Family testifies about pain of searching 24 years for missing Aboriginal woman
MEMBERTOU, N.S. — The 78-year-old Mi’kmaq elder cradles the grainy photo of his lost daughter laminated on his smart phone — a reminder of his hope to find her one day.
It’s black and white, but Virginia Sue Pictou’s brown eyes sparkle, and her father Robert James Pictou has added the lines, “Forever in my heart.” He keeps a full-sized version propped up at breakfast each morning.
The Nova Scotia-born Pictou was brought to a medical centre in Bangor, Maine, by police after being beaten on April 24, 1993.
But as doctors briefly turned their attention to a shooting victim in the trauma unit, she quietly left, never to be seen again, family members say.