Audrey Mary Desjarlais was a woman who was found deceased in the Red River. She is believed to have died around November or December 2011. She was identified in 2015.
Background[]
Audrey was a former residential school student from the Saddle Lake Cree Nation in Alberta. She raised her children in Saskatchewan until the early 2000s, when she left her family to live in Manitoba. However, she still kept in contact with loved ones via phone calls until 2011.
While in Manitoba, Audrey resided in Grunthal, Selkirk, Steinbach, and is believed to have resided in Winnipeg at the time of her death. Despite her struggles with drugs, alcohol, and run-ins with the law, her family does not know how she ended up in the river.
Discovery[]
Audrey's "extremely decomposed" body was found on the east side of the Red River, south of the North Perimeter Bridge. Her body was in a garbage bag, but there were no obvious signs of trauma or injury. Based on her clothing, it was assumed that she was homeless or a transient.
Identification[]
Barb Desjarlais, Audrey's daughter, suspected for three years that the Jane Doe pulled from the river was her mother; both women wore dentures, were of similar heights, and Barb recognized the Jane Doe's jewelry as Audrey's.
A police sketch of the Jane Doe was published in September 2012, which Barb thought resembled Audrey. Police dismissed this possibility a month later, due to unconfirmed sightings of Audrey in Steinbach and Grunthal around the same time. It was also believed that the Jane Doe did not have a history of childbirth, despite no conclusive evidence to prove this.
Police were reluctant to take a DNA sample from Barb, even though she offered to pay for the comparison. A DNA sample was finally collected from Barb in late April 2015, after a CBC investigation prompted police to look into the possibility. In early June 2015, the Jane Doe was confirmed to be Audrey.
Audrey is buried in section 38 at Brookside Cemetery. Her tombstone was formerly a concrete slab with the number 209, but Barb raised over one thousand dollars on GoFundMe to buy Audrey a proper tombstone.
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