A MOTHER’S DETECTIVE WORK LEADS TO GRIM MORGUE DISCOVERY.
What r eally happened to Dovi Henry, a promising Ottawa poet found dead, decomposing in the water, along Toronto’s lakefront on July 27, 2014?
And why did it take almost two years — and his mother’s own detective work — to finally identify the morgue remains on April 29, 2016?
Maureen Henry, 53, would like to know — dearly. “I couldn’t rest,” she said this week. “It just did not make sense. He was not a guy to just disappear.”
As she spoke, she sorted through Dovi’s things, kept in a large bin at her Ottawa home, including a photo album, little books with handwritten poetry and Mother’s Day cards in verse.
She refuses to accept Dovi may have taken his own life.
A mother of three, she describes a stressful 18 months during which she repeatedly tried to locate her oldest, who died shortly after his 23rd birthday.
She tells a frustrating story of repeated contact with Ottawa and Toronto police, checks with morgues, appeals to her MPP and MP, registering with a family- finder service, inquiries to jails and shelters, appeals to friends, scouring Facebook, even tramping through his Toronto haunts — to find any trace of her son.
In late April this year came a break, a devilishly simple one. Maureen said she googled the words “black, remains, unclaimed” and came upon an OPP/Chief Coroner website of missing, unidentified persons from across Ontario. She began to click through. One entry — which included a clue about a male’s teeth — struck her as a possible match.
The next day, she was on the phone with a senior OPP officer, who asked for dental records, which were promptly sent. And not 24 hours later, two officers were at her door with news: the records matched.
All these months later, Dovi had been found.
He had not disappeared to Germany, as a friend suggested. He had not been avoiding his acquaintances, siblings, mother and family. He had not run away. He was dead all along.
To this day, Maureen cannot understand why, with all the police contact since Dovi went off the radar in about June 2014, he was never entered into a missing persons database, which would have linked him to the remains and avoided two years of anguish.
“It’s a sad case,” said Toronto police Det. Jessica McInnes, who says she spent countless hours trying to identify Dovi’s body, found near a marina at Ontario Place.
The body was so badly compromised that it was difficult to tell the height, weight, age and even racial makeup, she said. There was virtually no clothing left. There were no indications of foul play or trauma, so the cause of death was listed as “undetermined,” with no criminal involvement suspected.
McInnes said she tried to match the scant information with thousands of missing persons reports from across Canada, the United States and Mexico. DNA was even extracted. “We had a body and, unfortunately, no missing persons report that matches this description.” So the case stalled. “If a person is missing in Ottawa and never gets reported missing in Ottawa, us in Toronto have no idea the person is missing,” McInnes said.
Maureen said she tried to report Dovi missing in Ottawa but, because his last address was in Toronto, was told to call the Toronto police.
When she called Toronto, she said, she was redirected to Ottawa because this was his permanent address.
Dovi began attending the University of Toronto in 2009. It was not all smooth sailing. In the ensuing three years, there were occasional problems with depression, l oneliness and the usual sorting out of academic choices.
When Dovi expressed suicidal thoughts to Maureen while in Ottawa in early 2014 — then went out of contact — she said she called police and was visited at her home by an Ottawa constable, who took notes of the circumstances and said he’d be in touch with Toronto officials.
Similarly, the family was told Toronto police visited his last known address but came up empty when told Dovi had moved out weeks before.
Maureen’s sister Cheryl, 50, who grew up in Toronto in an era of fractious race relations with police, believes skin colour is part of the reason the case was not treated with urgency.
“If this were a Caucasian and missing in Forest Hills, you don’t think they would be looking? The coroner just puts ‘undetermined’ and nobody does anything?”
Whatever happened, Maureen believes the police have an obligation to find out.
“That’s all we want. When you find bones washed up,” she said, “that in itself should warrant going to find out what happened.”
He was neither transient nor destitute, Maureen said. She would like the police to access his cellphone records and Gmail account, and interview his acquaintances, to retrace his final days.
To that end, the family has started a GoFundMe campaign to hire a lawyer to begin a private investigation.
His remains were cremated during the week of his 25th birthday this year and a memorial was held in May.