Why did Bella fall from the 31st floor?
Proud, happy Cree woman’s sudden death remains a mystery three years on
It’s been three years since her sister’s death, but Melina Laboucan-Massimo is still searching for answers.
She remembers an almost unbearable grief in the first year after her sister, Bella Nancy Marie Laboucan-McLean, fell to her death from a downtown Toronto condo unit on July 20, 2013; the numbness in the second year; and now, after the third, a sadness that can be kept at bay but occasionally rears its ugly head.
But through it all, Laboucan-Massimo has wanted to know the answer to one question — how did Bella, her bright, beautiful 25-year-old sister, a recent graduate of Humber College’s fashion arts program, plummet from that 31stfloor balcony to her death?
“There’s no closure,” Laboucan-Massimo said on the phone from Lubicon Lake Cree traditional territory in northern Alberta, on the eve of the anniversary of Bella’s death.
She had just stepped away from activities on the last of a four-day annual memorial held for Bella on the land of her father’s community, 4,000 km from Toronto.
“It feels different than a death where it’s more explainable and (the circumstances) make a little more sense to you,” Laboucan-Massimo said. “It makes it difficult to feel any closure, and you wonder on most nights, you wonder on her birthday, on (the) anniversary — it’s constant ... “It makes healing very difficult.” Bella’s family — her mother, father, two sisters and a little brother — have always rejected the idea that she intentionally jumped off the balcony. She was in the prime of her life, never had mentalhealth issues and never spoke about harming herself, Laboucan-Massimo said.
Even to Toronto police investigators, the circumstances don’t really make sense. According to police, Bella was in a unit at 21 Iceboat Terr., one in the cluster of glassy condos in CityPlace, with five others that Saturday morning.
Around 4:55 a.m., someone from a neighbouring building called police to report an “unknown disturbance”; when officers arrived, they found a woman sprawled on the ground next to 21 Iceboat. She had no identification on her, so police began a canvass of the condo, going door-to-door in hopes of finding someone who knew who she was.
Meanwhile, none of the people who were in the condo with Bella seemed to have noticed anything was amiss. It wasn’t until 5 p.m. that day, 12 hours later, that someone phoned police to report her missing.
Later on, when questioned by police, all would deny having seen or heard anything unusual; no one saw Bella go over the balcony railing, no one even seemed to have noticed that she was gone. Her phone, purse and shoes were still inside the condo. Investigators found no reason to lay criminal charges; police say because they aren’t suspects, the five others have never been publicly identified.
An autopsy showed Bella died of general blunt-force trauma consistent with a fall, and her case was — and still is — classified as “sudden death — suspicious.” In this case, “suspicious” means police haven’t found anything that indicates whether Bella’s death was a homicide, suicide or accident.
Without eyewitnesses or more evidence, it’s impossible to tell, according to police.
The last major note in her case was in 2014, when police were seeking the cell- phone records of the people who were in the condo with her; since then, the case has stagnated, although it remains open.
“If new information was brought forward, we would investigate it,” said Toronto police spokeswoman Meaghan Gray, who wouldn’t say what the results of the cellphone record search were. Gray urged anyone who might have information to come forward to investigators at14 Division.
After the autopsy, Bella’s body was brought back to Alberta. She was buried in Sturgeon Lake Cree First Nation, her mother’s community, about two hours’ drive from her father’s.
Laboucan-Massimo last saw Bella alive in April 2013, while passing through Toronto for work; Bella told her she was planning on applying to fashion school in London. It was one of the last conversations the sisters would ever have.
Looking back now, Laboucan-Massimo remembers her sister as a “beautiful, loving, caring, kind person” who was “very strong-willed, strong-hearted.”
She defied stereotypes about indigenous women and was proud of who she was and where she came from.
And that’s why, during the four-day memorial every year, attendees set up tents and teepees and take part in cultural activities such as drum making, tanning moose hides, making dried meat, storytelling, horse-riding and canoeing.
“She would love being here with us,” Laboucan-Massimo said. “One of the reasons why we do this here on the land is, for one, for cultural revitalization, for our communities, for our people. But also, Bella loved to be here making hide and having stew with our family . . . So this is the best way we can honour her and honour her life.”
As the evening of the last day approached, those activities came to an end. Attendees — including family from across Alberta and Saskatchewan, Laboucan-Massimo’s friends from British Columbia, and, this year, a few of Bella’s friends from Toronto — gathered for a round dance, the traditional Cree way of honouring lost ones.
Finally, at dusk, they held a candlelight vigil to mark another year without Bella — another year without answers about why she was taken from them.
“There’s a space she left in our family, a void of who she was, and we’re always going to miss her,” Laboucan-Massimo said. “We’re always going to grieve the loss of her, her death, because she left us too soon.”