By: ALISON LANGLEY
Local News – Niagra Falls Review-Thursday, June 08, 2006
News that Niagara police made an arrest in connection with the unsolved homicide of young woman is giving hope to a former prostitute that her friend’s killer will soon be captured.
Deborah Nanson once turned tricks alongside childhood friend Dawn Stewart in the Main and Ferry streets area.
Stewart was six months pregnant when she vanished from her Niagara Falls home in September 1995.
Her skeletal remains, and those of a fetus, were discovered six months later in Pelham.
While Nanson left prostitution two years ago after kicking a crack cocaine habit, she often thinks about her fallen friend and hopes the person responsible for her death will one day be brought to justice.
“Someone has to be held accountable. Whomever hands she died at, they need to be caught,” said Nanson, who now assists sex-trade workers and addicts through Come Walk a Mile, a Hamilton-based support group,
On Monday, a Niagara Regional Police task force announced the arrest of a suspect in connection with the death of 32-year-old Diane Dimitri, whose body was found in a rural ditch in Welland in August 2003.
The same suspect, a 33-year-old Niagara Falls resident, was arrested in January and charged with first degree murder in connection with the death of Cassey Cichocki, 22.
Nanson hopes the latest arrest will not slow down the investigation into the outstanding cases, which includes Stewart, 32, Nadine Gurczenski, 27, and Margaret Jeannette Jugaru, 26.
“Her (Stewart’s) body lay out there for how many months before she was found? I think they (police) owe it to her children to keep going.”
Stewart’s surviving children are now teenagers and, if her unborn child had lived, he or she would have celebrated an 11th birthday this year.
“We have to keep in mind the families of those women. They need closure in order to move on,” Nanson said.
Word of the latest arrest was met with praise from a Canada-wide sex worker’s rights organization which had earlier criticized Niagara police for not taking action sooner when the women vanished.
“We were afraid the task force would be just for show and would be quietly dismantled in two or three months. That doesn’t seem to be the case and we’re quite pleased with that,” said Valerie Scott, executive director of Sex Professionals of Canada.
According to SPOC, more than 600 sex-trade workers in Canada have either been murdered or have gone missing since 1985.
alangley@nfreview.com