John Simpson hung a red dress from the porch of his Niagara on the Lake, Ont., home after his daughter Ashley went missing.
The dress, a symbol of Canada’s missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, also served as a reminder that someone’s always thinking about Ashley.
They wanted to know where she went. Why didn’t she come home? Would she return? Did someone hurt her?
More than seven years after she disappeared from near Salmon Arm, B.C., on Monday, Ashley’s ex-boyfriend Derek Favell answered many of those questions when he admitted he killed the 32-year-old, leaving her remains in a wooded area not far from where they’d lived together.
For second-degree murder, he’ll be sentenced to life in prison on Feb. 13, 2024.
That red dress, however, won’t come down as this chapter of life ends, Ashley’s parents John and Cindy said.
“We’re not stopping. We’ve got justice for Ashley, we’ll see this through to sentencing, and then we’ll turn (the attention) on to the other people,” Simpson said Monday outside the courtroom in Salmon Arm where Favell pleaded guilty.
“My red dress still hangs on my front porch. That red dress will hang there until all five people from this area … are coming home.”
Ashley went missing on April 27, 2016, from a rural property near Salmon Arm where she was living with Favell.
It was around the same time as Caitlin Potts and Deanna Wertz. One year later, Nicole Bell and Traci Generoux also disappeared from the area. Generoux’s remains were found, though her killer has not.
RCMP said there is no connection between Ashley and the other missing women.
Nonetheless, their names became synonymous in the years that John and Cindy kept travelling back to the Okanagan, from their home in Ontario, and searching for any information that would help find their daughter. It was a pursuit that took a toll.
“Your health goes, your money goes, we did fundraising every year, to have someone to come out,” Cindy said.
“John has even slept in the car (while he was in the Okanagan) because we just didn’t have money, while I had a yard sale at home that day. You try everything you can in order to get the funds to come and look for the one that’s lost.”
Both Cindy and John said they never gave up hope Ashley would return home.
“We believed that Ashley wouldn’t hitchhike across the country. We believed that Ashley never left the town. But we also had to believe what other people were saying,” John said.
They believed “she was somewhere else because the only other option was what actually happened,” Cindy added.
December of 2021 was when Ashley’s remains were found in a wooded area not too far from where she lived with Favell.
“When they found Ashley, they brought (her rings) to Ontario for us and dropped them in our hands,” John said.
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“That’s when we knew that she wasn’t coming home alive, but we knew that they found her so she will be coming home and that’s key for us. To get our daughter home and to have her with us being found, that’s key.”
Investigators looking into her disappearance were incredibly helpful, he said. And so were supporters. For seven years, “Ashley’s Army” supported the family as they kept on their search.
The system, however, needs to change, they said.
“I want to raise the awareness of the missing we have in Canada and the lack of support they have for the missing families,” John said.
“The rules that need to be changed. Unemployment cut me off because I was looking for my daughter. Those rules need to be changed. It’s not fair to make a family suffer more just because of some little stipulation that was made a long time ago. That doesn’t make sense to me.”
He added that Canada also needs to create a system where people who may know more information are willing to speak.
There’s much to be done for people who have walked a path similar to theirs and their daughter’s.
For now, however, they’re going to remember the young woman whose life was cut too short.
“She’d love to explore, do new things like cooking, hiking, fishing,” Cindy said. “The last time I talked to her she was all excited. She said, ‘Mum, I found a garnet. When I come home I’m making you a ring. It’ll be the best ring you’ve ever had.'”
When Favell returns to court next February, Justice Alison Beames will set the time for parole eligibility somewhere between 10 and 25 years. Ashley’s family intends to return to the valley for that moment.
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