A mother’s long wait for justice

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This article was published 08/03/2020 (2038 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

KINGSTON, Ont. — Eleanor Hands contacted police every three or four weeks, hoping for a breakthrough in her daughter’s homicide investigation, but expecting none.

Not once did she think investigators had forgotten about 32-year-old Nicolle Hands, an Indigenous woman who died more than 16 years ago after being stabbed in her Mountain Avenue apartment as her three children and a babysitter slept in the next room. But the confidence she’d long had in their ability to find the man responsible was fading.

A phone call on Saturday restored her faith in their work.

She’s spoken with Det. Rick Lofto of the Winnipeg Police Service many times since Project Devote, a joint Winnipeg police-RCMP task force, took over the homicide investigation in 2012. He was kind, compassionate and patient, yet offered little in the way of new information.

“I’ve been having a lot of trouble lately, a lot of frustration, like ‘Is this ever going to happen?’ I’ve been a basketcase. It was just starting to get to be too much for me. Just say you can’t solve it and let me get on with life,” Eleanor said, in a conversation with the Free Press at her Kingston, Ont., home Sunday. “For 16 years, they weren’t able to tell me anything. I know it was a hard case. They had nobody of interest. But they kept telling me not to worry about it.

“I phoned them every month and I knew what they were going to tell me. But I had to phone to let them know that I’m here, I’m still waiting.”

This time, Lofto had news that caused Eleanor to nearly drop the phone.

“When I heard Rick’s voice, it was just like usual. He said, ‘Hey, how are you?’ Then he said when he got off a plane in Winnipeg from some place at 2 a.m., there was a message for him to get right down to Project Devote. That’s when they went out and made an arrest,” said Eleanor, 77. “I couldn’t believe it. They got him.”

An 18-month investigation by Project Devote resulted in the arrest on Saturday of a city man. It’s alleged he is responsible for the death of Nicolle, who was attacked Oct. 2, 2003, and died three days later. The accused has not been formally charged and his name hasn’t been released.

Contacted by the Free Press Sunday, a city police spokesman wouldn’t comment on the arrest, referring inquiries to the RCMP, who said Monday the suspect was interviewed and released, and the police are consulting the Crown on potential charges while continuing the investigation.

Beyond confirming the arrest, Lofto offered no other details but promised to keep in touch, Eleanor said.

“Sometimes, I was hopeful, but most times I knew I was going to have to live with not knowing who or why. Maybe now we’ll get some answers,” she said.

Earlier police reports suggest Nicolle’s babysitter woke to noises at 3:30 a.m. and saw a man standing over the victim in the adjacent room and then watched him flee from the apartment.

Eleanor, a widow living alone at the time, wasn’t contacted until 24 hours after the attack when Nicolle was in the hospital. She immediately made arrangements to fly from Kingston to Winnipeg the next day for one final visit with her daughter, four months after they’d last been together in Winnipeg for her grandchild’s birthday.

“The doctor from the hospital called me and I said, ‘Try and keep her alive until I get there.’ When I got there, she was still on life-support, and the next day they told me there was no brain activity,” Eleanor said. “They took her off life-support and she died really peaceful.”

Nicolle’s children were nine, seven and 16 months old at the time. For health reasons, Eleanor was unable to care for the children, who were raised separately by family friends.

Eleanor requested their names not be used in the story, however, she proudly showed pictures of the eldest, now a 24-year-old man with two university degrees, the middle daughter, 22, who is also university-educated, and their brother, 18, who has post-secondary aspirations.

“They are wonderful young adults. I’m so proud of them and I know that their mother would be, too,” Eleanor said. “The two oldest ones remember their mother. The youngest admitted recently he really doesn’t remember her, but he sees her in pictures. We all get together at Christmas and tell stories.”

Eleanor and her husband, Len, weren’t able to have children of their own but desperately wanted to adopt. Living in Red Lake, Ont., in 1972, the couple was blessed with not one but two children, a 14-month-old girl and her two-month-old brother from Lac Seul First Nation northeast of Dryden.

“Nicolle and Peter were ready to be adopted and the agency asked if we would take them both. We stayed in Red Lake for about five years. They’d never seen a stop light or train, so we just decided it was time to move to civilization,” she said laughing.

The family moved to Kenora, and then Eleanor separated from her husband and moved with the children to Westport, Ont., just north of Kingston. Nicolle graduated from high school there and then moved to Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., to take courses in social work.

After just one year, Nicolle moved to Winnipeg in 1999 to be near Len, who died just a year later. Her schooling fell through, she couldn’t find work and was raising two children at the time.

“I spoke with her all the time. She was struggling,” said Eleanor. “She’d phone me for money. I was suspicious about drug use but I couldn’t say no because grandma had to help. It was really hard. (Before her addiction problems), she was wonderful, really loving; good to the kids, a good mother. But just like a lot of other young people, one drug leads to two.

“I think about her every day. Nobody deserves to have their life taken.”

Eleanor is well aware the case could drag through the court system for years but wants to be present if the case goes to trial.

“I know that things are going to be said that I won’t like, about her lifestyle, about how she died. The lawyers will say things to try to get the guy off,” she said. “It’s not going to be easy, but if I’m still around, I’ll be there. I’ll be there for Nicolle.”

Project Devote was formed by Winnipeg police and Manitoba RCMP in 2011 to probe more than two dozen cases of missing and murdered Indigenous females. On Friday, Winnipeg police Chief Danny Smyth told the city’s police board the service will no longer assign officers to Project Devote, but will continue to share information about cold cases with the Mounties.

“So we won’t have investigators resident at ‘D’ Division itself (where) they were working on very specific files… We’ll still continue to support that work, we’ll still meet and work with the RCMP when it’s required,” he said.

jason.bell@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @WFPJasonBell