Canadian police have confirmed the identity of a second woman whose body was dumped at a private landfill near Winnipeg by a serial killer who preyed on Indigenous women and left their bodies hidden in trash.
The Manitoba Royal Canadian Mounted police said in a statement on Monday that the human remains found in the Prairie Green Landfill, north of Winnipeg, were those of Marcedes Myran, 26.
Myran’s family “has been notified and the Manitoba government continues to ask that the family’s privacy be respected”.
The young woman from Long Plain First Nation was killed in 2022 by Jeremy Skibicki, who was given a life sentence in July 2024 after he was found guilty of first-degree murder over four murders described as “jarring and numbing” by the judge overseeing the case.
Last week, police announced that another set of human remains found at the Prairie Green Landfill, north of Winnipeg had been identified as those of Morgan Harris, 39.
The discovery came after local officials were forced into a U-turn, launching a large search operation after initially suggesting that it would be too costly to examine the refuse, much of which was buried under tonnes of clay.
The remains of a third victim, Rebecca Contois, a member of Crane River First Nation, were found in a dumpster near Skibicki’s home in 2022.
Investigators are still trying to locate the remains of Skibecki’s fourth victim, an unidentified woman known as Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe (Buffalo Woman).
Police first suggested in 2022 that the some of the victim’s bodies were buried in the landfill, but said that any recovery would be too challenging, prompting disbelief and outrage from family members.
“They keep saying it comes down to feasibility. But it doesn’t come down to feasibility when it’s about human beings and bringing these people home,” Cambria Harris, Morgan’s daughter, said at the time. After meeting with former prime minister Justin Trudeau, she was blunt: “I told him these women need to be found, and they need to come home.
The province’s former Progressive Conservative premier Heather Stefanson nonetheless defended the decision not to search the landfill in 2023.
“My heart goes out to the families. It’s a horrific situation that they’re facing right now, but I’m also the premier and we have to make what are difficult decisions,” she said. “These are decisions that need to be made, and I continue to stand by the decision that has been made.”
She and others in her government said the search was too costly and too hazardous – a conclusion other experts rejected.
At the time, Federal Crown-Indigenous Relations minister Marc Miller called the decision “heartless” and said a search was necessary.
A search of the landfill became central to a provincial election in 2023, in which New Democratic party leader Wab Kinew campaigned on a search of the landfill. Kinew’s party won a majority government and last year, the federal government pledged C$40m to search for the victims.
When the positive identification of Harris’s remains were first announced, Kinew praised the family members as “having been the people who called us to our better nature and to do the right thing”.
Excavation began at the privately run landfill in December, with teams sorting through nearly 20,300 cubic metres of material with rakes and by hand.
An enormous steel heated building was also constructed to allow teams to sift though wet material by hand while outside temperatures hovered at about -20C.
Of the 45 search technicians hired, including family liaisons, a forensic anthropologist, a health and safety officer, and a director of operations, half are Indigenous.
Kinew said: “The effort itself is a microcosm of where we’re at as a country … people from different walks of life coming together to try to do the right thing for these families.”