Her body was found in a Whitehorse dump 55 years ago. The family still wants answers

The last time Tootsie Jimmy-Charlie was seen alive, as far as anybody knows, was on March 17, 1967, when she was released from the Whitehorse jail. 

Nine weeks later, her body was found by a trio of people who had gone to the Porter Creek dump for some rifle practice. According to a coroner’s report, Jimmy-Charlie’s body was found lying face up under some deadfall near the back of the dump. There were broken branches nearby. The body was partially decomposed.

It’s not known how long Jimmy-Charlie had been dead.

A coroner’s inquest a few weeks later ruled that the 26-year-old woman had died by “misadventure,” with alcohol and exposure playing a prominent role.

“There was no sign of a struggle at the scene and two broken branches indicated that the body could have rolled into the spot in which it was found,” reads the inquest report, recounting testimony from one of the RCMP’s investigating officers.

The coroner’s report was filed and for police, the case was essentially closed.

But for Jimmy-Charlie’s family, nothing’s been closed. They believe there’s more to learn about what happened 55 years ago to their mother, sister and aunt. They feel the inquest conclusions just don’t add up, and the report is deeply flawed — incomplete, and racist.

The report, “makes it sound like she just walked there herself and died on a pile of garbage. No one does that. No one,” wrote Jimmy-Charlie’s sister Darlene Jimmy, in a statement last week.

“Several statements [in the report] … demonstrate negligence in the investigation, as well as abject prejudice towards Indigenous people.”

Questions and suspicions have haunted the family for decades, Maje Raider says. 

“We knew definitely, you know, there was something more than what they had put in the autopsy report,” she told CBC News. 

“We felt that there was more than that. We still feel that she was murdered.”

Thorough investigation was not done: RCMP

Jimmy-Charlie’s family does not have any definitive new information to back up their suspicions. But they have something else, as of last week — an admission by the RCMP that police had dropped the ball in the original investigation.

“It was our job to complete a thorough investigation. And that was not done,” Yukon RCMP Chief Supt. Scott Sheppard admitted to a gathering of family members in Whitehorse last week.

“In failing to do so, we dishonoured the memory of Miss Jimmy-Charlie. We failed her family … We did not find out the cause of her disappearance, and ultimately her death.” 

Sheppard offered Jimmy-Charlie’s family a formal apology, “for all the pain and hardships you have experienced in the years that have followed.”

He did not try to explain why the investigation was inadequate, or what might have been done differently. But answering questions from Jimmy-Charlie’s family, Sheppard acknowledged a long and rocky history between RCMP and Indigenous people.

“Some of that history has been good and well-intended, but there have been troubling times as well. And this is certainly one of those times,” he said. 

“I’m not under any illusions when it comes to the relationship between First Nations communities and the police. And, well, certainly we’re a different organization than we were in 1967,” he said. 

Requests to revisit case ‘not followed up on’

Sheppard acknowledged that Jimmy-Charlie’s file “never received a lot of attention” over the years, despite requests to look into it once again.

Those requests “were not followed up on,” he said.

According to Sheppard, things changed a few years ago with the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG). The inquiry put a spotlight back onto the case, he said.

Jimmy-Charlie’s siblings, Dominic Charlie and Margaret Charlie, testified to the inquiry in February 2018 at a public truth-gathering hearing in Lower Post, B.C., about their older sister.

Dominic’s recollections of her were vague — he was just six years old when Jimmy-Charlie died. He described how he had been sent to residential school around then and had mostly lost touch with his family. He figured it was at least a year before he even found out his sister was dead.

“I didn’t know nothing about Tootsie getting murdered and stuff like that until my mom told me. And she took it really hard,” he told the inquiry.   

Asked what he knew about how his sister had died, he said, simply, “she was murdered.” 

“She was dumped — thrown in a dump, in the murderer’s dump.”

Mary Charlie, older than her brother, had more vivid memories. She recalled how Tootsie had been sent to jail in Whitehorse for a week “because of drinking,” and how the family waited at the bus depot for Jimmy-Charlie to arrive home after her release. She never came, Mary said. 

Later, the police showed up in Watson Lake asking for Mary’s parents.

“I knew right away something happened,” Mary told the inquiry.

Jimmy-Charlie’s death devastated the family, Mary said. There were so many unanswered questions and nobody seemed interested in finding the answers. Nothing would change for years to come. 

“We were trying to open that case on her to see what really happened to her, how she died. We really wanted to know, but they never done nothing on it. So actually, Mom just let it go. It was like they slide it underneath the rug,” Mary told the hearing.

The family says the MMIWG inquiry advised RCMP to review Jimmy-Charlie’s file and work with her family. Relatives began meeting with RCMP and pushing for acknowledgement that the long-ago investigation had been flawed.

More than four years after Dominic and Mary’s testimony, and more than five decades after their sister’s death, that acknowlegment finally came. 

Officer’s private journal offers hope of new information

Jimmy-Charlie’s family, desperate for anything that may shed new light on what happened, pressed RCMP Supt. Shepherd last week for something else — the private journal of a former RCMP officer, still living, who was involved in the 1967 investigation. They’re hopeful the officer’s written recollections will offer some new scrap of evidence.

“For me, I would like to see those notes because I think that’s what I’m missing for my closure,” said Liz Porter, a niece of Jimmy-Charlie.

“I didn’t know my auntie because I wasn’t born yet. But, you know, spiritually, she’s with me.”

Sheppard said the former officer’s journal is from after he retired from the force, and so is not RCMP property. Still, he said, police do have copies of some of the material, and the family could access them the same way as for any other RCMP files — through an access to information request.

“As a private citizen, as an individual, there are limitations in terms of what we can do to try to access information. But again, I’ll say it again, we will do our very, very best to get that information made available to you in whatever form,” Sheppard told them.

In the meantime, some family members say the formal apology from RCMP is welcome — even if it was a long time coming.

Stephen Charlie, chief of the Liard River First Nation and Jimmy-Charlie’s nephew, called it a “step in the right direction,” but also said it shouldn’t have taken so long.

“I believe the family is appreciative of that acknowledgment. But I think the family feels that they’re the ones that have to push forward the RCMP to do this. So it’s bittersweet.”

Margaret Charlie, Tootsie’s youngest sibling, needs more — she wants closure. For that, she needs answers. 

“We really need to know what happened to my sister, you know? And she’s still with us in spirit and my heart.”