[URL='https://www.toronto.com/news/crime/ontario-cold-case-patient-1-of-6-to-vanish-after-fleeing-psych-unit/article_5adebea4-26f4-5e90-b1ad-27ba5003bcf8.html?']ONTARIO COLD CASE: Patient 1 of 6 to vanish after fleeing psych unit | Crime | toronto.com[/URL]
Dawn Eva Carisse with her daughters Sandra and Nicole and husband Brooks before being admitted to the North Bay Psychiatric Hospital. Carisse went missing in 2001 and was never seen again. July 2019. - Sandra Mcneil Photo
- “Considering Dawn’s case dates back to 2001, there has not been any recent information that would forward the investigation. However, we have been working diligently attempting to complete comparisons with unidentified human remains cases across the country,” said North Bay Police Det. Const. Dave Wilson.
Carisse is one of the detachment’s 13 unsolved missing persons cases. Six of these people disappeared from the same location: the former psychiatric hospital, which was demolished in 2013.
While Wilson said he feels as though the detachment has developed a solid working relationship with the current North Bay Hospital’s Psychiatric Ward, missing person investigations in general are extremely frustrating for police agencies because Ontario hospitals are bound by privacy laws.''
''Another step in the right direction for missing persons cases, he added, is that a DNA databank is now in place, allowing police to submit missing person and family member DNA profiles in order to be compared with unidentified human remains across the country''
''Previously, police were expected to research individual cases that may relate to their missing person and then contact that agency directly to get a DNA comparison completed; the new system will automate this process.''
BEHIND THE CRIMES: How did 6 patients vanish from a psychiatric hospital? | Crime | toronto.com
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Philippe Guérin was a 27-year-old patient of the hospital when he disappeared June 12, 1966. Hospital officials sent a letter to police reporting him missing.
His parents died never knowing what happened to their son, the oldest missing persons case on record at the North Bay Police Service.
A decade later,
31-year-old Norman Welsh was picked up by OPP walking along a highway outside Sturgeon Falls, July 18, 1976.
Concerned for his safety, police took him to a local hospital; from there he was admitted to the psychiatric hospital. When staff accompanied him outside the next day, he ran toward the wooded grounds and was never seen again.
On July 21, 1982,
Terry Zubko was 18, a patient at the hospital since May. At 10 a.m., granted one hour of unsupervised time outside, Zubko went for a walk from which he would never return. He was reported missing later that afternoon.
On April 7, 2000, a particularly frigid day, just one year before Carisse slipped away,
34-year-old patient Russell Hoffert was reported missing. Hospital staff told police he simply walked away wearing a blue long-sleeved shirt, jeans and running shoes. With the wind chill that day, it was -20 degrees outside.''
On his 28th birthday, Glen Wesley was headed for downtown North Bay. A patient of the hospital, he had been granted special leave at 1 p.m. on Sept. 15, 2010 on a short-term pass. He never returned.''
“Can you really have six human lives just disappear?” That is the question
Ellen White poses on her podcast,
Whereabouts Unknown.
The former private investigator has assembled a team, including a genealogist, to dig into missing persons cases in North Bay. Some of the missing patients, White said, “are not people who are sophisticated in their thinking or had access to a telephone back then, without staff.”