B.J. had been buried in one of the plots the church provided for those who could not pay. After B.J.’s burial, Maria went to the cemetery and tried to get the adjacent plot reserved so she could be buried next to him. There she learned that it was church policy to assign these burial plots in the order in which people died. When her attempts to secure the plot failed, the strong-willed Maria told her husband that if the only way she could be buried next to her son would be to be the next to die, then that’s what she was prepared to do.
In a move that would have been inconceivable before B.J.’s death, David Tanasichuk went to the police station and approached Detective Cummings and Detective Sergeant Fiander, explaining that he needed to ask a particular favor. He told the detectives about Maria’s ultimatum. Was there anything they could do, he wondered, to ensure that that plot could be reserved for Maria? In despair over the possibility of losing both his wife and his stepson, David cried when he asked the detectives if there was any way they could do this for him.
To David’s great relief, the detectives were able to intercede on Maria’s behalf and secure a promise that the adjacent plot would be saved for her. When David and Maria saw that they were going to get what they wanted, a thankful David returned to the police station to speak with Detective Cummings. He told the detective that if he and Maria were ever successful in becoming parents, they wanted Cummings to be the godfather.
That was the situation and the state of the relationship when Cummings went to the apartment to talk to David about his missing person report.
A police officer may wear many different hats in the course of a single shift. He or she may go from investigating a robbery to dealing compassionately with someone mentally challenged, from interviewing a reluctant witness to trying to resuscitate a baby who’s not breathing. All day, every day, police are making complicated mental and emotional adjustments. Individual officers’ reasons for choosing police work will vary, but many are drawn by a need to preserve social order, a desire to serve others, a passion for righting wrongs and the hope, however often it is disappointed, in the possibility of goodness and redemption.
Because of the constant emotional demands of the job, police officers, as part of their training, are taught to maintain an objective distance from both criminals and victims. To do otherwise would make the job, with its frequent exposure to the horrific things people do to one another, too emotionally draining. All officers have cases that get to them, the cases they will carry for their whole lives. After the many contacts the department had with the Tanasichuks—with all the time and energy that had gone into helping them through B.J.’s death, the constant worry about David’s potential explosion and the relationships that had resulted—Maria’s disappearance was going to be one of them.
In many departments, standard operating procedure is not to act until an adult has been gone for more than twenty-four or forty-eight hours, unless that person is elderly or somehow compromised. Certain departments have levels of concern, from the more serious “Missing Person” to the more casual “Compassion to Locate” for cases where the primary reason was not fear of a crime but concern for a worried family. But Maria Tanasichuk was known to be a homebody who, according to her husband’s report, had been gone for nearly two weeks. This, along with David’s possible relapse into serious drug use, stirred concern for both husband and wife in the minds of the detectives who knew them best.
Although it is common in cases where a husband reports his wife missing to take a close look at the family dynamics, the Tanasichuk matter was not immediately flagged as a possible domestic incident. The Tanasichuks were not a couple known for their domestic problems; quite the opposite, they were fiercely protective of one another and known to be extremely close. They were a couple whom others envied for their loving relationship and the way they seemed to enjoy doing so many things together. Friends and neighbors alike spoke of their closeness and their devotion, particularly of Maria’s devotion to her husband.
In an effort to explain the intensity of Maria’s loyalty to David, B.J.’s aunt, Maria’s former sister-in-law Cindy Richardson, described the following event: David had stolen some guns from a gun shop around the corner and hidden them in the apartment. When police searched and found the guns, David and Maria were both charged.
Cindy said, “…She ended up going to court. And the judge knew about Dave and his character. And of course, I didn’t know he was this bad character as he turned out to be, and so they told Maria if she would stay away from Dave, she could have no time at all, but she said no, I’m sticking by my man. First, she was getting three months, but when she said she was sticking by Dave, the judge said he was giving her six months to think about it, because he figured she could start her life over without Dave. But she was in love and she was going to stand by her man, and she ended up going to jail in Saint John. And so she calls me from the courthouse, crying her head off, can I come and get Billy Joe, she’s got no one to take care of him, her mum don’t want him. So what else am I going to say? I said of course, Maria, I’ll come get him. And she asks me to come get Billy Joe and get him in school and stuff, and of course I said I would, so in 1991, Billy Joe comes to live with me.”
When Maria got out of jail, she went back to living in the couple’s home, where David later joined her.
Detectives embarked on the investigation hoping that this would be a typical missing person case: that Maria, as David had said, had left to take some time off and visit with an old friend in Saint John. Officers who were fond of her genuinely hoped that she would soon reappear, puzzled that anyone had been alarmed, to rejoin her husband and return to her quiet domestic life.
Nevertheless, David’s rather odd behavior and his former sister-in-law’s comment about “something bad” having happened to Maria roused concern.
On the Monday following David’s call, the Miramichi police began talking to Maria’s friends to establish some of the basic facts pursued in any missing person situation: Maria’s recent state of mind, her current domestic situation as observed by those who knew her best, the likelihood that she would have gone away, where she might have gone—Saint John or elsewhere—and with whom she might be staying. They were looking for which friends or relatives she might have told about her plans and, given David’s conflicting statements about when she left, wanted to create a timeline of when she was last seen.
In a large, anonymous city, where people live isolated lives and frequently don’t bother to know their neighbors, finding people with useful information can be difficult. But Miramichi is a small and old-fashioned place with an old-fashioned sense of community. Weddings, baby showers and wakes are community events. The Miramichi is still a place where kids run in and out of neighbors’ kitchens, call home for permission to stay at a friend’s for dinner and play outside in groups until dark falls and parents call them in. It’s a place of homemade pickles and canned moose meat and salmon on the grill, a place where friends drop in on each other, share meals or go for coffee, regularly check in with each other by phone and keep up with each other’s lives and news.
Maria Tanasichuk might live a humble life without even an automobile for transportation, but in one respect she was very rich in her abundance of close and caring friends. Friends who were regularly in touch. Friends who, even though it had been more than two years since B.J.’s death, understood her pain and were still attentive to her grief.
David had given two conflicting dates—January 14, as he’d stated in his initial phone call to the police, and January 12, which he agreed with Constable Seeley was the correct date on which his wife had left for Saint John on the bus. On the 26th, after reporting his wife missing, he told Seeley that he was traveling to Saint John, about three hours