She had a pink bunny on her right shoulder, a trillium flower on her left ankle and the name “Billy Joe” on her left forearm.
Asked if he knew for sure that Maria had taken the bus, David said he’d considered calling the bus station, but decided that wouldn’t prove anything because he’d taken the bus many times and knew you could buy a ticket on the bus. She probably didn’t pre-purchase a ticket because she was a homebody who never left the house except for grocery shopping, bill paying or cleaning B.J.’s grave.
David described Maria’s jewelry, saying that she wore a lot of it, often fifteen or twenty rings at a time, which Cummings agreed he remembered seeing in the past, and David told the investigator that he hadn’t seen any of her jewelry around the house so he presumed she had taken all of her jewelry with her, including some rings that had belonged to B.J. that she wore for sentimental reasons. He described some of Maria’s favorite pieces in detail.
Afterward, they discussed the idea of Cummings coming by the apartment and looking at pictures of Maria, to get a better idea of what jewelry she had and often wore. Later they did this, and David used some photographs of Maria wearing her jewelry to help remember what she usually wore, including her 90% Devil pendant.
What she had left behind, though, was her prescription medication, David said, along with the red devil teddy bear that she called “Baby B” for her son B.J. and her “sooky” blanket that she wrapped around herself for comfort when she curled up on the couch. David told Cummings that Maria kissed the bear every night, made him kiss the bear and would not go to sleep unless it was on her pillow.
Because state of mind is such an important factor in evaluating any disappearance, they next discussed David and Maria’s relationship at the time she left. Although the interview up to that point had been generally cordial, things got tense when the detective tried to explore the state of the relationship between husband and wife.
Cummings reminded David that he had told Constable Seeley that things hadn’t been good between them because of Maria’s refusal to give him space. David agreed, saying that things actually hadn’t been good between them for years, but that it had gotten much worse after Maria was diagnosed with Hepatitis C back in late August or September. While the couple hadn’t had physical fights, they had argued often about David’s drug use. David resented her interference, which was persistent and stifling, even though he understood that she did it out of genuine concern for his health. Maria would tell him to go look in the mirror, because he was killing himself. But he couldn’t see it, even after his son came to visit and his altered appearance made the boy cry.
David admitted sometimes injecting hydromorphone, readily acknowledging buying pills on the street as well. He had last used drugs, he told Cummings, about a week prior to the interview.
He had started getting worried after Maria had been gone for a week without him hearing from her, and around the 17th or 18th he began calling people, though he couldn’t provide the names of the people he’d called, referring Cummings to the list he’d given to Constable Seeley and the people he’d contacted in Saint John. David said that he had a list of the people he’d contacted at home, pages and pages of them, which they agreed Cummings would come to the apartment to pick up.
David had brought to the interview two prescription bottles for pills prescribed to Maria. Both were dated January 6. The first was an antidepressant. The bottle had initially contained sixty pills and the label instructed Maria to take one half tablet daily for the first seven days. When Cummings later counted the pills, there were fifty-five and one half. The second prescription was for an anti-anxiety medication. That bottle was empty. The recent prescriptions led to a discussion of Maria’s state of mind, and David said that she was tattered. Since her Hepatitis diagnosis, she’d been convinced that her life was over. Maria, he said, cared more about what happened to him than about anything else in the world.
When Cummings started going back through his notes of their conversation and writing out the details for a formal statement, David objected and became angry, stating that none of the stuff about their relationship or his drug use was going to help them find Maria.
In response to the question, “What do you think happened to Maria?” David admitted to being of two minds. A part of him thought she was staying with a friend, maybe had hooked up with someone, maybe was back on drugs herself. Another part worried that something might have happened to her. What he wanted, he said, was for someone to come and tell him she was all right.
When Cummings attempted to explore the possibility that something had happened to Maria, asking, “What if she’s not all right?” David replied angrily and threatened to walk out. Then he began to cry.
After David’s statement was reviewed, agreed on and signed, Detective Cummings then made the distraught man a promise. He said, “I want to find Maria as much as you do, okay? And I will find Maria, all right? I will.”
Four Heads Are Better Than One
Following David Tanasichuk’s interview on January 29, Detective Cummings drove David back to his apartment. The next day, Cummings returned there to pick up the list of people David had contacted and to get the contact information for a friend of Maria’s in Ontario who had been mentioned during the interview. The man he found at home that morning seemed to have undergone yet another dramatic change. This was neither the edgy man with glazed eyes the detective had found following David’s phone call to report Maria missing on the 27th, nor the coughing, spitting, highly emotional, weeping and sometimes argumentative man he’d interviewed the day before.
On January 30, despite there being no new information regarding his missing wife, David Tanasichuk acted light-hearted and cheerful. He chatted easily about drug dealing on the river and then asked Cummings for a favor, saying he had a problem with which he needed help. He said two of his friends had given him a hydroponic plant-growing setup to hold for them because they were afraid they were about to be raided by the police. Then he’d grown nervous himself about the risks of being found with the equipment and had thrown it away, only to find that it was worth $5000. He was concerned, he told Cummings, that his friends might seek retribution. Would Cummings be willing to give him a fake appearance notice so that it would look like the materials had been seized by the police?
When Cummings complied and produced the requested appearance notice, David had another question. Since Maria was gone, he wondered, was he still allowed to have Maria’s guns in the house? Cummings told David that, in his opinion, the guns were okay because Maria still lived there, but he offered to run the question by the department’s firearms officer.
During the entire time that Cummings was at the Tanasichuks’ apartment, despite the fact he was there to obtain a list of people who might have information about Maria, David never mentioned her except to inquire about her guns. Far from acting like an anxious husband deeply concerned about his missing wife, he acted like someone relieved that he’d gotten over a hurdle—like the police interview he’d been avoiding—who believed his responses had been satisfactory and he was in the clear.
It was at that point, based on David’s bubbly, relaxed demeanor and conduct, that Cummings’s suspicions about David as a suspect firmed up. A review of the information gathered thus far in the investigation reinforced that feeling.
After
