WHITEHORSE—Frances Neumann searched tirelessly for her missing sister-in-law in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, only to learn from a newspaper article she had been dead for years.
Neumann, the first family member to speak publicly at the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, urged the commissioners not to let Mary Smith John’s death be in vain.
Smith John fled Yukon after enduring the loss of an infant son and was found dead of an alcohol overdose in 1982. She had been in the company of Gilbert Paul Jordan, known as the “Boozing Barber,” who is believed to have plied multiple women with a lethal dose of liquor, said Neumann.
“These women were vulnerable. They had no protection. They were lost, but each one of those women had families that loved them,” Neumann said May 30, wiping away tears.
“We let them down. We did not protect them because they were weak. Because they were weak, no justice came to their aid.”
Neumann was among several relatives of disappeared or slain indigenous women who spoke at the first day of hearings in Whitehorse. Inside a white tent decorated with colourful blankets, families shared their stories of loss, heartbreak, and outrage.
