http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article ... rangeville
Frustrated with a futile three-day police search, the family of a missing Orangeville woman enlisted the help of a psychic and organized their own search party.
Less than two hours after setting out on foot, they found the lifeless bodies of Jeanine Blanchette, 21, and Chantal Dube, 17, in a wooded area in Orangeville.
Police have ruled out foul play and autopsy results won’t be known for several weeks, but the family of one of the young women believes they overdosed on prescription medication.
Blanchette’s family feels very strongly that Orangeville police didn’t do all they could to find the two young women.
The tragic story began on Tuesday when two friends received “goodbye” phone calls from Jeanine and Chantal and reported them to police. The young women also left behind goodbye letters to family members.
Jeanine’s mother Ellen Blanchette said the police responded quickly that day, but then didn’t take their concerns seriously as the week progressed. Instead, Ellen said, Orangeville police and OPP seemed to think the young women had run away.
“I thought they were on top of it,” Ellen said. “We put complete faith in the police, and that failed.”
On Wednesday, Ellen drove from her home in Oshawa with her sister and niece to Jeanine’s apartment in Orangeville. The house was a disaster, her computer was wiped of its memory, and the women found receipts for hundreds of antipsychotic pills, purchased at two separate pharmacies last Sunday and Monday.
They expressed their concerns to police, but Ellen said police kept saying the girls would turn up. She said one police officer bet her a week’s salary they would be found.
“They shook it off like it was an attention-grabber.”
“I wanted them to get moving,” Ellen said. “I knew if they took the pills they only had umpteen hours to get pumped.”
On Thursday, family members drove to Orangeville and posted 60 missing persons signs all over the town.
Desperate and frustrated, Ellen sought out Toronto-based psychic Sandra Mae Shaw, who had attended a family gathering to perform readings a few years ago.
“I just got this vision in my head of two girls in a field laying beside each other,” said Shaw, who said she’s never consulted on a case like this before or previously worked with police.
“Of course, it’s very difficult. You don’t want to tell them that their loved one is gone.”
“I said to (Ellen), you just tell police to look in the field close to her home. She’s there. I know she is.”
Ellen said Jeanine’s ex-boyfriend had told police earlier in the week that if the young women were going to go anywhere it would probably be near the place they met. She says police never searched that area.
Ellen’s 17-year-old nephew Bradley Walsh was the first one to spot the two figures in a wooded clearing on Friday, near the Dufferin Child and Family Services building in Orangeville where Blanchette and Dube met in a group-therapy session about nine months ago.
“I’ll never get their faces out of my head,” said Jolene Blanchette, Jeanine’s 19-year-old sister.
When Walsh started screaming, the rest of the family members ran toward the clearing.
Jolene remembers exactly how her big sister looked. Jeanine was lying on a blanket, curled into the fetal position, still wearing her glasses. Chantal was beside her.
“She looked peaceful,” Jolene said quietly, as she sat in the living room inside her mother’s Oshawa home on Sunday and relayed the story of the family’s desperate search with the help of her aunt, cousins and mother.
Blanchette and Dube had been dating each other since February. Jeanine’s family members said they do not believe their sexuality had anything to do with their deaths.
Orangeville police did not return repeated requests for comment Sunday. In a press release, the OPP said this case is not connected to any other ongoing police investigations.
Jeanine’s family said she started having mental health problems when she was about 15. She was a personal support worker who worked in a home for adults with disabilities, but had to take time off work when she started feeling depressed several months ago.
“She was just hurting,” Jolene said.
Jeanine admitted herself to a hospital in September. She was put on prescription medication and was released several days later. Her mother feels she was released too soon.
Family members said Jeanine was a deep thinker who wrote poetry and kept her feelings to herself.
“She was good at reading people,” said her grief-stricken mother, who sat stone-faced while telling her story. “She could read ya.”
There is a pause, and then one of her cousins adds, “And nobody could read her.”
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I can be debated if the reporting and conversations occurred exactly as stated, but what cannot be debated is the fact that the girl's bodies were found almost immediately after consulting with a pscyhic.