If you were paying attention to the news in Alberta a dozen years ago, her voice was unforgettable.
“You better not take – you better not be taking me anywhere I don’t want to go. I want to go into the city,” she said.
Those were some of the last words of Amber Tuccaro, a young mother from Mikisew Cree First Nation who, along with her baby boy and a friend, had travelled from their home in northern Alberta to Edmonton for a short visit.
But on the evening of Aug. 18, 2010, alone, Amber left the Nisku motel where they were staying looking for a ride into Edmonton from the town just south of the city.
She was never seen alive again.
This week, The Globe and Mail released the second season of reporter Jana Pruden’s podcast, In Her Defence: 50th Street, which investigates the killing of 20-year-old Amber.
Jana is a former Edmonton Journal reporter and has been covering aspects of the case for more than a decade. She was at the RCMP press conference in the summer of 2012, when police first released the audio recording that contained Amber’s voice and that of a still unidentified male, presumably her killer.
That the recording was released at all was pretty shocking. We’re used to hearing panicked 911 calls, seeing grainy interrogation videos, or watching courtroom verdicts being delivered in cases from the United States. But in Canada, it is pretty rare. So when the audio was first played publicly, it stuck in people’s minds.
As Jana wrote this week: “Both of their voices have been in my head ever since.”
But despite the shocking audio recording, more than 14 years after Amber disappeared, and 12 years after her remains were found, her death remains unsolved.
Over the course of six episodes, Jana, along with audio producer Kasia Mychajlowycz, dive deep into the case. They examine the circumstances around Amber’s disappearance; the science behind analyzing the audio recording; the possibility that her death is connected to the homicides of four other women, who are believed to be victims of a serial killer; and the admission and apology by RCMP that they messed up the investigation, perhaps delivering a fatal blow to ever finding the perpetrator.
In Jana’s feature story, published last weekend, and in the podcast, she highlights the anguish of Amber’s family all these years later and their hope that, even now, maybe, someone will come forward with answers.
“I just hope he’s caught. That’s my thing, that he’s caught, because for all we know, he is still out there murdering young girls or women,” said Amber’s mother, Tootsie. “The biggest thing is him being caught and taken off the streets.”
Where to listen:
- The new season of In Her Defence was released Monday on Apple, Spotify and wherever you get your podcasts.
This is the weekly Alberta newsletter written by Alberta Bureau Chief Mark Iype. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.
