How to Catch a Killer

Missing bodies, random shootings and mysterious motives. How amateur and professional detectives, with the help of cutting-edge technology, are helping to solve Canada's most notorious cold cases

- Luc Rinaldi

THE MISSING DAUGHTER

NEW LISKEARD, ONT. | 1996

A teenager decides to walk home alone and is never seen again

Nothing bad seemed to happen in New Liskeard, a small lakeside town in northeastern Ontario, until one September evening in 1996, when Mélanie Ethier a 15-year-old who had recently told her best friend she wanted to become a teacher-went to her friend Ryan Chatwin's house to watch the thriller Sudden Death. Around 1:30 a.m., Ethier said good night. On another day, she likely would have called home for a ride, but her house's landline had been cut off; her family was behind on the bill. So she chose to walk alone. It was roughly a kilometre to her house.

According to one unproven witness account, when Ethier crossed a bridge along her route, two men pulled up beside her in a car and, after talking to them, she got in the car and it drove away. The next morning, her mother, Celine, discovered that Ethier never made it home. She reported her missing later that day. The town went on high alert. Police questioned Ethier's friends and relatives. Volunteers combed the area around her route. A search-and-rescue unit checked the river. No one could find her.