The 93 day search involved the use of GPS. The dogs involved in the search were trained to sniff for human corpses. Police in Saskatoon stated on Tuesday that a set of remains identified during a search conducted in one of the city’s landfill is that of Mackenzie Lee Trottier.
Preliminary identification of a victim that was made by a member of a search team at the landfill was made by July 30, 2024; the search was still ongoing and on August 1, 2024 members of Saskatoon police force witnessed complete identification of human remains, said the police.
Police set precedent for landfill searches
Police began the search in this landfill on May 1st. Trottier, who was 22 at the time she was last seen, disappeared in December last year. When she left her family’s home she said she was going to get a lift using a ride-booking service. She was in good spirits, said her father in an interview with APTN News [sharp at the end of interview]. The police did not establish the cause of her death though autopsies showed that she had a heart ailment. The suspect, in the view of police, “passed on in another incident.”
“An application made to the court to produce items from the electronic device of the suspect substantiated the search of the landfill. In the beginning of the police investigation, there was footage of a man suspected of holding vital information to Mackenzie’s disappearance. This man is not the deceased suspect linking Mackenzie’s murder and hence, he has nothing to do with it.
Expert in Manitoba Month of searchies following Saskatoon situation
Jeremy Skibicki, aged 37, was earlier in July found guilty of first-degree murder of four women and girls; Harris, Myran, Contois who is originally from O-Chi-Chak-Ko-Sipi First Nation also known as Crane River, and an unnamed woman known as Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe or Buffalo Woman by the indigenous groups.
Authorities have stated that they think she was native and about 20 to 25 years of age. Since Myran and Harris’ deaths, Winnipeg police assume that Skibicki committed the homicides in early May 2022. Their remains were not found until weeks later when Skibicki, who was arrested for murdering Contois admitted to having killed all the four women. A provincial spokesperson said in an email that the forensic anthropologist assisting the Prairie Green landfill search has been closely observing the search for Trottier in Saskatoon.
“Manitoba expects the meeting with the Saskatoon team to be fruitful to learn from”, a provincial official said on Tuesday.