Ardeth mourned
'We've all regarded this as a very safe community,' police chief says. 'This is a shock to all of us'. Search called off after police find body; evolves into massive manhunt for suspect
Tom Spears and Karen Snider, with files from Karen Snider, Paula McCooey, Erin Conway-Smith and Sarah Kennedy
The Ottawa Citizen
Tuesday, August 12, 2003
They found Ardeth Wood yesterday afternoon near Green's Creek, where her body had lain hidden through six days of frantic searching. Police believe -- though haven't confirmed -- that she died in an attack, and have distributed the sketch of a "person of interest."
A dog in one of the many search teams found the body of the 27-year-old philosophy student on land, near the edge of the creek -- where searchers found her bicycle the day before. Her body was concealed, police said.
Though they have not formally identified the body as that of Ardeth Wood, police have called off the six-day search and are saying the body is hers.
"Ardeth Wood met with foul play, and we are treating this individual as a suspect in her disappearance," Ottawa police Chief Vince Bevan told reporters.
"We should all be shocked. We've all regarded this as a very safe community. You know in your own experience that youth and women have felt free to cycle, to jog and live their lives without the fear of something like this happening. This is a shock to all of us."
Ms. Wood's younger brother, Colum, 23, said his family had no indication the news was coming when it did. The family gathered on a bus at the command post to meet Chief Bevan. They were told there would be a press conference afterwards, but having had so much interaction with police and media since his sister's disappearance, Mr. Wood thought nothing of it.
"We just weren't expecting it at all. I was just so hopeful that nothing this tragic would ever happen."
Chief Bevan broke the news to the family, while other investigators stood by. Colum Wood said those officers were nearly reduced to tears.
"The police were just amazing. They helped us so much," he said. "They tried their very best and they are going to continue to try their very best."
Colum Wood said police couldn't reveal all of the information about their case.
"They told us there is more that they can't tell us and that the cops are trying. I'm led to believe they've narrowed it down to more than just a sketch. It seems pretty definite.
"They said they had other leads, and other people have seen the person and they think they might have a shot of him on camera somewhere. This is not the first time he tried to approach women."
Colum Wood said the family has not seen the body, and suspects it could be a week before they can have a funeral.
"It's terrifying to think about what could have happened. I just think, no matter how hard it is on me, just think of how hard it was on her. It's just a nightmare," he said, adding that his sister was an inspiration to him and that she was always there to give him advice.
"I always said she was the smartest person I ever met. There was never a question she didn't have the answer to. Whenever I needed guidance I always went to her. I don't know where I'll find that now."
Despite his loss, he said he is not angry.
"There's now a murder investigation, but in some ways, it just feels pointless to us. It just doesn't matter anymore now that she's gone. Nothing will bring her back," he said.
"But, I understand it's important to find him and ensure this never happens again to anybody ... so no other family has to suffer like this."
Colum Wood said he has been relying on his friends and his 22-year-old girlfriend, Stephanie Donohue, for strength. Loved ones have been gathering at the family's home.
"My uncle, Father William Ashley, is over, as well as two other priests who are very close to the family. They've been a huge help. I don't know how I'd make it through this if I wasn't a religious person.
"My father's just in denial right now. He doesn't know how he'll be in the future, but he's helping my mother stay all right right now. He's keeping her safe."
He said his brother, Crispin, 24, came home and fell asleep, exhausted from a day spent with volunteer searchers.
Colum Wood also expressed the family's appreciation for the community's efforts, and the hundreds of volunteers who helped search.
"Everywhere I go postering the town, people stop me and give me their best wishes," he said.
- - -
Margot Cafferty, a close friend of Ms. Wood's mother, Catherine, was at the command post at the Canada Aviation Museum yesterday after she heard police had found a body.
"Catherine was really, really hoping," she said. "I think she had a feeling right from the start, and she was quite concerned. Mind you, she was still keeping up hope as long as (Ardeth) hadn't been found."
Canvassers are already going door-to-door with the picture of a young man drawn by a police artist after other young women said a white man in his 20s had approached them in the area where Ms. Wood disappeared. And some women have begun to avoid the area where the body was found, saying it has long had a reputation as unprotected and far from help.
Chief Bevan said Ms. Wood probably died suddenly, and there's no indication that she knew her attacker.
"We will continue with our commitment to find the individual responsible for what has happened," he added.
"It is too early to tell right now if we can connect this to other crimes. It's going to take some time to do a forensic examination of the remains and do the appropriate tests. We'll need that information before we can make any assumptions," the chief said at a press conference.
This is Ottawa's seventh homicide of the year. But for nearly a week, Ms. Wood's family and friends didn't know if she had died.
An autopsy may not be conducted for several days.
- - -
On Wednesday morning, Aug. 6, Ms. Wood made her family a strawberry marshmallow dessert. It was still in the fridge yesterday.
A little after noon, she left for a bike ride along the Aviation parkway, which winds through a mix of grassy and wooded areas toward the Ottawa River just west of the family's Orléans home.
It was lousy cycling weather -- cloudy and sticky, threatening a thunderstorm. The rains would come early that afternoon, splattering hard in some areas and leaving others almost dry. Nonetheless she left the family's home on a black Peugeot bike, telling her mother she'd be home in an hour to go shopping. No one saw her or heard from her after that.
She was reported missing at 6 p.m. Wednesday. Police set up a command post the next day.
By yesterday morning, 139 tips had been called in to police and 870 volunteers had been involved in searches or canvassing.
It was one of the largest search missions in Ottawa's history. OPP and Canadian Armed Forces helicopters, equipped with heat-sensor devices, flew above the east-end trails and bike paths.
Trained and civilian volunteers hunted through bushes and pathways across a 36-square kilometre search area.
A military Labrador helicopter patrolled with a propeller so powerful it spread the foliage below so the 35 searchers could see through the trees. Below, in the brush, National Capital Commission ATVs hurtled through the rugged terrain while in the water a marine unit glided along the east end of the Ottawa river between downtown and Orléans.
At the same time, women started to come forward with disturbing stories of a white man in his 20s approaching women in the area, including the same day and in the same area where Ms. Wood was expected to go riding.
Ms. Cafferty said she was at the command post family and friends set up at the Rockcliffe Parkway just hours after Ms. Wood went missing. She said she felt, because of the circumstances, crucial time was lost as soon as she went missing because she wasn't officially considered missing until 24 hours went by.
"I was out on the Rockcliffe Parkway where they set up a command post right away on Thursday, and that was before the police got involved, because they don't get involved until 24 hours, which in this case is a shame because everybody knew she wasn't a runaway, she was a responsible young woman.
"She was always a very brilliant girl; she was very quiet and reserved."
- - -
Ms. Wood had returned to Ottawa for a two-week holiday just a few days before her disappearance. She has been at the University of Waterloo for the past two and a half years, working toward a PhD in philosophy. She had completed half the four-year program. While her interests lay mostly in metaphysics, ancient philosophies and the truth in literature, she had not yet decided the topic of her thesis.
Ms. Wood loved philosophy; she loved to teach it, read about it and talk about it. She considered it the root of all issues, such as crime or politics, her younger brother Colum Wood said.
The Woods are a devoutly religious family and Colum Wood said he thought it was only natural for his sister to pour so much energy into studying philosophy.
"Philosophy is essentially theology. They just go hand in hand," he said.
Ms. Wood's education started with home-schooling in Nova Scotia and New Brunswick, where she grew up. The Woods moved to Ottawa when Ms. Wood started high school at Lester B. Pearson Catholic school in Gloucester. She went on to obtain her BA and master's degree from Carleton University, before attending Waterloo.
Colum Wood, who works part-time in the Citizen's newsroom, said it is not unusual for someone in his family to put so much focus into academics. His parents have several degrees and his grandfather was an Oxford scholar.
"Ardeth wanted to be a professor," Colum Wood said. "She was going to do post-doctoral work as well. I don't think her schooling was ever going to end."
Despite being shy, Ms. Wood had a unique fashion sense, and "people are always coming up to her, saying 'Wow, that's really cool. Where are on earth did you get that?' " he said.
Her wardrobe consisted of some medieval style dresses and a dark vintage 1920s suit she bought at an old clothing sale at the Chateau Laurier. The suit was complete with a hat with mesh and feathers, and a fur collar on the jacket.
Friends said dangling jewelry made her jingle wherever she walked; she loved Hello Kitty products, including an umbrella with kitten's ears on top.
Several of Ms. Wood's closest friends from the University of Waterloo were in Ottawa for the weekend trying to help with volunteer searches.
"We all can't believe this has happened," said friend Amy Keppler, 29.
"She's always so happy and always perky. It just seems odd this has happened to someone who is always happy and had good things going on around her."
Her friends, who are also working toward philosophy PhDs, said they look up to Ms. Wood, admiring her uncanny ability to always have her work done on time.
"She was doing well and keeping completely on track," friend Jill Oliver said. "If she was stressed out, she never showed it."
They said Ms. Wood was in excellent physical shape; she jogged, cycled and swam to relieve stress.
Ms. Wood's brother Crispin said his sister was very athletic and was familiar with the trail.
"We've done it before together," he said.
Strangers and friends flocked to the command post, desperate to do anything to ease the suffering of Ms. Wood's family.
"I'm just here to help as best I can," said John Fennelly, who arrived at the command post at 7:30 yesterday morning. "I'm a friend of the family; I've known them for years."
Mr. Fennelly and about 25 other civilian volunteers were placed in groups of seven, each with two or three trained searchers.
The search area was divided into about eight sections that were subdivided by natural barriers such as bike paths, the Parkway and rivers. Searchers spread out about six metres apart and combed through each section.
Crispin Wood and his team covered the peninsula around the Green's Creek area.
In the area where Green's Creek meets the Ottawa River, Crispin Wood said it was difficult to find clues amongst the mass of waste that littered the area.
"There was garbage, toiletry products and driftwood," he said. "We had to spend extra time in that area because it was so hard to look through."
He and his team returned to the command post over three hours later, filthy and exhausted.
"The sergeant we were with had a leech on his neck," he said. "Everybody is tired. They're good volunteers, but they're beat."
Patsy Guérin, 29, felt compelled to join the search for Ms. Wood because she identified with the missing woman, two years her junior.
"She's basically my age, she's my type," said Ms. Guérin, her black work boots covered in mud, after returning from scouring the area east of Green's Creek.
"It really hit home," she said.
Searcher Linda Jorgensen, 44, regularly travels the parkway to pick up her three-year-old daughter at pre-school.
The blond, blue-eyed fitness instructor said she often runs and bikes alone on the trails in the area -- something she had never before given a second thought.
Ms. Wood likely didn't worry either, she said.
Ms. Jorgensen took her mountain bike out yesterday -- this time, not by herself -- to scour single-track trails off the beaten path where Ms. Wood might have gone.
"You've got to do whatever you can," she said.
Later, heading out with a stack of composite sketches of the man police say is a "person of interest," she said that even though the body of Ms. Wood has been found, the search goes on.
"Now is the most important part," she said. "Now it's a matter of helping to find the suspect."
Kathy Reid, 46, was one of two dozen volunteers canvassing the residential streets of Orléans last night with copies of a composite sketch of the twentysomething man police want to question.
Mrs. Reid said her cousin's 18-year-old daughter went missing in Brandon, Man., over a year ago, but was never found.
She wants the Wood family to have closure -- something her own family hasn't found.
"I believe in 'do unto others,' " she said.
Ms. Wood's close friend, Krystan Pawlikowski, 27, said he spoke with Ms. Wood every night she was in Ottawa. He last spoke to Ms. Wood Tuesday for 30 or 40 minutes. "She was relaxed," he said. "She liked to come back home (to Ottawa) and get recharged."
"She liked being in Waterloo, but she missed her family," Ms. Oliver said. "We recently talked about how we still feel like our roots are at our family homes."
Colum Wood said his sister returned to Ottawa about three times a year, whenever she had breaks from school. One thing she loved to do at home was cook. Living alone in a basement apartment in Waterloo never really gave her the opportunity to cook big meals for people, he said.
"People used to say to her 'oh, you're going home so you will get to have some home-cooked meals,' " her brother said.
- - -
For five mornings, the first thing Colum Wood thought of on waking up from four hours of sleep was whether he would find his sister that day.
The 23-year-old waited for word on his missing sister, sleeping with his cellphone next to him in case police needed to call him -- or better still-- in case Ms. Wood called him.
He tried to remain positive for his sister, his mentor, who has always been ready to offer him advice and encourage him in school.
Throughout the search he told people she was "still out there" so he kept searching trails and canvassing neighbourhoods to help find her.
It was also his way of keeping busy, to avoid those quiet times when the reality of the situation -- that he has not seen or heard from his sister in nearly a week -- crept into his thoughts.
His mother, he said, had a harder time staying optimistic. She kept asking why this has happened to her eldest of three children. "There just aren't answers to those kinds of things," Colum Wood said.
The day before his sister was found, a reporter asked Colum Wood what he would do when he found her.
"Just hug her," he replied.
"I won't want to let her go all the way to Waterloo again."
Ottawa Police Safety Tips
Following the discover of the body near Green's Creek yesterday, police issued a series of safety tips to the public:
- Whether walking, driving or cycling, always determine the safest route of travel. Take a longer route if it is safest.
- Avoid dark or isolated places.
- Inform others when and where you are going, and check with them when you reach your destination.
- Carry a cellphone.
- If you suspect you are being followed, head immediately to the nearest well-lit or populated area.
- If other people are within hearing distance, turn to the person and say in a loud voice, "stop following me!"
- Try to remember points of identification about the suspect. For example: complexion, body build, height, weight, age or clothing.
- If an attacker is only after your purse or other valuables, don't resist. Throw your purse or belongings away from yourself to put distance between you and the attacker.
- Contact police immediately.
Ran with fact box "Ottawa police safety tips", which has been appended to the story.
© Copyright 2003 The Ottawa Citizen
