SHIRLEY CLETHEROE
Jody Ryan, 32, remembers reaching the height of happiness a decade ago.
She had recently given birth to the first of her three young sons, she was in a loving and strong, stable relationship with the man who is now her husband and her close-knit family — especially her mother, Shirley Cletheroe — was there to enjoy it with her.
“Life was good. I remember being so happy and it was perfect. It was the cherry on top,” said Ryan, a bubbly but no-nonsense woman with an easy laugh — much like her mother, she admitted — in the dining room of her home in Fort St. John, B.C.
Cletheroe, who was 45 when she disappeared, was the type of mother who would call her daughter several times a day, sometimes just to let her know her favourite TV show was on.
Ryan remembers the last telephone conversation, on June 10, 2006, when she put her newborn up to the phone and laughed as he looked around to see where the voice of his doting grandmother was coming from.
“Nothing was terrible, until it all happened,” said Ryan, who remembers it sinking in slowly over the course of a few days, that this was it.
They were going to be that family now — that family missing a loved one.
What exactly happened remains unclear.
Cletheroe, who raised five children, was staying with her sister for some time after having gotten into an argument with her husband, which Ryan believes was nothing serious.
The night of that last phone call with her daughter, Cletheroe headed to a house party across the street from where her sister lived, leaving her truck in the driveway.
She was never seen or heard from again.
Ryan is frustrated by the pace of the RCMP investigation, which in her experience has involved being contacted by one investigator after another over the years as each one starts from the beginning again after having been transferred the file.
“Oh, so you want me to tell you the same story, over again?” said Ryan, who said she was also annoyed by some of the stereotypes that seemed to guide the line of questioning.
“Every time the investigation was passed on: ‘Oh does your mom drink? How often does she drink? Was she drinking that night?’ Look, dude — it doesn’t matter if she was drinking. Find her!” said Ryan.
“It just gets frustrating. I don’t want to sound like I am against the RCMP or anything, but they are just not doing their job,” said Ryan.