Alanna Bird knew right away something was wrong. Even when her son Samuel was out with friends, the 14-year-old always checked in, always told her where he was staying. He knew she worried.
On the evening of June 1, Samuel had stopped at her apartment in west Edmonton with a friend, on his way to his ex-girlfriend’s place. He told his mother he’d be back later that night, and left saying, “I love you, mom.” She waited up to buzz him into the building, but he never came home.
At first, she told herself not to panic, but things didn’t feel right. Samuel hadn’t texted her, and the friend he had been with that evening wasn’t answering her calls. Samuel was signed in to his social-media accounts on her phone, so she could see he wasn’t messaging anyone, and no one was messaging him.
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Alanna Bird checked her son Samuel’s texts and social media after he went missing this summer.
She posted on Snapchat to ask whether anyone had seen her son and to tell him, if he saw the message, to come home. Then the replies began.
“Samuel’s dead.”
“Samuel’s sleeping with the fishes.”
“What? How do you know that?” she wrote.
“IYKYK,” came the replies. If you know you know.
Some people responded with laughing emojis.
Samuel’s stepfather tried to calm her down, telling her it was just kids being cruel. But the longer Samuel was gone, the more ominous the messages became.
Ms. Bird reported Samuel missing on June 6, when she could no longer convince herself he was just off with his friends, or with a girl, or didn’t want to come home for some reason she couldn’t think of.
Police did not publicly announce the teenager’s disappearance until July 11, more than a month later. A second press release five weeks after that, on Aug. 22, said his disappearance was suspicious.
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Homicide detective Jared Buhler became the lead investigator in Samuel’s case 10 days after the teenager was reported missing.
But at an Edmonton Police Service press conference on Oct. 1, homicide Detective Jared Buhler said investigators have long believed Samuel was killed the night he disappeared.
“There has been public scrutiny concerning the police investigation, particularly the timing of the release of information to the public,” Det. Buhler told reporters. Ms. Bird and Samuel’s father, Justin Bird, sat nearby, as did Samuel’s grandmothers. “Investigations are not conducted in public, and for this, we make no apology.”
Det. Buhler said homicide investigators took over the case within 10 days of Samuel being reported missing, but made a “strategic and carefully considered” decision not to publicize the teen’s disappearance.
“The only regret I have with respect to timing of our information release is that we didn’t wait longer,” he said.
But from the outside, it appeared to some observers that the police weren’t doing anything, or even that they didn’t care about Samuel’s disappearance.
Samuel’s supporters, who rallied in Edmonton on Oct. 1, have been critical of the police’s public silence.
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Samuel’s father, Justin Bird, and grandmothers Geri Potts and Dora Palmer attended the news conference on Wednesday, where police revealed new information about their work on the case.
While the issue of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls has been the focus of significant attention in Canada in recent years, less has been said about missing and murdered Indigenous men and boys, who face exponentially higher rates of violence than any other population, but often receive what appears to be less serious attention from the public and police. Indigenous men are three times more likely to be victims of homicide than Indigenous women, and over six times more likely than men of other backgrounds.
Ms. Bird believed Det. Buhler when he asked her to trust him about the police strategy, but she still wanted to do everything she could to find her son herself − and to make other people care that he was missing.
She made posters and set up a “Bring Samuel Bird Home” Facebook page.
“Please if anyone thinks they may of seen him, don’t hesitate to call it in or even call me,” she wrote in her first post. “Someone knows something, Where are you Sam?”
Ms. Bird texted everyone Samuel had ever messaged to ask whether they’d seen him. She hunted for clues online, wading through a torrent of threats, pranks and cruel jokes.
Stories went around on the streets and social media – people circulating names and supposed details of Samuel’s death, even the address where it allegedly happened.
Amateur detectives and others who wanted to help started digging through social media, too. Sometimes 30 people sent Ms. Bird the same screen grabs appearing to show her son’s murder. She looked at them all, then sent them to the police.
One video from an anonymous sender showed someone who looked like Samuel tied up and being beaten. Another showed a young male duct-taped to a chair while a person forced alcohol into his mouth. It was posted along with Samuel’s username.
The videos nearly stopped her heart. Were they real? Was it Sam?
Ms. Bird has been flooded with messages and images purporting to show her son’s murder.
One person sent her a photo of a bloody knife. Someone else messaged her through the Facebook page, claiming they’d kidnapped Samuel and were holding him for ransom, demanding $30,000.
“They kept messaging me, kind of harassing me, and it gets to you. Because you’re like, what if? What if he was taken? What if he’s kidnapped right now?” Ms. Bird says.
When Ms. Bird said she couldn’t pay, they sent her a picture of Sam in the trunk of a car. It looked fake, AI or Photoshop maybe, probably just people messing with her, like the police said. But how could she be sure? If she had the money, she would have paid it.
At night, she rode through the streets of downtown Edmonton on a rented scooter looking for Samuel. She told herself maybe he was doing drugs, or mad at her. At home, she sat outside on her balcony listening for any sound, calling her son’s name into the darkness.
As attention to Samuel’s case grew, people around Edmonton and beyond increasingly wanted to help. Ms. Bird’s grief was palpable in her posts, and there was something about Samuel that drew people: His humour and charm showed through even in videos and pictures. He looked so young, laughing, mugging for the camera, recording himself practising skateboarding tricks.
Some saw their own children in him; others saw him as a symbol of the broader mistreatment of Indigenous people, or as a chance to help solve a homicide. Some saw him just as he was: a boy, lost.
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Samuel’s family describes him as a funny, charming kid who liked video games and skateboarding.Edmonton Police Service
Ms. Bird believed Edmonton police were taking the investigation seriously, and she trusted them. Ten homicide detectives were working on the case, as well as the initial missing persons investigator and numerous other officers and civilian members. But police told her they needed a specific area to conduct an official search.
So Ms. Bird and her supporters decided to embark on a broader push to find Samuel themselves. Early in September, they set up a command post at Dawson Park in central Edmonton, from which crews of volunteers would comb the blue-green waters of the North Saskatchewan River and the treed valley around it.
She was desperate to find him, and that’s where the rumours, the tips, the self-professed psychics and mediums told her he would be.
A sacred fire was lit to call Samuel’s spirit toward them.
“We believe that the other side can see our fires. They can see our lights,” said Samantha Dornbusch, a cousin of Ms. Bird’s partner. She’d begun helping Ms. Bird shortly after Samuel went missing, going downtown to talk with kids, gathering donations to help with expenses and reaching out to groups that might be able to help.
“This is the fire to let Samuel know this is where we are,” she said. “‘This is your home fire. We’re here.’”
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Dakota Bear brings personal experience to the search group: When his brother went missing, he went looking independently of the police, as the Birds are doing.
Among those who felt powerfully drawn to find Samuel was Dakota Bear, who travelled from Vancouver to help. Mr. Bear had found his own brother’s body in the South Saskatchewan River in Saskatoon. He says he did it without support from the authorities. Just friends, family, volunteers and a sacred fire.
Earlier this year, the remains of two women, Morgan Harris and Marcedes Myran, were found in the Prairie Green landfill outside Winnipeg, after years of demonstrations, advocacy and lobbying by the women’s families and community. Sacred fires burned and ceremonies were held throughout.
“Everyone said, ‘No, you can’t do it. You can’t do it.’ But that landfill got searched, and they brought women back home and gave those families closure,” Mr. Bear says. “So some people look at it as impossible, but we don’t see it that way.”
Outside the city, Samuel’s father, Justin Bird, and his family were conducting quieter and less public, but no less intensive, searches of their own.
“I did not want to be in the media, but know that I love and miss my son. I cry alone and my heart breaks daily with the pain and memories of time with him,” Mr. Bird said at the police press conference, his first time speaking publicly about the disappearance. “Finding Sam has always been the focus, which is why I haven’t spoken publicly until now. My family and I will continue to look for Sam by foot, boat and helicopter, and any means available to us.”
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Mr. Bear, holding a hook to scour the riverbed, sets out with Corenda-Lee, Ms. Bird and Malcolm Gladu. Other volunteers walk through the valley looking for clues. Today, one of them will find some clothes and shoes.
Throughout the summer, volunteers brought what they could to the Dawson Park command post to give comfort to the searchers. Dakota Bird is testing out a heavy bag set up for the children.
Shalynn Wabash, in the brown shirt, and Terri Razor, in white, brought sage from Waywayseecappo First Nation in Manitoba, donating traditional medicine to the command post.
In Edmonton, the command post grew quickly, from a few young men sleeping on the grass and tending the fire overnight, to a bustling and organized community. Some days, hundreds of volunteers showed up. They brought firewood and freshly cooked food, coffee and Timbits. Some contributed traditional medicine, and supplies such as walkie-talkies, safety vests and generators.
Ms. Bird joined the search teams almost every day, hiking through the river valley or riding in boats dragging the river, even as people begged her to stay behind. No one wanted her to be the one to find Samuel. Ms. Bird’s mother worried she wouldn’t survive it. And, Ms. Bird had to keep going for her other three children.
“We had a medium tell us that we won’t find him if I’m there, because Sam doesn’t want me to see him,” Ms. Bird said, waiting to go back on the river one afternoon. “But I was like, there’s no way I’m going to stay back from going to search.”
Samuel’s name was freshly tattooed behind her ear, with the wings of an angel.
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Ms. Bird has gone out with the searchers almost every day.
The Bring Samuel Bird Home Facebook group now has more than 35,000 members, and the case is the topic of frequent posts on social media. But the more people hear about Samuel and want to help, the more complicated the investigation becomes.
Rumours circulate, the information evolving, then being repeated with graphic new details taken as truth. People in the city find bloodstained or burned items in the river valley and bring them to the police or to the command post, sometimes attempting to hand them over directly to Ms. Bird.
“The investigation became much more difficult when information began to be posted publicly,” Det. Buhler said at the press conference. “I can say that there is a lot of misinformation. There’s a lot of conjecture, of theories based on nothing more than rumours. And it has cost us a significant amount of time that could have been otherwise spent investigating actual evidence.”
He added that videos that purport to show Samuel’s assault or death have required extensive resources, and been of little or no value.
Police traced one of the most common stories going around about Samuel’s death to a young man in a remote area of British Columbia who has no relation to the case.
“Unfortunately, there are troubled individuals out there who take some sort of perverse joy in trying to take credit to build up their own street credibility or online credibility by claiming knowledge or responsibility of this,” he said.
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Det. Buhler, pictured with Samuel’s grandma Dora Palmer, says misinformation and rumours have complicated the investigation into the teen’s homicide.
In the Facebook group, Ms. Dornbusch and the other administrators field a constant flood of messages. They repeatedly ask people not to interfere with the police investigation, not to confront those whose names are circulating online as being involved, and to respect Ms. Bird’s time and space.
Police say Samuel was last seen alive on surveillance video crossing through a schoolyard at about 8:30 p.m. on June 1, on his way to a home in west Edmonton.
Police executed a search warrant at that duplex on Sept. 19. Ten days later, the building suffered significant damage in a fire that police say is suspicious. A vehicle of interest was identified in the blaze.
Police now believe Samuel’s remains were left in a triangle-shaped stretch of land reaching 150 kilometres to the west and southwest of Edmonton. They are asking hunters, landowners and outdoorspeople in the area to check their properties.
Speaking to those who were directly involved in or have information about Samuel’s death, Det. Buhler said: “This investigation is progressing rapidly. And time is not unlimited to do the right thing.”
As the day grows darker, children at the command post play outside and do beadwork in one of the tipis. Week after week, the change in seasons gives volunteers less daylight time to look for clues.
Four months after her son disappeared, Ms. Bird says she sometimes feels like she could die of a broken heart. She remembers Samuel as so sweet and funny. He was always making her laugh, and so she misses him most in the serious moments.
“No parent should ever have to go through this, and yet too many Indigenous families continue to face this same nightmare,” she said, standing before a bank of cameras and reporters at the police press conference. “I want people to remember Samuel not as a headline, not as a case file, but as a loved son, a brother, a cousin and a friend. His laughter, his spirit and his love are what define him, not the circumstances of his disappearance.”
Samuel’s spiritual name, in both Cree and Stoney languages, translates to “the Little Boy on the Moon.”
Sometimes, Ms. Bird says, she feels like it’s all a terrible nightmare, and that she’ll wake up and find Samuel sleeping on the couch nearby.
Instead, she gets herself ready, and heads out to find him.
The days are growing short, the nights cold. The sacred fire is still burning, and she needs to bring her boy home.
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