NORTH BAY — They may be decades apart, but Ellen White still sees unique parallels between six missing persons cases which all are tied to the old North Bay Psychiatric Hospital which was located on Highway 11 North, north of the city of North Bay.
Ellen White is a private investigator who runs a podcast called “Whereabouts Unknown".
"The common link is they all happened at the old psychiatric hospital; the old building on the highway," said White, who is based out of Barrie.
The six, include Philippe Guerin (1966), Dawn Carisse (2001), Terry Zubko (1982), Norman Welsh (1976), Glen Wesley (2010) and Russell Hoffert (2000).
"They are all horrific and all very very sad, and they are all families who would desperately want some information about them," she said.
"But what has been really interesting about this case is the number of tips we have had and that is from current and former employees of the hospital and people from the community of North Bay.
"Lots of information, lots of lives; all of their families impacted. It is interesting when we hear the 'standard or care' because there is an expectation that people will walk away from psychiatric hospitals and we get that, and we get that not all people are held under lock and key."
White is working in connection with the North Bay Police and the families to try and find more clues as to what happened to all these missing former psychiatric hospital patients.
She says the Guerin one is the oldest and possibly the most bizarre scenario.
"It is one of the most bizarre stories we have heard as investigators because Philippe is missing for weeks and his family only finds out by chance that he has disappeared," she said.
"And it was disclosed during a visit that Guerin, who had polio and a distinct limp, had been missing for more than 3 weeks. The hospital allegedly sent a letter to the police saying this person is missing rather than calling in the disappearance report."
Then fast forward a few decades to the 2001 unsual case of Dawn Carrise.
She is a woman with a brain injury and memory loss, White says she left the hospital nine times from a securely locked ward.
"On her 10th attempt to break out she gets out and is never seen again," said White.
Then in 2010, it's Glen Wesley who goes missing from the hospital. He is the one White is most confident can be discovered still alive.
"We think of all the people that Glen is still out there," she said.
"He is one we are quite optimistic about. I would say we have had some decent sightings since he disappeared; one in Ottawa and one in Toronto,"
White said one search obstacle was the access of canine units to assist in searches within the North Bay area.
She has even taken the time to visit the heavy brush that now covers where the hospital used to stand just off Highway 11 North.
"We went and looked out into that bush area and we thought a human being, and the vulnerable nature of all these people," she said.
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White's research seems to indicate that there were some care issues at the old psych hospital.
"During the course of our research, we were able to pull up a lot of former nursing tribunal documents and different documents relation to the hospital and we did find at least a couple of staff members that had been reprimanded for some pretty horrific abuses of the patients," said White.
"We did not see any indication that any of these people were involved or in fact had cared for any of the people who went missing - so we are not drawing a parallel there for sure.
"But the fact that people in North Bay were not aware that these people were working there and the information that was provided by way of those tribunals."
White says these are all cases they continue to work on and that is their commitment to the families.
"We continue to post on our Facebook page, and get lots of tips and every time we do, we are going to post and of course those posts are sent to the North Bay Police Service and we share with the families as well and we are going to continue to do so until there is some closure on any of these cases," she said.
For more details on the missing persons cases you can check them out here at the North Bay Police Service Missing Persons section
