On the 6th of January, 2006, the badly beaten body of Leah Kendra Anderson (15) was found on a snowmobile trail around 10 am. Leah had last been seen on the 4th of January, as she's left her aunt and uncle's house (where she lived) with her ice skates.
After an extremely difficult childhood, Leah was doing well living with her Aunt and Uncle in God’s Lake Narrows, a Cree First Nation reservation in Manitoba. The evening she was last seen was her last weekend at home before she was to head back to school at Frontier Collegiate Institute in Cranberry Portage, Manitoba.
Leah and her friends had planned to go to the local arena and ice skate, however, the plans had been cancelled, but Lead decided to head out anyway at around 19:30 (according to a text she sent a friend.) She promised her Uncle she would be back by curfew, and not long after Leah left, one of her friends came by the house. However, the two did not cross paths that night.
The Investigation
Initially, when Leah's body was discovered it was thought that she had been attacked by dogs or wolves due to the disfigurement. However, upon examination, it was discovered that she had been badly beaten and that she had defensive injuries to her arms. Leah’s blood and toxicology showed that at the time of her death she had had no alcohol or illicit drugs in her system.
Because of how remote the area was, and that there were only 285 homes on the Reserve at that time, it was believed that the killer had been a local. The Reserve was also a 'legally dry' area, meaning that in order to consume alcohol, it would need to be smuggled in (possibly via snowmobile.)
In 2019, it was revealed that swabs taken from Leah’s clothing and body showed a male DNA profile. There have been arrests, however, no one has been charged, and the case remains unsolved.
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