Hope is a tricky word.
For the family and friends of Jodi Henrickson, a 17-year-old Squamish woman who went missing on Bowen Island in 2009, imagining a positive outcome to her case is nearly impossible. All they can hope for is relief from the torture of not knowing where she is, or what happened to her.
That’s why a new documentary called Finding Jodi is aiming to shed light on her cold case.
For filmmaker Jenni Baynham, a true crime documentarian who has spent years investigating the disappearance, her goal can sometimes be hard to articulate.
“Hope implies a happy ending, and there is no happy ending for this family. My motivation here is different because I don’t believe in closure or hope in this specific situation, but I think it’s sick for the family to have to live with this question mark, not knowing where she is,” she told The Squamish Chief.
“As a mother of two kids, that has motivated me because I know Jodi’s mother goes to bed not knowing where her daughter is. I want to give her that answer. This is about finding Jodi.”
Rumours have been swirling since the day Henrickson was last seen walking up Miller Road on Bowen towards Eaglecliff—which was initially misreported as her being seen walking in the opposite direction towards the ferry.
Through her work interviewing eyewitnesses, friends and family, Baynham has identified a new person of interest who she believes may have been involved in the crime.
“We have a pretty good idea where Jodi is," she said, noting that the goal is to receive more supporting information to conduct a search.
"We don’t want to pull the trigger too early, though, because every day we’re having conversations and receiving tips and accumulating more and more information."
She passes on leads to the RCMP's Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT), which is in charge of investigating Henrickson's case.
For Bayhnam, this quest to learn the truth about Henrickson's disappearance has become all-consuming. She has turned down requests to sell the film to streaming services because she doesn't want to rush the outcome, only going public with the project this June following years of research and interviews.
“I’ve fallen off the deep end with this story. It’s become very personal for me. Until I can look her mother in the eye and tell her what she needs to hear, I’m not willing to stop.”
‘She was deleted from society’
Rob Henrickson was just out of high school, beginning his chemistry studies at UBC, when his younger sister disappeared.
“I remember her studying to pass her final exams, and she’d never had the opportunity to try that before — that’s how young she was. She was just coming into herself,” he said.
“I think about what she would have done, what she would have spent her time doing. She liked hanging with friends and doing the normal stuff, but she never had a chance to explore her interests because that time was stolen from her.”
Though her brother is confident Henrickson was murdered, there’s always a hint of uncertainty because her body was never found.
“That’s the uncertainty of ambiguous loss. You can’t write anything down and say it’s a conclusion because there’s no conclusion here. But I don’t know what else could’ve happened. Science is the way, I think, and science is about demonstrating something and then proving it, backing it up. But nothing like that exists here. She was deleted from society," he said.
Along with the filmmakers, Henrickson's brother urges anyone with information about her disappearance to come forward, even anonymously, to Crime Stoppers.
“I think someone on Bowen Island knows exactly what happened to Jodi, and there’s no doubt in my mind that they’ve been keeping it to themselves for 15 years. It’s impossible that’s not the case. How can someone go missing on an island that small, and the RCMP can’t solve it?” he said.
“This documentary, we’re hoping that all of it adds together to someone having a change of heart. For whatever reason, they’ve kept the information to themselves, maybe for self-preservation, but the time to come forward is now.”
Fateful weekend
There was no way Tiffany MacMillan, whose maiden name was Tiffany Sweet, could have known she was spending her final moments with her friend.
It was Father’s Day weekend in 2009, and the then 17-year-old was sitting by a river in Squamish with Henrickson. The two were arguing about whether she would come along to Bowen Island for a party, but MacMillan had family visiting in town. Before walking to the bus stop, Henrickson rolled up MacMillan’s sleeves and wrote with a felt pen a list of all the things they would do that summer.
“I have spots around town where Jodi and I did things together, including that spot along the river, and I go there a couple of times a year because it’s the last spot where we were together,” she told The Squamish Chief.
“We spent so much time together, and because I was supposed to go with her to Bowen, I’ve always had guilt about it.”
For the past 15 years, MacMillan, has been tortured by her friend’s absence. She’s still interconnected with many of Henrickson's friends, who are still actively interested in the case, including Chelsea Armstrong, a best friend and co-worker of Henrickson's at Canadian Tire and Wendy’s.
Armstrong remembers Henrickson as a relentlessly cheerful force.
“We want Jodi to be remembered for the person she was. We want people to know how loved she was, and that she was taken away from us. We want people to speak up, because she deserves more than people not bothering to talk about what happened to her,” said Armstrong.
“We want justice for what happened to her.”
The friends have been heartened by the developments that have occurred since work began on the documentary, and MacMillan has struck up a friendship with Baynham. They speak regularly about how things are progressing.
“It makes me feel hopeful again after 15 years of no progress. You kind of lose hope, but Jenni is who I’ve always wanted to be on our side. It’s wonderful. I’ve always wanted somebody capable of reaching out by different avenues than we can to look further into things,” said MacMillan.
Both MacMillan and Armstrong heard the initial rumours that Jodi had run away, and dismissed them as impossible. MacMillan hopes that the new momentum around the case will finally bring some measure of accountability.
“Nobody should get away with murdering a child,” she said.
If you have any information about Henrickson’s disappearance, call 236-712-3349 or email [email protected].
*Please note that this story has been changed since it was first posted to clarify that the goal expressed by the filmmaker is to do a search, but more information is needed. The original story stated there was a search set.
