WARNING: This story contains details of violence against Indigenous women.
Police have identified a second set of remains found at a Winnipeg-area landfill as those of Marcedes Myran, one of four Indigenous women who were victims of a serial killer in 2022, the province said Monday.
Myran’s remains were one of two sets found at the Prairie Green landfill north of Winnipeg in February. The remains of Morgan Harris were publicly identified on March 7.
Both Myran, 26, and Harris, 39, were originally from Long Plain First Nation, 95 kilometres west of Winnipeg. They were among four Indigenous women murdered by serial killer Jeremy Skibicki in 2022.
“Marcedes Myran and Morgan Harris are coming home,” Premier Wab Kinew told reporters on Monday afternoon. “This is what we set out to do. I don’t know if many of us knew the odds of success … but, it turns out, bringing them home was within our grasp.”
WATCH: How the families fought to search the landfill:
Advocates for missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls and gender-diverse people are praising the strength and determination of the families who fought for the search for two First Nations women’s remains in a Winnipeg-area landfill. What challenges did the families face, and how were they overcome? CBC News presents the chronology here.
The search was expected to continue throughout 2025, Kinew said.
“We went through a whole heck of a lot to get to this point, but at the end of the day, we did the right thing.”
Workers are still at Prairie Green to find additional remains of Harris and Myran, he said. The search could continue for a few more weeks before the province reassesses next steps alongside the women’s families.
“I can tell you that today we continue to find remains, and in the coming weeks, perhaps that will no longer be the case.”
Kinew would not say whether the search would continue in hopes of finding another victim of Skibicki, a still-unidentified woman who was given the name Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, by community leaders.
Last July, Skibicki was convicted of four counts of first-degree murder in the killings of Myran, Harris, Rebecca Contois, 24, and Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe.
Harris and Myran are believed to have been killed in early May 2022. Mashkode Bizhiki’ikwe is believed to have been killed in mid-March of that year, but her remains have never been found.
Investigators believe Contois was the last woman Skibicki killed, on May 14 or 15, 2022. Her partial remains were found in a garbage bin in Winnipeg in mid-May of that year, with more later found at the city-run Brady Road landfill in June 2022.
Donna Bartlett, Myran’s grandmother, previously told CBC News that Myran made contact with family for the last time on March 15.
While the family had hoped that Myran would reappear, Bartlett said they contacted police and put out posters reporting her as missing later that fall.
The families of Harris and Myran had long called for Prairie Green to be searched for the women’s remains.
On the same morning Contois’s remains were found in the Winnipeg garbage bin, the remains of Harris and Myran, in a dumpster a few blocks away, were picked up by a garbage truck, court heard during Skibicki’s trial last year.
It wasn’t until June 20, 2022, that police realized their remains had been taken to the privately run Prairie Green landfill, in the rural municipality of Rosser, just north of Winnipeg. By then, more than 10,000 more loads of garbage had been dumped there.
‘I hope that there’s healing’
A search of the site, which was initially deemed unfeasible by police and later became a political issue in Manitoba’s 2023 provincial election, began late last year.
Heather Stefanson, the former premier and leader of the Manitoba Progressive Conservative Party, apologized following the election for ads that promoted her decision not to search the landfill for Harris and Myran.
Earlier this month, the Progressive Conservatives apologized to the families for refusing to search the landfill.
When asked about the PCs’ failed election campaign, Kinew replied that he’s more focused on Manitobans.
“Regardless of how you felt over the course of this thing, I hope we can all just agree that it’s good that we’re able to provide closure to these families,” he said.
Kinew said in the future, he would like to publicly honour those who participated in the Prairie Green search.
In the meantime, he urged time and space for the families of Harris and Myran.
“I hope that there’s healing for everybody.”
