https://www.nbcnews.com/dateline/lo...omen-featured-dateline-nbc-s-missing-n1277762
Monica L. Bercier Wickre vanished on April 7, 1993 after being out with friends at a bar called The Body Shop in Aberdeen, South Dakota, where she lived.
Monica was born and raised in Belcourt, North Dakota on the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa reservation.
That night, she caught a ride with a couple she knew and a man she did not know. It was the last time she was seen alive.
On June 16, 1993, her badly decomposed body was found by a passerby in a canoe in the James River just outside of Aberdeen. Her killer has never been caught.
The family is offering $10,000 to anyone who comes forward with information that leads to the arrest and conviction of Monica’s killer.
The family continues to bring awareness about Monica’s case with the
Justice4Monica Facebook page in the hope that someone will come forward with information that may help solve it. A billboard was placed on Dakota Street in Aberdeen, South Dakota in June 2020.
Monica’s case is of many mentioned in Savanna's Act or the #MMIW Act, which reforms law enforcement and justice protocols appropriate to addressing missing and murdered Native women. An initial version of the bill passed the U.S. Senate on December 6, 2018.
The bill was named after Fargo, North Dakota resident Savanna LaFontaine-Greywind, who was murdered in August 2017, and is just one name that represents the horrific statistics regarding abuse and homicide of Indigenous women.
Monica’s daughter, Tonya Hertel, told Dateline she often wonders why stories of Native women aren’t given the attention they deserve and said she hopes by sharing her mother’s story and continuing to fight for justice, it will give others hope to be a voice for the voiceless.
“For so long I felt like I didn’t have a voice,” Tonya said. “But today, I feel like I have a voice. And I feel like a voice has finally been given to my mother.”
Anyone with information about Monica’s case is asked to call the Brown County Sheriff’s Office at 605-626-7100.
