Mary Lisa Smith, 25 and a mother of four, disappeared from Manitoba in the summer of 1999. Her last reported sighting was August 8, 1999, in Selkirk after she left the Selkirk Mental Health Centre. She then went to Winnipeg to stay with a niece on Thames Avenue; the niece last saw Mary get into a black four-door sedan after Mary said she would be back in an hour but she never returned.

At the time she vanished Mary was described as four feet, ten inches tall, 90 to 95 pounds, with brown shoulder-length hair, brown eyes and glasses. Distinctive tattoos included a unicorn on her left hand, a flower on her right hand (described as either a poinsettia or an orchid) and a heart on her upper right arm. She was a citizen of the Roseau River First Nation and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and was considered vulnerable; she had also suffered head trauma in an assault in 1995. Reports of unconfirmed sightings in the Vancouver area surfaced over the years.

The Manitoba First Nations Police Service (formerly Dakota Ojibway Police Service) has handled the investigation and public appeals continued into 2020, but the case has gone cold and Mary’s family remains without closure. Did anyone in Selkirk or Winnipeg remember seeing Mary or that black sedan that August of 1999?