21 years after Tamara Chipman vanished, RCMP again asks for answers
Tamara Lynn Chipman disappeared while hitchhiking from Prince Rupert toward Terrace on Sept. 21, 2005. Her case remains unresolved, while members of her family later became prominent advocates for missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls.
Tamara Lynn Chipman was last seen hitchhiking from Prince Rupert toward Terrace on Sept. 21, 2005.
Photo: BC RCMP
PRINCE RUPERT — Twenty-one years after Tamara Lynn Chipman was last seen on a northern B.C. highway, RCMP investigators are again asking anyone who knows what happened to her to come forward.
Chipman was 21 when she disappeared on Sept. 21, 2005, just weeks before her 22nd birthday. Police say she was last seen hitchhiking from Prince Rupert toward Terrace. She was reported missing on Nov. 10 of that year.
“Investigators have followed up on every tip and lead provided over the past two decades, but we are still missing the key pieces needed to understand what happened to Tamara,” Staff Sgt. Kris Clark of the BC RCMP said in a release Monday.
RCMP describe Chipman as an Indigenous woman, five-foot-10 and about 130 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing blue jeans and a light-blue jacket.
Testimony given by Chipman’s family to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls provides more detail about her life and the circumstances surrounding her disappearance.
Her father, Tom Chipman, told the inquiry in Smithers in 2017 that Tamara had her own home in Terrace, while her mother lived in Prince Rupert. She was the mother of a young son and regularly spent time with her father, a commercial fisherman, when he was home.
Chipman was not a frequent hitchhiker, her father testified. She normally drove herself and owned a Mustang, but family testimony indicated the car had developed a mechanical problem and she was not driving it when she disappeared.
Tom Chipman told the inquiry that a friend of his was the last person known to have seen her. He said the friend saw Tamara hitchhiking in an industrial area on the outskirts of Prince Rupert, about four kilometres from downtown.
Her disappearance later became one of 18 cases investigated through Project E-PANA, an RCMP project examining disappearances and killings associated with several major B.C. highways, including Highway 16.
The project included 13 homicide investigations and five missing-person investigations. RCMP has said investigators are confident a single serial killer was not responsible for all of the E-PANA cases.
Chipman’s disappearance also became connected to a wider movement seeking answers for women who had disappeared or been killed along Highway 16 and elsewhere in Canada.
Tom Chipman told the National Inquiry that after he appeared publicly seeking information about his daughter, his cousin Florence Naziel organized what he described as the first Highway of Tears walk.
Chipman’s aunt Gladys Radek testified that family members joined the 2006 walk from Prince Rupert to Terrace and later travelled to Prince George for the Highway of Tears Symposium that March.
Radek later became one of the organizers of Walk4Justice. In 2008, she walked from Vancouver to Ottawa as part of an effort to draw attention to missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls and press for a national public inquiry.
Members of Chipman’s family later testified before the National Inquiry in Smithers in 2017 and Vancouver in 2018.
Monday’s RCMP release announced no suspect, arrest or other investigative breakthrough in Chipman’s case. Police instead renewed their appeal for information about her movements before she disappeared and about what happened to her.
“Someone out there may have information, no matter how insignificant it may seem, that could help move this investigation forward,” Clark said.
Police are asking anyone with information about Chipman’s whereabouts in the days or weeks before her disappearance, what happened to her or where she may now be located to call the BC RCMP information line at 1-877-543-4822.
Anonymous information can be provided through Crime Stoppers at 1-800-222-8477.
Twenty-one years after Tamara Lynn Chipman was last seen on a northern B.C. highway, RCMP investigators are again asking anyone who knows what happened to her to come forward.