‘I need to find him’: Sister of N.B. man appeals for information in homicide investigation

The sister of a New Brunswick man presumed to be the victim of a homicide is speaking out. She is hoping a search by RCMP will ultimately uncover what happened to her brother.

Richard (Ricky) Matchett, 58, was last seen around 2 p.m. in Sillikers, N.B., on Aug. 9, 2022. Matchett, who was from Sunny Corner, was reported missing to police on April 30, 2023.

RCMP have now said that his disappearance is considered a homicide.

“He’s my baby brother,” said Starlene Matchett. “I need to find him. I need to bring him home and bury him with Mum and Dad … I can’t bear another winter with him out there.”

She said her brother had been struggling with addiction, and the family believes Ricky was using crystal meth at the time of his disappearance.

“That is such a dangerous drug. That takes over your life the minute you start using it. But for me, I kept thinking he’ll do rehab. Well, there’s a way, right? There’s always a way,” she said.

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But before he had a chance to turn things around, Matchett said, her brother disappeared. For a while, his family wasn’t even aware he had gone missing. They had assumed he was staying at the old family home but was out of touch.

“On April 28, an RCMP officer came to my door and he said, ‘We can’t find Rick.’ And it looks like there’s been no activity since July 2022 on his bank account and it looks like there’s no record of him in any hospital or jail across Canada,” she recalled.

She said at that point “rumours erupted” in the community and there were fingers pointed at RCMP for a delayed response, but she stressed that simply wasn’t the case.

A formal missing persons file was opened, leading to an RCMP update yesterday, which stated that Ricky’s disappearance is now being considered a homicide.

“Right now, we are in sort of the best and worst of spots because we pray they’ll find him. But it means that everything is true and my brother is no more,” said Matchett.

RCMP said that “throughout the course of the investigation, police determined Richard Matchett’s disappearance to be suspicious” and a search warrant was executed at a home on Highway 420 in Sillikers as part of the ongoing investigation.

Matchett said as of Friday, police were still at the scene, and she is in constant contact with them.

All the family wants, she added, is to bring her “baby brother” home.

“I don’t have any judgment on the other people that were there that night … that did not hurt my brother, they were there because of an addiction. An addiction is a terrible thing. It’s a terrible struggle for everybody,” she said.

“But if they could feel comfortable enough or good enough in themselves to speak to the RCMP, call Crime Stoppers. It can be anonymous. Tell us what you know.”

Ricky deserves to be remembered for more than his disappearance, she said. He was the father of two and a man who worked out west but always felt drawn to return to Miramichi.

“My brother should have died old in his bed,” she said. “He shouldn’t have died at somebody else’s hand. That has to come to a rightful conclusion.”