canada.com

VANCOUVER (CP) -- One of the women believed to have disappeared from the Downtown Eastside has been located alive, police announced Wednesday.

Tanya Colleen Emery

Tanya Colleen Emery, 38, was located living in Central Canada, said the joint RCMP-Vancouver city police task force investigating the disappearances.

"She was located as part of our ongoing investigation," said RCMP Const. Catherine Galliford, spokeswoman for the task force.

More than 60 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 beginning of 1997 to the end of November 2001.

As part of their review, the task force entered all of the women into Canadian Police Information Centre database.

"So if they're run by any police agency across the country, they'll be located that way," Galliford said.

That's how Emery was found.

Emery, No. 46 on the list, was reportedly last seen in December 1998.

She didn't know she was on the list of missing women, Galliford said.

Emery was reported missing by a concerned relative in March and she was added to the list in July, after investigators could not locate her.

Accused serial killer 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.

Officially, the list now includes the names of 62 women. The task force is reviewing the case of one other woman fitting the same profile who could yet be added to the list, as well as other cases.