Episode 127: Kelly Morrisseau

When a young indigenous woman is found stabbed and left for dead, her community must grapple with a dark reality. Who killed Kelly Morrisseau?

Episode Media

Kelly Morrisseau *(Winnipeg Free Press)*

Sketch of suspect believed to have been last seen with Kelly *(Gatineau City Police)*

Car similar to one believed to have been driven by the suspect *(Gatineau City Police)*

Episode Sources

Episode Transcript

Welcome back to Bite-Sized Crime. Over the last few episodes, I told you about the cases of two young women who were abducted and murdered in the city of Ottawa, Ontario. Their stories got massive national attention, but while police were pouring resources into finding their killers, the murders of several other women in the area seemed to be just a blip on the radar. One of those women was Kelly Morrisseau. This episode discusses sensitive topics, so listener discretion is advised.

Kelly Joe Morrisseau was born in 1979 on the Sagkeeng First Nations Reserve in the Canadian province of Manitoba. The oldest of five siblings, Kelly was bright and full of laughter. Her family described her as loving and kind, outgoing with a beaming smile and a contagious laugh.

When Kelly was three years old, the family left the reserve and moved south to Winnipeg. Kelly’s mother Lisa wanted to build a better life for her children, but it wasn’t easy. Money was tight, and Lisa often struggled to make ends meet. Then, in 1991, Lisa’s younger sister Glenda was brutally murdered. Glenda, just 19 years old at the time, was abducted from outside her home in Winnipeg and found three weeks later, bruised and beaten, wearing only a shirt with her hands tied behind her back. Police believed she had been struck in the head with a cinder block and left in a scrapyard. Though police said they had a good suspect, Glenda’s case eventually went cold and her family was left without justice.

Shaken by her sister’s death and heavy with grief, Lisa moved her young family to Ottawa, hoping to escape the violence of Winnipeg. Kelly, now a teenager, enrolled in school and found a new circle of friends. Not long after arriving in Ottawa, Kelly learned she was pregnant, and at the age of 15, she gave birth to her daughter Tanis.

Kelly loved being a mother and wanted Tanis to have a full, happy life. Tanis told True Crime Central that some of her favorite memories of her mother were the times they spent doing arts and crafts together. She said that Kelly was always smiling, always laughing.

In her early 20s, Kelly fell in love with Michael Giroux, and they had two sons together. Kelly loved her little family, but being a young mother of three wasn’t easy, and her relationship with Michael was often marred by fighting. In 2005, Kelly was charged with assaulting Michael with a knife during one of their arguments. Not long after the incident, the three children were taken by the Children’s Aid Society in Ontario and placed into foster care.

Having her children taken from her was devastating to Kelly. She struggled with bouts of depression, and she and Michael had to take a hard look at the life they were living. In January of 2006, the couple decided to move back to Winnipeg and try to turn things around. By that summer, Kelly learned she was pregnant, and she knew she had to deal with what she was running from.

In July of 2006, Michael and Kelly decided to live apart for a while so Kelly could return to Ottawa and face her assault charges. She pleaded guilty and was sentenced to 12 months probation. She had to stay in Ottawa, so she moved in with Michael’s mother at her apartment on Bank Street.

Unfortunately, Ottawa was not a safe haven for Kelly. She had run with a rough crowd there, and this time was no different. Before long, Kelly had spiraled into a deep depression and was struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine. Kelly’s sister Farris told the Ottawa Citizen that the family worried about her going back to her old stomping grounds. “I think the reason why she did it is because she was depressed because she didn’t have her kids. When she was in Ottawa, she was a different person.”

Michael was also concerned. He told the Citizen that even though they were separated at the time, he wanted Kelly to be okay. “We had our problems, but we loved each other always. We took care of each other.”

In October of 2006, Lisa Morrisseau suffered from a stroke, and the entire family descended on Ottawa to help with her care. But Kelly kept her distance, likely because she didn’t want her siblings to see her in the throes of addiction.

As the months passed and winter settled in, Kelly seemed to be doing better. Michael’s mother told the Citizen that there were no signs of Kelly drinking or doing drugs, that she was acting very responsibly. She helped around the house and kept normal hours. She even visited her own mother and stopped avoiding her siblings. Her family was hopeful that Kelly would return to her old self and turn her life around.

In the early morning hours of Sunday, December 10, 2006, a man was out walking his dog when he noticed something in the darkness. Lying in an empty parking lot at the entrance of Gatineau Park was a young woman, naked and covered in blood. When the man approached, he could see that she was still breathing, clinging to life. He could also tell that she was pregnant. He immediately called for help, and within minutes, first responders arrived at the scene. The woman was rushed to a local hospital where she died shortly after.

Police were able to identify the woman as 27-year-old Kelly Morrisseau. An autopsy revealed that she had been stabbed more than a dozen times as she fought desperately for her life and that of her unborn child. After the violent attack, she had been left to die in the dirt, the loss of blood slowed only by the bitterly cold temperatures.

When Kelly’s family was notified of her passing, they were shocked. What had she been doing across the river in Quebec at 5 in the morning, especially being seven months pregnant? And who would have done this to her? Kelly didn’t have any enemies that they knew of – she was a kind, loving person who would go out of her way to help others.

The devastation of losing Kelly to such unspeakable violence was almost more than they could bear. Michael told the Citizen that he couldn’t imagine life without her. “I can’t sleep. I can’t eat… I don’t even know what I’m supposed to do with myself. I just hurt every time I think about it, every time I picture what the police told me about what they found.”

Her sister Farris worried that they would never know the truth, telling the Citizen, “I’m really concerned. I hope they are putting in the time to investigate this and not just leaving this alone. Sometimes, when native women get murdered, I hear they leave it alone.”

Thankfully, police were investigating. Because Kelly’s body had been found in Gatineau Park, detectives from the Gatineau City Police had taken over the investigation. From the get-go, they had roped off the parking lot and began collecting evidence from the scene, including pieces of Kelly’s clothing that had been discarded next to her body. They pulled surveillance footage from a Tim Hortons coffee shop on St Raymond Boulevard on the western edge of the park, believing the killer could have gone there to wash up. Forensic teams processed the men’s bathroom at the shop, collecting a garbage bag from the trash can by the sink and placing several evidence tags around the bathroom.

At a press conference on December 11th, Lieut. Jean Paul Le May told reporters that they were being cautious at this point in the investigation. “We have an important investigation going on, and certain things can’t be said because of that investigation. We want to be transparent in our investigation, but right now, we are in a very important investigative process and have a lot of information to validate and there is not much more that can be said.”

At a second press conference two days later, Lieut. Le May told reporters that they were examining the possibility that Kelly had met her attacker while engaging in sex work. Witnesses in her neighborhood had seen Kelly on street corners at odd hours of the night, and Lieut. Le May said that they had other information that led them to believe Kelly had been a sex worker. This possibility added another layer of complication to the case. Had Kelly been attacked by someone who knew her? Had the killer been targeting her specifically, or had they been targeting sex workers in general? Was it a completely random attack by someone with no connection to Kelly at all?

Gatineau police set up a command post at a gas station across from the Tim Hortons and told the public to contact them with any information about Kelly’s murder. They received dozens of tips, one of which led them to search a creek not far from the coffee shop. A dive team from Montreal searched the muddy waters while K-9 units walked the banks. Several items of interest were collected and sent for testing.

Meanwhile, Kelly’s family was preparing to lay her and her unborn child to rest. On December 16th, over 150 people gathered at Gatineau Park for a traditional aboriginal ceremony with songs and prayers. Two days later, Kelly’s funeral service was held on the Sagkeeng First Nations Reserve in Manitoba. Friends and family shared memories of Kelly as they poured out their grief. Her friend Tanya said, “It’s her laugh that I will always remember most about her. She was always fun to be around, and if anyone was ever feeling bad, she would make you laugh and make everything seem better. We will all miss her so much.”

After the funeral, Kelly’s family tried to be patient as they waited for updates in the case. But months passed with no answers, and it seemed that the investigation was slowing down. In March of 2007, police announced that they believed Kelly had been killed over drugs. Early in the investigation, a longtime police informant from Kelly’s neighborhood had given them a valuable tip – the informant knew details of the case that hadn’t been released to the public at the time, leading police to believe the tip was legitimate. The informant provided detectives with a detailed description of a man seen with Kelly just before she died. The informant also knew the man’s street name and indicated that he had disappeared shortly after Kelly’s death.

Two months later, police announced that forensic testing on the evidence found in the Tim Hortons bathroom had been negative, eliminating the connection between Kelly’s attacker and the coffee shop. The surveillance footage was also a dead end, leaving investigators with one less potential lead.

In June of 2007, six months after Kelly’s murder, the Assembly of First Nations announced that it was partnering with Crime Stoppers to offer a $2,000 reward for information leading to an arrest and conviction in Kelly’s case. Chief Phil Fontaine told the Star-Phoenix that they hoped the reward would generate more leads for investigators. “We certainly don’t want it to become a cold case. We’ve been concerned that whenever a situation like this one comes up involving an Aboriginal woman, people turn a blind eye. There should be as much concern in this situation as there is in others.”

Very quickly, the community picked up on the huge discrepancy between the small reward in Kelly’s case and the significantly larger ones in the area’s most recent high-profile cases. Ardeth Wood’s murder in 2003 garnered a reward of $50,000, while the murder of teenager Jennifer Teague in 2005 brought in twice that amount. Although some of the discrepancy was due to different investigating agencies – Gatineau police rarely offered rewards while Ontario police did – it was also glaringly obvious that Kelly’s background played a role.

Reporting for Ardeth’s and Jennifer’s cases focused on their youth and innocence, while coverage of Kelly’s case centered on her drug use and sex work. All three women were abducted and brutally attacked in strikingly similar ways, and yet their lives were ascribed varying degrees of importance.

Shining a light on this disparity led to an increase in Kelly’s reward fund. Several local organizations donated, including the Society of Obstetricians and Gynecologists of Canada, and soon, the reward had surpassed $20,000. An education fund for Kelly’s children was also set up in her name as the community rallied around them.

Over the next few months, investigators continued to sift through leads in the case. In September of 2007, Gatineau police announced that they had a suspect. Although they didn’t have a name, they were able to release a composite sketch based on a description given by a witness who had seen him with Kelly the night she died.

According to police, the witness had seen Kelly get into a car around 4:00am on December 10, 2006. With her was a man with wavy blond hair and an athletic, muscular build, appearing to be between 20 and 30 years old. The witness recognized the man as someone who had been soliciting sex workers in the area in the days leading up to Kelly’s murder. According to the police, the man spoke both English and French without an accent and was driving an older model Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera with wire rim hubcaps.

In addition to the sketch, Gatineau police also announced that they had secured a DNA profile of the suspect, gathered from evidence left behind at the scene. When the suspect was identified, they would be able to use the DNA for a comparative analysis.

With this new information, Kelly’s family began to feel hopeful. Her aunt Michelle spoke up at the press conference, saying, “I hope this will end soon. It’s been difficult for all of us. We’re all just trying to stick together and try and get information of our own to share with the police.”

After the release of the sketch, police received multiple tips about the suspect’s identity. Sgt. Claude Parent told the Citizen, “A lot of people think they know the individual and they’re calling in with information. We’re hoping that eventually one of these individuals that is suspected will be linked to this guy.”

But before long, the tips slowed down, and the investigation seemed to cool. Police were able to rule out hundreds of names, but that left them with little to go on. Kelly’s family watched as the families of Jennifer Teague and Ardeth Wood found justice, but there was nothing but silence for them. It wasn’t until 2010 that Kelly’s name started popping up in the news again, this time in connection with another woman who had been killed in Ottawa.

An indigenous woman who was addicted to crack cocaine and engaged in sex work, Jennifer Stewart’s story was very similar to Kelly’s. And much like Kelly had been, Jennifer had been stabbed and left to die in a parking lot. But the evidence in the cases didn’t match, and police ruled out a connection.

Then, in 2012, Kelly’s name appeared in the news again, this time in connection with the murders of three indigenous women in Winnipeg. Police had arrested 52-year-old Shawn Lamb for the murders of Tanya Nepinak, Carolyn Sinclair, and Lorna Blacksmith. The similarities between Lamb’s victims and Kelly Morrisseau had police again comparing evidence that led nowhere.

In 2013, police arrested 56-year-old Marc Leduc for the murders of two sex workers in Montreal: Pamela Kosmack in 2008 and Leeanne Lawson in 2011. Again, Gatineau police searched for a connection to Kelly’s case, but forensic testing was inconclusive. In 2016, police officially announced that Leduc was not responsible for Kelly’s murder – it was yet another dead end.

In December of 2016, on the ten year anniversary of Kelly’s death, Gatineau police announced new information in the case, information they believed could lead to her killer.

According to police, they believed the suspect had been driving his Oldsmobile around the Vanier area of Ottawa in the days leading up to Kelly’s murder, trolling the streets for sex workers. Around 4:00 on the morning of December 10th, the suspect picked up Kelly on Montfort Street and drove her across the river into Quebec. When they reached Gatineau Park, the suspect and Kelly fought in the parking lot, and he stabbed Kelly multiple times. During the struggle, police believed the suspect had suffered his own injuries, injuries that may have been visible to anyone who encountered him in the days following the attack.

After leaving Kelly for dead, the suspect may have headed west away from the parking lot, driving his car down a side road used by emergency vehicles. This would have been an unusual sight, and police hoped it would trigger someone’s memory.

They also announced that they had recovered items belonging to Kelly in a creek near the Tim Hortons as well as from a wooded area behind a movie theater. Both of these locations were just a few kilometers from the park. Police believed the suspect had driven around, stopping occasionally to dump evidence from his car.

When asked why they had waited ten years to release some of this information, Lieut. Le May told reporters that they remained hopeful that they would solve Kelly’s murder. “Ten years after this dreadful event, there are people who still have information crucial to this investigation, who never contacted the police for fear of being identified or that their information may not be relevant… What we hope by revealing this is that people retaining this information will call us, that it will be the push they need.”

While the information did bring in more tips, it appears that none of them were fruitful. As of this recording, it has been nearly two decades since Kelly Morrisseau was murdered, and her case remains unsolved. Her family still waits for answers. Although Kelly’s life wasn’t picture perfect, she didn’t deserve to die alone in an empty parking lot, fighting to protect her unborn child. She deserved to live, to see her children grow up happy and healthy. Kelly deserves justice.

If you have any information about the murder of Kelly Morrisseau, please contact the Gatineau Police at 819-243-4636 or submit a tip online at police.gatineau.ca.