COLUMN: Lorette, 2011 — The Murder Manitoba Almost Managed to Forget

The Number That Shouldn’t Be a Number

Thirty-six years old. In 2011, being thirty-six in Manitoba meant growing up in the 1970s, being a child during the Great Recession of 1982, and turning twenty just as 1990s Winnipeg began its long descent into the gang crisis. Dean Ureche had lived through it all. He had a past, a network, people who remembered him from elementary school, perhaps brothers or sisters who saw his photo in the local newspapers and were never the same again. The RCMP does not release information about his family. That’s standard procedure. But behind the procedure, there are people who have been waiting for an answer since 2011.

There’s a mother somewhere—or there used to be one. There may be children who were two or three years old in 2011 and are now fifteen or sixteen, and who know only that their father is dead and that no one has ever been arrested. Growing up with that void means growing up with the certainty that justice has its own geography and budget. That if you die in a field twenty-five kilometers from Winnipeg, with the wrong crowd or at the wrong time, the state does what it can—and what it can do, sometimes, is issue a public appeal fourteen years later.

I’m not saying the RCMP did a poor job. I’m saying that someone killed Dean Ureche, age 36, on May 7, 2011, and that in 2025, the best thing society can do for him is to hope that someone calls a 1-800 number. That’s the line between justice and abandonment.

The Families of Victims of Unsolved Homicides: The Other Kind of Suffering

In Canada, the loved ones of victims of unsolved homicides have no specific legal status in the investigation. They can request updates, which the RCMP is not required to provide in detail. They can testify at case review hearings, if they take place. They can call. According to the Association of Families of Murdered or Missing Persons in Quebec—a situation applicable to other provinces as well—more than 60% of the loved ones of victims of unsolved homicides develop symptoms of complicated grief—a condition clinically distinct from ordinary grief, characterized by an inability to find closure. You cannot grieve for someone when the case remains open. When the culprit is still at large. When you still don’t know why.

And yet. And yet, in 2025, the RCMP reminds us that the case is still open. That investigators are still working on it. That someone, somewhere, is still thinking of Dean Ureche. That’s not nothing. It’s not enough. But it’s not nothing.

Gravel roads, dead zones, unsolved crimes

Manitoba has a well-documented problem with unsolved homicides in rural areas. The province has one of the highest homicide rates in Canada—in 2022, according to Statistics Canada, Manitoba recorded 4.68 homicides per 100,000 residents, compared to a national average of 2.07. But it’s not the rate that’s the problem here. It’s the clearance rate. Homicides that occur outside major urban areas—far from surveillance cameras and neighbors peering out their windows—are statistically less likely to be solved within the first five years. After ten years, the probability of resolution plummets to below 20%.

The Lorette region, and the municipality of Pembina Mountain to which it belongs, is an agricultural area crisscrossed by gravel roads that don’t appear on any tourist maps. There were no surveillance cameras in 2011 on the road where the body was found. There are probably still none today. What this means in practical terms: a murder on this road exists only in people’s memories. And people’s memories can be bought, intimidated, or eroded by time.

There’s a lot of talk about the “medical desert.” There’s little talk about the “judicial desert.” But the pattern is the same. The areas where the state is absent when it comes to providing care are often the same areas where the state is absent when it comes to enforcing the law. And that absence is an invitation.

Cold Cases in Manitoba: A Growing List

The Ureche case is not an isolated one. The Manitoba RCMP maintains a list of unsolved cases dating back to the 1970s. In 2024, RCMP “D” Division had more than 80 unsolved homicides on record across the province. Some date back several decades. For each one, there is a family. For each one, there is one or more perpetrators living among us. This list is public—partially. It doesn’t make the front pages of newspapers. It doesn’t spark debate in the Manitoba Legislative Assembly. It exists, discreetly, like an administrative embarrassment tucked away in a drawer.

And yet, every time the RCMP renews a public appeal—as it did on January 15, 2025, for Dean Ureche—something sometimes happens. A former neighbor who has since moved away calls in. A friend of a friend who had sworn to remain silent for ten years but can no longer keep quiet. A conscience that awakens—or gives in. Of the 80 unsolved cases on record, the RCMP has solved seven thanks to belated public appeals since 2015. Seven out of eighty. That’s not much. That’s all.

A man known in certain circles

Dean Ureche lived in Winnipeg. He was thirty-six years old in 2011. The RCMP is asking for information about his associates—a term that, in police jargon, has a specific connotation. You don’t ask about the “associations” of someone who has only friends with clean records. This term means: we believe the victim moved in circles where some members know what happened. It says nothing about Dean Ureche’s guilt. It says everything about the likely context of his death. Winnipeg has rough neighborhoods—the North End, Spence, certain areas of St. Boniface. Shadow economies. Settling of scores that end on gravel roads, far from the cameras.

This is not an accusation. It is a working hypothesis supported by geography. You don’t transport a body—or lure someone—twenty-five kilometers out of town by chance. The road to Lorette that evening was chosen. It was known. It was intentional. The killer knew that the fields are silent in May, before the crops come up, and that bodies left there make no noise.

I wonder what Dean Ureche was thinking as he drove toward Lorette that evening. Whether he knew he was heading to a dangerous rendezvous. Whether he believed he had the situation under control. Or whether he was simply there, without any particular suspicion, in that moment just before—when nothing yet indicates that this is the final hour. You never know when it’s the final hour.

Winnipeg’s Silence: Fourteen Years Without a Witness

Winnipeg has a population of 750,000 today. In 2011, it had about 680,000. In a city of this size, someone knew that Dean Ureche had an appointment on May 6, 2011. Someone saw him leave. Someone received a call, a message, a note. Someone may have been there. And that someone—or those several people—are now forty, fifty, or sixty years old. Some may have children. Some may have moved on with their lives. Some may be living with this like a stone in the pit of their stomach that never quite goes away. The RCMP knows this. That’s why they’re renewing their appeal in 2025. People change. Loyalties crumble. Fear turns to shame.

And yet—the third “and yet”—no one has called in fourteen years. Or if someone did call, it wasn’t enough to build a case. That silence is a form of collective complicity. Not legal complicity, necessarily. But moral complicity. Someone, somewhere, has done the math: my peace of mind is worth more than justice for Dean Ureche. This calculation is made every day, in every city, for every unsolved crime. That is why they remain unsolved.

Why 2025? The answer they’re not giving

The RCMP has not explained why it is reopening the public appeal specifically in January 2025. This kind of decision is not made at random in a police investigation. There are generally three reasons for reopening a case after ten years: new evidence, a witness who has started talking but hasn’t yet revealed the key details, or a review of the case file as part of an audit of cold cases. Chief Inspector Doerksen did not specify any of these. This silence is, in itself, a form of information. Either he is protecting an active lead—which would be encouraging—or there is nothing new and the appeal is a message in a bottle—which would be disheartening.

The truth probably lies somewhere in between. Investigators have reopened the case. They’ve reviewed the 2011 transcripts. They’ve checked to see if any potential suspects have since had run-ins with the law that might provide new leads. DNA databases in Canada have expanded considerably since 2011. Samples that didn’t match fourteen years ago sometimes find a match today. It’s one of the few ways time works in the favor of justice.

There is something resembling hope in this January 2025 appeal. Not the naive hope of official statements—but the precise, almost surgical hope of investigators who have a new lead and need one final piece of the puzzle. I prefer to believe that. Because the alternative—a cry into the void, form without substance—is too difficult to face.

Aging Witnesses: A Race Against Biology

In 2011, a witness who was thirty years old is now forty-four. One who was fifty is now sixty-four. Witnesses are dying. They’re developing illnesses. Their memories are fading. A study published in 2019 in the Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition found that eyewitness memories begin to distort significantly after seven years when it comes to peripheral details. Fourteen years is twice that threshold. What someone remembers about the night of May 6–7, 2011, is no longer the same memory they had in 2011. The contours have shifted. Details have merged or disappeared. The RCMP knows this. That’s why every additional year without a resolution is an irreversible loss.

And yet, cold cases do get solved. Sometimes after twenty years. Sometimes after thirty. Forensic techniques are evolving. Genealogical DNA—which makes it possible to trace suspects through databases of relatives—has helped solve dozens of cases in the United States dating back twenty to forty years since 2018. In Canada, this technique is still in the legal development phase, but its framework is beginning to take shape. Dean Ureche has not been forgotten by these tools. He is waiting for them to catch his killer.

The Right to a Resolution: A Class Issue

I’m going to say something difficult. Unsolved homicides are not randomly distributed across the population. In North America, victims of unsolved homicides are statistically more often men, more often from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, and more often involved—to varying degrees—in activities on the fringes of the law. This profile says something about who receives what kind of justice. Not because investigators put in less effort. But because witness networks in these communities are more insular, media resources are more limited, and public attention is less sustained. A Westmount businessman killed in his apartment receives national coverage. A 36-year-old man from Winnipeg found in a field in Manitoba receives a single paragraph in Global News and a public appeal fourteen years later.

This is not an attack on the RCMP. It is an observation about how society allocates its outrage and attention. Dean Ureche deserved exactly the same level of coverage, resources, and public pressure as any other 36-year-old Canadian. He didn’t get it. And that inequality—subtle, unintentional, systemic—is also a form of violence.

If you’re reading this article today, you’re already doing something. You’re giving Dean Ureche a few more seconds in the collective consciousness. It’s not much. But little by little, it adds up. And sometimes, that accumulation ends up weighing heavily enough for a witness to pick up the phone.

The children of 2011 have grown up: the new potential witnesses

One detail that no one mentions in public appeals: in 2011, there were children in the Lorette area. Twelve-, thirteen-, and fourteen-year-old teenagers who hung out on the gravel roads, rode their bikes out to the fields, and recognized their neighbors’ cars. Those children are now twenty-five or twenty-six years old. They may not have understood what they saw back in 2011. Or they did understand, and they were scared, and they didn’t say anything because you don’t talk to the police when you’re thirteen and you’re scared. But they’re twenty-six now. And the fear of a thirteen-year-old is not the same as the fear of a twenty-six-year-old. The RCMP may be counting on that. They’re right to do so.

It’s these witnesses who sometimes make the difference in cold cases—people who weren’t old enough to fully grasp what they’d seen, and who’ve spent years trying to figure out how to live with it. The Crime Stoppers number—1-800-222-8477—is anonymous. That sentence should be repeated a hundred times in every public appeal. Anonymity is the only protection the RCMP can offer. It’s not much. But it’s real.

A Face on a Cold Case File

In the RCMP archives, there is a photo of Dean Ureche. It was taken before May 7, 2011—a smile, perhaps, or a neutral expression, like in mug shots. He was thirty-six years old, with brown hair, brown eyes, and stood one meter seventy-seven. These details are in all the press releases. What you don’t read in the press releases: the way he drank his coffee. The fact that he might have laughed a little too loudly. That he might have had a nickname his childhood friends still used. That his mother could recognize his footsteps on the stairs. Those kinds of things don’t make it into the files. They disappear along with the people who carry them. Every year that passes without a resolution is another year in which these fragments fade away.

What we owe him, collectively, is not to let him become just a line in a statistic. One unsolved homicide out of every hundred in Manitoba in 2011. That figure is real. But behind it stands Dean Thomas Ureche, thirty-six years old, from Winnipeg, found in a field at dawn on May 7, 2011, when the mud still smelled of the night’s frost and the birds began to sing, unaware of what they were flying over.

The public is asked to remember. But who remembers him? Who, every May 7 since 2011, thinks of Dean Ureche by his first name, not by his case number? I hope someone does. I hope that whoever it is, upon reading this article, will feel that what they know—even if it’s small, even if it’s old, even if it’s fragmentary—is worth sharing.

The Counterpoint: The Investigators Who Never Gave Up

It would be unfair to end this section without saying something about the men and women who have been working on this case for fourteen years. Not out of any formal obligation—an unsolved case can be put on administrative hold. But because some investigators never give up. Chief Inspector Doerksen devoted time and resources to reopening this case in 2025. Analysts have reviewed hundreds of pages of witness statements. Technicians may have submitted biological samples for further analysis. This invisible, unreported, thankless work—it is the only counterweight Dean Ureche has against institutional oblivion. These people deserve to be named, even if not all their names are public. They exist. They are working. In the silence of offices that no one films.

And that persistence—that refusal to close a case for good, to stamp it “unsolvable,” and to move on—is the only grace the system can offer. It’s not enough. But it’s real. And in 2025, it’s the only thing that can still make a difference.

One number. One decision. One minute.

If you lived in the Lorette or Winnipeg area in 2011. If you knew Dean Thomas Ureche, or someone who knew him. If you remember a conversation, a rumor, or a detail that seemed insignificant at the time. If you saw anything on the evening of May 6, 2011, or in the days leading up to it. The number is: 1-800-222-8477. Crime Stoppers Manitoba. Anonymity guaranteed. No obligation to identify yourself. No follow-up if you don’t want it. Just a number, a human voice on the other end, and the possibility that what you know might be the final piece of the puzzle.

You can also share this article. Not because sharing replaces taking action, but because it increases the chances that the right person will read it. The person who knows something might be in your network. They might not read Global News. They might read what you share. The information that solves a cold case often takes unexpected paths. An article shared at the wrong time by the wrong person that, by chance, reaches the right person at the right moment. It’s not much. Sometimes it’s everything.

I’m not naive. Most people reading this article know nothing about Dean Ureche. But someone, somewhere, knows something. And that person might be just one degree of separation away from you. If you do just one thing after reading this: share it. Not for me. For someone who’s been waiting for an answer since 2011.

The reader is also a cog in the machine

Here is the uncomfortable truth this article must convey: through our collective inattention, we all contribute to the moral obsolescence of these cases. When an unsolved homicide disappears from news feeds after 48 hours, it enters a kind of limbo where only the families and investigators keep it alive. We—readers, citizens, consumers of news—help decide which crimes deserve to remain in the collective memory. Our clicks, our shares, our conversations determine the level of public pressure exerted on institutions. The RCMP feels that pressure. It influences resource allocation. It shifts priorities. You are not a bystander in this story. You are, whether you like it or not, a supporting character.

Dean Ureche was killed. The killer is still at large. What you do in the next five minutes is a response to this sentence, whether you want it to be or not. Closing the tab is a response. Sharing is a response. Calling 1-800-222-8477 if you know anything is the only response that matters.

What the Gravel Road Still Holds

The road that runs alongside the field where Clifford Traverse found Dean Ureche’s body on the morning of May 7, 2011, is still there. It hasn’t changed its name. It has no commemorative plaque. Tractors drive along it every spring and every fall. The mud smells the same there. The wind is the same cold wind that sweeps down from the Manitoba plains with nothing to slow it. The road doesn’t remember. Roads never remember. Only people do.

There’s a culprit somewhere in Manitoba, or perhaps beyond. Someone who drove on that road that night, or who waited in the dark, or who watched headlights approach, knowing what he was going to do. That person has a face. He has a name. He may have children now who don’t know. He may have grown old peacefully since 2011, convinced that time has absolved him. Time absolves no one. It merely postpones the inevitable.

Fourteen years. That’s how long it sometimes takes for someone to decide that the silence has become too heavy to bear. I don’t know if that moment has arrived. But I do know that someone will read this article and feel something stir in their chest. Something old. Something heavy. And maybe—just maybe—they’ll pick up the phone.

Time is still running out

Witnesses are getting older. Memories are fading. Conversations from the past are growing hazy. Every additional day is a lost opportunity. Not dramatically lost—an opportunity that quietly unravels, like the yarn of a sweater you pull on without paying attention. The RCMP issued its appeal on January 15, 2025. In six months, the appeal will be forgotten by the media. In a year, Dean Ureche will once again be just a line on an administrative list. Unless someone speaks up. Unless someone remembers. Unless someone decides that fourteen years is long enough to keep a secret that isn’t theirs.

Justice isn’t an abstraction. It has an address: RCMP, Division D, Manitoba, Dean Ureche homicide case, 2011. It has a phone number: 1-800-222-8477. It has a face: thirty-six years old, brown hair, brown eyes, found in a field in Lorette at daybreak on a Tuesday in May, when the night’s frost had just lifted from the ground.

What Remains When Everything Else Fades Away

Dean Ureche died on May 7, 2011, in a field twenty-five kilometers from his home. Someone killed him. Someone knows. These three sentences haven’t changed in fourteen years. They haven’t aged. They won’t age. They will remain true until the second and third are resolved by the same answer: a name, a date, an arrest. Nothing else will close this case. Not time. Not forgetting. Not the death of witnesses. Open cases do not close—they wait.

The RCMP is waiting. Dean Ureche’s family is waiting. Justice—whatever form it may take for a thirty-six-year-old man killed in the darkness of a Manitoba gravel road—is waiting. It needs only one thing: for someone, somewhere, to decide that the silence has lasted long enough.

The body in the field was thirty-six years old, with brown hair, brown eyes, and someone who loved him. That someone is still waiting.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist