery drops dramatically.

"At the 30-day mark, the chances of being successful are near even, but they drop precipitously after a month has passed," wrote co-authors Kimberlee Sue Moran and Brian Paulsen — a former police chief in Plattsmouth, Neb. — in their 2019 study, which they believe to be the only broad research on landfill search feasibility done in North America.

"A search should not be initiated if more than 60 days had passed between the body entering the landfill and the search being initiated."

The findings could provide valuable context as government and Manitoba-based law enforcement agencies consider whether to search Prairie Green landfill, north of Winnipeg, for the remains of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran.

Winnipeg police believe the two women were killed and their remains ended up at that dump in mid-May of this year — a conclusion investigators say they reached on June 20, though they did not disclose that publicly until this month.

Police announced on Dec. 1 that Jeremy Skibicki was charged with first-degree murder in their deaths, and that of a woman who hasn't yet been identified but has been given the name Buffalo Woman.

Skibicki had been charged months earlier with first-degree murder in the death of Rebecca Contois, who was also killed in May, according to police. Her partial remains were found at the Brady Road landfill in south Winnipeg, following a search there in June.

The charges have not yet gone to trial. Skibicki's lawyer has said he plans to plead not guilty to all four first-degree murder charges.

Growing calls for search

Police have faced growing calls to mount a search of Prairie Green after initially suggesting it wasn't feasible.

Protesters, including family and loved ones of victims, have blocked the Brady Road landfill recently, calling for a search of the site for other missing people.

Manitoba's premier and Winnipeg's mayor announced on Dec. 8 operations at the Prairie Green had been paused following such calls. Last week, the federal government committed to footing the bill for a feasibility study on a possible search.

The authors of the American study, which was published in the journal Forensic Archaeology in January 2019, reviewed 46 landfill searches in the U.S. between 1999 and 2009. Of those, 20 — or 43 per cent — were successful. The successful searches took 17 days on average.

The research found one of the most important factors was the time between when a victim's remains ended up in a landfill and when the search began, according to Paulsen.

Searches that got underway within 30 days of remains being deposited were most successful, and searching for at least 30 days also increased the odds of success. Over 90 per cent of the successful recoveries happened within that "magic" window, said Paulsen.

The study discourages law enforcement from searching after two months had passed.

"There was instances of recovery after 30 days, but it was much, much rarer," Paulsen said in an interview with Marcy Markusa, host of CBC Manitoba's Information Radio. 

Factors that might impede an investigation include how much time has elapsed, resources, weather conditions and potential hazards searchers could encounter, he said.

Success typically also hinges on whether landfill managers can roughly pinpoint the location of where remains may have been deposited.

That depends on the quality of record keeping at a landfill and whether or not garbage trucks dropping off loads there have GPS location data tracking, which is true of many jurisdictions in the U.S.

"Having that location is paramount, just a starting point, and it goes slow. It goes very, very slow," said Paulsen.

'Extremely hard' to call off search

One 2003 Nebraska case he was directly involved with shows the importance of that information, Paulsen said.

The father of Brendan Gonzalez, a four-year-old boy, confessed to killing the child and showed police to the trash bin where he discarded his son's body.

Police managed to pinpoint when that trash was taken to a landfill in Springfield, Neb.

But they didn't learn that information and start looking until about six months after the fact, Paulsen says — similar to the amount of time that has passed since remains of Harris and Myran are believed to have been taken to Prairie Green.

Investigators didn't have GPS garbage truck location data in that case, but the landfill manager "was extremely confident that he knew exactly where we needed to go," Paulsen said.

"Absent of the landfill manager having noted where we were searching on the day after the murder, I don't know if we would've been so aggressive in going in," Paulsen said.

But after an unsuccessful month, the search was called off. 

"It was extremely hard for myself and the assistant chief to be with the mother and the grandmother and say we were stopping the search," Paulsen said.

"Everybody was confident that we were going to find him ... but in the end it came down to we just didn't know where to go."

That case is the only unsuccessful landfill search in Nebraska history, according to Paulsen. Two subsequent searches resulted in the discovery of remains.

In one case, the remains of a baby were found after a landfill was shut down within six hours of the infant's disappearance being reported, Paulsen said.

The other successful search was more extensive, but fell within the "magic window" of 30 days, he said.

Thomas McAfee, a special agent with the Federal Bureau of Investigation who served as a senior team leader with the American bureau's evidence response team for eight years, agreed that the passage of time, availability of records and volume of debris are all factors in searches.

McAfee has been involved in four landfill searches where the FBI worked with local police forces. None resulted in the recovery of a body.

"You really need to have a lot of the pieces of the puzzle solved before you start digging," he said in an interview with Information Radio.

A search is less likely to be successful "if you don't have solid, workable intelligence that the person went missing on date X and we shut down the landfill almost immediately, and we know they went to this dumpster, and this dumpster went to this area."

But as officials consider whether to search Prairie Green in Manitoba, the likelihood of success isn't the only factor to consider, he said.

"There's typically a lot of emotions," said McAfee. 

"Investigators want to do right by the victim and the victim's family — bring them home."

Support is available for anyone affected by details of this case. If you require support, you can contact Ka Ni Kanichihk's Medicine Bear Counselling, Support and Elder Services at 204-594-6500, ext. 102 or 104, (within Winnipeg) or 1-888-953-5264 (outside Winnipeg).

Support is also available via Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak's Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Liaison unit at 1-800-442-0488 or 204-677-1648.