Mary Ann Birmingham: RCMP charge man in teen’s murder

IQALUIT, Nunavut –

Mounties in Nunavut have made an arrest in the murder of a 15-year-old girl almost 40 years ago.

Mary Ann Birmingham was found dead in Frobisher Bay in what was then the Northwest Territories in May of 1986. Frobisher Bay later became Iqaluit and is now the capital of Nunavut.

Police said Thursday an indictment was signed a week ago and on Tuesday, Jopey Atsiqtaq was arrested in Ottawa.

He appeared in court Wednesday on a charge of second-degree murder and has been remanded in custody. RCMP have said Birmingham was “brutally murdered” in her home while her family was out of town.

Police say she was found by her sister, Barbara Sevigny, who had just returned from visiting her brother in Montreal. The front door to the house was locked, and she had to pry open a window with a makeup compact.

In 2018, Sevigny shared further details to panel members with the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.

“When I turned to the living room, I saw her body on the couch,” she told commissioners at the time.

“And then I’m saying, ‘Mary Ann?’ I’m calling her (name) out. I wanted her to wake up, but my mind’s telling me, ‘But there’s a pool of blood, she cannot wake up.”‘

Since the family didn’t have a telephone, Sevigny went door-to-door to ask her neighbours for help. It felt like hours had passed when first responders showed up at the house, she said.

After police arrived, Sevigny went to her grandmother’s house. In the months and years since, she said she has felt the immediate after-effects of post-traumatic stress.

“I was hearing voices, I was paranoid,” she said. “I thought I was going to be killed next. I was crying in corners.”

Birmingham’s mother, Sarah, also spoke to the panel.

She said she was in Montreal at the time to support her three-year-old adoptive son, who was receiving treatment for leukemia.

While there, she was told that a social worker wanted to see her.

“It was then I would be told (of the death),” she told commissioners in Inuktitut. “I couldn’t cry. Mary Ann was so important to me and I couldn’t accept that she was gone.”

Birmingham remembered Mary Ann as being a welcoming and friendly girl.

“We used to dress her up as a hunter and pretend she was going out hunting when she was little,” she said.

“We used to play with her, and she enjoyed it in the days when everybody was fine.”

RCMP said Atsiqtaq was remanded into custody and is scheduled to be back in court Oct. 29.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 26, 2024.

By Aaron Sousa in Edmonton