will betray them is through verb tenses…It may also be that by talking in the past tense, a person will reveal he is being deceptive. Listen to the verb tenses being used in a statement. Inconsistencies in verb tenses can show you what a person is really saying.”7
There was another disturbing piece of information that was distinctly at odds with the story David was telling. While Cummings was in that interview room with David, the detective bureau had received an urgent call from the addiction counseling service at Miramichi Hospital.
In his initial statement to Constable Seeley, David said his counselor at the addiction counseling service had told the couple that they needed to spend some time apart. David Tanasichuk had reiterated that information during the formal interview, explaining in detail the discussion that he and Maria had had about who would leave and where they would go to gain the time apart their counselor had recommended.
Detective Sergeant Fiander, who received the call from the addiction counseling service, learned it was prompted by the newspaper article about Maria’s disappearance and the concerns it raised at the agency regarding Maria’s safety. The addiction counseling service director told Fiander that at the beginning of his treatment, David Tanasichuk had signed a contract with his counselor, agreeing that if his wife or his counselor saw signs of “relapse, agitated, restless temper, aggression of voice, missed appointments without calling to cancel or of risk to society,” he gave them permission to call the police.
The call was made pursuant to that contract and the counseling service’s “risk to third party” policy. The caller informed the police that at prior appointments, David Tanasichuk had stated that sometimes he got so angry he wanted to hurt people, sometimes to the point where he felt like killing someone, and one of the reasons for his drug use was that it took away those urges. The addiction counseling service had received calls from Maria twice during December, expressing concern about David’s drug use and her fear that he might hurt himself or someone else.
David had missed two appointments in January. When he did attend an appointment on January 23, he had come without Maria and didn’t want to talk about his wife, ducking counselor Sylvette Robichaud’s queries about Maria’s absence. At that appointment, Robichaud observed that David seemed like a different man. He discussed with her his interest in writing an article on his drug abuse and his hopes that such an article might be helpful to other drug users. Despite his statement that he wasn’t on drugs, Robichaud felt that he had been using that day and she terminated the session early because his impairment made further discussion futile. As he was leaving, he also violated the boundaries of such a session by attempting to embrace her. Robichaud further reported that she had never told the Tanasichuks that they needed to spend time apart, other than suggesting the occasional hour apart to give each other some space.
Because of the initial confusion about the date of Maria’s disappearance, the investigators had been diligent in trying to find witnesses who could establish the last date when she had been seen in Miramichi. In their interviews, investigators had identified three people who had seen or spoken with Maria on January 15. Her next door neighbor, John Paquet, had spoken to her that morning when she came outside to see if the mail had arrived. He was certain of the date because Paquet was waiting for his guide’s license, which arrived the following day. Maria’s niece in Fredericton had spoken to her on the phone that afternoon, a call that had been interrupted by someone at the door. Finally, Darlene had had coffee with Maria that evening, and at that time the two friends had arranged a shopping trip for the 17th.
The investigators then looked at the information David Tanasichuk had given them about the date of Maria’s departure. He had been very specific in detailing their conversations on January 11, the day before Maria left, and his activities on the 12th, the day she had allegedly taken the bus to Saint John. He had gotten up first and brought Maria her coffee in bed. She had not yet dressed at the time he was ready to leave for his friend Donnie Trevors’s house, where he was going to work on his ATV. She had her bag open on the floor and had begun to pack. David had asked if she was really going and when she said she was, they had embraced and promised to always be good to each other and then he had left. When he returned, Maria was gone.
Why was it, then, that in subsequent days, her friend Darlene would have visited her at the residence twice? Why would Maria have made plans to go shopping with Darlene if she was planning to leave town? Why would she have failed to mention her planned departure to her sister, her best friend, to Cindy Richardson or to her niece, when they spoke on the phone?
Perhaps more interesting was the question of why David had told Darlene, when she stopped by on the 16th, that Maria wasn’t home not because she’d left to go to Saint John, but because she’d gone to a baby shower. Why had he told her sister that she’d gone to Saint John on the 19th and would be back around the 25th? Why had he told another acquaintance that Maria had left on the 20th?
A question all of the officers raised, as they sat around the conference table, was why David had chosen the 26th, two weeks after her supposed departure for Saint John, to become worried enough to report Maria missing?
In part, their interviews suggested, the pressure had come from the increasing level of concern expressed by her sister, her friends and neighbors, who, as many days passed without a sign of Maria, had been phoning the apartment frequently or stopping by, looking for her. But another, more disturbing, explanation also presented itself to these seasoned outdoorsmen. The weather that January had been unseasonably dry. Between January 14 and January 26, the total snowfall was less than two inches. On the 26th, though, they finally had a significant snowstorm during which nearly nine inches fell. Another eight fell the following day. If, as they were beginning to suspect, David was responsible for something ominous happening to Maria and had disposed of her body somewhere in the woods surrounding the city, the tracks of his distinctive three-wheeler, his footprints and her body would still have been visible on the ground between the 15th and the 26th. After the 26th, those tracks would have been wiped out and the body buried under deep snow.
With no idea what they were looking at—whether Maria might have suffered harm at home or elsewhere—the detectives determined that they needed to search the Tanasichuks’ apartment. Their decision to search had dual purposes: first, there was the possibility that the apartment might be a crime scene and second, even if a search suggested that harm had not befallen Maria there, her residence might yield further information about Maria’s whereabouts, her mindset and what clothing and possessions of hers were present. A search would also help them identify what items were missing from the apartment—information which they could get from Maria’s friends—which might corroborate or contradict the information they’d received.
They immediately went to work on crafting a search warrant and supporting affidavit. Not knowing what they were looking for made the task complicated, for they had to anticipate, and describe in enough detail to meet legal standards, a wide variety of items and areas (the apartment, out-buildings, trash cans, basement, common areas, the yard and the Tanasichuks’ vehicles) to be included within the scope of the warrant. The investigation didn’t stop while they were writing the warrant. While some of the team went to work on the documents, others went back out into the community to continue to interview witnesses who might have information about Maria.
Although the search warrant for the apartment had the highest priority, they also had to prepare warrants for Maria’s jewelry and the pawn and sales records at the pawn shop. They had to prepare warrants for Maria’s prescription records and arrange to interview her doctor. They needed a warrant for records at the addiction counseling service. Someone also had to do a follow-up interview there and get a statement. They still had to decide, from a myriad of possibilities, where they should next focus their efforts to locate Maria Tanasichuk, while their current to-do list was already growing long.
At this point,
