She had been in Prince Edward Island (PEI) from January 10th to the 13th, visiting her terminally-ill mother, and she had borrowed money from Maria for a rental car to make the trip. She said Maria’s relationship with David had been deteriorating recently because of David’s increasing drug use. Because Maria was so very depressed and constantly anxious about her failing marital situation, Darlene had urged Maria to come on the trip with her and get a change of scenery. Maria had declined, saying she didn’t want to leave her house or David, because she was concerned about David’s drug use and thought she ought to be there in case he needed her.
On the day Darlene returned, January 13, she had stopped by Maria’s at around 6:30 in the evening. David and Maria were both home and Maria was in her pajamas. On the 14th, Darlene had been next door visiting Maria’s neighbors, and decided to drop in to see Maria. Maria was fine, but David was on the couch with one of his migraine headaches. There was tension in the air and it appeared that the couple was not getting along, so Darlene left.
Darlene told the detective that Maria had been quite depressed for about a month, because she felt that her relationship with David was worsening. David had been getting more deeply into drugs, they had been fighting about his absences and the money he was spending and Maria was doing everything in her power to stop him. Darlene explained that Maria had long believed that because she’d been able to kick her own drug habit through willpower, David could do the same with her help. Her lack of success was sapping her energy and she rarely left the apartment.
Darlene said that she had returned the following day, January 15, for coffee with Maria, at which time the two of them made plans for a shopping trip on the 17th to return some unwanted Christmas gifts. That evening, Maria was complaining about a sore thumb, the result of a scuffle she’d had with David over money the night before. On leaving, Darlene gave her a kiss and hug and promised to repay the money she owed when they got together on the 17th.
The following day, January 16, when Darlene stopped by to visit Maria, David answered the door. He told her Maria wasn’t home and that she’d gone to a christening with Pauline and Sandy. David’s statement puzzled Darlene. Maria had not mentioned attending any christening when they were together the previous day, though it was something Maria would normally have shared, and Darlene thought she knew Maria’s friends and didn’t know of anyone named Pauline or Sandy. At his request, she gave David a ride to his friend Donnie Trevors’s house.
On the 17th, when they were scheduled to go shopping together, Darlene called Maria several times to make arrangements but got no answer. She left messages and when they weren’t returned she went to the house but found there was no one home. She continued to telephone her friend or visit Maria’s house daily, but Darlene’s calls weren’t answered and she never found Maria at home.
The interviews by Constable Seeley and Detectives Cummings and Dewey Gillespie in the days after David reported Maria missing produced numerous other dates and stories about Maria’s schedule and the time of her departure. They also produced some disturbing revelations about David’s behavior regarding Maria’s property in the two-week interval between the date Maria allegedly left for Saint John and the date when her husband reported her missing. The Miramichi detectives hoped that the information they would learn from David’s interview would explain the discrepancies and finally give them a set of hard facts to go on in their search for Maria Tanasichuk.
To improve their chances of locating Maria, at the same time that they were interviewing witnesses and trying to obtain a detailed statement from David, the Miramichi police sent Maria’s description and what details they had about her disappearance to news media and police departments in Canada via CPIC, 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