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By Susan Clairmont
Feb 11 2022
Hamilton police homicide case No. 95-030477 remains unsolved. But Helen Gillings is not forgotten. | The Star
''Some things have not changed much since I wrote that story. Helen’s murder is still unsolved. The $10,000 reward is still unclaimed. The case remains cold.
Also unchanged, however, is that somehow — in a city that has had some 250 homicides since then — Helen has not been forgotten.
On Valentine’s Day, red hearts will be placed on the lamp post by the alley at King and Emerald streets where Helen’s body was found.''
''Sisters in Spirit, the organization calling on us to remember and honour Helen with hearts, asks participants to post photos of the lamp post memorial using #MMIWC2S. Sisters in Spirit began as an initiative to research and document the statistics of violence against Indigenous women in Canada. It has expanded and is now a voice for awareness, education and advocacy.''
“She was a beautiful girl,” her dad told me back then. “She was intelligent. She loved animals. She had artistic talent that would blow you away. What happened to Helen was a waste of what could have been a wonderful life. And for that, I’m very, very sad. Helen was very much loved here. We did everything we could to convince her of that.”
Helen spent her last evening playing pool with a “clean-cut young man” at the long gone Straw Hat bar. She was seen entering the alley with a man at 1 a.m. on Feb. 16, 1995. Her naked body was discovered at 5 p.m. the next day, stuffed under an overturned sofa.
She had two daughters — a two-year-old and a three-week-old. Her newborn was premature and still in the hospital when Helen was killed. Both girls were put up for adoption.
Fifteen years earlier Helen too had been adopted, along with her sister, by a family in Alberta.''
