the Canadian Police Information Center. Her mysterious disappearance and recognition of the Tanasichuk name from prior cases involving David as well as the story of B.J.’s death quickly grabbed media attention. Stories about Maria’s disappearance began to appear in newspapers and the Miramichi community grew more and more concerned.
Shortly before noon on the day scheduled for his interview, David called Detective Sergeant Paul Fiander to say that he was in Saint John, where he’d gotten a list of Maria’s old friends and was planning to contact them to see if anyone had heard from her. He reported that he would be returning to Miramichi either late that night or on the following day. Later, he called the Miramichi dispatch and told them that if Detective Cummings was looking for him, he had gone to his mother’s in Saint John. He left a contact phone number.
Later that morning, David called Maria’s friend, Darlene, and told her he was in Saint John. Then he tried to convince her that she was wrong about the dates on which she had told police she had last seen Maria, and that she had last seen Maria at the apartment on January 12. Darlene reminded him that she was away visiting her mother on that date and also of their conversation on the 16th, when she’d stopped by and he’d told her Maria wasn’t home because she’d gone to a christening. David disagreed, saying that Maria had gone to Amanda Malley’s baby shower that day.
Concerned by the odd nature of the phone call, Darlene phoned Detective Cummings and repeated the conversation to him.
David also called the ex-husband of his upstairs neighbors and asked him to feed the Tanasichuk’s dog while he was away. While David was in Saint John, he was contacted by a reporter from Global News, Dave Crase. Crase had seen the police press release about Maria Tanasichuk being missing and had recognized the names both from David Tanasichuk’s past brushes with the law and from the events surrounding B.J.’s death. Crase contacted Tanasichuk and asked for an interview. At first, David refused the interview, but when Crase pressured him, suggesting that refusal would demonstrate his lack of concern about Maria’s whereabouts and welfare, David agreed.
He gave the television interview to Global News from his mother’s house in Saint John. It appeared on the six o’clock news on the evening of January 28. In the segment, David told the interviewer that things between himself and Maria were fine when she left. He described the day she left and said that he believed Maria had taken the bus to Saint John and he presumed that she had taken a cab to the bus station. David said that his concern for his wife began after he hadn’t heard from her for four or five days, and he told the reporter that the police suspected some of Maria’s friends were lying for her and helping her to hide. Then he made a plea to the general public for information about his wife’s whereabouts.
With David out of town and unable to be interviewed, the detectives continued to speak with the Tanasichuks’ friends and neighbors. They learned that what others were saying was inconsistent in many respects with what they’d been hearing from David.
Police officers have a motto (from former US President Ronald Reagan) that they operate by: “Trust, then verify.” In any investigation, given the uncertainties, inconsistencies, faulty memories and the way that full information can often take repeated interviews to obtain, detectives like to have multiple sources to establish any facts on which they’re going to rely. This meant that while David Tanasichuk was Maria’s husband and therefore presumed to be the person closest to her and most likely to have the information they needed to help locate her, they wanted to check what he was telling them against what they could learn from her friends, relatives and the Tanasichuks’ neighbors.
In this case, they were also forced to turn to other sources in seeking information useful in locating Maria, because despite the concern he had voiced about his missing wife, David had thus far been unwilling or unable to provide much of substance that the police could use in trying to locate her. They had no idea what she was wearing when last seen or what she’d taken with her. They didn’t have a name and address for the friend she’d gone to visit. They needed an explanation as to why, if she had packed luggage to be gone for a week, she’d left behind something as important as her prescription medicines. Even something as basic as the day she’d left town was uncertain.
The investigators suspected that David’s vagueness might be due to his admitted issues with drug use. A person under the influence of drugs can have a fuzzy memory and be unable to recall dates and times. But a person who expresses deep concern about a disappearance, yet seems unwilling to assist in investigating that disappearance, also raises suspicion. He had spoken about providing names and phone numbers but hadn’t provided them. He had agreed to an interview but instead left town. He had said during his television appearance that he believed her friends were hiding her, yet the friends police had spoken with had not heard from her. The significant dates he was giving the police differed from those of other witnesses. And now, if Maria’s friend Darlene was telling the truth, he was trying to persuade people the police might interview that their own recall of significant dates was faulty.
In his brilliant book about homicide detectives in Baltimore, Maryland, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, David Simon observes the following from the police officers whom he has interviewed:
It is a God-given truth: Everyone lies. And this most basic of axioms has three corollaries:
A. Murderers lie because they have to.
B. Witnesses and other participants lie because they think they have to.
C. Everyone else lies for the sheer joy of it, and to uphold a general principle that under no circumstances do you provide accurate information to a cop.6
In truth, there are plenty of honest witnesses. But even with well-meaning witnesses, obtaining information and then determining if it is “truth” is a complicated business.
Good people tell the truth—or try to—or tell the truth as they remember it. Witnesses may tell as much of the truth as they think will reflect favorably on them and maybe leave out the parts that reflect poorly on them. Perhaps they were under the influence of drugs or alcohol and have poor memories of what happened. Sometimes, as with the case of a man with a reputation for violence like David Tanasichuk, they’re afraid to tell the truth because of who the parties are and their fear of retaliation.
In some cases, witnesses may know something but they’re actually unaware of the significance of what they know. Sometimes their memories are vague or unreliable and it takes multiple interviews to jog the information back into consciousness and coherence. Sometimes it can take more than one interview to build the trust necessary to get witnesses to talk freely and share what they know. Detectives are often forced to walk a fine line between re-interviewing in order to conduct a competent investigation and over-interviewing and risking the charge of harassing the witness.
All of these factors combine to complicate the investigator’s task. In this case, the murky nature of the information available, combined with the deep concern and fear for her safety expressed by Maria’s friends and relatives, made the detectives certain that Maria’s disappearance warranted further investigation.
On January 28, after hearing David’s former sister-in-law’s ominous words at the courthouse about “something bad” happening to Maria and following his conversations
