Another year has passed since she went missing, but the members of the RCMP's Historical Case Unit say they are as determined as ever to discover what happened to Courtney Struble.
The Estevan woman, who would now be 22 years old, went missing in the early morning hours of July 9, 2004. As has been well documented, Courtney was watching movies with friends at the Estevan Veterinary Clinic and left to return home just after midnight. She has not been seen since.
Originally considered a missing persons case, the search for Courtney took a sad turn in 2011 when the RCMP said they were now treating the case as a murder investigation.
With the anniversary of Courtney's disappearance on July 9, the story is again back in the spotlight as many in the community continue to wonder what happened on that fateful night.
While many are wondering, the task of proving remains in the hands of the RCMP. In an interview Monday, Cpl. Rob Zentner said the HCU has not, and will not, quit until they piece together this puzzle that has haunted many in the community, but none more so than Courtney's family and friends.
However, Zentner admitted the investigation is moving slower than they would like as they continue to follow leads and tips they receive.
"I wish I could tell you that we have made huge bounds and leaps towards getting to where Courtney is and her whereabouts, but sometimes the information we require doesn't come into us as quickly as we would like," Zentner said. "We have spent a fair bit of time outside the Estevan area over the last year and that includes interviewing people in other locations in Canada. Some of these were names and people that were identified in the investigation and those people had just left the province or the city."
Zentner said they have received a handful of tips over the past year but unfortunately none of them proved to be legitimate."The number of tips has decreased since the beginning of the investigation until now," he said. "There are still some that come in and obviously we follow those up as and when we get them.
"Unfortunately I would say that most of them have had no validity, especially when we get to the tips that someone believes they might have seen Courtney at this location or that location. Sometimes those are pretty hard to verify; maybe the location doesn't have any video surveillance. None of the tips have gotten us to where we need to be."
Although the tips and recent interviews have not led to a conclusion, Zentner said the positive is that the trail has not run cold and they still have more people they need to speak with.
"We have never gotten to a point where there hasn't been information for us to follow up on, which is good because when we get to a situation like that then we are at a bit of standstill. But in this case we still have people out there that we haven't been able to find and sometimes you interview one person and they say you should go talk to this person, this person and this person.
"So then you spend some time finding where those people are and in some sitatuons we have travelled to a location and by the time we get there we have learned the person that was supposed to be there has moved again. So sometimes we spend a fair bit of time just trying to track down and locate the people we need to talk to."
Although they aren't there yet, Zentner said every interview opens some doors and closes others, which helps the HCU piece together a better picture of what may have happened on the night Courtney went missing.
"After speaking with every person that we have talked to, we get a little closer sense as to what we believe happened. Obviously at the end of the day when the investigation is complete and we know all the answers, we will know whether the circumstances that we believed on today's date is actually what happened because the theories and stuff that we work are based on the evidence and information that we have at the time.
"But that stuff is bound to change because one key person could come in and tell us a bit of information that could change the direction of the investigation. Even though we have, we believe, a pretty good understanding and belief to what was going on and, potentially, what happened to Courtney, on that evening, we are still alive to the possibility that there is some evidence out there that might cause us to alter that."
Zentner said the HCU currently has 47 active cases underway.
