The Legacy Letters

by Janice Landry

  Ann said she only has one regret, which has to do with timing. “It [the letter] is twenty-four years too late.” She wished she had told the public back in 1992 exactly how she felt about their unwavering support.

  Outwardly, Ann may have appeared to be weathering her trauma adequately, or even well, but privately, she had admitted she had times of profound anger, which she wrote about in the letter.

  Ann’s Christian faith may have wavered but it has never disappeared. A woman of deep moral conviction, Ann has worked through her experiences to speak about Andrea and her family at conferences, schools, and churches; her charitable nature has also extended to me, and to you, twenty-five years later. Perhaps the most telling aspect of her strength and character was her immediate reaction to my first call to her home, when I got her out of bed.

  When I asked what she thought of my reaching out to her, after so many years, she immediately responded, without missing a beat, “Gratitude; immediately, gratitude. Thank you, so much. She’s not forgotten.”

  Ann said her husband Wayne has been incredibly supportive and still “looks after me.” She said her husband is a key source of strength for her.

  Ann now has arthritis and limited mobility. As time passes, the continuing lack of answers weighs heavily. “I am seventy-three. I am afraid I am going to die and I may never know [what happened],” she said in a quiet voice.

  The uncertainty and trauma has been insurmountable for some, like daughter Maria.

  “I can deal with the truth. I can’t deal with not knowing,” Ann King concluded.

  Ann King’s Legacy Letter

  A big thank you to the people of Nova Scotia.

  Are you discouraged at times and losing faith in humanity?

  Well, here is my attempt to uplift your spirits, and share how I have kept my positive attitude about how good, kind, and perfect we humans really can be.

  As you know, we are all born with the ability to make choices, and sometimes those choices are not in the best interest of others or ourselves.

  Such was the case in 1992, when our daughter Andrea King came to Nova Scotia to study. You may remember she arrived at the airport and was never heard from or seen again. Her skeletal remains were found eleven months later.

  She had been murdered.

  Someone had made a bad choice.

  We, her family, were devastated and spent many hours in Nova Scotia talking to police and being interviewed by the media.

  Now, twenty-four years later, we still miss Andrea and her murder has not been solved.

  We coped; well, not all of us.

  Our oldest, biological daughter, Maria, couldn’t cope. She sadly took her own life eight years ago.

  In many ways, the effects on our family have been many and varied.

  Yet so often I have been asked, “How are you holding up?” “Where do you get your strength?”

  Firstly, I want to sincerely thank the people of Nova Scotia, so very much, for all the support.

  From the police to the unknown persons who gave us hope, encouragement, and their love.

  To the people who anonymously gave money, paid for our meals, sent flowers, wrote letters, et cetera.

  To the artist who painted a lovely picture of Andrea.

  To the lady who gave us white roses to put on her gravesite.

  To the hotel [management] who gave us complimentary accommodation.

  To the family who loaned us their personal vehicle to drive around.

  To the families who gave us their willing hospitality.

  To the many police officers who were so understanding and sensitive to our needs.

  To the media who interviewed us with compassion.

  To the generosity of Victims Assistance for hours of counselling.

  All this has helped us deal with our loss.

  For these acts of pure kindness – we thank you.

  However, there is something I need to share with you all.

  I have a strong Christian faith and know that God has been by my side each step of the way. When I couldn’t cope, I asked for His help and somehow He lifted me out of the depths of despair.

  Oh! Yes! There were times I considered taking my own life just so I would see Andrea and Maria again.

  I am not perfect, and my faith was shaken terribly during some of those years. Yet it has been that faith, and the kindness of the human race, that has carried me through.

  Thank you, and God bless you all.

  4

  Where is Kimberly McAndrew?

  Kimberly McAndrew’s disappearance haunts and disturbs many, including me. It is etched into our memory and psyche, a mystery that is painful to revisit and, most importantly, heartbreaking for the family. Kimberly is still listed as a missing person on the Halifax Regional Police website, twenty-eight years after she was last seen, in Halifax, August 12, 1989.

  What we do know is that Kimberly finished her shift a little early that day at a Canadian Tire store and clocked out, according to an old Halifax Regional Police press release which I have kept in my files.

  The release stated: “On August 12, 1989, 19 year-old Kimberly McAndrew disappeared without a trace after leaving work at the Canadian Tire Store on Quinpool Road. ‘She punched out at 4:21 p.m., walked out the back door into the parking lot, and that’s where the trail ends,’ says Sgt. Mike Spurr, one of the lead investigators on the case. ‘There isn’t a week that goes by without our group meeting to talk about this case. We still receive leads and each and every one of them is followed up.’”

  My first archival tape was missing when I visited the CTV station. It had three stories about Kimberly’s disappearance on it dating from 1991, two years after she went missing. The first stories I did, in 1989 and 1990, have not been kept, according to the records I viewed in 2016. I do not have the scripts for those stories in the two remaining files about Kimberly I have kept and later found when I was researching this book.

  It has been widely reported that Kimberly was last seen leaving work at the Canadian Tire Store on Quinpool Road in Halifax, August 12, 1989. The first story of mine I could find about her dates from the third anniversary of the day she disappeared.

  “Third Year Anniversary” opens with an interview clip or quote from Kimberly’s father, Cyril McAndrew, a former Nova Scotia RCMP officer who died in 2004, at age seventy-two, without knowing what happened to his daughter. That fact is devastating and when I saw his face come up on the television screen in the playback area my heart dropped.

  I had met and interviewed Cyril and his wife Audrey at their home in Parrsboro for the 1992 interview. They were gracious and welcoming. We sat in their living room. Watching the old story immediately took me back to being there with them. Hearing him speak was heartbreaking. It was then. It is now.

  “It’s been a long year. We’ve had our ups and downs. We all remain positive, all the four girls and James, the youngest boy. We still believe she’s out there,” Cyril said.

  By all reports I have read, from family interviews, police statements, and media reports, Cyril never stopped believing Kimberly would be found. He was a veteran police officer and would have been well aware of theories and possibilities. But as a father, he always remained hopeful they would get answers. That did not happen during his lifetime, but for the benefit of the remaining family, it is time for someone to step up and talk.

  By the time that interview had occurred, the family had already been through a horrific roller-coaster ride, which included a mistaken report in 1991 by a missing persons’ agency in Canada that Kimberly had been located in a London, Ontario, hospital.

  Before it was confirmed whether or not it was the missing teenager, I was sent by ATV to London to see what I could confirm. I tracked down two Halifax detectives working on her case at the hospital. Neither would talk to me on-camera, but both allowed me to videotape them at the hospital as a confirmation of their presence in the city and the Halifax/London investigation. The missing person’s ag
ency publicly apologized, through the media, to the family.

  “The important thing is to keep looking, and if you keep looking, you just can’t keep looking back to see mistakes that were made, you have got to go on,” Cyril McAndrew said in one of my reports.

  The story went on to explain Kimberly had one thousand dollars in her savings account, which she had set aside to attend Dalhousie University in Halifax. At that point, it had remained untouched for three years. Her family said it was a clear indicator she was not a runaway. “There’s no doubt in my mind that she was abducted,” her father said in 1992.

  Her sister, Megan Adams, also appeared in the story and confirmed they never believed Kimberly left of her own accord. “She has nothing to run away from or to, so we never even considered that at all,” Megan said.

  The last part of the story includes edited footage of the family showing me a homemade videotape of Kimberly, taken four days before she went missing. In it, the beautiful young woman is smiling and looking happy. As the video plays, my story concluded this way: “Unlike you might think, members of the McAndrew family say, as the days go by, their hopes aren’t really fading. They do believe the police will solve this case and they will know what happened to Kimberly.”

  Two years later, the media, including myself, ran stories on the fifth anniversary of Kimberly’s disappearance. Her family said they were basically in the same place where they had started in 1989. They vowed they would never give up until they had some proof, one way or another, of what exactly happened to Kimberly.

  As part of my broadcast, the late Constable Gary Martin, with the Halifax Regional Police, and its media spokesperson at the time, said on-camera, “It’s agony for the family. I know the investigator(s) who’s handling it for our department has gone through a real rough time trying to solve this disappearance. And we’ll do anything we can now to solve it,” Martin concluded.

  Besides the false report of her being found in the London hospital, the McAndrew family has had to endure more false leads and reports, both originating from prison inmates.

  One involved an informant telling police Kimberly’s remains could be located in Halifax’s Fleming Park, referred to by locals as The Dingle, near the Northwest Arm.

  On November 7, 1995, the media covered the Fleming Park search. I was there. It was grim. No one wanted Kimberly to be found there, but at the same time, everyone wanted answers for the family. It was excruciating waiting for word. I cannot fathom what it was like for her loved ones.

  The search and excavation went on for three days.

  Constable Martin did regular media briefings. When it concluded, with not a shred of evidence of Kimberly being found, on November 9, 1995, the constable gave me an interview at Fleming Park which started with this exact exchange:

  JL: “Very disappointing outcome.”

  GM: “It’s very disappointing, it’s [an] extremely disappointing outcome.”

  According to my report, the inmate “… from a central Canadian prison maintains McAndrew’s body was buried in that park. Police have gone to great lengths to protect his identity, releasing very little information about their informant, including what role he may have played …”

  Police said they realized that given where the information was coming from they may not find anything. Police also said they felt the informant’s information was good. I also broke a story that the inmate had passed a polygraph test and had visited Fleming Park three times with officers as part of the search for an exact site.

  Asked why he had come forward so many years after the disappearance, the inmate had claimed he wanted to clear his mind and that it had been bothering him for a long time.

  Another of Kimberly’s sisters appeared on-camera, a few months later, in January 1996, discussing the family’s pain and suffering. “I would have to say things are kind of day-today dealing with it,” Carla Roberts told the media at a briefing at police headquarters in downtown Halifax. “The inmate coming down and saying that he was going to find a body, I mean, nobody wants to think they they’re going to find the body of their child or their sister. I mean, that’s just something that’s so difficult to think about, especially after six years, you know, your family still having to go on and hoping that you’re going to see that person,” Carla said.

  Another false lead came later that same year. In the spring of 1996, police received a tip from another inmate that Kimberly would be found in Point Pleasant Park, deep in the city’s south end between the harbour and the Northwest Arm. Police dug in a well at the park and brought in a forensic specialist from New Brunswick. Again, no trace of Kimberly was found.

  As part of a 1996 media briefing, also involving the family, police released a composite sketch of a man seen following Kimberly out of the Canadian Tire store parking lot. A female eyewitness claimed she had seen the suspicious person following closely behind, as the teenager crossed the street at the lights near the site of the former St. Patrick’s High School. Kimberly allegedly then turned to walk along Quinpool Road towards the Willow Tree, the nickname of a multiple-lane intersection near the Halifax Commons. That lead was also followed. It also did not lead to an arrest.

  Detective Sergeant Dave Worrell, a respected and now retired police investigator and forensics expert, who worked extensively on the McAndrew case, said in 2016 he does not believe this lead was solid. He thinks Kimberly never made it out of the parking lot, that she was either abducted from that area or left willingly with someone.

  As part of the investigation in the McAndrew case, HRP even went as far as having a re-enactment done of the day Kimberly went missing. The re-enactment was performed for the media in 1997 by Megan, Kimberly’s sister, who bears some resemblance to her missing sibling.

  After the re-enactment, Megan told reporters, “Obviously the past eight years have taken a toll on our family. But we remain hopeful that this is going to be solved. There’s people out there – someone out there knows something – and hopefully they’ll think about their own family and think, ‘Nobody, nobody should be put through this,’ … eight years is a long time.”

  Megan Adams made that statement twenty years ago, as of 2017. The pain these people have had to endure is beyond cruel. No tip or lead you can offer in 2017 is too small.

  The 1997 re-enactment story and interview with Megan was the last story I filed on the disappearance of Kimberly McAndrew and its investigation. It was produced two years before I left television. I cannot find any other scripts, files, or stories about Kimberly in my records. I do not remember any others.

  That final story ended this way: “As to whether she is alive, no, we don’t know that. But I’m not going to say I really believe my sister is dead, because I owe her more than that,” Megan concluded.

  We still owe it to Kimberly McAndrew and her family to keep pushing for a conclusion.

  5

  Forced Self-Reflection

  The final story I wrote about Kimberly McAndrew’s disappearance was done in 1997. The next time I reached out to her family was for this book, nineteen years later.

  I had deliberately avoided requesting that interview for six months. I tried to get around it in my research and writing as long as I could. I was afraid, terrified of their reaction. I dabbled with the idea I did not need to ask for the interview. My training, experience, and empathy undercut any thoughts of avoiding the request, because dodging it would only benefit me and no one else.

  It was also unethical not to give them the opportunity to speak should they wish to; that chance had to be given. In my gut, I knew from the outset I would have to ask and who I would invite to speak, regardless of her answer.

  I had stopped working in the daily news media and no longer covered these traumatic cases where I had to interview the family and loved ones of deceased or missing persons the way I used to in this earlier part of my career. Revisiting that part of my work was like ripping the scab off an old wound.

  If that was what if felt li
ke for me, I worried, and still do, about what my contacting the families would mean for them. Because I was discussing their loved ones in this book, I wanted them to know about the project one year in advance, to allow them ample time to digest the knowledge and prepare for any discussion about either case during media interviews I may be doing when the book was launched. I also wanted to request an interview or some form of communication with the families to go along with this book.

  In my old file folders, I found the contact phone number for Kimberly’s sister, Megan Adams. I noticed from reading stories online that Megan had spoken to the media within recent years. I had also interviewed her before. It made sense she would be the person I would try to contact.

  I doubted it still was the right phone number. It took weeks before I worked up the nerve to call her – the first time. No one answered. The message centre kicked in and I recognized her voice immediately. I did not leave a message. I did not want to take her off guard without speaking with her.

  Days passed.

  I called a second time with the same result.

  I went on with my writing and research. Several weeks later, during the summer of 2016, I called a third time. A man answered who identified himself as Megan’s husband. He was very pleasant and said he would pass along my contact information.

  I heard nothing. One month passed. I wanted to call back, thinking her husband may have forgotten to give Megan my message or, with it being summer, vacation may have interrupted my request.

  I called back on August 17, 2016.

  This time Megan answered.

  It was five days after the twenty-seventh anniversary of Kimberly’s disappearance, August 12, 1989.

  I tried to explain who I was and why I was calling. I did not do a great job. Our conversation lasted about fifteen minutes. My heart was pounding the entire time. I stumbled over my words. I tried to not become emotional. That she even took my call is something for which I am grateful.