Prairie Green landfill search 'way under budget' amid quick results, premier says
Province still working to ID second set of remains after one set confirmed as belonging to Morgan Harris
Manitoba's premier says the search of the Prairie Green landfill is "way under budget" as the work to find the remains of one of the victims of a Winnipeg serial killer continues.
The province and the federal government had committed $20 million each for the search of the remains of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran, which officially began in December and was expected to continue through the rest of 2025.
On Friday, nearly three months after the search started, the province announced human remains found in the landfill outside of Winnipeg belonged to Harris, one of four women murdered by Jeremy Skibicki in 2022.
"We are way under budget right now and it reflects the fact that we're relatively early on to where we expected we might be," Premier Wab Kinew said Monday.
Winnipeg police said in 2022 the bodies of 39-year-old Harris and Myran, 26, had ended up in the landfill after they were killed by Skibicki, but they decided a search was not feasible.
A second set of remains besides those belonging to Harris was also found, but they still haven't been identified and there is no confirmation they belong to Myran.
WATCH | Prairie Green landfill search continues:
"Right now, we're still waiting on the identification process to play out," Kinew said. "Because we don't know what's going to happen there, we can't speak publicly about a ton of detail."
Kyra Wilson, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, said Monday the quick results of the search show what governments can accomplish when they come together with First Nations people and leadership.
Wider searches would find more remains: Wilson
Wilson, as chief of Long Plain First Nation, was one of the voices advocating on behalf of the families for the search. Both Myran and Harris were originally from Long Plain.
"We just need all levels of government to come and support everything that we're needing to do to ensure that First Nations people have the same opportunities and the same rights as everybody else," Wilson said, adding that the country is in the middle of a crisis when it comes to missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people.
"I firmly believe that if we were to look in the landfills, that we would find other remains. This is a reality," she said.
"It only took a few months for us to find [Harris].… If we were to come together to search all the landfills in our region, that we'd probably find some answers to the questions of families that are missing their loved ones."
Wilson specifically mentioned 31-year-old Ashlee Shingoose, who was last seen in Winnipeg in 2022, as well as Tanya Nepinak, who went missing in 2011.
Police searched for the remains of 31-year-old Nepinak at the city's Brady Road landfill in 2012, but the six-day search was unsuccessful.
Skibicki was also found guilty in the deaths of 24-year-old Rebecca Contois from O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation, and an unidentified woman who has been given the name Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, or Buffalo Woman.
Contois' remains were partially discovered in garbage bins near Skibicki's apartment, and at the Brady Road landfill.
With files from Ian Froese and Alana Cole