File:Island-Crime-s1e04-Bones-in-the-Woods.mp3

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Island Crime s1e04:Bones in the Woods (32m) Thu May 28, 2020 (Laura Palmer)

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Island Crime: Season 1, Episode 4 Bones in the Woods

somebody knows something they haven't come forward they have to talk to a police officer they have to call us they don't want to identify themselves they have to call crime samples that's the voice of Nanaimo police spokesman Gary O'Brien CHEK TV interviewed him at one of the annual marches for justice for Lisa you won't be hearing from Constable O'Brien in this podcast what I began work on this story it was not my intention to investigate Lisa's disappearance I wanted to focus on Lisa to add depth and context to the news stories I had read over the years I thought I'd interview family and friends and then speak with the police so they could lay out the facts of the case and update the investigation but that's not what happened

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you will likely have noticed by now that I have not included an interview with the RCMP Canada's Royal Canadian Mounted Police force this will seem especially odd if you are used to hearing American true crime podcasts but the police in this case will not agree to an interview with me I've had several polite even friendly conversations with the local spokesperson for the area Constable Gary O'Brien and with Corporal Markus Muntener from the Serious Crime Unit I'm told Lisa's case remains an active investigation Constable O'Brien says there is no strategic advantage in speaking about it on the record to me he reminds me this isn't the United States where officers are far more willing to speak openly about cases this is the RCMP and that's not how they conduct business I make my case as best I can I talk about my years of experience with the public broadcaster I explained that Lisa's friends and family are supportive they want to keep Lisa story alive I offer multiple options on times for the interview I give them every opportunity to say yes to be clear my interactions with the police have been nothing but courteous and professional at one point Constable O'Brien even makes suggestions of people he thinks I should speak with I learned from another source Constable O'Brien knew Lisa he met her while she was in foster care I get why the police have chosen not to speak with me I do but the RCMP s unwillingness to speak is regrettable Lisa's family and the community have endured almost 18 years of rumours some of those rumours could be dispelled if the police would answer a few questions I believe after so much time it's also fair to ask some questions about the investigation itself and it's possible that someone will listen to this podcast and come forward with information that could lead to finding Lisa it's my hope that after listening to this story the RCMP will speak with me and if they do I will update this series you I'm Laura Palmer for more than 25 years I worked as a producer in a big-city newsroom I've recently moved to an island and I'm digging into stories I didn't have time to tell this is season one a violent crime the case of Lisa Marie Young

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as years past stories about Lisa in the local news become fewer in Episode three reporter Kendall Hanson recalled Lisa's mother Joanne ringing to ask for coverage Joanne is not keen on speaking with the media and yet there's the chance that keeping Lisa story and the public eye could someday bring her daughter home but with no new news hooks no one new to interview the stories begin to fade from the headlines I can't imagine what that must be like for families the rest of the world moves on but you don't you can't everywhere you turn you are reminded of the daughter who is still out there somewhere Lisa's beautiful face is literally staring at them from every store window every telephone pole I'm told that one of Lisa's young brothers will decide to leave town for this reason and the tragedy takes its toll on Joanne she struggles her health deteriorates everyone I talked to believes Joanne's early death at age 54 from kidney failure is linked to the trauma and grief of losing Lisa still despite all of this Joanne is determined and creative in her resolve to find her daughter when I speak with Don he mentions a psychic who Joanne turned to for help that psychic is known Pratt 20 years or so I've been using my intuitive authority to assist families and police in looking for missing people and I use that ability in various other aspects of my life as well but that's probably how I may be best known in the province for assisting police can you tell me when you realized you had this ability yeah I mean it goes back to being a kid really and not using words into it over you know knowing what that is really but sometimes knowing that things were going to happen before they did which could be really simple like you know going to the post office and knowing who is going to be there or something that was going to happen that day or when the phone would ring and a lot of people have that experience you know with the phone rings and right before it rings you know who it is or it rings and suddenly a trigger something within you that you know who it is and you don't think much other because it's almost an everyday occurrence or you know kind of a usual thing on the other hand a lot of people really discount their intuitive ability and so it's never really developed and with me I started to notice that that you know the things were happening that I couldn't quite explain but I seem to have an awareness of them coming and then they would happen and I sort of trusted us and the more I trusted it the more it seemed to happen and later in life I learned that no it's like a muscle the more you flex it and work with it the more it grows and norm at what point did you decide you were going to do something with this ability to perhaps help people and help please I was living in Banff and a grown adult you know married with two small children two boys and at that time a young boy on Vancouver Island went missing in English Michael Dunahee it's pretty well known in Canada but a case I think it was sort of the first case of its kind in a way that sort of woke us up maybe the national consciousness that holy cow kissing go missing and get that bitter or taken or whatever you know every night on television his parents would be getting interviewed by journalists and or the police and begging for information really and not much was known I mean my heart really went out to them like everybody's and I started to kind of wonder if maybe the intuitive ability wouldn't serve and something like this where it didn't seem to be any information available rather readily you know no witnesses they didn't know what had happened I thought maybe this is the sort of thing where it he could come into play and while I didn't work on that case at that time because I hadn't developed my ability I started thinking about it more and more and I seen the openers door and things started to happen where I just started my practice meditation at the time I practice yoga and some of that was just from my own general well-being and growth but in doing that I really started to kind of clear up my mind and clear out my agenda you know what I wanted and stuff like that and just things which start to float into my consciousness and an awareness of things beyond sort of what was physically present or known or obvious so I would say at that point I started developing my intuitive ability and you know finally got to a place where I was ready to kind of offer my services tell me about the first time that you did get involved with trying to help someone the first time with action record where I was living with just near Nelson BC and I didn't know motive at the time but a 22 year old girl I'd gone missing we say gone missing I wouldn't that mean I mean she just disappeared off the face of the earth but nobody knew where she was and friend of mine called that knew that I had intuitive ability and said you know maybe you could work on this maybe you could really start using your ability to help and here's an opportunity and I was kind of nervous about it because I hadn't done yet but I thought well I'll start with just doing some meditation so we have my royal property acreage and I went for a walk in the woods and after information and just sort of cleared my mind and different insights I guess or impressions started to float in and I decided to call the police which was a big stretch for me because I had never done that before I didn't want to be perceived as a flaky psychic or somebody looking for attention or out there to take advantage of anybody or be anything so I was quite hesitant about it and I've always been really private really about my ability but it was sort of one of those neat circumstances where I pick up the phone the phone the police and the phone line it was hockey like on the other side was Sergeant of the Nelson City police who had just picked up the phone on his end to try to contact somebody like me it was kind of amazingly start off and he and I ended up working very closely together and over time we found her so tell me about that how did that happen one of the things that happened when I was meditating was I had a vision and a vision it's just like it's almost like a dream except there are actually you're awake you're cognizant that you're having it you're able to kind of look at it and question it and even go deeper with it in some ways but I had a vision that I was flying in a helicopter over Nelson and I knew you know I could recognize the area from the air that I was flying and stuff so I told the detective surgeon about that and he said well you want to go up and I said sure so I think that very first day he brought me in and we went up in a helicopter and just us in the pilot I think the pilot was a little taken aback that we were flying around you know with an intuitive trying to figure out where the girl might be and Nelson is a really pretty area kind of on the side of a mountain in a very mountainous area but for me it just felt like she had really decided that they call in life and had got up into the forest above and behind Nelson and done that and so it had the division of flying in a helicopter and communi so I thought okay well let's reenact the vision is that we can't so we went up in the helicopter it took some orange flagging tape with us and when we were flying over a certain area again it's a little hard to explain but again I had a vision while we were flying I could see her down below and she was naked and she was jumping up and down waving at the helicopter so like that let's just throw the flagging tape out the window and we'll try to find this place because it was pretty remote so we touched down and the police office and I went for a hike through the woods which was quite a [ __ ] there was still snow and I think at one point we're up to almost our thighs and snow which was really more than we kind of Bank on that first day but later on it played out that I ended up finding her and she was within probably 50 feet of when we flew that flag and taste the first thing so I'm guessing by now there are people listening who are thinking this is nuts I have my first conversation with norm while I'm out for a walk in the woods with my dog I do a lot of my thinking and planning for the podcast while out on the trails I'm not a spiritual person but this moss-covered path through old-growth forests is a kind of sacred place for me my mother's side of the family is Irish I have relatives who believe in angels and healing through crystals and vibrations and the like but I've been a working journalist for more than a quarter of a century my skepticism is deeply ingrained I will admit my eyes rolled when I first heard about the involvement of a psychic so yes my first instinct is suspicion but before you listen now to how norm was involved in Lisa Marie's case consider this norm didn't seek out Don and Joanne contacted him when I first reached out to norm through his website it takes a while for him to get back to me when we do have that first talk on the trail he tells me he will only agree to speak on the record if Lisa's family says it's okay he is not anxious for the limelight after getting assurances from family members that they are open to norm speaking with me Norma Gries to share his detailed memory of his time looking for Lisa how did you then become involved in Lisa's case Lisa's mom Joanne contacted me within a few months or maybe a year of me finding that first girl so Joanne contacted me about coming to the island and taking a look for Lisa Marie and at that point I think she's been missing for ugly and shall I you know I always [ __ ] with with things first and just see do I feel like I'm going to be a service you know is there any energy around this and am I getting any sort of information or impressions and Alicia's case you know there started to be definitely a flow of information including from Lisa herself and one of the things I do pretty early on while I'm talking to family members the closest standing members is I listen to them pretty closely and I wait to see where are they with this do they feel like their missing person is alive or not and you know you can usually tell three quickly if somebody's talking in the present tense of the past tense about their loved one and so in Joanna's case she was really open to hearing whatever I had to say they'd certainly after two years entertained every sort of possible outcome they were well aware that Lisa Marie could have passed in that time or something could have happened to her they felt very strongly that if she was alive if she would get in touch but even at that time they were still having tips that she was you know excited here it's lighted they're like not murder New Brunswick or you know all over the place but they always had to hope that she was going to show up and I learned early to look for me part of my makeup I guess was to always have that sense of hope as well even sometimes when I knew that that person had passed because of the visions I had or because they were you know communicating with me from a place of spirit that I always had the whole thing rocking the door to it just felt real to me if I let me always have to kind of keep that alive and I could be wrong so you know I'm always going to keep that hope too that they could come home and be okay and I started realizing that I wanted to bring those people home but if we couldn't bring them home physically that maybe somehow we could bring them home spiritually and so I would share with the families as best I could what I was feeling the visions that I had what kind of information was coming through whether it was in a dream or just a sense of things or you know however it came or that person was actually speaking with me I would share with look but I thought was being said and then we would work with that to try to find them so that's kind of how it started with masonry so with that first conversation you mentioned there was you know like a flow of information that was starting can you describe what that was like pretty much whenever I talked to a family member especially in the case of a mom with a missing child you know I'm feeling the love of the mum for the for the child often and I start feeling the same thing on the other end I start feeling for love of the child for the mom regardless of age stage time or when it happened or what happened and when that happens it opens the door to kind of a deeper sense of intuition and I start to know if that person is still you know physically a lot or if they passed in the spirit and in Lisa Marie's case I guess I knew that immediately but soon as I started talking to mom like I could just sense that Lisa Marie was in in spirit and after we talked for awhile and started to get comfortable and he started to get comfortable with me and she was very open and really you know wanted me to assist I would have shared with her at that point that I felt like Lisa Marie was in spirit and that this wouldn't be about bringing her home alive but me you know maybe with any luck that we would be able to find her body at least or her remains and maybe find out what had happened before with it at that point they really didn't have any idea what is the process like for the family to begin working with you at that point I usually ask them to contact the police that they're working with to notify them that they've contacted me she if the police are open to working with me which doesn't always mean them sharing information with me as much as being willing to listen to what I have to say and be able to act on any kind of tips I might give them and you know hopefully actually work together like if I want to revisit okay where was she laughing where did she live where were friends you know what's knowing I always want to work you know start off with what what's known as best we know it what is known what are the facts there's no point me trying to and to it all that if it's already right there you know time is better spent starting to Intuit what isn't known or at least what isn't readily known so I try to gather as much facts if I can by talking to friends and family talking to the police moth and the not the police are quite open to working together mostly because I guess that the credibility I've established over the years and then from there I'm also you know practicing meditation going for walks just being really open and aware in general and noticing what I'm feeling or what's coming true or in some cases connecting with the person if the you know missing person has passed and they connect with me then I'm starting to also record any kind of information I'm getting that way and sometimes it's very very so like I mean it's not as simple as the kind of conversation you and I are having right now it's me sort of asking or I guess praying for information and opening myself for that to happen and seeing how it comes and trying not to interpret it too much and just record what am I getting and what am I feeling now what does just feel like and you know and Lisa Marie's case pretty early on I had a pretty strong feeling of what had happened with her somewhat graphic as well seeing what happened to her and then from there I was trying to find her so did you did you end up talking to the police down here yeah I ended up coming there I think for just a few days then the first time I came there was sort of a whirlwind tour and I was working on about four different cases at the same time a couple on the island and I think I put in about maybe two or three days with Lisa Marie's family and the police that were those RCMP responsible for that file at the time and ended up kind of pinpointing an area for a search actually and going out and doing a search for her with a first nation search-and-rescue team and some of the members of her family well I like I've never been out on a search before what happened well in this case it was instigated by me I felt like I was getting enough information when I got there I think what I did was I just went for a drive when I go for a drive around the area and just because really not much was known there had been a couple of sightings I'm if memory serves I think we sure had made a call from her cell phone the evening that she went missing from a particular location and she was with a guy at that point and she phoned a friend and said you know I kind of can't get away from this guy he's a creep or something like that I don't think there was a lot more to it I think I went with her father Don and we went for a drive around he showed me where you know where the house was that she had made that phone call from where else you know they attract her you know the police attract her movements that night for where she's been or where you know at least what they knew and as we drove around and worked I started to hit on a search area or a potential search area and for me it just I don't know I just started seeing flakes it's hard to describe how it happens by with we're driving on a road called Rutherford Road near Nanaimo and I just started to feel like I think she's in here I could just feel her pulling the end of the woods and it was fairly heavily wooded area so I just really paid attention to where the feelings felt strongest for going into that area and then in talking with Don and Joanne her parents talked about what the best way to proceed was and we decided they want very much to be involved themselves and they wanted very much to involve their First Nations search and rescue team so that's what we did so Lisa Marie's grandfather Moses who was the chief of the First Nations community at that time arranged for the search-and-rescue team to come I think we had about a dozen of us and we went out the next day and did a search so we were out in a fairly heavily wooded area we weren't really doing a grid search because you know we weren't sure what we were going to find we were just sort of doing a general search people are at walking we were taking different areas we're just looking for anything that doesn't fit the landscape hmm but I know my energy was running really high that day and I felt like we were going to find something and she was basically saying to me that we were going to find her so I didn't share that with them but I was really hopeful that we were going to find her and you know get some kind of closure sure that's family and the first thing I think I found was that big and it had all kinds of ID different IDs and there are a lot of female ID and not really send up a signal for me that uh you know what's going on and then a little further along I just sort of I think I was scraping up some ground cover for some reason I just do whatever comes naturally and I found myself sort of scraping away to the ground cover on the ground and started finding some bones so I called in a few of the search-and-rescue members and we started kind of being pretty carefully scraping away some of the ground cover and finding more bones and even though some of these guys were hunters nobody could identify for sure what it was and on the land I mean I'm being pretty honest here and I can't remember if I ever really shared this with our family but on the one hand I was feeling weak summary saying this is me this is me and being really excited and on the other and my rational mind was saying I don't know about that it feels to me like this is a deer it looks it look at Deer to me but we weren't able to tell and often it's pretty hard to tell out in the fields when you're just looking at a few bones what they are so being a First Nations community we all sort of gathered together and decided to do a little bit I guess do a little bit of a ceremony and everybody felt strongly enough that there was the possibility that it could be her and you know Lisa Marie's mom was there Joanne and her grandfather Moses was there and several members of the search and rescue team and myself and I had some sweet crafts with me and we burned some sweet grass and we just do a little prayer and you're saying a song and just in honor of the you know whatever this is we're honoring Lisa Marie no matter what and so we did a ceremony and it was actually a pretty emotional pretty intense ceremony for all of us after that we Moses and I talked about it and we decided we would leave everything as is that I would come back into town and get the police and we would go back and we would take a look at it and go that next step we're seeing what is that you know is an animal is it person what is it and I thought I did I came back at with the head of the head of that file which would have been an RCMP sergeant and we bagged up some of those remains and they took them back to the office to send a scientist anthropologist at UBC to determine first of all are they human or animal meanwhile I was still feeling Lisa Marie saying this it's me and I explained to the family I said you know I wish I was clear I wish I could tell you one way or the other there's things out here that really indicate this is a possibility for where we are with the area of how I was guided to bring us here and what we have found here at the same time this could be deer remains and there were any clothes or anything so there was nothing as obvious as that and there was no skull or you know anything that would be it that obvious so I think within about two or three days they got back to me and they said they are deer bones and they said actually for a really young deer you know and they said it is really hard to tell you know what they with a small deer this femur and leg bones are very similar to human bones Lisa Stokke said it was her so I didn't understand that and I couldn't understand what she would take me there and take us through that exercise only for it to end up being deer remains so I made a phone call to Joanne which were a really hard phone call to want to make to Lisa Marie his mom and she took the news really well she said norm she said it's totally okay for us we feel like that may have been the only experience that were gonna have a blindingly stuff so for us it was just like we found her and it's made all the difference and that helped me and then I still talk we shouldn't say that I was sure and I didn't understand that I said it you know if you have any kind of nickname for Lisa Marie growing up like little deer or something along that line that would make sense that would be aligned with this and she got pretty upset and she said absolutely she said all through her young childhood we called her band I think Lisa Marie did her best to give her family and experience of finding her and some kind of have spiritual not closure but healing me on some level through that experience and Joanne and Moses both said afterwards that for them it felt very real and still did and that knowing that it was dear bones didn't really change that so that's what we carried away with us that day norm had a vision of what happened to Lisa as he said it was quite graphic and so out of respect for the family and concern that including it could taint a future criminal case should it ever come to that I won't be including norms vision in the podcast after Lisa disappeared Don tells me they were contacted by a number of psychics offering help for a price but he is nothing but good things to say about their experience with norm Pratt as do other family members I speak with they remain friends with him even after all these years I think of Lisa's mother Joanne often how she wasn't comfortable speaking with the media but was driven to talk to the media to keep Lisa story alive how she brought norm Pratt across the province to search for her daughter how she marshaled a walk for her daughter year after year and how she never gave up hope that she would one day have answers Joanne wanted us to be outraged about what happened to Lisa she wanted it to be unacceptable that her daughter had just vanished and that no one had been held accountable in the episodes to come we'll examine Lisa's cold case through the eyes of two investigators one who has been closely following this story and another who was closely involved in Vancouver's missing and murdered women investigations is it were a middle-class white girl there would have been a lot more concern and only because those detectives would have been informed thought that that was unusual for her whereas with a young indigenous woman as the victim a missing person in their minds the drug user and the researchers already know the circumstances oh no she no party or social and they would make all these little fine Tunes decisions about who she was and her life and would not even be conscious all it would make them say yeah we came in four days before jump on there.

I'm Laura Palmer and this is Island Crime.

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