It’s been just over two decades since Nicolle Katherine Hands, 32, was fatally attacked in her Winnipeg apartment, and still, the family is searching for answers.
“I’m 82 years old and the only wish I have before I die is an arrest is made and somebody is in jail for what they did,” Nicolle’s mother Eleanor Hands told Global News from her home in Kingston, Ont.
Eleanor keeps a binder full of photos of Nicolle throughout the years, as well as newspaper clippings from various articles on her death.
Eleanor adopted Nicolle while living in Red Lake, Ont., when Nicolle was just 14 months old. She remembers here as being a bright, independent young girl.
“We didn’t have her very long when we discovered she very independent. She could dress herself, and you could tell she had to look after herself,” Eleanor said.
The family moved to Kenora, Ont., and then eventually to Kingston. Eleanor said Nicolle became connected with her Ojibway roots; she danced in powwows, spent time at the local Indigenous friendship centre, and was working on becoming an Indigenous social worker.
“She told us once that we would always be her parents, but she really wanted to meet her roots,” Eleanor said.
October 2003
Nicolle moved to Winnipeg in the late 1990s, and that’s when her life took a tragic turn. She started to struggle with addiction and associated with people who had ties to the drug trade, police said.
In the early morning hours of Oct. 2, 2003, Nicolle was brutally assaulted and stabbed in the kitchen of her apartment on Mountain Avenue, while her three young children and a babysitter slept nearby.
Eleanor received a call no parent or grandparent ever wants to receive.
“I got a call from the doctor telling me she was (in hospital) and she was unconscious,” Eleanor said.
“And I said, ‘I’ll be there tomorrow, but please try to keep her alive until I get there’.”
Eleanor rushed from Kingston to Winnipeg to be by her daughter’s bedside in hospital, and to be there for Nicolle’s three young children, a time that’s still vivid in Eleanor’s mind.
“I got there the next day and I spoke to her and I held her hand and there was no movement at all. So I stayed awhile and I spoke to her, and then I had to find the children,” Eleanor said.
The three children were brought to the hospital and had a chance to say goodbye.
“I’ll never forget it, they got off the elevator and they probably didn’t know what was going on, but they ran up to me and they grabbed me,” she said.
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“I had to take them in a room and tell them what was going on and ask them if they wanted to see their mom, and they said yes. So we went into intensive care and I’ll never forget it, the oldest boy jumped up on the bed and grabbed his mom and started crying. The girl, she just stood by the bed and looked at her mom.”
“We all sort of got ahold of ourselves and I said, ‘do you want to see her once more before we leave?’ And they said yes, so we went in and that was the last time they saw her alive,” Eleanor recalled.
Nicolle passed away in hospital a few days after the attack. That’s when the Winnipeg Police Service’s major crimes unit handed the case over to the homicide unit. Retired officer Jim Thiessen was the supervisor of the homicide unit at the time.
Thiessen said one of the first tasks was interviewing witnesses, including some that were very young. Nicolle’s oldest son had been woken up and saw the suspect standing over his mother.
“Before we ever did the interview, we learned that he had in fact been woken by the sounds of what we believe were a struggle. And when he got up and came into the kitchen to see the individual — the suspect in this particular case, a male individual — standing over top of his mother. There were some words exchanged and then the suspect ran from the scene,” Thiessen told Global News.
“They saw more than any children should ever see,” Eleanor said.
Thiessen agrees.
“He was there, he saw his mother in that situation,” Thiessen said. “And you can’t help but feel for that young man and what he must have been going through at that moment in time and now for the last (20) odd years.”
But, Thiessen says, with witnesses at the scene, he was hopeful investigators could hit the ground running on the case.
“I remember thinking to myself, that with that kind of information, we had definite courses of action to follow, (and) the potential for solving this case was high,” he said.
“We didn’t have a name, we didn’t have anything more than a description. But we still felt that based on this information, with a lot of footwork we might be able to identify who this suspect was and obviously make an arrest and see this through until court. The fact was, that didn’t happen, at least not initially.”
Years passed by and the case remained unsolved, something that still weighs heavily the family and on Thiessen, who retired from the Winnipeg Police Service in 2006.
“It’s very difficult, actually. I believe what drives every homicide investigator to be successful and to do their job successfully is the fact that they see themselves as the voice of the victim. And I know that sounds very cliché-ish, but the fact of the matter is I firmly believe that’s the case,” Thiessen said.
“To not solve it weighs very heavily on me, quite frankly. It always has, always will. You feel like you’ve failed to a certain degree, and you feel you failed the family and most importantly, you failed the victim,” he added.
“So it’s stayed with me a lot. It stuck with me significantly and it’s followed me for the last (20) years and will continue I’m quite sure.”
Thiessen said what’s lessened the burden is the fact he’s stayed in contact with Eleanor over the past two decades and become close friends with her.
“We’ve shared some very emotional moments over the years,” he said.
Impact of the unknown
No closure, no justice, and the rollercoaster that comes with searching for answers over two decades has taken its emotional and mental toll on Eleanor.
“It’s indescribable. The phone rings the first thing I do is look and see what area code it is, and if it’s area code 204, I get all excited,” she said.
“There were times when I thought of ending it all, but then I thought I can’t do that to the kids, so I pull myself together and life goes on.”
Eleanor says seeing her grandchildren, Nicolle’s children, grow up into successful young adults is what gets her through. She says they have gone through post-secondary education and are working in successful careers. Eleanor didn’t want them to be identified in this story.
“I am so proud of them, and I’m sure their mother is too,” Eleanor said.
Eleanor says she has also relied heavily on counselling, and has formed close friendships with officers on the case, including Thiessen and Sgt. Rick Lofto, who worked on the case a few years ago. She has also leaned on the Manitoba Organization for Victim Assistance (MOVA) for support, joining their monthly sessions remotely from Kingston.
Karen Wiebe, the executive director of MOVA, says a lack of answers in any case only intensifies the trauma for family members of victims of crime.
“I think it’s grossly unfair after 20 years for someone to not have the details,” Wiebe told Global News.
“They want justice for their loved one, but it’s 20 years later. Twenty years and you’re leaving this world yourself. Isn’t it only fair that people should be given the information that they need to at least to be able to go peacefully, or as peacefully as they can from this world?”
Wiebe, who’s son T.J. was murdered in Winnipeg in 2003, says closure is something family members will never stop searching for.
“People need information to bring some peace, to deal with the trauma, to be able to get on with it,” she said. “Somebody like Eleanor, I don’t know what opportunity she has ever had to find some peace in her life.”
The latest on the investigation
In 2017, Nicolle’s case was taken over by Project Devote, an initiative, at the time, between Manitoba RCMP and the Winnipeg Police Service to tackle unsolved homicides and missing persons cases. Sgt. Rick Lofto with the Winnipeg Police Service oversaw Nicolle’s case from 2017 to 2020.
“The investigation had been through a lot of hands, a lot of good investigators had looked at that investigation and gone down different avenues,” Sgt. Lofto told Global News.
“Time can kind of be positive in a sense, but it also is a bit of a detriment. Positive in a sense that people maybe at that time, if they lived a higher-risk lifestyle, they’ve maybe now moved past those lifestyles and are now more willing to cooperate and speak to police. But a detriment in a sense that some people may still be in that lifestyle or may succumb to that lifestyle.”
Sgt. Lofto says when he took over the case, he flew to Kingston to meet with Eleanor.
“That experience in meeting with Eleanor and sharing and hearing the experiences from the family is what sort of fuelled me to come back to Winnipeg here and start investigating,” he said.
In 2020, there was a glimmer of hope and an arrest was made in the case.
“We did find a new avenue that we pursued. In that avenue I’m confident that the person that was arrested at that time was responsible for Nicolle’s murder,” Sgt. Lofto said.
“(Sgt. Lofto) he phoned me and said ‘well, we got him and he’s in a cell’,” Eleanor said. “And I got all excited and I had to tell the kids, we were all rejoicing.”
But that glimmer of hope, sadly, was short-lived. Sgt. Lofto said Crown prosecutors determined there wasn’t enough evidence in the case to convict the suspect in Nicolle’s murder, so the suspect walked free the next day.
“I was devastated and the worst thing I had to do was tell Nicolle’s children that they had to let him go,” Eleanor said. “And it’s something I hope that I’ll never have to do again.”
Global News has learned in late 2023, there was another development in the case that was difficult for the family, and officers working on the case, to process.
“Unfortunately, now the suspect has recently passed away,” Sgt. Lofto said.
“Which, again, is a giant frustration and not uncommon to some of the other investigations that (the) historical homicide unit experiences.”
While the death of the suspect in the case means justice is no longer possible for the family, investigators are keeping the case open in the name of seeking specific answers and closure for the family.
“Just because something’s happened in the case where somebody has passed away, doesn’t mean that it automatically shuts it off. We’re still working for those families and trying to provide closure in the best way we can to the families,” Sgt. Lofto said.
“I’m here today on behalf of the Winnipeg Police Service, on behalf of Nicolle’s family, I believe that there is somebody out there that would have information that could help us.”
Something Thiessen still believes as well.
“The case is never closed,” Thiessen said. “The fact of the matter is I still believe, and I will continue to believe there are people in the city that know what happened.”
People that Eleanor wants to come forward.
“I know somebody in Winnipeg knows who did it,” she said.
“And I ask please, please, if you know something. Somebody out there, please call. And give the children and grandma some peace and closure.”
If you know anything about Nicolle Hands’ murder, you’re asked to contact the Winnipeg Police Service at 204-986-6222 or CrimeStoppers at 204-786-8477 (TIPS) or 1-800-222-8477 for residents outside of Winnipeg.
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