On October 20, 1970, a 12-year-old girl named Katherine May Wilson, also known as Kathy, vanished while walking home in Kirkland Lake, Ontario. That afternoon, she had gone to a local store to buy groceries for her mother. The items she was carrying included two loaves of bread, a can of milk, a box of instant potatoes, cigarettes, and a package of wieners. Katherine, a young Indigenous girl, was last seen on Harvey Kirkland Road.
At the time of her disappearance, she was described as being 4'9" tall and weighing 106 pounds, with black, curly, collar-length hair and brown eyes. She was wearing a blue blouse, red bell-bottom pants that had a white flower design, and brown shoes. Before starting her walk home, Katherine called her mother just before 5:00 p.m. During the call, her two sisters made a plan to walk and meet her halfway, but they never saw her.
For decades, Katherine's disappearance remained a painful mystery for her family and community. Extensive searches involving police dogs, helicopters, and boats in the weeks following her disappearance yielded no trace of the young girl. The case grew cold, but investigators and her family never gave up hope for answers. In 2006, the Ontario Provincial Police officially re-opened the investigation. A significant break came years later when, in January 2009, the OPP arrested 60-year-old Barry Vincent Manion of London, Ontario, and charged him with first-degree murder and abduction in connection with Katherine's disappearance. Manion, who was a distant cousin of Katherine's, had been living in Kirkland Lake at the time she went missing.
The arrest brought a painful resolution to the long-standing case. Barry Manion confessed to the crime, revealing that he had offered his young relative a ride home on that October day in 1970. He admitted to taking her to a secluded wooded area with the intent to sexually assault her. When Katherine resisted and ran, he chased her and choked her to death. In March 2009, Manion pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Just days after his sentencing, he was found to have died by suicide in his jail cell. Following his confession, Manion told authorities he had buried Katherine's body and the groceries in the woods. Despite this information and subsequent searches of the remote location he indicated, Katherine May Wilson's remains have never been recovered. The case is a tragic story of a young life taken, which left a family searching for answers for nearly forty years until a confession brought a conviction, but never the closure of bringing her home.Last Seen: Oct 20, 1970
