How does Saskatoon's successful landfill search compare to the one planned in Manitoba?

WARNING: This story contains distressing details.

A recent search that recovered a missing woman's remains from a Saskatchewan landfill years after she was last seen could help guide a similar effort about to begin one province over.

The people tasked with finding the remains of Morgan Harris, 39, and Marcedes Myran, 26, which are believed to have been brought to the Prairie Green landfill near Winnipeg after the women were murdered by a serial killer in 2022, are expected to soon meet with the team that last week brought home the remains of Mackenzie Lee Trottier, who was 22 when she was last seen in Saskatoon in 2020.

The forensic anthropologist behind Manitoba's search, which is expected to start late this fall, "has been following the search in Saskatoon very closely," a Manitoba government spokesperson said in an email this week.

"Manitoba's team looks forward to meeting with the Saskatoon team to learn from their success."

That expertise isn't the only thing Manitoba's search team could get from the one in Saskatoon. According to a police chief who did a study on landfill searches, the update in Saskatchewan should also be "a huge bump, a huge morale driver" for the search about to get underway in Manitoba.

Brian Paulsen, an assistant chief of police in Sturgis, S.D., who completed his master's thesis about landfill searches in the U.S., said he was "a little bit shocked" to hear Trottier's remains had been found after so much time.

"Right now my research … would have told me that Saskatoon was not going to be successful, nor would Winnipeg," Paulsen said of his 2019 study, which concluded a search shouldn't be started if more than 60 days have passed since a person's remains were put in the dump.

"But Saskatoon kind of brings us back and says, 'Wait a minute, it can be done.'"

However, the details of the Manitoba search are different from the Saskatchewan one in several ways — something noted this week by Saskatoon police Chief Cameron McBride, who confirmed at a news conference his force plans to share some of the lessons from their search with the Manitoba team.

"Although I don't know a lot of the intricate details or, you know, specifics around the Winnipeg circumstance, I do know enough to say that our circumstance was significantly different from what they're facing," McBride said.

From the potentially massive difference in the size of the area to be searched, to how long each was expected to take, to how searchers even knew where to start, here's a look at how the two landfill searches compare.

How big is each search area — and why?

One of the biggest differences is the size of the areas searchers were expected to focus on.

In the Saskatoon case, police said the search expanded as time went on from an initial area of interest of 930 cubic metres.

"Due to these variances in depth and area, the total volume that was searched when factoring in the expansion of refuse is approximately 10,500 cubic metres," a Saskatoon Police Service spokesperson told CBC on Friday. 

But even that number is a fraction of the estimate in the Manitoba case. Here, officials have said the section of interest spans an area of roughly 100 metres by 200 metres, with a maximum depth of 10 metres — which would come out to a maximum expected search area of 200,000 cubic metres.

However, the engineer behind Manitoba's search plan has said another assessment was anticipated to narrow down a more specific area, and that garbage sitting on top of where the women's remains are believed to be is also anticipated to be removed before searchers start working.

The potential difference in size between the two landfill searches is in part because of the intel that led investigators to the landfills to begin with.

In the Saskatoon case, that information came after investigators in December got data from the cellphone of the person police believe killed Trottier, who they did not identify and said has since died from a drug overdose. 

The cellphone data showed the suspect searched for garbage pickup days around the time Trottier went missing, and that he didn't leave the residence that was Trottier's last known location during that time.

Police said they were then able to figure out which truck would have picked up the remains from that address at that time, then use GPS data to figure out roughly where in the landfill that truck would have emptied its contents. 

But in the Manitoba case, the garbage truck believed to have been carrying the women's remains wasn't equipped with a GPS tracker — so the estimate of where they could be is based on which landfill areas, or cells, were in use at that time, a feasibility study report on the search said.

Chief Paulsen said starting in a more specific location in the Saskatoon case definitely helped. But even getting Manitoba searchers in the general area they need to be in is "better than nothing," he said.

Paulsen added the long timeframe dedicated to the Manitoba case could also work to searchers' advantage. While the Saskatoon search was scheduled to take about a month and ended up taking closer to three, officials in Manitoba have said the search could continue into early 2026 if needed.

"It's a daunting task," Paulsen said. "But then at the same time, I go back and I weigh that the commitment is to go to 2026, continue to man it at full staff or close to full staff on those search lines — it could be done."

Paulsen was chief of police in Plattsmouth, Neb., in 2003 when he led the task of searching a landfill for the body of a four-year-old boy. The search was halted after 45 days without the boy's remains being located.

Searching by hand in difficult conditions

Despite their differences, there are also several similarities between Saskatchewan and Manitoba's searches.

For instance, officials have said both searches would involve piles of garbage being moved for searchers to sift through by hand, looking for the women's remains and indicators like receipts to provide information such as dates and addresses that could help them know if they're in the right area.

And neither search process is without its challenges. 

During the one in Saskatoon, officials said the vast area being searched, the conditions in the landfill and the thousands of bone fragments they turned up at times made the operation difficult. In Manitoba, hazardous materials like asbestos have been identified as risks searchers could come up against.

While the challenges in Saskatoon led to insights that police chief McBride said could help in future landfill searches — like the one about to start in Manitoba — there was one thing he came away from it knowing for sure.

"I think collectively I can say we hope we never have to do one of these again," he said.

Support is available for anyone affected by these reports and the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous people. Immediate emotional assistance and crisis support are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through a national hotline at 1-844-413-6649.

You can also access, through the government of Canada, health support services such as mental health counselling, community-based support and cultural services, and some travel costs to see elders and traditional healers. Family members seeking information about a missing or murdered loved one can access Family Information Liaison Units.