Manitoba will begin Brady Road landfill search for remains of First Nations women on Monday

A search of another Winnipeg landfill for the remains of First Nations women will begin on Monday, CBC News has learned.

The province trained staff this week in preparation for searching the Brady Road landfill, located in Winnipeg's south end, for the remains of Ashlee Shingoose, one of the victims of convicted serial killer Jeremy Skibicki. He's now serving four concurrent life sentences with no chance of parole for 25 years after being convicted of killing four First Nations women in Winnipeg in 2022.

Once that search is complete, the province has previously announced it plans to search the same landfill for Tanya Nepinak, a woman who disappeared more than a decade ago.

The government declined to comment on Friday.

Nepinak has not been seen or heard from since Sept. 13, 2011, when she walked out of her Winnipeg home where she lived with her mother, saying she was heading to a nearby restaurant to get pizza.

While Nepinak's remains have not been recovered, police have told her family they believe she was a victim of convicted Winnipeg serial killer Shawn Lamb, and said there is a good chance her remains are in the Brady Road landfill. 

The province began a "test phase" of a search at the landfill in August. It included excavating an area to determine what the search process would look like, as well as conducting ground-penetrating radar tests to narrow down the location.

A search of the privately run Prairie Green landfill, located near Stony Mountain, ended in the summer after the remains of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran, also victims of Skibicki, were found.

Skibicki's trial heard he targeted the women at Winnipeg homeless shelters and disposed of their bodies in garbage bins.

He was also convicted in the death of Rebecca Contois, whose partial remains were discovered in the Brady Road landfill by Winnipeg police in June 2022.

At the time of the trial, Shingoose had not been identified and was referred to in court as Mashkode Bizhiki'ikwe, or Buffalo Woman, a name given to her by Indigenous grassroots community members.

Months later, police announced that interviews with Skibicki after the trial, along with DNA evidence, led them to identify the unknown victim as Shingoose. They said they believed her body was taken to the landfill.