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Medium: Tue Sep 21, 2021 (Rebekah Schroeder) Seeing Red in Nanaimo - The Case of Lisa Marie Young
source: https://bekah302.medium.com/seeing-red-in-nanaimo-the-case-of-lisa-marie-young-26efe62ca46c
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[Reproduced under Copyright Act (Canada) s.29.2 - Fair Dealing for the purpose of news reporting]
This article was obtained from an unverified private blog.
Seeing Red in Nanaimo — The Case of Lisa Marie Young
Her disappearance is part of the bigger epidemic facing Indigenous women
Sep 21, 2021
Passionate and athletic, Lisa Marie Young wanted to become a television sports announcer. From Nanaimo, British Columbia, she went out with friends to a nightclub on June 29, 2002* to celebrate a birthday, when their plans for the evening changed. A stranger joined them, striking up conversation, inviting them to a house party in his distinctive maroon Jaguar.
Hours later, Young's phone sent out distressed messages, then nothing.
The person she was last seen with had more than just a criminal record.
Marlene "Joanne" Martin Young, her mother, was a member of the Tla-o-qui-aht First Nation, part of the Nuu-chah-nulth Indigenous people, who live in the Pacific Northwest Coast of Canada in fifteen related tribes.
It was Dallas Hulley's birthday that Lisa Marie Young, 21, wanted to enjoy alongside him. Having just met the unfamiliar man, Christopher William Adair, they went from one house party to the next, staying out until Sunday* morning. At one point, Young voiced that she was hungry, but as a dedicated vegetarian since childhood, there were very few options for her there.
She wanted to call it a night and get food before returning home, so Adair offered to drive her to an open sandwich restaurant in the red Jaguar. The vehicle belonged to his businesswoman grandmother, Geraldine "Gerry" Lorna Adair, whose husband, a mayor and politician, was a man of significant influence.
Hulley received distressed texts from Young around 4:30 a.m. There are several versions of these messages online, some brief, and others recalled by Hulley later on.
"Come get me, they won't let me leave," Young texted him, this shortened account reiterated by several news outlets.
CHEK News stated that in their original 2002 interview, Hulley phrased the messages from her as the following:
"Dallas, I don't know what's going on. This guy won't bring me back. We're sitting in a driveway on Bowen road and he won't bring me back...I'm bored. I'm getting pissed off," she sent.
Stuck at a random house, Young's texts seemed to indicate discomfort. Come the morning, she disappeared, with Adair considered an unofficial person of interest. Authorities suspected foul play of some kind, but her body and phone were never found.
Gerry Adair allegedly sold the car, her grandson's past convictions of physical violence, theft, and fraud warning signs to later crimes like assaulting a peace officer. Other suspects tied her absence to the darker underbellies of the Nanaimo streets, implying she met harm at that last location.
Before that summer day, Young was planning on moving, having just accepted a new job at a call center with ambitions of going back to school for her dream career. When she did not return any calls, Joanne Young and Don, her father, became concerned. Lisa Young's former roommate came to their house looking for her, so her mother turned to a black book of phone numbers that Young kept close. No one had talked to her or seen her since the night before.
Her parents went to police, who said she needed to be gone for 48 hours before being reported missing, all because she was an adult. As the Native Women's Association of Canada detailed, once they begged them to take action, a police officer came over. He stated that he was off for the next four days, and they would pick up the investigation then. Frustrated, the parents contacted local news media, so Joanne tried to not be captured by cameras, in fear of the perception others would have of her daughter.
"You couldn't tell by looking at her that she was First Nations and I didn't want people to know that and judge her...to discriminate against her because of that," Joanne said in 2012.
From the beginning, authorities and victim services had a strained relationship with the Young family, including Carol Frank, Lisa Young's aunt.
"It took them two months before [the police] would do a search for Lisa," Frank said to Ha-Shilth-Sa in 2019. "It was our Tla-o-qui-aht men that came right away, organized and with tips, did searches in different areas."
Royal Canadian Mounted Police's (RCMP) Serious Crime Unit later took on the case, while the Nanaimo & District Crime Stoppers filmed a re-enactment. The community conducted annual walks and candlelight vigils, only pausing when Joanne Young's health began to deteriorate. She was on dialysis, suffered from hypertension and needed a kidney transplant that never came. Joanne, 54, passed in 2017 without knowing the truth about her daughter.
Following Joanne's death, family and friends held another annual Walk of Love and Hope for Lisa, but also honored Joanne's memory, the event taking on an even deeper sadness.
In 2018, the last person to speak to Young, Hulley, 38, died after being struck by a car while walking on a highway shoulder with another woman. He walked out to grab something in a lane where he was struck and killed wearing dark, non-reflective clothing.
A lengthy podcast series, "Island Crime Season 1: Where is Lisa," examined Young's disappearance in scrutiny, interviewing people within the search for the missing woman. Allegations and rumors persisted, some of her being drugged or filmed, as well as her disappearance inextricably linked to the local Hells Angels.
The province's Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit conducted an investigation, Project Halo, that looked into criminal activity committed by the biker gang over several years. Nanaimo lost a battle to seize their clubhouses after a previous raid, but police presence at their gatherings continued, the group still having ties to the drug trade.
"British Columbia Hells Angels have a significant influence and presence worldwide, not just within the Hells Angels organization itself, but within criminal organizations worldwide," Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit (CFSEU)'s Lindsey Houghton said to the Vancouver Sun in 2018.
Whoever was there that night, Young did not feel safe. To keep her memory alive, Nanaimo Mayor Leonard Krog declared June 28 Justice for Lisa Marie Young Day, and June 30 as Lights on for Lisa Day, established with the hopes that residents will leave their porch lights on to honor the missing woman.
Allison Crowe, a musician and friend of Young's, wrote a musical piece entitled Lisa's Song, performing it several times in memory. She said Young had a "quiet confidence" about her that she admired, so as soon as she heard of her disappearance, she penned the track.
Then, in June of 2021, RCMP held a news conference to say that "numerous witnesses who were previously afraid to speak out about the case have now come forward," according to CTV News Vancouver Island. They hope to keep advancing the investigation with new information and a recent influx of tips. Young's file reportedly has over 15,000 documents and hundreds of witnesses. There have been numerous searches, some using a ground-penetrating radar, as well as trained cadaver dogs.
Because of Young's background, she was added to RCMP's database of "more than 1,181 missing and murdered Indigenous women," as stated in a 2014 report. Canada's latest version of the initiative no longer discloses a numerical amount of people within their records, but it pushes a plan to restore community relations and work towards finding justice.
Reuters stated that wearing orange, as seen in the picture above, symbolizes the victims of Canada's residential school system in Indigenous communities. Members of Young's family endured that same pain in the coverage of her story, even if the victim herself did not attend them.
After mass unmarked graves were uncovered at multiple institutions, Young's disappearance became intrinsically tied to the treatment those in her place often face.
Never letting anyone forget the struggles, a neighborhood grant from Clayoquot Biosphere Trust helped Frank make an installation of red dresses and shawls to remind others of the lost Indigenous women across Canada. Young's family and loved ones hope that soon, she will come home, the culprits responsible caught red-handed.
[image caption:] The memorial site one of the annual walks (Source: Ha-Shilth-Sa)
[image caption:] The latest walk 19 years after Young's disappearance (Source: Ha-Shilth-Sa)
* Several publications misreported dates surrounding Lisa's disappearance (likely confused by the long weekend). Lisa's parents last saw her late Sunday June 30th, and she was last seen by her friends at the bar and at two parties early Monday July 1st (Canada Day), which was also the day she was to move into her new apartment, and when her disappearance was reported to RCMP. (See the timelines.)
