(Violet Heathen pictured on the left and Jeanette Chief pictured on the right. RCMP handout)
APTN National News
A 59-year-old man from Red Deer, Alta., was charged with two counts of first degree murder in connection to the slaying of two women from Onion Lake Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, the RCMP said Thursday.
Gordon Alfred Rogers was arrested in Edmonton Tuesday and charged Wednesday with the murders of Jeanette Chief, 48, and Violet Heathen, 49, the RCMP said.
RCMP investigators from Alberta’s historical homicide unit and Saskatchewan’s historical case unit identified Rogers as a person of interest on both files after finding a common link in both killings which happened about two years apart.
Detectives determined that Rogers new Heathen for several years, but he was not previously known to Chief.
The RCMP did not reveal the nature of Rogers’ relationship with Heathen.
Rogers is scheduled to make his first appearance before provincial court on April 5 at 10 a.m. in Lloydminster, Alta.
Chief was last seen in Lloydminster, a municipality straddling the Alberta-Saskatchewan border, around midnight on June 2, 2007. Her body was found on June 6 that same year in a rural area outside of Lloydminster and her death was determined to be a homicide.
Heathen’s body was found near Kitscoty, Alta., on Nov. 7, 2009. She had been last seen in Lloydminster on May 15, 2009.
The RCMP released no other information about Rogers.
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