10 years after Tina Fontaine's murder, lead investigator maintains police charged right person

Though no one has been found guilty for the murder of Tina Fontaine 10 years ago, the investigator who led the search for the teen's killer maintains that the police charged the right person.

Fontaine, 15, had been missing for eight days when her lifeless, 72-pound body — weighed down by rocks and wrapped in a duvet cover — was pulled from Winnipeg's Red River near the Alexander Docks on Aug. 17, 2014.

"It took hours and hours before we could even start to think that this was Tina Fontaine," said John O'Donovan, a retired Winnipeg police sergeant who led the investigation into Fontaine's killing.

"And once we did, you know, it was sickening."

Fontaine, who was from Sagkeeng First Nation in Manitoba, was in the care of Child and Family Services when she died. After her father's murder in 2011, she went to Winnipeg to reconnect with her mother, but fell into a world of addiction, homelessness and sexual exploitation.

She was reported missing four times in the three weeks before she disappeared on Aug. 8, 2014. The night before that, she was dropped off with a contracted care worker at a downtown hotel, but she later walked away.

"She was an exploited kid, there's no doubt about it. She was exploited by everybody that came in contact with her," said O'Donovan.

"There was only a [handful] of people that cared for her.... and some of the people that should have cared for her, didn't."

Fontaine's death shook the city, attracting global attention as police began to search for her killer. It also helped galvanize the federal government into launching the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, which released its final report in 2019.

"It was such a tragedy," O'Donovan said.

He says it was important to remind people that Fontaine was just a young girl, and O'Donovan went off-script as he spoke publicly the day after her body was discovered.

"This is a child that's been murdered," he said at a news conference on Aug. 18, 2014.

"We would be horrified if we found a litter of kittens or pups in this condition. This is a child."

It was a moment that had never been seen before in Canada, humanizing cases of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, said Manitoba Families Minister Nahanni Fontaine.