Seventeen-year-old Fonasa Lynn Bruyere went missing in August. Her body was
found last week in the same field that hid the remains of Aynsley Aurora Kinch,
a 36-year-old sex-trade worker whose body was discovered in July.
Sergeant Kelly Dennison of the Winnipeg police said that aside from the
location and the occupation of the two women, there's nothing to indicate the
work of a serial killer.
"For something to lend itself to being serial in nature there has to be a
number of factors that are similar," Sgt. Dennison said. "In this case, the
similarities we have are very limited. We're dealing with a sex-trade worker
and we're dealing with a location."
Sgt. Dennison said he couldn't discuss the evidence because both cases are
still under investigation, but suggested there were enough differences to lead
police to believe the homicides aren't linked. He said he knew of no plans to
launch any kind of special task force looking at the death of sex-trade
workers.
Jane Runner, the head of New Directions, a group that helps young girls get off
the street, said Ms. Bruyere is the 25th sex worker to be killed in Winnipeg
since 1988. Only three of those cases have been solved, she said.
"We've been keeping track of all the women who've been murdered and I would say
that up until now we would've said no, it hasn't been serial. Lately, though,
it's become more questionable when there has been a few bodies found in a
certain area," she said.
Ms. Runner said that hundreds of young girls are being exploited for sex in
Winnipeg. Her agency has dealt with children as young as 9, 10 and 11. They
populate street corners in the city's west end along Sargent and Ellice
Avenues, and in the north near Selkirk Avenue.
Ms. Bruyere was last seen getting into a vehicle on Selkirk Avenue on Aug. 8,
but who she was with remains a mystery. Her body ended up in a large open field
on the city's north perimeter, an area surrounded by a few homes, dirt roads,
power lines and bales of hay.
Sgt. Dennison said the transient life led by many sex-trade workers makes their
deaths harder to investigate.
"People involved in the sex trade are living this high-risk lifestyle. Simply
put, they're easy prey for anybody," he said. "I know that's sad ... but that's
the truth."
Gloria Enns works at Sage House, an outreach centre for sex-trade workers not
far from Selkirk Avenue. Between 30 and 50 young women visit Sage House every
day and there are about 100 regular clients.
Recently, they were very quiet about Ms. Bruyere's death, she said. The
possibility of one person or several people targeting the city's sex-trade
workers is terrifying.
"To me it doesn't really make a difference if it's a john or a drug dealer or
just some guy down the street. It's someone who's prepared to kill, and it all
ends the same," Ms. Enns said.
"My feeling is that there's a lot of organized criminals out there who are drug
dealers and who want to send the message that it's not okay to not pay your
drug dealer."
Most of the girls on the street are there to feed their addictions, she said.
Until the city has a dedicated intervention team that can target underage girls
and get them to a safe place to treat their addictions and rebuild their lives,
more women will fall victim to violence, she said.
