Mom tells jury about last day in 1978 she saw daughter alive

VANCOUVER — The mother of a 12-year-old girl who disappeared 40 years ago tearfully told a jury Tuesday about the last time she saw her daughter outside Merritt.

Madeline Lanaro said she was driving her old Mustang home with her other children when she passed her daughter Monica Jack on the highway as the girl waved at them from her bicycle on what was a sunny day on May 6, 1978.

“I honked and the kids yelled out: ‘Do you want a ride?’ And she said ‘No.’ ”

Monica’s skull and some bones were found 17 years later on a hill close to where she was last seen by witnesses.

Garry Handlen was arrested in November 2014 following an undercover police operation and has pleaded not guilty to firstdegree murder in Monica’s death.

Lanaro told B.C. Supreme Court it was the first time Monica had asked permission to ride about 30 kilometres into Merritt.

She said Monica left their home on the Quilchena Reserve and met her cousin so the two could shop in town together for a birthday present for a sister.

Lanaro said she saw her daughter riding home hours later as she was heading to the reserve after buying supplies for an overnight trip and the birthday party, but Jack was never seen again.

Monica, who had two older brothers and three sisters, joined her siblings to make breakfast and bake cookies for a school fundraiser on the Saturday she was last seen, her mother said.

She said Monica, who had received her bike as a gift from her father a couple of weeks before her 13th birthday, asked if she could ride into town with her cousin Debbie John.

“She barely was used to her bike,” Lanaro said.

“It was a bit of a distance,” she said, wiping away tears, adding children from the area sometimes walked to the town for fundraisers.

Monica was in Grade 7 and a good student with lots of friends, she said.

Lanaro said families in the area got together regularly to fish on weekends and share what they caught.

She knew when she went into a grocery store in Merritt that her daughter had been there because of a charge she’d made on their account and later saw her near her sister’s home, Lanaro testified.

“We talked a little bit and I told her to go home.”

Lanaro said after seeing her daughter riding toward home on the highway, she went fishing overnight as planned and arrived back the next morning to discover she had not shown up.

She called police and friends of the family started looking for the girl.

An RCMP officer who later interviewed her made her uncomfortable, Lanaro told the court. “As I was being interviewed, I realized I’m an Indian woman,” she said. “He was quite rude to me.” Lanaro said the officer’s note taking was “quite sloppy” and the interview wasn’t recorded.