MISSING WOMAN FOUND
NEWS 1130 All News Radio-Vancouver
April 27, 2002
A Kitchener, Ontario man is relieved and overjoyed to be reunited with his sister, who he feared had died on a BC pig farm. Robert Sexsmith had been searching for his sister Linda, and feared she was one of the missing women from Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
His search began in 1990, but something went wrong and he was told by authorities that his sister was dead. Then he saw his sister's face on TV, displayed as one of the women missing from Vancouver. A new search involving police at several different levels finally found his sister in Winnipeg.
They were reunited this morning in Kitchener. Sexsmith says his sister has turned her life around. Linda Sexsmith is warning young people that life on the streets is a scary and lonely existence.
Man suspects sister is among the missing in B.C.
Wednesday February 13, 2002
JOHANNA WEIDNER
RECORD STAFF
KITCHENER -- It's been more than 20 years since Robert Sexsmith last saw his troubled sister Linda, and now he fears she may finally have been found.The Kitchener man wonders if his younger sister is among the 50 women who have gone missing from Vancouver's east side since the early 1980s.
Linda Sexsmith vanished from her family farm in Carrying Place, near Trenton, in 1980 and they never heard from her again.
"I wonder if Linda is one of those faces," said Sexsmith while carefully scanning mug shots of the missing women published yesterday in a national newspaper.
A joint RCMP-Vancouver city police task force is searching a pig farm about 35 kilometres east of Vancouver after receiving a tip that the Port Coquitlam site contains evidence important to the case.
Sexsmith contacted RCMP and they're interested in learning more about the disappearance of his sister, who would now be about 47.
One picture closely resembled Linda, although Sexsmith wasn't certain because he only saw his sister a few times as an adult and that was decades ago.
However, among the nationally publicized pictures was a woman Sexsmith's other sister immediately recognized as Linda's friend Carol, a tough-talking native woman who stayed at the farm briefly before both women vanished.
Shortly after, the Sexsmith family heard rumours that the pair headed out west. Both young women had a history of drug abuse and prostitution, as well as run-ins with police for theft.
"They were buddies, they were a team," Sexsmith said.
"If Carol is there, then Linda would be there,too."
"There" is a farm where more than 80 police investigators, including 40 forensic specialists, have been combing through buildings, junked cars, mounds of dirt and other material.
For the last week they've been looking for signs some of the 50 women may have been here before vanishing over the last two decades.
Not a shred of evidence has been publicly disclosed -- though unconfirmed reports said police found identification and a woman's inhaler at the site.
But friends, relatives and supporters of the missing women have flocked to the location, both hoping and fearing what may be found here.
Police set up a tent reserved for victims' families and made it off-limits to the media.
"We ask you to understand the emotional needs of others,'' Vancouver Det. Scott Driemel told reporters outside the farm.
Emotions have been equally raw for Sexsmith, as he hopes for some clue of his sister's fate. The last time he saw Linda was in 1980, when she came to her older brother for help.
"She was trying to get herself back into the straight and narrow," he recalled.
After just a few days in Toronto, Linda went to visit her mother and sister on the family farm, saying she'd return soon to start working.
"She just never came back."
For years, the Sexsmiths tried to track down their missing sister, with no luck.
With files from Canadian Press
Courtesy of NEWS 1130
ALL NEWS RADIO
http://www.news1130.com