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Chapter 5

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 27^th, 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 consulting with the department’s firearms officer, Cummings returned later in the day to collect all the guns and ammunition in the house, to be held until Maria’s return. David handed over four guns and ammunition, stating that that was everything they had.

Back at their offices, the detectives met in the conference room with their supervising sergeant, Paul Fiander, to discuss the case, sharing the information each of them had gathered from all sources, including David Tanasichuk’s interview, and testing the information David had supplied against that which had come from other sources. Once it was all out, they would decide how to proceed in their search for Maria Tanasichuk.

In evaluating the state of the couple’s relationship, the detectives shared what they had learned from Maria’s friends and neighbors—that while David and Maria had been a couple seemingly very much in love, since B.J.’s death Maria had experienced long bouts of depression, making her emotionally unavailable, while David had increasingly taken refuge in drugs. His drug use, in turn, had made Maria hyper-vigilant and suspicious. She wanted to know where he was going whenever he left the house. She had taken to inspecting his body, his pockets and even his socks when he returned home, looking for drugs, drug paraphernalia or signs of drug use. Maria was willing to do anything to help the man who was, witnesses told the investigators, the center of her universe. A man she had been willing to go to jail for, even if it meant being separated from her young son rather than end the relationship.

David’s response to Maria’s anxious questions and her efforts at supervision had been to stay away from home, often for days at a time, so that he could indulge his drug habit without being questioned. His behavior and deteriorating physical condition deeply worried Maria and she had taken to calling his friends to ask if he was with them. To prevent him from using their scarce cash for drugs, she had started hiding their money in her bra.

Despite her many years of total devotion to David, recently Maria had seemed to be reaching a terminal point, according to those closest to her. She told friends that she had grown sick of the arguing, the fights, David’s absences, drugged-out hazes and deception. After David had been too stoned to get off the couch and attend B.J.’s memorial fundraiser on January 4, Maria announced she’d had enough.

Something detectives do when they’re dealing with a crime victim, or, as in this case, where all they knew they had was a disappearance and thus a suspected crime victim, is to build a profile of the victim so that they know what would be her typical behavior, habits and routines. This profile, known as “victimology,” is created by speaking with people who knew the victim, as well as from information learned from searching the victim’s dwelling and reviewing phone, computer and other domestic records. In Maria’s case, where they knew that she was housebound and didn’t use credit cards, have an employer or own a car, their information came primarily from speaking with her sister, her niece, close friends who were regularly in touch and her neighbors.

From these sources, they had learned many details about Maria that didn’t mesh with what David had told them. Maria’s niece and her best friend both told investigators that Maria was deeply attached to the little red devil bear that had been her last gift from her dead son and would never leave home without it. David himself had said that Maria kissed it every night and couldn’t sleep without Baby B on her pillow.

Multiple witnesses confirmed Maria’s attachment to her apartment because it was where she had spent so many years raising her son. Because of her fondness for B.J.’s memory and his possessions, people told the investigators, she was very unlikely to be willing to leave the apartment for any length of time. Her niece reported that after Maria and David had journeyed to Saint John for her wedding, a trip on which Maria had taken her little bear and her “sooky” blanket, Maria told people in Miramichi that she wasn’t interested in ever going to Saint John again.

It was not just her attachment to the apartment that made Maria’s reported decision to go to Saint John so suspicious. Maria’s former sister-in-law, Cindy Richardson, told investigators that when she was at the cemetery visiting B.J.’s grave, it was untended. Maria had been very faithful about that.

Maria’s next door neighbor, John Paquet, an avuncular former military man who hunted with David and was very fond of Maria, reported that Maria had explicitly told him that if one of them were ever to leave, it would have to be David, because the place held too many memories for her.

Cindy Richardson had told Cummings, “Darlene Gertley called me and said she was worried about Maria and had I heard from her? I’d called Maria on the 11^th, because the week before was [the fundraiser] and I know she was in bad shape then, and she told me Dave was back on the shit again, and she wanted to get back home to check on Dave, to see if he was still home, worried that he’d taken off. So she didn’t want to hang around and talk to people…Maria was real rundown looking. She had circles under her eyes and she was so stressed out and she hadn’t slept for days and who knew if she ate? And I hugged her and kissed her and said, Maria, call me anytime, you know. I’ll be there for you. So on the 11^th, I called her, and that’s the last time we talked.

“So Darlene and I figured it had been enough time, and the first thing I thought of was, “I’m calling Saint John. So here I am calling up Saint John…I think this was the 23^rd or something. And I told mum Maria was supposed to have gone to Saint John, and mum said, ‘Funny, I haven’t seen her. If Maria’s in town, she’ll surely come to see me or [her brother-in-law].’ So mum said she’d get [the brother-in-law] and Billy to go around and check up with old friends if anyone had seen her. And nobody had seen hide nor tail of her.”

What investigators are looking for, in the case of a missing person, is whether she has departed in significant ways from her usual behavior. Nearly every aspect of the story David was telling them marked a significant departure. It seemed unlikely to the investigators that Maria, who spent days at a time huddling in her pajamas on the sofa and who was so strongly attached to her apartment, would suddenly decide to leave town. It seemed improbable that a woman who regularly spoke by phone to her sister, her niece and her close friends and visited with them frequently would leave town without a word to anyone, or that she would be gone for two weeks without being in contact with anyone she knew either in Miramichi or in Saint John, where she still had many friends.

It seemed suspicious that a woman who, only a little more than a week before her sudden departure, had consulted her doctor for medicine to help her with anxiety and depression would leave town without it; yet David had given the medicine bottles, one barely touched, the other empty, to Cummings and reported that she’d left them behind.

Investigators found no one who knew of Maria taking any trips without David; just a week before, despite her discouragement and depression and the fact that they had been arguing frequently, Maria had been fearful of leaving David alone when he might need her and she had refused to leave for a mere three days with her best friend, Darlene.

Given how attached to her jewelry collection her friends said that Maria was, they felt she would never leave her cherished jewelry behind. Even David had said she wouldn’t do that. Yet immediately after the last date on which anyone had seen Maria, David had been pawning pieces of jewelry that he specifically told Detective Cummings that Maria had taken with her.

And then there was that small, but telling, comment that Paul Fiander had noticed while monitoring Tanasichuk’s interview with Cummings from another room. During their discussion about Maria’s jewelry, her attachment to it and her habits about wearing it, Tanasichuk had said: “…See, Maria was the type where one week she’d wear them all and the next week she’d wear none or just a couple.” Maria was. David had not used the word is, suggesting a present connection, but was, suggesting that Maria, and her choices about what jewelry she would select and wear, was a thing of the past. This comment acquired greater significance when meshed with what they were learning about the fate of some of Maria’s jewelry. In his book on statement analysis, I Know You Are Lying, Mark McClish observes, “One way that people’s words 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 17^th.

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 12^th, 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 16^th, 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 19^th and would be back around the 25^th? Why had he told another acquaintance that Maria had left on the 20^th?

A question all of the officers raised, as they sat around the conference table, was why David had chosen the 26^th, 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 26^th, 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 15^th and the 26^th. After the 26^th, 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, the investigation was no longer regarded as simply an attempt to locate a missing person. Nor, though the police had to consider the possibility, did this look like a case of suicide, even though witnesses agreed that Maria had been depressed. The pattern of lies David Tanasichuk had told, coupled with the information received from witnesses and their victim analysis which suggested that Maria had departed significantly from all of her normal patterns of behavior, made the investigators feel strongly that they were looking at a potential domestic homicide, with David Tanasichuk as their primary suspect.