Missing sisters mystery solved
Lethbridge police locate sisters who have been missing for more than 30 years
Two sisters missing for decades have been located alive and living in the United States. The last time family members had seen Anna and Kym Hakze was in Edmonton in the mid-1980s. Their mother reported them missing in 2003 as she hadn’t seen or heard from her daughters in more than a decade.
At the time, eldest sister Anna was estranged from her family and struggling financially. The sisters, originally from Lethbridge, were said to be inseparable and the pair disappeared together. Anna was 43 and Kym was 29 at the time. They haven’t had any contact with relatives since.
After a lengthy investigation that has spanned decades and multiple detectives, the Lethbridge Police Service closed the book on the historic case on Thursday.
The sisters were found living with new identities and not too far away from each other. Today, Anna is 67 and Kym is 53. One of the sisters had been working as an author.
“Without going into a lot of details and to protect their privacy, they had just left due to some family turmoil, and had moved on and were living their own life as a result of that,” said LPS Staff Sgt. Scott Woods, who oversees the Criminal Investigation Section.
The sisters had been using a few different aliases, which complicated the investigation.
“But in the end it actually linked a few things back to help us, quite frankly.”
In 2003, Lethbridge police began actively investigating the file, after the mother’s missing persons report. After following a number of leads, the file “hit a dead end,” said Woods. However, a missing persons file is never concluded without a definitive answer to the person’s whereabouts.
Over the years the file was transferred through the hands of several detectives.
In the fall 2015, LPS issued a news release in an attempt to generate new leads in relation to four historic missing person cases, which included the Hakze sisters. Although several tips were received and investigated, none panned out.
Familial DNA was even submitted during the Robert Pickton investigation, as there was information suggesting the pair had moved to Vancouver. The DNA was tested against samples police recovered from his Port Coquitlam farm, but there were no matches.
The women’s fingerprints were also provided to the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System operated by U.S. authorities.
In January, police evaluated the case as part of an annual review. In doing so, the detective, Const. Saska Vanhala, noted a theft report filed with the Vancouver police back in 1999 under an alias name that matched one on file for Anna Hakze.
A copy of the report was not in the LPS file, so he requested one from the Vancouver Police Department. When the complainant was contacted, police learned it wasn’t Anna, but the woman provided police with information that corroborated a Crime Stoppers tip received in 2012.
The Vancouver woman had saved a newspaper clipping from 1984 that advertised a book written by another woman with the same unusual name. The Vancouver woman had never known anyone else to share her name and found the ad humorous, so she held on to it.
The Crime Stoppers tip police received in 2012 identified two women — one being the author of several books and the other with an alias known to have been used by Kym Hakze — as the possible missing sisters. At the time, police attempted to contact the author and her publisher, without much success. They also attempted to locate the other woman named, but she was not found in the location provided.
New technology and the advancement of social media played a “huge role” in the search, said Woods. Police performed new online searches of the author’s name from the old Crime Stoppers tip.
“From that, the officer did some open source checking on the book, which led to a recent news story that happened to be online and a recent photo in an area where we believe the author was living,” said Woods.
Police found no records under that name, but they did locate records in the name of the author from the 1984 Vancouver newspaper clipping. From there, they were able to obtain a number of documents and one listed a sister as next of kin.
“As we got into that a little bit deeper we basically got the break that we got and we were able to positively identify both Kym and Anna living in the United States,” said Woods.
In late February, U.S. police conducted a face-to-face interview and confirmed the identity of Kym Hakze, who no longer goes by that name. LPS subsequently spoke to Kym via telephone.
“She wasn’t aware of the fact she or her sister was reported missing all these years,” said Woods. “We’ve also been able to confirm the other sister is alive and well.”
LPS have not yet spoken directly to Anna, but her sister has had contact with her. Kym has also been provided contact information for their siblings, but she requested her privacy. As such, no details about the women’s new lives, their location or their new names will be disclosed by police.
Vanhala broke the good news to the Hakze family and their first response was shock. Unfortunately, their mother passed away a few years ago without knowing what happened to her daughters.
The Hakze family asked for privacy and advised police they do not wish to comment.
It’s very unusual for a case such as this to have a happy ending, Woods said. So often police have to deliver tragic news or having no news to give after many years.
“In this instance, it’s a nice feeling to come to the conclusion we did and get this off the books for both us and the family,” he said.
Along with the many hours and resources expended when investigating a missing persons case, there is always an element of luck. Woods said police wouldn’t be able to close these kinds of cases without the community sharing tips.