CANADA Canada - 4 seniors mysteriously disappear, Muskoka area, Ontario, late 1990s, *Fresh initiative*

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LIVE PRESS CONFERENCE AT LINK NOW.
July 25 2019
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/muskoka-missing-seniors-opp-update-1.5224453

"Police in Ontario are providing an update Thursday on an investigation into the mysterious disappearances of four seniors in cottage country more than two decades ago.

Ontario Provincial Police have long said foul play is suspected in the missing-persons cases of Joan Lawrence, Ralph Grant, John Semple and John Crofts, who all vanished from the Muskoka area, some 230 kilometres north of Toronto, between 1997 and 1998.

• A decades-old missing persons case continues to haunt Ontario's cottage country

• FIFTH ESTATE
  Muskoka mystery: Missing senior killed to stop her from reporting 'mistreatment, neglect,' police said

OPP top brass will be at the news conference, set to start at 11 a.m. ET.

In a statement, the OPP said it hopes to "bring clarity and a potential resolution for the community that has lived with unanswered questions and speculation since the late 1990s."

The enduring cold cases have been the subject of two The Fifth Estate investigations, Murder in Cottage Country (2017) and The Muskoka Murder Files (2018). They were also explored in the CBC investigative podcast Uncover: The Cat Lady Case released this summer.

"Cat Lady" is a reference to Lawrence, who was given the moniker by locals in the community of Huntsville who would often see her walking through town with grocery bags of food for her 30 or so cats.

Joan Lawrence, 77, went missing from this property on Siding Lake in late 1998. It was operated as a retirement facility by members of a local family. She's one of four seniors who disappeared some two decades ago in Ontario cottage country. (Lisa Mayor/CBC)
Her disappearance in the fall of 1998 sparked an OPP homicide investigation that took several strange twists before finally going cold years later.

In the last years of her life, the 77-year-old lived in an 80-square-foot shack without running water, insulation or electricity on a rural 27.5-hectare farm outside Huntsville.

After she was reported missing, OPP searched the farm by land and air, and dragged the lake adjacent to the property, but never found any trace of Lawrence."

 

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COLD CASE: The Huntsville ‘Cat Lady’ who just disappeared

A $50,000 reward is offered for information leading to the conviction of those responsible for the disappearance of Joan Lawrence. She was last seen in the Huntsville area in 1998. - OPP/Photo

HUNTSVILLE — Not a whole lot is known about the missing cat lady.

People say she was known as a frequent hitchhiker around Huntsville, that she took care of more than a dozen cats and was quite well spoken. She is believed to have been living in a garden shed on a property off North Lancelot Road.

Her real name is Joan Dorothy Lawrence and she was 77 years old when she was last seen in the Huntsville area in November 1998."

 

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Police believe 4 missing seniors from Muskoka were victims of homicide
Police believe 4 missing seniors from Muskoka were victims of homicide

John Crofts, left, John Semple, Joan Lawrence and Ralph Grant, right, went missing in the late 1990s in the Muskoka region. (Police handout)

 

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Joan Lawrence 'met her end' at 77 while living in a derelict van

 

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Muskoka mystery: Family linked to disappearance of seniors fights release of police documents

 

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I wonder just how much the landlord was looked into.

 

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Contains lots of info on the Laans ... so close but no cigar.

Cottage Country Murder
Police have dragged the lake. They've dug up property. They've brought in dogs. But after twenty years, they still can't find the bodies of the four missing seniors in Muskoka

BY ZANDER SHERMAN
ILLUSTRATION BY CLAY RODERY
Updated 15:36, Jul. 8, 2019 | Published 11:34, Sep. 15, 2017

 

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Potential breakthrough in decades-old case of missing seniors

 

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Potential breakthrough in decades-old case of missing seniors

Thanks for the update!
"There are new developments in the cold case that has shocked and captivated Canadians. The lead police investigator in the Muskoka murder mystery sits down with us for the first time, talking about developments in the case in a special episode this Sunday on @CBC TV at 9 pm"

 

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Lengthy article rbbm.
Dec 8 2019
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/cat-...ily-muskoka-mystery-missing-seniors-1.5386819
'Don't mess with us': Family of the 'Cat Lady' seeks justice in Muskoka mystery of missing seniors

Joan Lawrence’s relatives hope to learn what happened after her disappearance in late ’90s"

Prior to her disappearance, Joan Lawrence rented this uninsulated shed near Huntsville, Ont. (Ontario Provincial Police)

"When an isolated 77-year-old vanished from Huntsville in 1998, the Ontario Provincial Police couldn't locate any next of kin. Joan Lawrence, the so-called "Cat Lady," lived a hermitic life, spending her pension on cat food and an eight-by-ten-foot, $600-a-month shed.

More than two decades later, CBC Podcasts has found Lawrence's family.

"I felt angry, I felt upset," said Sherry Churchill, Lawrence's first cousin once removed. "I just looked at that shack she lived in.… If anyone in the family had known about that, we'd have come in there with shotguns, probably."

Lawrence wasn't the only one to go missing at that time in Ontario's cottage country. Three other seniors — John Semple, 90, John Crofts, 71, and Ralph Grant, 70 — also disappeared. (The OPP now say they were homicide victims). Despite multiple stories in the media, little about Lawrence's life has been previously reported.

The breakthrough happened on Nov. 4, 2019, when researcher Laura Beacom — who was featured on Uncover: The Cat Lady Case — was studying Lawrence's family tree on Ancestry.com. "

This newly discovered poem first appeared in The Ottawa Citizen in 1940, when Lawrence was a teenager. (Ottawa Citizen)
Before Lawrence became known as the "Cat Lady," she was a struggling poet and freelance writer living in Ottawa. Seemingly disillusioned with her profession at age 19, she wrote an op-ed for the Ottawa Citizen, declaring journalism as a "closed corporation."

A few years later, when she was 26, Lawrence was dismissed from her advertising job "for trying to write a book while she was supposed to be working," according to the OPP.

Despite her grandmother's stories, Churchill had no idea what had become of Lawrence, or that her cousin was the central figure in a high-profile homicide investigation.

Listen to "The Cat Lady Case" from CBC PodcastsWatch "Murder in Cottage Country" from CBC's The Fifth Estate
After reading up about the story, Churchill immediately contacted other family members. Though they had watched a documentary by CBC's The Fifth Estate on the case — which shows Lawrence's picture and says her name — they didn't realize they were related".

OPP released this photo of a van that Lawrence lived in. (Ontario Provincial Police)
"Because the Retirement Homes Act didn't come into effect in Ontario until 2010, no one screened the Laans or questioned the legitimacy of their business. Police only discovered Lawrence in the shed a few weeks prior to her disappearance, at which point she was relocated to a van on the same property.

David, Walter, and Kathrine all had criminal records, and Walter, Paul, and Kathrine eventually pleaded guilty to defrauding the federal government of more than $120,000 in benefit money it was providing their residents."

"They didn't find Lawrence's body, but they did find another piece of evidence: Six of her cats had been fatally shot. According to the OPP, the Laans' uncle, Ron Allen, eventually confessed to shooting them with a .22-calibre hunting rifle."