Mike on Crime

By Mike McIntyre
Winnipeg Free Press

The gruesome killing of a young Winnipeg man has stunned his family and friends who have spent months praying for a happy ending amid a barrage of gossip, rumours and finger-pointing.

The decomposed body of Chad Davis, 22, was found Wednesday stuffed inside a barrel and wrapped in plastic on the Lee River just east of Lac du Bonnet. RCMP have not released an official cause of death pending autopsy results.

“This is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever heard of in the world. I can’t get it out of my mind,” his weeping girlfriend Courtney Sych told the Free Press in a telephone interview from her Calgary residence.

“I don’t understand how someone could have no heart and do something so cruel,” she said.

Sych was planning to fly back to Winnipeg this weekend to prepare for Davis’s funeral. The young man is survived by his parents and an older brother.

Davis was last seen on February 6. He had been with his girlfriend that afternoon and said he was stepping out to give a friend a ride.

“He said he’d be back in half an hour. It turned into 169 days before he was found,” she said.

Davis reportedly dropped his friend off at a home in the 700 block of Prince Rupert Avenue in East Kildonan — then left the residence in a cab.

His girlfriend said the story doesn’t add up and police have confirmed no cab was ever dispatched to that location.

Court records suggest Davis may have been involved in the city’s drug trade. He was out on bail for several charges including possession of narcotics for the purpose of trafficking and had been sentenced last fall for two counts of assault.

His girlfriend admits he wasn’t an angel but said she saw a different side of him.

“He was a sweetheart. He had the perfect parents, he was their baby,” Sych said.

They were planning to move to Calgary together around the time he vanished. Instead, his girlfriend made the trip alone.

“After he disappeared, I drank myself stupid for about three weeks. I had to get out of Winnipeg, because if I would have stayed in that city I’d have drank myself to death,” Sych said.

The young woman has made several return trips to Winnipeg. She had flown back to Calgary on Thursday — only to learn hours later that Davis had been found dead.

“I’ve been crying my eyes out for the past few days,” she said.

Davis was reported missing to police on Feb. 10. Investigators made two public pleas for information in the weeks that followed.

The case immediately triggered a flood of suspicion and theories. Davis’s girlfriend volunteered to a polygraph test in May after learning police thought Davis might be “hiding out’ with her in Calgary.

“Now it’s time to go after the person that we should have been a long time ago,” she wrote in a subsequent post on the “Help Find Chad Davis” Facebook page.

She declined to clarify her comments during the Free Press interview, saying it’s too upsetting at this time.

The Facebook page included several other postings that alluded to a possible suspect in Davis’s disappearance.

“Hope to (expletive) we find out who it is butI think we already know who it is and when we do there ain’t no words to describe what gonna go down,” one friend posted.

There were also several negative posts regarding Davis that prompted angry responses from loved ones. Others expressed relief the waiting game was finally over.

“Your family misses you, things shouldn’t have ended up this way but I hope you’re in a better place now,” one friend wrote on Friday.

“He’s with the angels now…. he’s finally resting and safe…. no one can harm him now. I love you Chad Davis and always will,” Sych added.

The RCMP major crimes services and forensic identification section, and Lac du Bonnet RCMP, are continuing their investigation.

Winnipeg police are also assisting.