canada.com

VANCOUVER (CP) -- The missing women joint task force said Tuesday that one of the women who vanished from the Downtown Eastside actually passed away in a local hospice in March 1997 under an assumed name.

Dawn Lynn Cooper

Dawn Lynn Cooper, who was No. 25 on the missing women list, was last seen sometime in 1996 and her family, residing in the U.S., reported her missing to the city police department in June 2002.

RCMP Const. Cate Galliford said in a prepared statement that the task force reviewed her file as a result of the missing person complaint and decided to add her name to the missing women list.

When Cooper's photograph appeared in local media outlets, investigators received a tip that Cooper was known in Vancouver as Dawn Lynn Woods.

The task force subsequently discovered that Cooper died due to a terminal illness. Her family has been notified.

Last week, the task force located Tanya Emery, a woman reported missing in March 2002. She is residing in Central Canada.

The task force said the number of missing women being investigated now stands at 61.

The women -- all drug or alcohol addicts involved in the sex trade -- have disappeared from the drug ghetto of the Downtown Eastside since 1978.

Thirty-seven of them disappeared in a five-year span from the beginning of 1997 to the end of November 2001.

Robert William Pickton has been charged with the first-degree murders of 15 of the missing women. A search of his suburban Vancouver farm is continuing.