nOur project is about the story of a woman named Bella Marie Laboucan-Mclean. This project is completed by Lucas Bailey, Nathan Donnelly, Oliver Mcloughlin. The podcast talks about one of the many unsolved cases of missing and murdered indigenous woman in Canada. The steps we took to create this podcast include researching the person, writing the important information about them, recording it, and finally editing it. Our goal of this podcast was to bring awareness to the missing and murdered indigenous woman so that cases like Bella’s do not happen again.
Script
Lucas
Hello, you are listening to Cold cases, brought to you by Lucas Bailey, Oliver McLoughlin, and Nathan Donnelly, where we are going to be talking about the missing and murdered indigenous women of Canada
In today’s episode we are going to look at the case of Bella Marie
Laboucan-McLean’s story, and her mysterious death.
Early Life
Bella Marie grew up in Sturgeon Lake, with a family of eight, Bella lived with her mom, dad, three older sisters, and 2 younger sisters.
In her early life she was taught the importance of her culture and traditions. As she grew older, she became very talented at both dancing and artwork. Her goal was to blend the Cree culture with modern fashion into one.
Bella had a thorough education. She attended Portage College to fine-tune her skills in tanning hide and beadwork before pursuing a degree in Textiles at the University of Alberta in Edmonton. In 2011, she would transfer to Humber College in Toronto and started to work toward a Fashion Arts degree. Her goal upon graduating was to apply to a graduate fashion program in London, England. To earn money, she worked in retail store while looking to move into design or merchandising
One of her older siters Melina Laboucan-Massimo, is an indigenous rights activist, who speaks against the environmental degradation caused by the Alberta tar sands.
Bella had a positive outlook on life and always had a smile on her face, she would always tell her friends to focus on and appreciate the little things in life. All her friends say that she was a loving and compassionate woman that was sportive toward her friends and family. Although being an extravert She was known for loving her family and would go home to Alberta to see her family regularly.
Bella was an active social media user; she was known by her friends as the go-to person for when you wanted to put together a playlist for event or party.
On the night of July 19th, 2019, Bella was at a nightclub in Toronto. On the early morning of July 20th, she attended an afterparty at Bellas residence located at Toronto city place. She traveled there with three men and two women.
Her death
At around 4:55 am a Nabor of Bells that was located on one of the lower Flores called the police to report a unknown disturbance, when the police got to the residence what they saw was a 25-year-old Bella Marie Laboucan-McLean, who had just fallen 31 stories, to her death.
Bellas body remained unidentified for 12 hours, while the police tried to identify her.
There was no I.D. on Bellas corpse witch made the police go door to door as king if they knew what happened, if they heard anything, and if they knew who she was. All the residents said no as you would expect.
When they got to Bellas residence there was no answer, so they moved onto the next house, on July 20th, 2019, at around 5pm a man that Bella lived with called to report that she was missing, and hadn’t come home the night before, after this the police quickly identified the body as Bellas and began an investigation.
The investigation started off with an autopsy being performed on Bellas body and concluded that the cause of death was blunt force Trama consistent with that of falling.
They continued to say that the death was suspicious, and that they were going to investigate it as if it was a homicide.
The police got a warrant and searched the condo that she lived in to see if there was any evidence in her condo to support a reason for throwing her thirty one sorties to her death what they saw was, her wallet, purse, and phone all still in the condo, they then went through the surveillance cameras to identify the people that where at the condo that night of her death.
After locating them and bringing then in They interrogated all the people but not as suspects but as witnesses due to the lack of evidence they had.
All the people that were over that night stated that they didn’t see Bella go over the edge, the police found this hard to believe seeing as though there were 6 people in a small condo building.
Due to a lack of evidence, there was no media coverage on her case, and the inability to show any kind of Thery as to what might have happened that night.
We wanted to take a second to thank our sponsor of this podcast. Our sponsor today is Vancity, thanks to VanCity we are able to high quality audio to record this podcast they have also continuously supported the indigenous population in our community’s Vancity believes that the key to success is building trusting relationships, along with 30% of their profits go back into their community’s.
[Nathan]
Moving on, Bella’s story ends on a sad note, due to lack of evidence police have stopped investigating this case. But if you want to help you can call to the Canadian Government and demand these three calls to action to be put in place, because not only do the calls to action lower the chances of another case like Bella’s from happening again, but the calls to action also bring closure to the victim’s family members, here they are.
The first call to action is number 41, and it states.
- We call upon the federal government, in consultation with Aboriginal organizations, to appoint a public inquiry into the causes of, and remedies for, the disproportionate victimization of Aboriginal women and girls. The inquiry’s mandate would include. Investigation into missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls.
The second one is number 55, part 6, and it states.
- 55. vi. Progress on reducing the rate of criminal victimization of Aboriginal people, including data related to homicide and family violence victimization and other crimes.
The third and final call to action is number 39, which states.
- 39. We call upon the federal government to develop a national plan to collect and publish data on the criminal victimization of Aboriginal people, including data related to homicide and family violence victimization.
Thank you, all for listening to today’s podcast, just to recap, Bella, grew up on Sturgeon Lake, with a family of eight. Fast forward into the future, and Bella is at a night club getting ready to go to an after party at her place, that’s when things turned bad. Bella was found by police at 4:55am, she fell 31 stories from her apartment. All 5 of the people in the apartment have all said that they did not see anything, that the police found suspicious. However, they did not act on that suspicion, as police have no longer investigated this case, as there is not enough evidence to prosecute anyone, making this a cold case.
we hope we were able to explain what has happened to one of many missing indigenous women around Canada, tune in again, goodbye.
Commission of Canada “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Calls to Action” https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/british-columbians-our-governments/indigenous-people/aboriginal-peoples-documents/calls_to_action_english2.pdf 2 June 2008 accessed 4 October 2021.
Ira Belsky “Royalty-Free Music & SFX for Video Creators” https://artlist.io Na, Na, 2015 accessed 5 October 2021.
CBC News “Unresolved: Bella Marie Laboucan-Mclean” https://www.cbc.ca/missingandmurdered/mmiw/profiles/bella-marie-laboucan-mclean 20 July 2013, accessed 5 October 2021
“The death of Bella Marie Laboucan-McLean” Stories of the Unsolved https://storiesoftheunsolved.com/2019/03/11/the-death-of-bella-marie-laboucan-mclean/ (2019, July 16) Accessed October 15, 2021
The Globe and Mail “How a Cree woman fell to death, and no one saw anything” https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/how-a-cree-woman-fell-to-death-and-no-one-saw-anything/article22167039/ 19 December 2014 accessed 5 October 2021.
“Find Free Psd Ai Eps Graphic Items” Download Free Psd Ai Eps Graphic Design Files RSS 19 October 2020, accessed 12 October 2021 https://flevix.com/vector-frozen-blood-background/