Contributed Cases or Files

PUNCHED THE CLOCK AT 4:21 p.m

File Number: 104200065

Halifax, Nova Scotia: On August 12, 1989, 19-year-old Kimberly McAndrew punched the clock at 4:21 p.m., walked out the back door of the Canadian Tire store on Quinpool Road in Halifax and vanished, never to be seen or heard from again.

The events of August 12th, 1989

[The Reader's Digest] 2002:

A happy, well-adjusted Dalhousie University undergrad, Kimberly was working for the summer as a cashier at the store. Her sister, her sister's boyfriend and Kimberly's boyfriend were to pick her up when she finished work at five.

But it was a quiet day at the store, and Kimberly's supervisor told her that she could punch out early. It wouldn't have been unusual for Kimberly to walk home on such a beautiful afternoon. The store was about a 15-minute walk from the apartment where she lived with her two sisters.

When they left to pick her up, Kimberly's sister and friends drove the same route to the store that she would have taken had she walked home. There was no sign of her.

Intelligent, outgoing, well liked at work, Kimberly was her usual upbeat self the day she went missing. Her father, Cyril, a retired RCMP officer, says that she longed to get the silver braces removed from her teeth. She would never have missed the appointment with her dentist that was to have taken place three days after she disappeared.

Possible Sightings (shortly after her shift ended)

[Halifax Regional Police]:

She was last seen at the Gardenia Flower Shop in Penhorn Mall in Dartmouth. She was identified by an employee at the flower shop as having bought a balloon and a rose. At the time of her disappearance, she was wearing pleated, ankle-length navy cotton slacks with slash pockets in front and one pocket in the back, a white, short-sleeved "Esprit" t-shirt with red and green squares, a navy cotton oversize cardigan, and jade green flat-heeled slip-on loafers.

The police have conducted hundreds of interviews, several polygraph tests, and have even followed tips from psychics who contacted the department.

Anyone with information on Kimberly's disappearance is asked to contact police at 902-490-5016. Anonymous tips can be sent to Crime Stoppers by calling toll-free 1-800-222-TIPS (8477).

The Rewards for Major Unsolved Crimes Program is offering a cash reward of up to $150,000 for information in Kimberly's disappearance. They can be contacted at 1-888-710-9090.

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STABBED AND MUTILATED

File Number: 104200116

Iqaluit, Nunavut: On May 26, 1986, Mary Ann Birmingham, 15, died at the hands of an unknown assailant who stabbed and mutilated her inside her family's housing unit near the beach.

She's one of the nearly 1,200 missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls whose deaths and unexplained disappearances have provoked a Canada-wide demand for the national MMIW inquiry that the federal government is now preparing for.

Sevigny had flown back that day from Montreal, where her mother, Sarah Birmingham, had taken her little brother, the late Lyta Birmingham, to be treated for leukemia.

"I know now that I was in shock. But the RCMP officer I talked to at the station was very good at helping me out of it and getting me to talk," said Barbara Sevigny, who later became a trauma and grief counselor.

Police, however, were not able to solve the crime. Through the spring and summer of 1986, many Iqaluit residents were haunted by the knowledge that a brutal killer was likely still at large.

The late Fred Coman and the late Lionel Jones, along with other benefactors, put a up a $10,000 reward for information that could solve Mary Ann's murder.

For many months, Nunatsiaq News donated space every week to advertise the reward, but police could not find enough evidence to identify the killer and lay a charge.

In the fall of 1986, an Iqaluit man named Jopie Atsiqtaq murdered Pootoogoo Eyesiak, 21, and his mother, Oolayou Eyesiak, 51, using a kitchen knife.

Police arrested and charged him the next morning. Because the apparent facts were so similar, many Iqaluit residents believed Atsiqtaq was responsible also for the death of Mary Ann Birmingham.

It was Mary Ann's sister, Barbara Sevigny, now a counsellor with the Tungasuvvingat Inuit organization in Ottawa, who found Mary Ann Birmingham's body, some days after the teens's death.

For that reason, Justice David Marshall of the Supreme Court of the Northwest Territories decided that, to give Atsiqtaq a fair trial, a 12-person jury be chosen in Rankin Inlet and flown to Iqaluit.

In early 1988, that jury found Atsiqtaq guilty on two counts of second degree murder.

Marshall sentenced him to life in prison, with no eligibility for parole for 10 years. Atsiqtaq has never received parole and still serves out his sentence at a federal penitentiary.

In a letter to Nunatsiaq News that was never published, but shared with the court and admitted as evidence at trial, Atsiqtaq apologized for killing the mother and son, but emphatically denied any responsibility for Mary Ann's death.

Police later charged him with that crime, but after a preliminary inquiry, a territorial court judge found insufficient evidence to send him to trial.

No other arrests have occurred or suspects named in Mary's murder. Her older sister is active in the MMIW community and assists other families going through a similar process with their own missing or murdered family members. May Mary rest in presence and may her family and community receive justice.

Anyone with information about Birmingham's death can call the RCMP's tip line toll free at 1-844-370-7729, or Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.

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FOUND DECEASED

File Number: 104200141

On September 17, 2009 at about 7:30 p.m., the Wasagaming RCMP Detachment were dispatched to a complaint of a suspicious death in the "Old Campground" area of Wasagaming. Upon arrival, police found a deceased female. RCMP identified the deceased as 39-year-old Sherri Leigh Green of Brandon, Manitoba.

Last heard from Halifax International Airport

File Number: 104200206

Halifax, Nova Scotia - On January 1, 1992, the victim, Andrea Lynn King, flew from her home in New Westminister, British Columbia, to Halifax, intent on traveling and working in Nova Scotia for a period of time.

Andrea was last heard from on January 1, 1992, when she called a family member in British Columbia from the Halifax International Airport, to advise them that she arrived safely and that she would call them back the following day with an address where she would be staying. This was the last time that anyone heard from the victim.

January 4, 1992, the victim's family reported Andrea missing, and an extensive missing person investigation was conducted.

On December 22, 1992, the skeletal remains of Andrea King was located in a wooded area approximately 200 feet from the end of a dead-end street in the Sackville Business Park. It was determined that Andrea had been murdered.

During a 1997 re-investigation of the 1989 disappearance of another young woman, Kimberly McAndrew, police identified a former Halifax sex offender as a prime suspect. During a sex offender treatment program, the man, Andrew Paul Johnson, had been asked to write an essay about a sexual assault from the point of view of the victim. Johnson's essay was a chilling account of McAndrew's rape and murder.

At the time, DNA testing wasn't sophisticated enough to positively connect the murder dots from Johnson to McAndrew or King, and police themselves lost interest after a B.C. court declared Johnson a dangerous offender in 2001.

This case is still unsolved.

Any person with information regarding the person(s) responsible for the murder of Andrea Lynn King should call the Rewards for Major Unsolved Crimes Program at 1-888-710-9090.