Gatineau Police appeal for new leads in decade-old Morrisseau murder

CTV Ottawa: Unsolved murder CTV's Joanne Schnurr reports on why Gatineau police are drawing attention to the unsolved murder of Kelly Morrisseau.

Gatineau police are drawing attention today to an unsolved murder that dates back a decade.

They hope re-visiting the scene with the media will spark new information from the public.

27-year-old Kelly Morrisseau was left for dead in parking lot P3 in Gatineau Park 10 years ago this week.

The pregnant mother of 3 had been stabbed to death. Ten years almost to the date police now say the man who killed Kelly Morrisseau may have cut himself in the process and driven around the area dumping evidence.

The lonely sound of a drum echoes through the Gatineau woods in an impromptu ceremony to honor the life of Kelly Morrisseau, at the very spot her life ended.

Tina Vincent with Minwaashin Lodge has come to Parking Lot 3 with other aboriginal women to remember the young mother, “We get together, a group of men, of women, to honor her life, honor the child she couldn't bring into this world.”

Kelly Morrisseau would have been about 7 months pregnant when she was found murdered in the parking lot in Gatineau Park. Gatineau Police say she fought back hard against her attacker and new evidence they released today suggests her killer may have been injured as a result.

It was December 10th, 2006 when a dog walker came across the young aboriginal woman, nearly naked and bleeding in the snow.   Police know just hours earlier she had gotten into a man's car in Vanier, possibly a 1985 to 1990 Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera or Calais.  They have sketch of that man who remains the main suspect in Morrisseau’s murder.  But a decade later, they have little else.

“We remain hopeful we will solve her murder,” says Sergeant Jean-Paul LeMay with the Gatineau Police.

Gatineau Police set up a command post at the site of the murder today, hoping their presence and the news conference will jog old memories.

They now say the killer drove along an emergency road by the parking lot, which is now a bike path, then dumped evidence of Morrisseau's by a business at 115 boulevard du Plateau in Gatineau and in ruisseau des Frenes, near boulevard du Plateau.

“What we hope by revealing this,” says Sgt. LeMay, “is that people retaining this information will call us,  that it will be the push they need.”

It may be the push the community needs, too, to heal the scars of a vicious crime.

“We still want to solve Kelly's murder,” says Bridget Tolley, an activist for missing and murdered aboriginal woman with Families of Sisters in Spirit, “her kids are grown up.  The oldest is 18 now and she wants to know what happened to her mother.”

A pipe ceremony is planned for the very day Kelly was murdered.  It will be this Saturday, December 10^th, which marks ten years.  The vigil begins in the parking lot at sunrise.

Anyone with information is asked to call the SPVG crime hot line at 819-243-4636, option 1 or Crime Stoppers at 613-233-TIPS (8477) or visit the website at www.police.gatineau.ca.