A new group looking into the disappearance of Sudbury teen Meagan Pilon is treating the case as a homicide.
It has been more than six years since the then 15-year-old went missing. She was last seen by her father, Marc Pilon, on Sept. 11, 2013.
You've likely seen posters with details of her disappearance, what she looked like at the time, and seeking information on her whereabouts.
A Facebook group, Help us find Meagan Pilon, was created to help find her. The group has almost 1,100 members, and the administrators keep the public up to date on what's happening with the case.
Another Facebook group, Greater Sudbury Missing Persons, is also looking into Meagan's disappearance. The group has more than 1,400 members.
But there is another group looking into her disappearance. Please Bring Me Home is a volunteer-driven organization that is actively investigating dozens of missing persons across Canada. To date, the group said it has helped locate the remains of Nolan Panchyshyn, who went missing in December 2017 in Port Elgin, and Terry Schope, who went missing in June 2018.
Nick Oldrieve, one of the founding members of the group, said they have been looking into the Pilon case since late 2019.
“Please Bring Me Home kind of sprang up out of nowhere,” said Oldrieve in a phone interview with Sudbury.com. “We started looking at what's really a world-wide problem, but really honed in on seven cases in southern Ontario. We felt maybe we could do something.”
The group's efforts were documented in a W5 episode, which led to an outpouring of support from across the country from families looking for answers and individuals wanting to help. The group decided to expand its scope and is now setting up teams of volunteers all across Canada.
Retired RCMP Insp. Linda Gillis Davidson watched the W5 episode. She's one of the many who wanted to help.
Davidson brings to the table decades of experience investigating crimes. Her LinkedIn account states she started her career as street officer for the RCMP and eventually moved up the ranks to the Prime Ministers Protection Detail, serving under Paul Martin first and then under Stephen Harper. She retired from the RCMP in 2012 and launched her own consulting service, Muskoka Executive Security Consulting.
She was blunt in sharing her theories on Pilon's disappearance.
“I suspect homicide,” Davidson said.
Is there any possibility she's still alive somewhere?
“I don't think so, and the family has accepted that fact,” Davidson said. “They're pretty well-versed, and they're prepared and expect that.”
Before proceeding with this story, Sudbury.com did reach out to Pilon's father, Marc, to notify him a story was in the works and to confirm that he was aware of Please Bring Me Home's work on the case and their hypothesis that his daughter is not longer alive. Sudbury.com did not want this story to come as a surprise to Pilon's family. He consented to the story, but did not want to be quoted.
Davidson said she has been working on the case since September. She has received a number of tips, and come spring, will be conducting several ground searches around Greater Sudbury.
“We will use a cadaver dog and ... ground-penetrating radar,” she said, adding the group is trying to get maps of all the culverts around the city and the outskirts. They want to search them, even if it's only to put minds at rest that Pilon's body isn't in any of them.
Davidson said the Please Bring Me Home team has an extensive investigative background, with 30-plus years in forensics, 30 years in investigations, and 30 years in conducting ground radar searches.
“There's so much skill there,” she said. “When you retire from a police agency or a specialized unit agency, that experience doesn't go away. It's there. Why not put it to good use?”
Davidson called Pilon's case a “dog's breakfast.” She has checked into a number of tips — some that provided grisly details of Pilon's demise — but nothing has panned out.
“Every single rumour, everything that's passed on, I go into it and find out who they are, where they are, how they could have been involved and what would have been the motive,” she said. “I build a theory. then I tear it apart. It's a tremendous amount of work.”
She also is working closely with detectives from Greater Sudbury Police Service, and provides any information she receives to them.
However, her job isn't to solve the case, she said.
“My business isn't to solve who did it or how they did it,” she said. “My business is to ... help bring her home to provide closure to her family. It would be tremendous to see the family not suffer any longer.
“My heart goes out to Meagan's family. Whoever did this, all they have to do is make an anonymous tip. Tell us where to look, where we would find her, and we can bring her home.”
While Meagan's case is her sole focus right now, Davidson said she wants to help find anyone missing across Canada.
“If you want us to look into it, if you want to have a team of investigators concentrating solely on your case, call us,” she said.
If you have information about Meagan Pilon, you can call the tip line at 1-226-702-2728.
