S02E14: THE DISAPPEARANCE OF EMMA FILLIPOFF

On November 28, 2012, 26-year-old Emma Fillipoff disappeared from Victoria, British Columbia. Her last known whereabouts were outside the Empress Hotel in the downtown area, talking to the police after an acquaintance called 911 saying she was in distress and needed help. After the police talk with her and let her walk away, she is never seen again.

For almost a decade, her disappearance has garnered media attention and many theories have been developed.  Emma's strange behavior, frantic phone calls to family members and disturbing journal entries in the weeks leading up to her disappearance are shrouded in mystery, with very few concrete answers.

To this day, her case remains unsolved and many questions still linger: Was she met with foul play after last being seen with police outside of the Empress hotel? Did she commit suicide? Or did she intentionally disappear for some unknown reason, like to avoid a potential stalker?

If you have any tips about Emma's whereabouts or any information regarding  her disappearance, call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS (1-800-222-8477),  or call the Victoria Police Department non-emergency number at 250-995-7654.

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EPISODE RESOURCES:

Help Find Emma Fillipoff:
http://www.helpfindemmafillipoff.com/

'Finding Emma Fillipoff: The Fifth Estate' :
https://youtu.be/b3FPSmlCmJk

The Search for Emma Fillipoff Podcast With Kimberley Bordage:
https://youtu.be/4JEIp6B_2XY

The Nighttime Podcast With Jordan Bonaparte (10-part series):
https://www.nighttimepodcast.com/emmafillipoff

Dr. Todd Grande: Analysis of Emma Fillipoff Disappearance:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FkUzeu_3IdI

Transcript

Coming up on this episode of Crime Family. 

So Emma Fillipoff went missing from Victoria BC on November 28th, 2012. And her movements and her actions throughout that day can be accounted for, from some surveillance footage, a strange cab ride, a run in with an acquaintance and a lengthy conversation with the police.

Well, this reminds me of that Elisa Lam story, the Cecil hotel, because there's that video of her coming in and out of the elevator, like looking around, like someone's kind of chasing her or she's scared of somebody. 

There was a man who came into their store and was captured on surveillance video with a crumpled up missing person's poster of Emma's and said, "it's one of those missing persons posters, except she's not missing. She's my girlfriend. And she ran away because she hates her parents". 

Checking herself out, could be like, "I'm going to get myself... myself, looked at by a doctor, like checking myself". I mean, there's lots of different meanings of what that could actually mean, but...

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Crime Family! If you're new with us, I'm your co-host AJ. I'm here with my sisters, Stephanie and Katie. In this episode, I'm going to be telling you about the disappearance of Emma, Fillipoff.. So Emma Fillipoff was a 26 year old woman who went missing almost a decade ago and her case is still unsolved to this day.

It's a sad story about a young woman who may have been fighting a battle that no one close to her knew anything about. And the strange case has many possible theories and many potential outcomes with very little concrete evidence to back up any of those theories. Yes. So Emma Fillipoff went missing from Victoria BC on November 28th, 2012.

And her movements and her actions throughout that day can be accounted for, from some surveillance footage, a strange cab ride, a run in with an acquaintance and a lengthy conversation with the police. So these vital moments before her disappearance have all been under intense scrutiny since that dark November night.

And it's a case that actually there's been quite a few podcasts and stuff out there that have done like, um, who have gone into her case. There is one podcast that did like a 10 part series on her case. And there was an episode of the "Fifth Estate" on her case as well. So it has gotten some significant attention, but it's still not like majorly known.

Like it's not one of the major cases that you would think of when you think of like disappearances in Canada or anything like that, or at least I don't think so. So I'm going to get into like the specifics about like her disappearance and the day she went missing a little bit later on, but first I think it's important to give context into Emma's life before she disappeared.

So Emma Fillipoff was born on January 6th, 1986 in Perth, Ontario, which is a small town, about 300 kilometers Northeast of Toronto. According to Emma's family, she was always a very private person from when she was young, right up until she went missing. Like she did keep like to keep a lot of things to herself.

So while she was extremely playful with her siblings as a child and everything like that, she just didn't really tell a lot of people around her like personal things that were happening in her life. So even some of her closest family members didn't know like every detail of her life. However, this private nature perhaps contributed to the secretive life that she was living in the months before she disappeared, which is a life that her family knew nothing about until it was maybe too late.

When Emma was 18, during a time when her parents were going through a tough separation, Emma left Perth, Ontario to escape from it all. One journal entry from around that time says, quote, "My parents' marriage in shambles. My father turning to me, my mother hating us both for doing so and me always a good listener. Too nice to say that it hurt me too", end quote. So to escape the claustrophobic life in a small Ontario town, Emma went about as far as you could go. She ended up in China, teaching English as a second language. After this, she returned to Ontario and got a degree in photojournalism. And then a second degree in culinary arts from a college in BC.

Eventually by the time she was 25, she found herself living in Victoria, BC, which is a quaint city on the Southern tip of Vancouver island with a population of about 92,000 people. Being surrounded by the water is where Emma felt most at home. She always had a love for the ocean and a desire to live by the water.

So Emma was a very artistic person. She wrote a lot of poetry. She did a lot of journaling. She was just kind of always into that sort of scene. And so journals, entries, and poetry that were found after her disappearance were really, really interesting. And like her family just always liked to read her poetry.

And they knew that that was something that she always did. Um, and Emma's life in Victoria seemed simpler, more carefree or at least on the surface. So she ended up getting a job in a seafood restaurant, Red Fish, Blue Fish, which was a seasonal position. And then when the restaurant closed for the season on October 31st, 2012, which was only about a month before her disappearance, Emma told her coworkers that she would be returning to work the following spring, Emma seemed to be living somewhat of a transient lifestyle at this time in her life.

She had a roommate at one time in Victoria by the name of Mikayla Bouchard. Um, and I think this is where she lived initially when she first moved to Victoria. So she lived with Mikayla for a period of time. Then she went on to live on a few boats, I guess she knew some people who had some boats, so she kind of just lived there.

She also spent some time living in the woods by herself. And there were some reports that she had like slept in trees and stuff like that. So she was kind of just always that like free spirit kind of person. So by the time November, 2012 rolls around,  she's lived, been living in Victoria for a little bit over a year.

And at that time, Emma was living in the Sandy Merriman women's shelter and she had been living there on and off since February of that year. Now how she ended up there, no one really quite knows the scenario or the situation that led her to live there. But that is where she was at the time that she disappeared in November of 2012.

So this leads us to the week leading up to her disappearance. So Emma is captured on surveillance camera at the YMCA in Victoria. And she went there to take out a membership at the Y and the behavior that she's seen exhibiting on the camera is pretty odd. She can be seen exiting and entering the building several times in the span of a few minutes, almost as if there's someone out there that she's trying to avoid.

There were a few different reports about when this happened. Like the Fifth Estate episode says that it was five days before her disappearance, which would make it November 23rd. But other podcasts I've listened to and timeline of events that I've read have said that it was November 20th. So perhaps there were two separate occasions. So maybe those are both true. Maybe it happened on two separate days, but regardless it is within this one week period of time before her disappearance. If you look at the video, like she is going outside, she comes back in, she's like peering outside of the window as if she's like looking for someone or trying to avoid someone who's out there and like, doesn't go out until the coast is clear so to say.

 On November 21st, Emma hired a tow truck to move her van from Sooke, BC back to Victoria. And during the ride, she did tell the tow truck driver that she had plans to go back to Perth, Ontario to surprise her family. So she was expressing that that was something that she was thinking of.

And then there were also other people who said that she was anticipating moving to Japan. You know, she wanted to travel. And she had said that she was going to go back to Perth to visit her family and then she was going to go off to Japan, to live for a period of time. So she was making plans for the future, um, on these occasions .

Then on November 23rd, a few things happen, uh, that are kind of suspicious. So while the Fifth Estate documentary focused on the case mentions that Emma hadn't been in contact with her mother in quite a while before her disappearance, other sources say that Shelley and Emma had been communicating via email sporadically leading up to this. Um, the emails were "cryptic and lacking in detail", but they were supposedly positive and loving.

Uh, family had not been concerned about Emma based on these emails, because, you know, she was always a very private person. So it wasn't unusual for her to keep a lot of details about her life away from her family. And she seemed to be okay in these emails, despite what may have really been going on. So her family says that like the emails were cryptic, like she wasn't really saying much about anything, but you know, nothing in these emails really indicated that there was anything wrong. Um, and also too, it can be kinda hard to tell in writing, like maybe if they had spoken to her on the phone or something would have been different, but through email, it seemed to be fine.

So this reminds me of like the Elisa Lam story when she was went missing was murdered or committed suicide, whatever story you want to go with, at the Cecil hotel because there's that video of her coming in and out of the elevator, like looking around, like someone's kind of chasing her or she's scared of somebody and also, she would write on like blog posts and stuff, just kind of how she was feeling. She was also a very private person. And you kind of like had like philosophical things that she just kind of saying out to the internet. So it's this super like similar. 

Yeah, actually I didn't actually think about that case, but that actually that is true.

I know there was, um, in reading a lot of like different blog posts and stuff about this case, a lot of people were comparing it to a woman who went missing in Hamilton, Ontario under very similar circumstances. Like once I go further into the case, like a lot of details are very similar. So that was the one that I kept seeing come up as a comparison to this. But I never thought of the Elisa Lam one, but you're right actually. So on November 23rd, Emma calls her mother Shelly in the middle of the night in tears. In this conversation, she tells her mother that she wants to come home. Shelly tells her that of course she can always come home whenever she needs to.

And Shelly was obviously quite concerned at this time, but the next day on November 24th, Emma seemed to change her mind. And then she called her mother back and told her that she didn't want to come home and told her over the phone "I don't know if I can face you". And so she told her mother not to book her flight home as planned, um, cause in interviews with Shelley, she said that after that conversation, the plan was, she was going to book a flight for Emma to come right back home to Ontario, like the next day.

But the next day Emma called her and said, no, it's fine. I want to like, I want to stick it out in Victoria. I want to figure it out on my own. So don't come or don't make plans for me to come. So for a couple of days, there's like a detailed timeline of this case for a couple of days, it goes back and forth like that.

Like Emma would call up and say, I need to come home. Like, things are bad. I need very like vague. She wouldn't go into any details. But she was basically saying like, I want to come home. I need to come home. Or I want you to come to Victoria. And then either later that same day or the next day, she would always call back and say, nevermind, I don't want to come home.

Like, so Shelly never really did know what she actually really wanted it seemed. Like she would be totally convinced of whatever she wanted it at the moment of the phone call. And then she would completely go back on that and change her mind. So, yeah, like I said, this went back and forth for a couple of days until Shelly finally took it upon herself to book a ticket to Victoria to rescue Emma because she knew that something was drastically wrong.

The call that Emma made on November 23rd came from the office phone at the Sandy Merriman women's shelter that she was staying at. And that's according to "The Search For Emma Fillipoff" podcast with Kimberley Bordage. So that initial call came from the office of Sandy Merriman, on November 27th is when Shelly learned that Emma was living at the shelter because she called back the number that showed up on her call display. And it came up with Sandy Merriman on her calls, this call display. And she just assumed that that was like a friend that Emma was staying with. So she obviously didn't know anything.

And then I guess on the 27th, when she called that number back, it was probably like a staff member that had picked up the phone and said, You know, Sandy Merriman woman's shelter. And that's when she found out that that was where Emma had been staying at. And this was obviously very shocking to her. She had no idea that that was the case.

So when she found out that Sandy Merriman was a shelter, everything changed and Shelley got on a flight to Victoria right away. During the conversation with shelter staff that Shelly had had, privacy laws prevented the staff from disclosing much information about Emma, but could only tell Shelly that she was safe.

There's a few things that are unclear because I've seen in podcasts and stuff that the shelter staff said, like, we can't disclose like in-depth information, but we can tell you that she's safe. But then later on, they did disclose to Shelly some, some details that said that they were very concerned for her mental health.

So the fact that they would say that she was safe is a little bit odd. It kind of glosses over all of their concerns, but I get privacy laws, you know, they couldn't really disclose, but when I was reading it, I was thinking like, it's weird for them to say that she's safe when they had very different thoughts, actually. Shelter staff did eventually tell Shelly, you know, this is later on, but they did come come to Shelly and they told her that Emma had been exhibiting some changes in her personality and they were very concerned about this. So all signs point to the possibility that Emma was experiencing mental health concerns around this time. And that's responsible for her sudden change in behavior. As Kimberly mentioned in her podcast, she went from... Emma, went from sweet to extremely paranoid in a matter of weeks. Shelter staff also mentioned that at around this time she was drinking large, large amounts of water, but she wasn't eating or sleeping.

And the podcast also shares the last journal entry made by Emma before her disappearance. And that entry is dated November 23rd. It reads "Sleep dep hurts. Very hopeful. Checking myself out. Mom is coming. It's November 23rd. Have to get home before dad goes, I want to call dad, you're going home tomorrow. Go home to gather and rest and read and come to be". The first call is on November 23rd for Shelley, and then they're going back and forth for a couple of days. And then Shelly eventually flies out on the 28th and on November 28th, Emma did call Shelly one last time. And this was around 4:30 AM on the 28th.

And that is, I believe for Shelly. It was four 30 in the morning. So for Emma, it would have been maybe around like 1, 1 30 in the morning. In this call, she tells Shelley not to come home saying "Not today". And despite other family members telling her to respect Emma's wishes, Shelly got on the next flight to Victoria in order to help her daughter who she believed was in the  midst of a severe mental health crisis.

So, you know, in this case, there's a lot of people who say that Shelly should have gotten on a flight right away. Like the first time that Emma called her, but she didn't really have a reason to like, be super concerned at that time, I guess. Um, cause she had been exchanging emails and stuff with her and the first call, like she did call her in tears saying she wanted to come home and then it was always like back and forth. So I guess she was making arrangements, but like just always would call it off at the last minute until this time when she found out that she was in the shelter, like she just had to go.

 Around 8:23 AM on November 28th. Cause she would've called her mother at like one in the morning on that day. So at 8:30 that morning, like six, seven hours later, Emma can be seen on surveillance footage at a 7/11 convenience store where she buys a $200 prepaid credit card.

 Here, she exhibits similar behavior that was seen in that YMCA surveillance footage. She lingers at the door to the store, peers out as if she's hesitant to leave, possibly to avoid someone who's outside. Around 10:00 AM that same day a man by the name of Julian, someone that knew Emma previously caught a glimpse of her when he was on a city bus and he got off a few stops early in order to chat with her.

Now his account of the situation says that she was standing on the sidewalk, not moving. She was like staring straight ahead. She was facing the road. Julian wasn't entirely sure if it was her. So he ended up walking to where he needed to go. It was to like, get a new health card or something like that. So he does that.

And then when he comes out of the building, he still sees Emma standing in the same position. So then he decides to eventually go up to her and he asks her if she's okay. She motioned to him that she didn't really need any help. Um, at which point, Julian kind of just walked away and left her standing on the street corner.

 Various witness sightings place, Emma at various points along the streets of Victoria that, saying that she looked confused and lost. So between four and 6:00 PM, Emma was seen at two separate times and locations by the same man. He says that he saw her crossing the street in front of his car and he smiled at her and she did smile back. But he says that the look in her eyes and the look on her face was so sad because it was the type of smile that you would give if you were holding back tears.

So for whatever reason, like just this interaction with him, like it just struck a chord with him. Like it wasn't just a typical like person that he saw while crossing the street who maybe looked a little bit sad. He said something about her, just like, kind of gave him this feeling where he felt like he needed to do something.

Um, so he says that he did consider parking his car and going up to her to ask if everything was okay- he just sort of felt compelled to do that. Um, he just had a feeling something was off, but he ultimately chose not to because he says, like she might've been uncomfortable with having a random man, like come up to her and start talking to her and that might just make the situation worse.

So that's why he decided not to do that. But a few days later after news of her disappearance went circulating, he obviously felt incredible guilt that he didn't approach her. Cause you know, you never know what could have came of that. If he could have intervened in some way. Um, he did contact the local police to report these sightings once the investigation started, but they allegedly, never returned his calls or got a full report from him. So that was between four and 6:00 PM was when that man saw her twice.

At 5:54 PM, Emma returned to the same 7/11 convenience store as before and buys a prepaid cell phone. And again, this time she stands by the door, she's peering outside looking like she's scared to exit, trying to avoid someone who outside and she looks visibly upset and fearful. The cell phone that she bought at the store was never activated. Then at 6:00 PM, she returns to the women's shelter, but did not stay overnight. So the "Nighttime" podcast by Jordan Bonaparte actually did a 10 part series about this case. And he, he interviews multiple people who knew Emma in various different parts of her life.

And in one episode, he interviews a woman named Patty who was close with Emma during her time at the shelter. And she kind of reveals that Emma went back to the shelter that night in hopes of staying there, but was refused a bed because apparently she had already reached her maximum number of nights at the shelter.

And that there was not enough emergency beds for her that night. In the interview, it's a little bit unclear, like exactly what she's saying. Like when he interviews her, um, she kind of goes a little bit all over the place and talks about... goes down like a bunch of different avenues. So it's hard to kind of get a clear narrative.

The gist of what it was was kind of saying, like, I guess the shelter had a policy where it's like, you could stay for up to a month at a time. And then after that, like you, they had to like give the bed to somebody else or something. And then they had like a certain number of emergency beds that they could give to people.

But for whatever reason, when she went back that night, like she had already overstayed or she already stayed her maximum amount of nights, for whatever reason, they wouldn't give her a bed that night. And this is according to Patty. So we don't know a hundred percent sure. Like we haven't confirmed if that's true, but that's what she says.

Um, and in the interview, Patty expressed anger at the shelter because she says that they should've noticed that something was very wrong with Emma and they should not have turned her away that night, which was on a night that would turn out to be the last night she was ever seen. So Patty explains that Emma did find out that her mother was coming to Victoria, which made her very upset.

And Patty says that she chased after Emma, when Emma ran out of the shelter after learning about this information. Now another kind of thing that's unclear in all of this is nobody knows exactly how Emma found out that her mother was coming. Shelly in interviews has said that she never told shelter staff that she was coming.

She never told Emma that she was coming. So nobody really knows how Emma knew that that was happening. But whenever she found out, if a staff member had mentioned it to her, she obviously was very agitated and didn't want to see her mother. So she ran out of the shelter, um, to avoid that situation. So...

Did she ever find out that her mom had called the shelter and maybe she knew that she just like knew her mom would freak out about that and come? 

Yeah, I don't know. Like, it's never been clear what, how much information she knew or the details of what she knew. But the only thing that seems kind of clear is that like she did find out that her mother was on her way. But like, obviously the phone calls that she had in the shelter were in like the office of the shelter. So their policy was that like, obviously at least one staff member had to be with Emma at the time that she's like in the office making phone calls. So like somebody on the staff would have overheard this conversation.

Um, I mean, Shelly says that she never told Emma and Shelley says she never told the shelter staff that either. So for them to know, I don't know how that information got out or maybe Shelly did mention it and then like, forgot that she had mentioned it. But anyway, this information got back to Emma somehow and Emma was, seemed very agitated at this and ran out of the shelter. Um, and Patty was like running after her and she describes this in her interview with Jordan, like. She was like running after her and then couldn't keep up with her or whatever. And then that ended up being the last time Patty ever saw Emma, because when she leaves the shelter, she does not, she never does come back.

And this is also why, like, I feel Patty was very upset at the shelter cause she was like, if they only would let her have a bed, like she might've stayed there. She felt like it was very wrong for the shelter to just kind of deny her. So that was kind of her stance in all this. And also, an interesting piece of information that was gained from this interview with Patty is that Patty explains that Emma did mention from time to time that she was being stalked by a man.

Um, it's unclear if Emma ever said the name of this man or the intensity of the stalking but Patty believes that it was true and that Emma was really, really scared about this person that was stalking her. 

Yeah. I actually was going to say something about that because to me it sounds like every time she goes in somewhere and she's looking around, it's like, if some, like she knows someone's following her and she wants to see if you know, they're right behind her or something like, that's definitely one of the first things I thought.

Yeah. Like in, like, when you look at the surveillance videos and like the episode of the "Fifth Estate", like show some of the surveillance clips and you can see, like, she's like clearly like looking out the window, making sure someone's gone, or you looking out like, uh, like you would expect if they were trying to avoid someone.

 I was just going to say what Katie was saying. But I also think like, is that normal for like women's shelters to like decline people if they, if they stayed too long? 

Yeah. So like, I worked... for those of you who don't know, I did work in like the shelter system here in Toronto. Um, and like, obviously if you don't have enough beds, if you're like full, then you can't accept someone who's coming in because you have like a maximum capacity.

So I don't know if the shelter was full that night. I've never heard of like, I mean, there are some shelters where it's like an emergency shelter. So like you go there for the night, it's first come first served, you stay there for the night you leave. And then there was other shelters where it's like more longer-term stays. So you have like more the same people staying there for longer periods of time. I've never like heard of one that was like, sort of what seems like halfway is like in the middle. Like, it was like, you were able to, they stay there for like a month at a time and then they would have to leave. So it's like, you could stay there for more than one night, but you could also couldn't stay there like long term. So I've never heard of that. So, but it's very possible that that was a thing. 

I mean, cause she stayed there for like, like more than a few times, I feel like they knew who she was. 

Yeah. Like they knew who she was. She was a known person at the shelter. Like all the staff knew her obviously. And she would, she was staying there since February of that year. So at this point, if that's about like nine, 10 months that she was staying at the shelter... so she would stay like in month increments at a time. So I think she would stay for a month and then she would leave probably when that month kind of allotted time was up, then she would leave and then she would come back, stay for another month.

And this woman, Patty was like kind of one of her closest friends at the shelter. And when she was explaining kind of like the way the shelter worked, it, she was kind of, that's what she was kind of getting at. It was that like, she had like exceeded the amount of time that she could stay. And then there were no emergency beds left, so they couldn't allow her to stay because obviously in the shelter, likeI can attest to that.. Like if you're at capacity, you're at capacity, like, unfortunately you can't have more people staying if they don't have a bed to sleep in, right? I do get that part. Um, Patty says she's very upset with the shelter for not allowing her to stay, but I mean, I do get that part of it. Like I said, if capacity is capacity, right?

But also a little bit later on, I'll get into it by like, knowing a little bit about what they knew about Emma and their concerns about her. Like, it is a little bit weird. I don't know. It's hard to say, like, I feel like the shelter system is so.. It's so hard because like, there's so many gray areas. It's like, I know that like you can't, if it's policy that you have a certain number of beds, you can't let people stay if there's no room, but also like knowing that she was sort of maybe at risk, she was vulnerable. But I guess everyone that they're dealing with is vulnerable, right? Like. Very vulnerable population just by nature. So I don't know.. 

Like, do we know anything else about the shelter? Like, was it a sober shelter? Cause you know, there's some where if you are drunk then they won't let you in cause it's only sober and maybe the way she was acting, they thought maybe, you know, she was on drugs or something. So they're like, well you're just not allowed here because of that. Did that ever come up at all? 

Um, I don't, I don't know if it was officially a sober shelter. I hate sober shelters. First of all, full disclosure. I think they're stupid. Um, that's a whole other podcast we'll get into that, but we won't get into that, but that's for another podcast..

A sober shelter would be good for like a mother and like a daughter. You don't want people that are like under the influence, you know, like really severely around your kids. Like, so that makes sense as a sober shelter or is that a different kind of like family shelter? Yeah, I don't know. 

Like that would be like, yeah, be for a family shelter, but I mean you could probably have a family shelter that is a sober shelter as well, but you can have also family shelters that aren't sober shelters. I don't know, it's so hard. Like it's...

Like a sober shelter, it also makes sense for, you know, the population that would need a shelter, but is trying to be sober at the same time. And if they're around people that have drugs and alcohol and you're trying to be sober, that's going to completely like, you know, mess up their sobriety maybe. So that makes sense in that sense as well. 

That's true. So something, I guess, someone yeah, could seek out a sober shelter for that reason. Um, I know from like interviews that I've listened to and stuff like the reason that Emma was staying at this particular shelter was that it was an all women's shelter and a lot of the other shelters were co-ed and she did have a lot of bad, like experiences and stuff with men in the past. So she didn't want to stay at a co-ed shelter. So this was like the one shelter that she felt safe at because it was an all women's shelter, but there was no full no details that I saw about whether it was sober or not, but nobody has ever, but there are people who say that they do not suspect that Emma was using drugs of any kind. Um, they, you know, like I said, there's, this podcast has interviewed multiple people throughout different stages of her life. And no one has ever said that they thought that she was abusing those things. Like, obviously she would like, you know, and enjoy a drink now, and then just like on a social basis. But I didn't get the impression from any of those interviews or from anything I've seen that she was like using drugs heavily or anything like that. 

Does it ever go into her like family history of like mental illness, like, was there a reason that their parents separated? Like, was there like she had, did she see her dad? Like, was her dad around? 

Interesting that you mentioned. So Shelly says that one of the reasons I think after she got that call, when she found out that Emma was staying at a shelter and like her family members were kind of trying to discourage her from going, because they're like, you have to respect Emma's  wishes, she doesn't want you there. But Shelly said, she kind of took it upon herself to go. Cause she did feel that Emma was having a mental health crisis at that time. And she said the family did have a history of mental illness. So that's why she felt like she could be at higher risk for something like that.

So that's why she kind of took it upon herself to go. But she didn't go into detail about like what the nature of that was there anything, um, and I know her parents were separated like at 18 when Emma moved away, her parents were in the middle of separation. Again, I didn't have much information about like, If it was a really estranged relationship, or maybe they still remain cordial, or I don't really know that detail, but Emma, I don't have anything to suspect that Emma wasn't close with her father. 

So, yeah, like I said, so Emma was last seen at the shelter, like shortly after six, when she found out that her mother was on her way. Again, we don't know how that came about.. At around 6:10 PM, Emma gets into a taxi after running out of the shelter and she asked to be taken to the airport.

So shortly after getting into the cab, she realizes that she doesn't have the appropriate fare to pay for the ride, so she quickly exits the cab. Although she did have the prepaid credit card that she had bought earlier that morning at 7/11, and also allegedly had like between, I've read between two and $3,000 in her bank account.

So it's unclear why she didn't use the available funds. Like she very much did have the money and she did buy the $200 prepaid credit card and she bought the cell phone. So she did have funds available to her. So I don't really know why she just said she didn't have the funds, but she got out of the cab when the driver asked her where she was planning to fly to when she got to the airport, Emma said she didn't know. So she gets out of the cab and a friend of Emma's named Dennis Quay,  he met her a few months earlier in September, 2012. He ran into her at around 6:30 PM. So this would have been not too long after she exited the cab and they were just like acquaintances at this point, like they had just met in September and they had seen each other maybe once or twice, so they weren't super close, but, um, she barely recognized him at first, but Dennis claims that Dennis claims that they were just acquaintances.

Uh, he reports that Emma was barefoot at this time and he was asking her questions, like if she was okay, he asked her if she was, you know, taking any drugs or she was aware of her surroundings. He also mentioned at one point that he tried to like test her. So he like started to walk and cross the street before the light turned to see, like, if she would like, say anything.

Cause they were walking together at this point and she like stopped him. She's like, no, the lights red, you can't go. Um, and then they, she went... she started to walk once the light turned green. So he was kind of testing her in that way to see if she was kind of like aware of her surroundings clearly, but he was concerned for her well-being as he could tell that she was super paranoid and in distress, like a clear stark difference from the last time that he had seen her.

So he knew that something was definitely wrong. So just after 7:10 PM, they parted ways. And then Dennis went into a local restaurant and made a 911 call, um, saying that somebody was in distress and they needed to do a mental health check. So the police arrived to speak with Emma and this was across from the Empress hotel on Government Street in downtown Victoria.

And once the police arrived, Dennis walked away. He assumed that she'd be in safe hands with the police. He assumed they were probably going to like take her in for questioning and that she would be a little bit safer. So he said that he kind of waited around for a little bit. And then once he saw that they were talking with her, then he left.

And so the police located I'm at around 7:17 PM and spoke to her for nearly 45 minutes. The police officers say that she gave one word answers, she refused to put on her shoes and she only told them her name after they insisted for nearly 30 minutes or insistent for her to tell, tell them her name.

She eventually did about 30 minutes into the conversation. Um, the police asked like some standard questions. They asked if she was suicidal. She said, no. They asked her if she was homicidal. She again said no. And because the police felt that they had no reason to keep her in custody or any reason to believe that she was a harm to herself or others, they let her walk away at around 8:00 PM.

And this is the last confirmed sighting of Emma. So the police were the last people to have ever officially seen her, um, that we can confirm for sure. Shelly arrived in Victoria on the evening of November 28th and went immediately to the shelter that Emma was staying at, but Emma was not there. And as it turns out, Shelly showed up at the shelter just mere hours after Emma was last seen alive.

So Shelly says by the time she got to the shelter was around 11:00 PM or she flew into Victoria, landed around 9:00 PM. By the time she got her luggage got a cab and everything, she ended up at the shelter at 11:00 PM. Emma was last seen at 8:00 PM. So it was literally hours. Like she was hours, few hours too late, unfortunately. 

Did Emma have all of her stuff as if she was going to get on a plane and go somewhere, like did she have luggage and baggage? Or did she have anything to really take? 

Um, I don't think she had any luggage or baggage or anything like that. It didn't say for sure, but I don't think she did. And Dennis never mentioned anything about that.

She had a ton of stuff with her either. Um, he said that like she had like... also Julian, the guy who saw her a little bit earlier mentioned that she had like a lot of bags on her, um, bags over her shoulder and stuff like that. That she had like accumulated just kind of like, you know, that was kind of just the way that she walks. She has always had sort of a lot of bags around her, but nothing like no suitcases or anything major to like, like that you would expect if somebody was going to be flying across the country. Um, so shelter staff then did tell Shelly again, it's a little bit unclear of like, when these details came out, if they told her right then and there, this information, or if it was a little bit later on in the investigation that Shelley found out.

But, um, they did tell her that earlier that day there was an incident in the shelter where Emma was moving furniture. She was like taking the furniture from inside the shelter and moving it outside. She was selling off many of her personal belongings and she was saying things like that, the furniture was talking to her, so she had to put it outside the shelter.

So it wouldn't be speaking to her stuff like that. Um, her friend, Patty vehemently  denies that this ever happened, and she actually puts a lot of blame onto the shelter. And she says that they kind of painted this false picture of Emma in order to cover up their own culpability. She says that they probably felt bad that they refused her a bed that night, um, so told police that in the media, that Emma was like crazy in order to make themselves look better. Um, she said this incident with the furniture never happened and Emma never acted in this way at any time. Like the vibe I got, Patty was saying that Emma was like the most level headed person there. And that all of that kind of description from the shelter staff was totally not in line with anything that she knew about Emma.

 Also, I don't know how if the shelter was saying, oh, she was acting crazy, that would be a good defense. It's like, well, now it's kind of something that you need to protect. You can't just send like a mentally ill person that's in the middle of a break out into the street. It seems like a worst defense if they were just making that up. 

Yeah. And like, I don't really see any motivation why they would lie like that. I mean, if you go by, if you go by Patty's explanation that they were just lying to cover up their own culpability, but like there's no culpability to cover up. Like if they told the police, unfortunately we couldn't offer her a bed because the shelter was full. Like the police, aren't going to say like, that's negligence. Like that's no, that's just what happens at a shelter. Like you can't take in every single person who shows up on your doorstep if there's no beds. So yeah. Like, like you said, it would be almost worse to like, say that this happened, if it didn't.

So I don't know if that lines up and also too, like Patty says like that, that never happened, but to be fair, like Patty was never, couldn't have been with Emma every single minute that she was at the shelter, you know? So like, it's not like Patty's seeing everything that's happening. Like she's seeing Emma in a very different light. So I think like, for her to say, like, I never saw it, it never happened. It's like, well, you know, things can happen even if you don't witness it yourself, you know? And I feel like the shelter staff, they're the ones who are there all the time. Like they would see maybe more things than this one person would see. So, but I don't really know. ..

Like, it seems like a Patty's perspective is like very one-sided, like you said, because she didn't see everything. And the shelter's seeing other things, so it's kind of like everybody's perspective to put the whole story together. 

Yeah. So, I mean, you take what Patty says with a grain of salt and also like, it's hard for me to say too, because I don't know any of the people involved. I don't know Patty, so I can't say straight up that she's lying or that she's not telling the truth or that the shelter is lying. Like, I don't know, but just from an outsider perspective, like it seems more believable that the shelter would know more about what's going on in Emma's situation then Patty would necessarily. So the shelter staff also did disclose that in the weeks proceeding her disappearance, they did call the police and they asked them to do a mental health check on Emma because they were concerned for her safety and privacy laws prevented them from contacting her mother.

So the police was just like the next best option that they felt that they had to do something. So the police sort of brushed off the staff's concerns, told them to call back if her behavior persisted or got worse. And the shelter staff have said that they never ended up making a second call to the police.

So obviously it shows that they were concerned for her mental health. And maybe that goes into a little bit of what Patty was saying. She's like, she felt that the shelter should have done more that night. They denied her a bed, but knowing what there was going on. And obviously if they were concerned about her mental health, it seems like... but also too, like the shelter staff, like they're obviously so overworked, they're dealing with so much, and they probably have many instances in a day where people who might be having, you know, mental health concerns, like they might be dealing with lots so, to kind of put all of the blame on them and saying they should have done more. It's like, well, it's easier to say that then when you're actually in that situation. Cause Emma could have just, you know, they could have just seen him as like, well, you know, they, they see lots of people like that, you know? 

Well, yeah. And I feel like they are probably the primary concern is the people that are actually staying there. They can't be concerned about every single person that tries to get in as well. Right. Like they probably have enough to deal with just people that are there and like, don't have the capacity to like, oh, let's worry about everybody else that's out there too. You know what I mean? So, and they're probably only to like legally have to worry about the people in the shelter, not someone that comes in and they refuse and then they leave, even if they do know Emma kind of. Right? So, yeah.

Yeah. So I don't necessarily think the shelter did horrible negligence or anything like that. But if you just listen to Patty's interview, like she's obviously very upset with them. Um, because of that.

 Emma was declared a missing person very quickly. And Shelly immediately began searching for Emma on the streets of Victoria. All she really knew was that she was at the shelter earlier in the day of the 28th and that she spoke with the police in front of the Empress hotel at around 8:00 PM. But after this, there was no traces of Emma at all. 

Emma's car was found the day after. So on November 29th, her car was found at a towing yard after it was towed from the Chateau Victoria hotel parking lot and that was where Emma last left it. Um, they're in like the detailed timeline. There's some information about like she had to move her car a couple of times because she, like, had parked it somewhere and she was going to get a ticket. So she had to park it to this hotel in this hotel's parking lot. And then on the 28th, I believe earlier in the day, she like begged them to like, let her have one more day there before ticketing her. They eventually agreed and they said, but she wouldn't have to move it by the time. So then it makes sense if on the 29th, that's when the car is eventually towed. Um, so it ends up at the towing yard. Uh, so the police went to the tow yard and found most of Emma's personal belongings inside the car, her passport, her laptop, her camera, her journals, stuff like that.

So they knew that she didn't have that kind of stuff with her. So if she was planning to like leave and go somewhere, she didn't have her passport, she couldn't leave the country. She couldn't, you know, so, um, a lot of her personal belongings that they didn't believe that she would just leave, if she was planning... Like, you know, like that's not stuff that she would like move away with or go away without. 

So the first real lead in this case came only five days after she was last seen. And that was when the prepaid credit card that she had purchased was used at a gas station near Colwood, which is 12 kilometers from downtown Victoria.

And once the card was flagged for use, the police tracked it to a man who said that he found the credit card on the side of the road and used it to buy cigarettes at the gas station. The man was given a polygraph and he passed. So is therefore not considered a suspect in Emma's disappearance. But my question is like, how did Emma's credit card end up on the side of the road in a town, 12 kilometers from Victoria?

So it's a little bit odd. And then later on the man who found this card did disclose to Emma's mother, that at the time that all of this was happening, he had a very heavy drinking problem and therefore could not remember exactly where he found the credit card. Like some of those details are a little bit blurry. So what this did cause dispute about where exactly it was found, but it's largely believed that it was found somewhere close to the original location in Colwood, BC. It is a little sketchy, like how her credit card ended up there on the side of this road, 12 kilometers from where she was last seen. So this might be a little bit of a track, like a little bit track, like maybe she was there at some point.

So it might be leading the police a little bit closer to finding out where she went. Another interesting thing in all of this was that Emma's family was frustrated that early reports of Emma's disappearances reported false information. They, a lot of reports said that she was last seen with friends outside the Sandy Merriman shelter, which was not at all correct. Like we all know that her last known whereabouts were in front of the Empress hotel, um, talking to the police that around 8:00 PM. So this, this misinformation that was printed in several major news outlets in the weeks and months after Emma went missing. And it was 79 days after the disappearance, when the first accurate news report with her last known whereabouts was released.

So due to this wrong information, like who knows how many possible tips could have come up and like, you know, could've led to nothing. So there's always a lot of misreporting in the case too. So people thought like, oh, that's where she was last seen. So they might not have thought anything about like, oh, well I saw her here. They didn't think it matched up with the timeline that the media was presenting. So maybe that could have like caused people to not come forward, who may have come forward if they didn't have that misinformation. So that's why it's very important that like, when the media it's a crazy, that you would think that these major outlets are misreporting it, but that is what happened.

One of the early suspects in this investigation. So like they, they ruled out that guy who found that the prepaid credit card pretty early on. So then another one of the early suspects in the investigation was none other than that man Julian that I mentioned before. So remember, that's the man who got off the city bus when he spotted Emma standing on the sidewalk on the day of her disappearance. Um, he's the guy who like went up to her and didn't know if it was her, went and like renewed his health card and came out and he still saw her standing there. So this is Julian.. 

So he was a friend of Emma's and he actually met her back in Perth, Ontario when she was still living there. Um, they met in the summer of 2011 and over the course of about a month, they developed a friendship and saw each other quite often. And it's my impression from all of this that he wanted to be a little bit more than friends with Emma, but Emma was the one who was hesitant and kind of told, kind of cut communication off, told him to stop calling her and stuff like that.

Um, and that was back in Perth before she left to go to Victoria. So after they stopped seeing each other frequently, Emma moved to Victoria BC, and then Julian also moved to Victoria shortly after this, which led some to speculate that he moved there, like in order to follow her or something that he claims that he had very legitimate, personal reasons that he went to Victoria that was completely separate from Emma. He did said he didn't even know that Emma was living in Victoria. Um, it just kind of happened that they both went to the same city, not too long after each other. The "Nighttime" podcast that I mentioned before, like the 10 part series. So they do interview Julian on the podcast and he kind of gives his side of the story and he says that he did run into Emma a couple of times, like prior to that time that he saw her on the day of her disappearance. So, um, he says that he first saw her in October, 2012, which would have been about a month before she went missing. And he remembers that they spotted each other and he remembers that it was a pleasant encounter. It was just like old friends meeting up again, nothing seemed to be awry or anything like that. And she, Emma seemed, you know, normal, like she always had been. And then after they parted ways,  Julian explains that he actually sent a Facebook message to Emma's father, because that was the only way that he thought of that he could reach Emma because Emma didn't have a cell phone and she wasn't active on social media.

And he had hopes to like invite her to this concert that was taking place, I think at the end of October, early November. And he wanted to have Emma's father contact her for him. So that's why he reached out to Emma's father through Facebook. And this Facebook message went unread by Emma's father until after her disappearance.

But some of the wording in that message is what initially caused Julian to be looked at as a person of interest. Because in that message, he does apologize to Emma's father for"stalking her". Julian explains that like, he wasn't actually stalking her, but he just used a poor choice of words at the time. Like he was kind of saying it like, oh, sorry, I was stalking her, obviously, meaning it in jest. Um, but it was that kind of wording that he used. Once her father saw that message after she went missing, he thought, okay, well the police have to look at this guy. He said something about stalking her.  

Did Emma's like journals or anything mention Julian at all, like in a good or bad way?

Um, I, there was no information about like, if he was mentioned in the journals, like their journals do kind of talk about like her being paranoid, that somebody was following her, but it never names a specific person. And, um, Patty also mentioned that Emma said that somebody was stalking her, but there was this man that she knew who was stalking her.

And that she was very concerned about that. Um, 

So she knew who was talking to her? Like she knew who it was or she just knew somebody was stalking her? 

She knew who it was, but she, she knew, like she said, someone that Emma knew was stalking her. So it was somebody that she knew. Patty never really says in this interview, the name of the person. So I don't know if Emma told her the name and the Patty's just hesitant to say it out loud. Or if maybe Emma, didn't say the name at all and just mentioned it like this guy. So, um, the interview with Patty is very interesting on this podcast because like, she kind of said some cryptic things that kind of make people not really sure what she's getting at, but she does kind of hint to Julian in a very odd way. It's bizarre. Yeah. 

She probably can't come out and say it for like legal reasons. She can't be like, it was him, but she... maybe she has a feeling or maybe she has a feeling like if she knows who it is, but she just can't say anything. But I find it also weird that Emma, if she knew who it was, like, why wouldn't she contact the police and tell them who?

Yeah, that's a good point too. Like, I don't know why she wouldn't have done that. It seems like a logical thing to do. And obviously if she was very concerned that someone was stalking her, ,like that would be the, her best move. But yeah. And like, I, again, it's kinda one of those things that we don't know the exact details. Like we don't know if Emma said who it was, or it's hard to say, like what information Emma actually told Patty and what information Patty is just kind of putting together based on like things that she might know. So nothing is really clear there. Um, I know Jordan, like the host of that "Nighttime" podcast, he does like read emails that Patty sent to him.

And she mentioned something. I don't have the exact wording, but it's something about how she believes, um, that cause they weren't on anyway, as long story short, but the, the host of this podcast and Patty weren't on great terms for awhile. And so she was like, she sent Jordan this email, and she was saying, um, "you should focus on the perpetrator of this", um," somebody who was from where she was from" or something like that, like kind of alluding that it was like somebody from back home that was like stalking her. It's like kind of weird. And it makes it seem like it's hinting that it might be Julian that she's talking about. I'm like maybe if Emma said, oh, like this guy I know from back home is stalking me. And then Patty found out later that Julian like was from back home. You know what I mean? Like she might be putting the pieces together herself versus what Emma actually told her. So it's a little bit unclear. 

Did she ever have any boyfriends or anything that they had looked at? Like anybody, like even when she lived in Perth? Like ex-boyfriends or anybody like that that would maybe be stalking her?

Um, like I, she did have like a few, I think she, I think she did like date a couple of people while she was in Perth and also in Victoria, but there's not a ton of information about who these people were, but I'm assuming like these people might've would've come forward or the police would have interviewed them like, and nothing ever really came out about them.

I'm going to put a link to like the podcast and stuff. So you can listen to these interviews with these people, some of these people, if you want, because it is very, very interesting. And obviously I can't go into as much depth because this isn't a 10 part series, but if you want to know more information that is there.

Um, but yeah, so going back to Emma's dad, like once he got this message from Julian and he saw this message from Julian, he reached out to the police, but at that time, Um, Julian was already in contact with Shelley and he was helping with the search efforts for Emma. Um, and then once this message was put out there in the media and people were kind of suspicious of him, it did cast this sort of light onto Julian who then distanced himself from Shelley and the search efforts.

He was given two polygraph tests and passed both of them and he's not considered a suspect in Emma's disappearance. Furthermore, Julian does express frustration, um, in his interview on the "Nighttime" podcast with how "The Fifth Estate" portrayed him in their episode, because they kind of just made it look a little bit more shady than it was.

And due to this, he was basically forced into isolation because of all the suspicion that surrounded him. Um, and so after Julian was eliminated, as a suspect, this investigation went back to square one- again, the police didn't really have any other leads to go on. So for two years, very little progress was made in the case.

Shelly spent much time in BC combing the streets of Victoria interviewing the homeless, both there and in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver. Some people say that they did see Emma on the streets in the Downtown Eastside, but none of these types of tips have ever been confirmed or substantiated. However, in May, 2014, the police got another potential lead in the case.

So the police got a call from the employees of a clothing store in downtown Vancouver with claims that there was a man who came into their store and was captured on surveillance video with a crumpled up missing person's poster of Emma's. The man appeared to be frustrated and agitated. And he said, "it's one of those missing persons posters, except she's not missing. She's my girlfriend. And she ran away because she hates her parents". So this implies that Emma purposely made herself disappear and was possibly living on the streets of Vancouver among the hundreds of homeless people that are downtown on the Downtown Eastside. 

Well was her bank account emptied out? Like she had like a couple thousand dollars in there right? Still, but that's kind of weird. For anybody that's going to do anything. You think you'd clean that out? 

Yeah, exactly. That's what I was thinking too. Um, yeah, like I'm assuming that the money was still in there. Like it wasn't ever touched after she went missing, funds were never cleared out of the, so she still had that amount of money in her bank account. So yeah, it seems kind of weird that she wouldn't be using any of that money if she... 

But that's so random for a guy to say that if it's not true, like.. 

I know, I know it's so it's so weird. It's so weird. The man was wearing a green shirt and had a slight limp and he had like flame tattoos on his arms. The surveillance footage is very grainy of course, cause you know, we can't ever have a clear surveillance video in any of these cases, but um, it's very grainy. So this man could not be clearly seen. The police were never able to contact or identify this man and no one has ever come forward again. So this lead again was a dead end and the case went cold once again. So this guy went to that store, made that claim and then was never heard or seen again. Um, which is odd.

So there's never been any follow up with him. 

It's super weird.

 It's so weird. I find it really weird that somebody would just like, say that out of... with no, like no amount of truth to it at all. Like he would just come out and say that like, it's very odd. So he was basically implying that, like she had went to the downtown east side, she's like in hiding purposely because she hates her family. And is trying to stay missing is what he was implying. Nobody ever knows for sure if it's true, because they can never find him again. So ...

He could have been delusional as well and just say random things. 

Yeah. So the police kind of just wrote it off as not legitimate. Um, but it is like an important piece in the story and in the mystery. So it is worth noting. 

So yeah, for years, very few leads developed and the case was very much still open. However, a major lead in the case did come in June, 2018. So this was almost six years after Emma went missing. And that was in the form of a story by a man named William. He says that he was in his car driving to work at around 5:00 AM on November 29th, 2012.

He was late for work at his new job. So he was in a hurry, but he saw a woman who was clearly in distress on the side of the road, shoeless and soaking wet. He said that had, it had been raining all night. And at the time that he saw her on the side of the road, it was just like sprinkling just a little bit. So because that she was like soaked from head to toe, he assumed that she had to be walking around outside all night for her to be that wet. Cause she wouldn't have just been wet like that. If she was outside for like 10, 15 minutes, um, she seemed to be frantic and looking around as if she was worried someone was following her and she was trying to avoid them.

So he pulled over and she got into his car and asked if he could take her to a girlfriend's house in Colwood. William says that this woman's demeanor changed once she entered the vehicle. She was frantic and in distress on the street, but inside the car, she was calm and content. He says the pair were in the car together for only like five to 10 minutes or so it was like a very short encounter.

But William explained to her that he was late for work at his new job so he could not take her to Colwood because it was too far out of the way, but said that he could take her as far as he could, along his route. Five or so minutes into this encounter, William pulled over and dropped this woman off at an intersection next to a 24 hour gas station.

He's also interviewed on that podcast with Kimberly Bordage . She, she interviewed him, he says that he kind of like pointed out the direction of Colwood indicating that that was the direction that she needed to go if she wanted to go to Colwood.  He explained that when she exited the vehicle, her demeanor went back to being frantic and paranoid, just like it was right before he picked her up.

And he says at this time, he's pretty sure, like, as soon as that happened and he saw her demeanor change that quickly, once again, he was pretty sure that the woman was experiencing some type of mental health crisis. Um, so he continued on his way to work and left this woman at the intersection where she left the vehicle. He is adamant that this woman is Emma. And if it was, this places her at this intersection roughly nine hours after she was last seen by police at the Empress hotel. Also, Colwood is where her prepaid credit card was found. So William's story of this woman wanting a ride to Colwood would make sense if that was Emma.

So did she continue on her way to Colwood after exiting Williams' vehicle and just dropped her credit card on the side of the road on the way? That's a possibility, like I said, William was interviewed on Kimberly Bordage's podcast and was asked if Emma threw anything out the window during the car ride.

And William explains that no, the windows were up the whole time because it was raining. So it's not like she could have discarded anything along the way. If this was in fact, Emma, then these are her last known whereabouts, but William didn't come forward with this tip until nearly six years after she went missing, which was far too late to lead to any substantial information about where she could be now.

So William explains that he didn't come forward because when he saw reports about her last being seen at the homeless shelter with friends, which was due to the misreporting and misinformation that was out there in the weeks after she went missing, he didn't think that his tip was of any value. He also mentioned that friends discouraged him from coming forward with the tip and they kind of wanted him to stay out of it and that it wasn't relevant  so why interject in this story and put yourself out there if it's not of any value. But he says that after the birth of his baby girl, he decided that he couldn't be silent anymore and chose to bring the tip forward at that time. And Shelly has gone on the record to say that this tip from William is like, she believes one of the most legitimate tips that has ever come forward about the case. So she is fairly certain that this woman was Emma. So this tip actually led to a new investigation that involved like canine searches and rescue dogs in the area that William dropped off Emma. They searched wooded areas in the immediate vicinity, the search was conducted by volunteer search canine handler Kim Cooper and Kimberley Bordage, who did that podcast helped and Shelley Fillipoff as well helped, but the police were not interested in helping at this time. So the trio had to start a GoFundMe page in order to fund the search efforts, which were scheduled to begin in December, 2018. And the website HelpFindEmmaFillipoff.com says that future searches  were planned for spring 2019, but that's the last update that was ever put on the site so I don't know if there were further searches that have been done and obviously nothing came of those searches because there's been no updates since then. Other than that, there are no other clues or pieces of information known to the public that could help determine what happened to Emma. Investigators and experts say that there are only three possible outcomes.

She was either met with foul play, she committed suicide or chose to voluntarily go missing and is somewhere out there and could potentially be found. So do you guys have, what, like what theory do you think is the most plausible? Like, do you have any thoughts about which one could be accurate? 

So I think she doesn't want to be found just from maybe just from the information that I've been hearing that you were talking about  but also going back to what you said about her having like someone, someone stalking her like that's and she'd being paranoid and stuff like that. I'd always wondered if maybe she has like, maybe schizophrenia and like those voices in her head, are like telling her, like someone's stalking her. Like, cause I feel like the paranoia thing and like just the way he was acting kind of, kind of makes me believe that that's what it could be, but she could also be having a stalker too, but I just, I don't know, just seems really odd to me.

Yeah. Uh, I was kind of leaning toward maybe she just wanted to disappear or maybe she kind of did it involuntarily . Like she is going through like a break, like a mental break or she does have schizophrenia and she just can't function, you know, back enough to, for her to be found. But like if she did disappear, like why would she still have money in her account that like, that's still, that doesn't make sense to me if that, if she does still have money to me, maybe. You know that same day she was still on the road hitchhiking and somebody, you know, not as nice picked her up and could have taken her anywhere, you know? So I don't know. 

Yeah. Yeah. Like it's, um, it's very hard. And I think going back to what Steph was saying, like, I think if you like, look at the case and people say, because she was living in a homeless shelter, like I think a lot of people automatically assume like, oh, she must have, you know, people just kind of write. people who are in homeless shelters off, like, oh, they either have drug problems or they're mentally ill or something like that, which like there's, you know, a significant portion of folks in those shelters who do, but like, that's not the case for every single person. So I think a lot of people might be easy to say like, oh, she might be having a mental break. And I think they might downplay the fact that it's really a real possibility that there could have been someone stalking her. But if people kind of focused on like, oh, well she was just having a psychotic break. They might not ...it might cause them to not look into the veracity of like a stalker, which could be true.

So maybe that's going to prevent them from looking into a potential suspect. But I think like if you look at all of the information, like, I think many people have said that it's clear or possible that she was having some  type of mental, mental break at the time and around that time, like she was 26 at the time that she went missing and that is kind of an age, like at your early to mid twenties when like these kinds of things can manifest and they can really, really become severe at that time. So yeah, like it is very possible that was happening and you can kind of tell like, maybe she is like, she keeps, I don't know. Cause it's hard to say. Cause like people thinking back to that, like guy in the store who said that she hates her family, she doesn't want to be found, but like she was the one who called up her mother initially and said she wants to come home like that... wasn't.. Nothing caused her to do that. Like she wanted to do that. So that doesn't seem to fit.

Like if she hates her family, why should it be calling her, calling them voluntarily? And also just seems like it is sort of like she is having this... she doesn't know what she wants. Like she wants to go home. She doesn't want to go home. She keeps changing her mind back and forth all the time. She doesn't know what she wants or she is having these intense, like swings in her personality.

And when she's feeling really paranoid and scared, that's when she wants to come home. But then when she's feeling a little bit better, that's when she calls it off. So I don't know. I think it is kind of clear that there was some mental health issues happening, but obviously nobody knows definitively.

Yeah. Well, I think she definitely was having some sort of like mental health issues. Um, but something must have happened to her because  no one seen her. Right? No, one's come forward. So it's not like she's out there somewhere distressed. Somebody would see her on the street or... 

Well this man did! He said it's his girlfriend..

I guess again, is he hiding her, like in his house or something? Like you think, I guess maybe if people don't come forward in that kind of, that kind of lifestyle maybe.. 

That's the thing too. I mean, I did say like a lot of people on the downtown or not a lot, but some people on the Downtown Eastside said that they did say that they saw her, but like they could never confirm that. And people, I think kind of just wrote that off too, like, oh, well, you know, like, I feel like a lot of people don't take, it's sad. Like a lot of people wouldn't take that seriously. They're like, oh, what do you mean? Like they're probably mistaken or something like that. So, I mean like, these people are saying that, but no one knows for sure. So like, is it possible that even at this stage, like she's still out there, but she hasn't cleared her bank account. Like she still has her money in her bank account. Which is weird. 

But I feel like if she was living on the Downtown Eastside, eventually like someone you would eventually know, like the, like the police kind of become familiar with all those people that are regulars and that live there. So I feel like they would know if she was there regularly. Maybe she was and then left,. I don't know. But it just seems like if shewas around... They'd be able to find her, 

She's never obviously had any contact with any member of her family after she went missing, so it's like at one point she was calling her mother regularly and saying she wanted to come home. So it's like, what? She really then just like completely stopped contact and never called them again. Like you think eventually she might come back around to wanting to speak to her mother again where she would then call her. Right? So that's another thing too, that makes me think like, something did happen to her where she can't call, you know?

Yeah. And I feel like in a severe mental break, like it's not going to get better unless you get help. And like, You know, even if she wanted to call her mom, she might not be able to, we're not know how, or like, not remember her phone number, like things like that. And there's, it's not going to get better until she gets help. So it's like, she actually can't. But I feel like if she was out there, someone would see her and know her. 

Yeah. Yeah. That's true. It's like, it's very bizarre. Um, but one thing from the "Fifth Estate" episode that kind of supports the suicide theory. So in "The Fifth Estate", they mentioned that investigators found a dark journal entry that was written by Emma shortly before her disappearance, which reads "To everyone, from dead Emma: Hello, I figured someone will be on this computer at some point and will read this. Okay. So I'm dead. Floating around on energy or not .Watching dying stars, reviving stars and dreaming, Milky dreams, and shadow dancing on your timelines or whatever. Good luck, every heart. I love you. Em, ". So experts on "The Fifth Estate" say that like, obviously this is a dark and disturbing journal entry, but they say it doesn't have the markings of a traditional suicide note.

It lacks specificity and detail that would usually be found in a legitimate suicide note. And Shelley also says that she's 100% sure that Emma would not take her life. She doesn't believe that for a second. And other than that suspicious journal entry and shelter staff who say they believe that she was suicidal at the time of her disappearance, no other evidence has ever surfaced to back up the suicide theory.

Police did send divers into the Harbor in Victoria three separate times to search for her body, but found nothing .Search and rescue specialist Martin Callwell who was interviewed on "The Fifth Estate", says that if she went into the water, like from a suicide attempt, her body would have been likely been discovered less than five kilometers from where she entered. Basically, it was determined by the experts that it's not likely that in that body of water, that she would have been swept out to sea before divers would have found her and no reports were ever made about a body being discovered on the shoreline or by any boats in the Harbor. So I guess the experts were able to determine that, like, it's not likely that her body would just have washed out to sea like that quickly in the amount of time before they did the search. So somehow they determined that, um, well.. 

Vancouver island is just full of forests, right? It's like a rainforest. And you had said before that she had spent time by herself, out in the woods, like maybe she went, decided to go out in the woods on a trip by herself just to get away and then just never made it back. And it was so remote and like, nobody really knows where to look for. So it could have been intentional that she wanted to disappear and not come back or she could have got lost and died or something out there. 

Yeah, that's true. And if you believe that William guy, she was on her way to Colwood to see a girlfriend, but no one's ever come forward saying that like, they, they like to be that person that she was going to see there. So no one knows for sure if she actually did know someone there or if that's legitimate or not. Um, but as for her voluntarily going missing, like that theory, all we have is that man in the Vancouver clothing store, who claimed to be Emma's boyfriend to back up this theory, but because this man was never identified by police, it's a very loose lead to go on.

And then as for her being met with foul play, which is the third theory, I mean, that is possible, like who knows, who could have come upon her as she was on her way to Colwood,, if William's account is correct and that was Emma, there's nothing solid to back up this theory either. But at this point with no body and no trace of her after November 29th, anything is possible.

The only thing that seems clear is that Emma was experiencing some sort of mental health crisis and wasn't able to get the help she needed before she went missing. Um, and I find it so sad that her mother was like only a few short hours away from intervening. Like she showed up at the shelter just hours after Emma was last seen.

So think if she had just went like a day earlier, even like six hours earlier, she could have been at the shelter when Emma was at the shelter at 6:00 PM. So it's like, there's an opportunity there and it's just sad. And like, you kind of just slipped away and it was, she was so close.

Her mother probably can't get over that either though that how she was so close but missed her. 

Yeah. And like, she probably feels so much guilt that like, she didn't go on a plane the first time Emma called her like four days before that. And then she waited four days to go ... she.. I'm sure she feels horrible guilt for that. So like, I feel bad that she would feel bad because obviously nobody would like expect that to happen or think that that would happen. So it's just really, really sad.

I did just like want to go back to for a second, the very last journal entry that Emma made on November 23rd that I mentioned earlier, because if you break it down, like it could have various meanings and like it is cryptic and just like everything in this case, it is mysterious.

And she did write a lot of poetry. She was very creative. So I just wanted to look at that, cause this is her last known journal entry. So like it could possibly have like clues as to what happened. Um, I mean, it was from November 23rd, which is still five days before she went missing. So who knows what could have happened in that five days in between, but as of November 23rd, like these were her thoughts, so it could have some sort of information.

So, um, I'm just gonna break it down. So first-line says sleep dep hurts, like sleep deprivation. So obviously she's not sleeping very well or at all, uh, this could be due to her paranoia, her mental health crisis, fear, sadness. And like the shelter staff said that she wasn't sleeping very much as well. So that all lines up. The very next line after that is "Very hopeful".

Now, this isn't really in line with someone who is suicidal  necessarily. Like, I feel like if you're hopeful, you wouldn't necessarily be suicidal. You'd rather if you're hopeless, that would be kind of, if you have suicidal ideation, you may feel hopeless, but she says she is very hopeful. Um, and like I said, this is five days before she was last seen. So maybe at this time she was hopeful since she planned to go home and maybe she rapidly deteriorated in those next five days, which made her be suicidal. Then the next line is "checking myself out". So I assume that this means that she's checking herself out of the Sandy Merriman shelter. Um, but I was also thinking like, could it have a more cryptic and dark meaning?

Like I'm checking myself out as in like I'm taking my own life. Um, this would totally be against a very hopeful statement that she just made before this, but she was kind of. 

Maybe she was thinking that now she has a plan for how she's going to die or disappear. Now she's like hopeful that she's actually going to go through with it. Like, you know, she's happy that she's going to die and that's like a hopeful thing for somebody that wants to die. 

Yeah. Yeah. That's true. That's true. And also too, like she did seem to kind of be this indecisive stage. Like she didn't really know what she wanted, so she could have written like very helpful. And then the next line is I'm checking myself out. Like could kind of show that like, double-sided sort of like mentality that she sort of had at the time. Um, um, 

Checking herself out could be like, I'm going to get myself myself, looked at by a doctor, like checking myself. You know what I mean? 

That's, that's true.

Yeah. That's true too. 

There's a lot of different meanings of what that could actually mean, but..

 Yeah. And like, if you just take it on, on surface level, like yeah. I'm checking myself out, like out of the shelter. Maybe, but then obviously that doesn't go with what Patty says with like, she was trying to stay that night and she wanted a place to stay and that they wouldn't allow her to have a bed. So it's like, this makes it seem like she's leaving voluntarily. But again, this is also five days before that. So who knows what happened in that amount of time? 

Yeah. And then also, yeah, I did have here, like you said, Katie, maybe the hope she was feeling would come from taking her own life. Like if that was a very hopeful feeling for her, um, and like perhaps I'm reaching here, like I could be just like trying to grasp at straws here, but like she, like I said, she was very poetic and artistic. So I'm just trying to say that there could be double meanings in a lot of this information that maybe we can glean from this final journal entry, who knows.

 Um, and then the next line is "Mom is coming. It's November 23rd. I have to get home before dad goes, I want to call dad". So where was her dad going somewhere? It seems like she has a sense of urgency to return home. And she does acknowledge that her mother is coming. She knows that her mother is coming at this time and she seems happy about it. So that doesn't seem to go in line with this guy who says she hates her family and she's, you know, voluntarily leaving.

And also, so this, I want to call dad, um, this "want to call dad" line... so another piece of information that came out during the investigation that Shelly didn't actually find out about this until 2015. So there was surveillance footage that showed Emma outside of the Sandpiper condo building. And this is all explained in Kimberley Bordage's podcast, but she looks like she's waiting to enter the building. And, um, Shelly says like she was shown this video by the police in 2015. And she says that Emma looks very uneasy in this video. Emma eventually enters the building and apparently knocked on a stranger's door, asking if she could use their phone to make a long distance phone call. The residents says, quote, "She was a nice, looked neatly dressed, and there was no signs of drug use or anything".

So they felt like safe enough to let her in, um, it's unknown who she was calling, but it's speculated that she didn't get through to this person that she was looking for and left a voicemail on their phone. Uh, phone records led police to that apartment and that's how they know that she was there. And people suspect that she called her dad in this call and she left a voicemail with her dad.

So, and that would have been on, I believe that was on November 23rd as well. It could have been the next day.., but she says," I want to call dad" in that final jury journal entry. So that could line up, if she did call her father, um, there shortly after she wrote this, um, journal entry. Um, and then the last lines are like," you're going home tomorrow, go home to gather and rest and read and come to be". That was like, well, what is.. what does home mean? Like that could also have multiple meanings. Like is home. Like if she takes her own life, like to rest and come to be like, is that like, kind of, you know, her way of saying like what happens after she dies or something like I could be reaching, but that was just kind of the thoughts that I had. And I was just trying to get any information about that final journal entry to see if it had any like possible meaning other than what is said there. So I don't know. Did you guys have any like final thoughts or what do you guys think of this case or theories? 

Well, yeah, I mean the final entry does make it seem like she was excited to go home and wanted to, you know, just kind of like reset everything. And so that guy that said, oh, she hated her family. It just, that seems like the least possible thing that happened. I feel like she didn't probably want to disappear on her own. That's my conclusion. 

Yeah. I'm kind of. I don't know.. I'm thinking I still think that she is like... voluntarily decided to disappear. Maybe she just needed to check herself out of the real world for a bit and hiding in that woods somewhere in Victoria.

Yeah but for six years?, how long has it been now? 10 years? 

Yeah, it was 2012. So it's nine years coming up.It was November 28th, we're recording this around that time. So it's going to be nine years in a little while or like a week? 

Yeah, I don't know. I don't, I don't think, I think she just wanted to disappear she's out there somewhere. Not wanting to be found. 

Yeah. I think if I had to like pick a theory that I was going to go with, I think that she either took her own life or she just kind of ended up dying. Like she could have just ended up somewhere on the side of the road and just like, you know, went into the woods, like Katie said, and like, didn't mean to die, but just ended up dying due to the elements or something like that. So I don't know. That's what I would go with if I had to guess, I don't think there's foul play. Like, I don't think somebody like killed her. Um, I don't think there's anything to like that Julian guy, I don't think he did it. Um, yeah. And also too, it could be very true. Like, like she could also be having a mental break at the time. And then cause Julian says that he did see her a couple of times before that day. So it's like, she might've interpreted that as stalking like, oh, this guy is like now living in Victoria. I saw him at this coffee shop and I saw him here, like. she could be like, seeing and taking it in as like, oh, this guy's kind of following me, even if that wasn't his intention. And then she was also at the same time having this mental crisis that sort of compounded that feeling that she had. So like all, both of those things, could be true. Not saying he was stalking her, but like, you know what I mean? Like it could have happened that like she mistook the situation and because of what was happening with her, she might've thought it was more sinister. 

That's true. She could be talking about Julian, the person that was stalking her, but he actually wasn't stalking her. So it could be both of those things. 

Yeah. So it's such a bizarre case. And like I said, it is unsolved, it's been almost nine years. And, um, yeah, it's just a crazy case And  if you... I'll put links to like those podcasts so that you can listen to more information, cause I'm sure there's lots more in there that I didn't get to get into.

Um, but if you have any information on Emma's whereabouts. Call Crimestoppers at 1-800-222-TIPS, which is 1-800-222-8477. Or you can contact the Victoria police department non-emergency number at 250-995-7654. Or you can visit the Victoria police department in person at 850 Caledonia avenue, Victoria BC.

So if you've seen Emma or know anything that might be of use in this case, in this investigation, call those numbers or go in person. And hopefully some resolution, even if you know.. They find her body or whatever, hopefully the family can get closure. Cause they're kind of in this limbo right now. They don't know if she's alive or if she did die in 2012. So who knows? 

But, um, yeah, it's a crazy case. So thank you guys for tuning in. I hope you enjoyed listening to this episode. If you, if you like the show, follow us on all the social medias @crimefamilypodcast on Instagram or @crimefamilypod1 on Twitter. We're also on Facebook atCrime Family Podcast, and you can email us at crimefamilypodcast@gmail.com.

Send us your case suggestions, your feedback, your tips, your suggestions. Tell us if you love the show or tell us if you hate the show. Uh, any feedback is good feedback, I guess, to a degree. Um, so yes. Thank you guys. And, uh, we'll see you next week for new episode. Take care .