Ashley Simpson: Time's Up

Ashley's search party 

When Cindy McGean Simpson received the call that her daughter Ashley was missing in Salmon Arm, she immediately contacted the RCMP. It was days after Ashley had disappeared after an ill-fated drinking party at Margaret Falls involving Ashley, her boyfriend Derek, and a friend.
The party, by many accounts, had turned into an alcohol-fuelled fight between Ashley and Derek. Ashley had already made the decision to leave Derek and travel back to her home in Niagara-on-the-Lake. She didn't know how she was going to make it back. She was still waiting on a cheque from unemployment, she had no money, and had only texting ability on her Smartphone.
But she knew she had to leave.
It was clear that the situation had gone south since the pair relocated to Salmon Arm from Pink Mountain in a truck that Derek had borrowed without telling his employer. So this was a last hurrah.
After the fight, Derek told police, the pair went back to their trailer where he decided to sleep it off. When he awoke the next morning, Ashley was gone.
He was worried, but not enough to tell anybody for three days.
He finally called Ashley's cousin Bobbie-Lyn, who immediately called Ashley's mother.
The Simpsons always found it strange that he had just let Ashley disappear down a lonely road through the bush.
This was not the behaviour of a man concerned about the whereabouts of a loved one.

In the early days that followed Ashley's disappearance, according to multiple sources, a neighbour became concerned about a flurry of activity at the farm where Derek's trailer called home. She saw a group of men moving soil and some sort of greenery up the logging roads that surrounded the property. Salmon Arm and its surrounding communities are well known places for growing weed, and the neighbours became suspicious that maybe a drug bust was coming down.
Days later, the police arrived, along with a search and rescue team. Initially, the landlord refused to allow them on the property. When they did get permission to enter the premises, there was no evidence of grow-op activity, and little evidence that Ashley Simpson had even been there.

After Cindy got that terrible call from Bobbie-Lyn, her husband John dropped everything and organized a posse of Ashley's friends to set out to find their beloved daughter and friend. John was both inconsolable, and angry. A cook and former military man, John loved the vagabond life. His daughter Ashley shared her dad's passion for the great outdoors, for living in hard scrabble places, and taking in the airy mountain vistas.
Ashley arrived at Pink Mountain on John's apron strings. She worked as a cook, and in a local resort as a housekeeper and reservation jockey.
It is in Pink Mountain where Ashley met and fell for Derek.
And when it came time to leave for home, Ashley refused to leave with her dad.
It was against John's better judgement to leave her there. He and Derek weren't exactly close, and he had a deep-seeded feeling the situation wasn't going to end well. But Ashley was 32, a big girl, who was street-smart and could take of herself. Ashley promised John she would come home for her sister's baby shower in May. With that promise, John agreed to leave the couple.
It wasn't long before John's fears came true. Things at work went sideways for Derek, and he convinced Ashley to move to his hometown of Salmon Arm.
Ashley texted Cindy every day, and sent Facebook selfies that showed that she was having fun and making friends in the new community. People I spoke to said that Ashley was well liked in Salmon Arm, that she made friends quickly, and that she was great with the landlord's kids.
But they also said that there was a dark side. The couple were known to fight loudly and sometimes violently, and Ashley didn't mix well with Derek's friends. People told me about a very public  incident at a party when a friend of Derek's got overly friendly with Ashley. When she tried to push him away, he started to pull her hair. She told people she was really afraid of that guy.
The incident stuck in the minds of some of the locals who brought it up more than once in the days following Ashley's disappearance.

When John and his posse arrived in Salmon Arm on May 7, he was loaded for bear. The cops had been slow to respond to Ashley's disappearance, and John was there to make sure that the stops were all pulled out to find his girl. John got in Derek's face, and squabbled with many of the locals who gave him a cold shoulder. John didn't care. He'd move heaven and earth to find Ashley even if he had to bulldoze over the local constabulary to make it happen. He couldn't believe that in a province made famous for the Highway of Tears that more effort wasn't made to find a vulnerable young woman.
People on social media -- me included -- were outraged. Calls were made to the media, and the heat was turned up on the short staffed RCMP who weren't used to this kind of heat. Usually when people went missing in the wilds of British Columbia, they either turned up, or eventually turned up dead from suicide or misadventure. But the worm had turned after a pig farmer named Pickton was found to be killing sex workers down the coast.
British Columbia was getting a bad reputation for murder tourism.

A search and rescue was conducted, and police efforts went into full swing. Members of the RCMP's major crimes unit arrived to assist in the investigation.
It was too little too late.
Those precious days between Ashley's disappearance and the investigation had clearly been used to the killer(s) advantage. The search was futile. It was as if Ashley had disappeared into thin air.
Instead of facts, the locals engaged in wild speculation.
Ashley had been picked up by a trucker. Ashley had been eaten by wild life. Ashley had just taken off with another guy.
Then, suddenly, other women went missing. A neighbour. Two other women.
Suddenly a missing white girl from Niagara became an indigenous community statistic.
Then there was talk of a serial killer. A local man was charged with assaulting prostitutes and bones were discovered on his farm.
All meant to take everybody's eye off the ball.
Nobody I've talked to believes Ashley was part of a genocidal plot to kill the women of Canada's First Nations. Nobody I know thinks she was slain by a serial killer.
To paraphrase Dorothy, when it comes to domestic violence, there literally is no place like home.

Since Ashley Simpson's disappearance four years ago, she has continued to haunt the community of Enderby-Salmon Arm. The publicity over the case has caused Derek and his friends to scatter to the wind. The community has become the stuff of made-for-tv-movies where everybody is suspicious of everyone, where everybody knows everything, and where cover-up has become a family affair.
Lives, including the lives of her parents, her sisters, and her dear friends have been ruined. John lost his livelihood, his health and his savings because he can think of nothing but Ashley. Her mother sits by the phone and does media interviews while working her tail off as a ship's cook.
Thankfully, nobody is giving up on Ashley.
Four years later, she is still on everybody's mind.
A recent social and mainstream media blitz on the anniversary of her disappearance has caused some of the rats to scurry from their cubbies, after being reminded that there is a $10,000 reward for any information related to her disappearance.
It happens sometimes in places like Salmon Arm. Ten grand can buy a nice used truck to get out of Dodge and start a new life. It can soothe a guilty conscience and provide a little safety net to buck the trend that snitches end up in ditches.
Speaking as the daughter of a community that lived in fear of Paul Bernardo, I'm sure I can speak for the sentiment among the most respectable locals. They want to be able to leave their doors unlocked, like in the old days.
They are sick of living in a community that has been decimated by unemployment and a drug culture that permeates the trailers and the farms where people are left to poison the minds of the good kids. And they are ashamed of living in a place where women go missing and nobody cares, where there are plenty of places to hide dead bodies, where it has become normal not to report people going missing.
So somebody say something.
Do what's right.
Take the money and run.
Whatever.
Stop growing weed, stop making meth and grow something else -- some balls and a conscience.
Time's up.