Missing, Dead, Mourned

Police on Alert!  Aboriginal women, prostitutes.  Oh

They were, after all, only prostitutes.  Young and attractive, and out on the street and vulnerable, selling - putting their bodies out there, for hire.  Temporary use.  Unconventional in polite society, but quite conventional as far as the seamy side of life goes.  They wouldn't be doing it if there wasn't a demand.  They would be doing something else to earn a living if there wasn't hard cash to be made - no receipts required, none given - to funding their lifestyle.

Police have done something unusual for Ottawa.  They have expressed concern over a string of unsolved murders.  And one disappearance, now held to be a murder, the body never discovered.  Other bodies have been found, though.  In 2008 a 38-year-old woman who was also a mother of young children suddenly disappeared.  She was reported missing by her family.  MRC des Collines-de-l'Outaeouais police found no sign of anything amiss at her apartment.

Which led them to conclude she was not a victim of a crime.  Since then, however, neither her bank card or credit cards have been in use.  She is nowhere to be found, not a trace of her remains.  It was known, though not publicly stated, that she was doing escort work, not plying her trade on the streets.  At the same time, the Ottawa Police Department is investigating a serial killer case.  Someone who obviously targets prostitutes, in Ottawa and Gatineau.

There is a serial sex killer somewhere out there in the great, populous area of the National Capital Region.  Prostitutes have been warned, and they have been advised to take additional cautionary measures.  If they can.  They are concerned.  They most certainly are; no one courts death.  This is their profession.  They take greater care now.  In Vanier and the Byward Market in the last two years there were some 250 attacks reported on prostitutes.

And then, of course, a number of unsolved deaths.  Thirty-six-year-old Jennifer Stewart, found dead in a parking lot in 2010.  Kelly Morrisseau, 27 and pregnant, also dead.  Found unclothed and bloody in another parking lot in 2006, near Gatineau Park, she died in hospital.  Stabbed over a dozen times, desperately trying to stave off her attacker, fighting for her life.

In September 2011, Leeanne Lawson, addicted to drugs and doing street work to pay for her lifestyle, discovered dead, in a downtown parking lot.  There are more.  Two vicious clients who force prostitutes for free sex are on the loose.  Not necessarily murderers, just ordinary, garden-variety sex abusers.  Presumably.  One has a phony police badge, threatens arrest if not serviced, the other threatens with a knife.

Last fall Jonathan Mathieu, 30, charged with attempted murder among other charges, tried to kill a prostitute by attempting to strangle her to death after sex in his apartment.  He dragged her out to his car, where she regained consciousness and began screaming, so he stamped on her throat.  When a witness intervened, Mathieu sped off in his car.

Police are still looking for Ms. Chretien, the mother who has been missing since 2008:  5'5", 114 pounds, long curly light-brown hair, blue eyes.  Rose tattoo on her left ankle, scar behind her knees.