Feelings of hope and fear
Human remains found near where Niagara man’s daughter disappeared in B.C.
John Simpson doesn’t know where to place his hope. There is no outcome that can truly end the suffering of his family.
Since last week, Simpson hasn’t been able to turn away from news about an ongoing RCMP investigation in Salmon Arm, British Columbia, not far from where his daughter, Ashley Simpson was last seen in 2016.
Over the weekend, police have uncovered human remains in an ongoing investigation they aren’t discussing publicly.
So Simpson’s heart is left trapped between hoping police have found his daughter’s remains so that his family might find a sense of closure, and fearing the finality of that outcome.
If it isn’t her, then the Simpsons will remain confined to the limbo they have lived in since April of last year, without any clue to Ashley’s fate.
“It’s been hard,” John Simpson said Monday morning. “We have sort of reached the obvious conclusion that she is gone and if it is her, then can we have a funeral and maybe there is some closure there. But then there is no chance that she is still out there somewhere.
“We just want to bring her home.”
Late last week officers from the Southeast District Major Crime Unit of the RCMP began searching a rural property in the Yankee Flats area near Salmon Arm.
On Thursday Police executed a search warrant on a 24.7-acre farm on Salmon River Road. By the weekend, a large segment of the property was cordoned off behind black fences while officers combed through the area.
RCMP spokesman Cpl. Dan Moskaluk said Monday that police are treated the discovery of human remains as suspicious and are part of an ongoing investigation. However, Moskaluk said he could not comment on which investigation the remains are believed to be connected to, nor how many bodies were found.
He did say investigators expect to be at the farm for several more days at least.
On Oct. 13, RCMP issued a public warning specifically to sex workers, after a woman was threatened by a man with a gun in the area of Salmon River Road on Aug. 28.
The man and woman had set up a meeting “via an online website utilized by escorts and sex workers.”
A 36-year-old man, who police said lived in the area of Salmon River Road and was known to frequent the Okanagan and Shuswap areas.
Curtis Wayne Sagmoen, born in 1980, was arrested Friday and was charged with seven offences — disguising his faced with intent to commit an offence, pointing a firearm, uttering threats, careless use or storage of a firearm, possessing weapon for a dangerous purpose and possession of a controlled substance — in relation to incidents near Falkland, about 50 kilometres southeast of Salmon Arm.
He remains in custody pending a scheduled appearance in Vernon Provincial Court on Oct. 26.
Sagmoen does not face specific charges connected to the remains found at the farm which, according to the B.C. Assessment records is owned by Evelyn Ruth Sagmoen and Wayne Thomas Sagmoen.
Curtis Wayne Sagmoen was previously listed as a co-owner of the property from 2004 and 2007.
In a 2013 mortgage foreclosure petition filed by CIBC Mortgages on a former New Westminster property he owned, Sagmoen was listed as living on Gilker Hill Road in Maple Ridge. Court records indicated his occupation was that of a “pile driver/bridgeman.”
The Salmon River Road farm is not far from where Ashley Simpon was living in a squalid camper on Yankee Flats Road with her boyfriend, Derek Favell.
The couple met while employed at workers’ camps on the Alaska Highway in northern British Columbia.
In interviews last fall with The Standard, co-workers and friends of Simpson and Favell described their alcohol-fueled relationship as mutually abusive. Nevertheless, they left the north to move to the Salmon Arm area where Favell has family.
On April 27, 2016 Simpson and Favell got into another fight during an outing to a local waterfall. A mutual friend dropped them off at their camper. It was the last time Simpson was seen.
Despite several searches by police, search and rescue teams and family who travelled from Niagara to Salmon Arm, no sign of Simpson has been found, and no charges have been laid in her case.
It is not known at this time if Simpson knew Sagmoen.
Simpson is not the only woman to go missing from the area.
On July 19, 2016, 46-year-old Yankee Flats Road resident Deanna Wertz vanished. She had gone for a hike but never returned home.
And on Feb. 22, Caitlin Potts, a 27-year-old woman, also vanished from Salmon Arm.
Reports from news media in Salmon Arm indicate there are other women from the area who have gone missing since Potts, Wertz and Simpson disappeared.
Simpson said his family has been in contact with the RCMP since their investigation at the farm made headlines. Simpson said police haven’t said much except to say the initial police probe wasn’t connected to his daughter’s case and it will be at least a week before the remains are identified.
Until then, all he can do is wait to see if the RCMP have found his missing daughter.