It’s February 21st, 2016, 27-year-old Caitlin Potts is recorded on CCTV entering the Orchard Park Mall in Kelowna, British Columbia. This is the last confirmed sighting of her. Caitlin is a Samson Cree woman originally from Alberta who had moved to British Columbia only a few months prior. Over the next 24-hours, Caitlin is reportedly seen in Enderby, BC, a rural town 101 km (~63 miles) north of Kelowna where she lives, and texts her sister about a man she had met the night before and her plans to return to Alberta. Nothing is publicly known about the man, but her sister has revealed that Caitlin had made contact with an unknown person over the classified site Kijiji. This person was leaving the Okanagan, the region where all of this takes place, and driving to Calgary, Alberta. Caitlin had made arrangements to meet this person on the evening of February 22nd with the intention of catching a ride to Calgary which would take just under six hours, if they were leaving from Enderby. It’s unclear what she was going to do in Calgary as Caitlin is from Edmonton which is where all of her family live, and is three hours north of Calgary. Also mentioned is Jason Hnatiuk whom Caitlin claims owes her money. The courts have issued a no contact order that makes it illegal for Jason to interact with Caitlin, but she has been texting him demanding money anyway and the two had seen each other on Valentine’s Day.
Her text messages and Facebook posts stop on February 22nd. On March 1st, Caitlin’s mother reports her missing to the Vernon North Okanagan detachment of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The RCMP seemingly do nothing for the next 20 days. During this period of time, Caitlin’s mother and sister travel to the Okanagan and begin doing all they can to find her. They contact local media, put up missing persons posters, and even go knocking on doors asking if anyone knows or has seen anything. There are a lot of natives in the Okanagan, and their communities join in efforts to find Caitlin. This must have spurred the RCMP to act as they put out a missing persons alert on March 21st and announce that the Major Crimes Unit is involved which is not a unit that normally investigates missing people.
Like many indigenous people in Canada, Caitlin had a hard life. She was in foster care until she was 11 years old as her mother was either a drunk or a drug addict or both. Despite this, Caitlin was on the honour roll during high school, though after graduating Caitlin became a junkie herself, had a son, and seemingly lost custody of him. There’s little mention of her son and no mention of his father. In August of 2014, Caitlin was assaulted by Jason at the Forum Hotel in Edmonton. This was captured by CCTV and Jason would be convicted of the crime in May, 2017. Caitlin’s family categorise Jason as an abusive boyfriend, but he disputes being her boyfriend. According to him, Caitlin was a prostitute whom he solicited during a dark time in his life.
Jason relocated to Enderby, which might be where he’s originally from as he owns a seemingly large rural property there, after the assault in order to clean up his life. According to Jason, he had still been texting Caitlin despite the no contact order, and she simply showed up in Enderby in fall 2015. He claims she had expected to live with him which he had no desire to do. Her family are of the belief that Jason had invited her to come live with him. According to Jason, when he told her to leave, she called the RCMP to have him arrested for violating the no contact order. According to her family, she was living with Jason and got into a domestic dispute that resulted in the police being called. Regardless, afterwards Caitlin ended up living in a women’s shelter in Salmon Arm, which is about 25 km (~15 miles) from Enderby, where she worked at a Tim Hortons and took some kind of post secondary education. She eventually found a roommate and moved out of the shelter.
In May, 2017, the RCMP announced that they believed Caitlin was likely dead and that foul play was involved. They have said very little since. Her family continues to hold vigils and speak to the media.
In an unusual twist, Jason Hnatiuk has spoken out very publicly, not because he cares about Caitlin, but because he wants the RCMP to leave him alone. They spent days searching his property with forensic teams and scent dogs, named him publicly multiple times, subjected him to multiple interviews, and even attempted a “Mr. Big Sting” targeting him. If you’re unaware of what a Mr. Big Sting is, that’s probably because it’s illegal in pretty much every civilised country other than Canada. Basically, how it works is undercover cops inject themselves into your life somehow. They’ll make repeated efforts if they’re unsuccessful at first. They then offer you large quantities of money to do something in furtherance of a criminal organisation. After paying you thousands, and thousands of dollars over the course of weeks or months, they tell you the crime boss wants to meet you. When you meet the boss, he tells you that he has moles embedded in the police, and knows that they were investigating you. He needs you to confess so he can cover all of his bases. When you tell him you were involved in an investigation but had nothing to do with the crime, he insists that you confess to the crime. He threatens to stop working with you, offers you more money after you confess, implies harm might come to you, offers to bribe investigators so that they leave you alone. After you’re coerced into a false confession, you’re then arrested and the Crown Prosecutors play the tape of you confessing at your trial. Trials coming as a result of these stings are wholly dependant on the confession as there’s never any forensic evidence. They wouldn’t need the sting if there were any.
Jason claims someone showed up at his door claiming he needed help with a flat tire. He then offers Jason a job counting money for a loan shark. It pays $300 a day cash. Jason spends weeks travelling around western Canada, staying in nice hotels, and counting money. When the boss meets with him, Jason tells him that he knew they were cops the entire time. In interviews Jason explains he already knew what a Mr. Big Sting was when they showed up at his door, and just wanted the easy money.
It would seem that we’re left with three plausible explanations: 1 – Jason murdered Caitlin; 2 – The mystery man she met on the 21st murdered Caitlin; and, 3 – the person who offered to driver her to Calgary murdered Caitlin; however, there is a fourth possibility. As many as three other women went missing from the same region between Caitlin’s disappearance and September, 2017. It was actually four, but one of the cases was solved.
In July, 2016, Deanna Wertz disappeared from Enderby while taking a walk near her house. No trace of her has been found. Traci Genereaux went missing from Vernon in May of 2017. Her remains were later found on a farm the following October. Nicole Bell disappeared from Sicamous in September, 2017. Her remains were found outside of Salmon Arm nearly eight years later. The police publicly named Curtis Sagmoen, whose family owns the farm where Genereaux’s remains were found, as a suspect in the Genereaux and Bell murders. They lacked enough evidence to charge him. He has since died. Was Sagmoen a serial killer responsible for all four cases?
This is the last one that meets all the criteria. I don't think I can check all the boxes again. I'll do two more from BC and one from Saskatchewan. After that I'm going attempt one from Japan, but that requires a lot of translating as the English-language coverage on the case leads a lot to be desired. That write up will be very long and will take a while.
