Police believe Evelyn Stewart targeted in 1998 Winnipeg slaying

WINNIPEG – Time has not solved the brutal murder of Evelyn Stewart.

17 years after her badly beaten body was found near Higgins Avenue, investigators say she was killed by someone she knew.

“We now know this is a targeted murder,” said Det. Sgt. Randy Levasseur of the Winnipeg Police Service. “We’ve had some new tips come in, but now we need the public’s help with filling in the gaps.”

Stewart, 25, was badly beaten and left to die in an empty lot off Higgins on March 20, 1998.

Detectives in Project Devote, a joint Winnipeg Police/RCMP task force working to solve 29 cases of missing or murdered women say Stewart, a sex trade worker, was last seen on Higgins – commonly known as Winnipeg’s ‘low track.’

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How she ended up dead, just a short distance away, is still a mystery.

Shona Stewart, the Director of Dignity House, knows first hand the struggles and violence women in the sex trade face.

“I was caught up in prostitution for 16 years,” said Stewart, who opened Dignity House, a place for women to get help getting out of the trade.

“She’s somebody’s daughter, sister, auntie, she could be a mother they also had reasons why they picked up drugs and felt there was nothing else to do but sell themselves.”

Stewart came to Winnipeg from Vancouver in the early 1990s in an attempt to escape addictions but ended up in the sex trade .

Police have done 130 interviews about the case, with some people interviewed as many as six times.

Officers released a video re-enacting Stewart’s last steps, including an appeal from Stewart’s mother, Elizabeth Mclean.

“I was wanting to ask any of you if you could please come forward or tell the police anything you might know about my daughter’s murder so that I can finally get some closure and move on with my life,” she said.

Anyone with information is asked to call the Project Devote tip line at 1-888-673-3316.