Police in Montreal are using ground-penetrating radar in their search for the remains of a toddler who went missing and was presumed murdered more than 35 years ago.
Yohanna Cyr was 18 months old when she went missing from her St. Laurent home on Aug. 15, 1978, while in the care of her mother’s then-boyfriend, Aaron Lewis Guay. Guay, then 32 years old, is an American citizen and not the child’s father.
He was charged with kidnapping but released due to insufficient evidence. Police were never able to build a case against any suspects or locate Cyr’s body.
Ten years ago, a witness came forward and told police that at the time of Cyr’s disappearance, she saw Guay carrying a breadbox in a field in the area of Marcel Laurin and Cote Vertu. The field is now a parking lot.
In April, engineers and students from the Ecole Polytechnique helped police search the area using what is known as GeoRadar, which can penetrate the ground and find anomalies in soil.
The radar system picked up irregularities in four spots during the April search, and police returned to the lot this week to focus on those areas.
“They have to clarify four zones where we have may have discovered something irregular under the ground,” Montreal Police spokesperson Dany Richer told CTV Montreal.
If police feel they have reason to start digging, they hope to break ground in the next month.
Back on that day in 1978, the toddler’s mother, Lilly Cyr, had left her daughter in Guay’s care while she was at work. At one point, Lilly Cyr called Guay, who told her that the baby was in the bath. During another call, Guay said the baby was with her grandmother.
Lilly Cyr later travelled to Boston, where Guay’s mother lived, but was told that the baby had drowned and had been buried.
After Guay was charged and released, he was deported from Canada.
With a report from CTV Montreal’s Denise Roberts
