"Sweeping the (Detroit) river" isn't as easy as it sounds. It's winter in southeastern lower Michigan, and we are about to encounter a lengthy period of temperatures in the teens. Most waterways are nearly frozen now, and below-freezing temps cause just about anything that's wet to freeze.
Add to this the financial strife of the city of Detroit that limits resources for daily operations like police, EMS, and fire protection, let alone an expensive and possibly unproductive search of the Detroit River. A cursory search of the river apparently yielded no indication that Bianca's tiny body might be in the immense waterway that has a very strong current. A painter who was working on the Ambassador Bridge fell into the Detroit River last week, and even though a search began shortly afterwards, his body has not been recovered.
BBM
Several years ago in the spring... I was releasing a very large snapping turtle that I had spent the winter caring for (I spent 16 years as a wildlife rehabilitator) and he was ready for release. I had went down to the river (just around the Lasalle/Windsor border... Canadian side of the river) and I had brought my dog with me. I was busy manhandling this very large turtle into the river without getting my fingers being snapped off and I wasn't paying a lot of attention to my dog other than being aware he was a few yards away from me and walking the river edge and sniffing along. I finished with the turtle and stood up and watched him disappear quickly into the fairly deep water and then noticed my dog. He was about 30 feet from me and stood rock still. Every piece of fur on his back was raised and he was growling very low and deep under his breath and every muscle in his body was tense and rigid. This was WEIRD. he was a calm placid older rescue dog and I had never seen him be anything but a placid old couch potato. I started towards him and then stopped because it was such a strange thing for him to be doing.. so out of character and it sorta freaked me out. I looked over at the edge of the water that he was focused so intently on and seen a large pile of some type of mixed cloth-type material sort of lazily washing up on the edge of a small beach. Looked for all the world like a large armful of semi rotted mucky, slimy, water-logged cloths that were somehow held together by some lumpy things caught underneath it.
Now I am one of those people who can happily walk a lake edge or creek for hours and be completely entertained, so I picked up a large stick floating nearby and started toward it, intending to poke around and see what it was. Took a couple hesitant steps toward the pile and my dog growled louder and became even more tense as I started past him but he refused to move closer to it and then sorta stepped in front of me as I went to go past him, almost like he was trying to block me from going nearer.
I can't even begin to describe to you guys the intensity and strangeness and apprehension that his focus and body language was conveying to me. Started freaking me right out and I was still walking towards the pile but reeeeeeeeally slow.. just a step then I would stop and then another slow step and then stop again... all the while looking back and forth between him and the pile. I finally came to a stop about 10 feet from the pile, still holding the stick in my hand and just stared at the pile. and then REALLY stared at it. Just stood there at a distance.. staring hard at it.
I will NEVER ever forget how, whatever those "lumpy" objects were under the cloth.. how they moved under it. They were "loose" but yet connected somehow and the cloths seemed to be just sort of draped over the lumpy objects. The whole thing was moving lazily as the water's current bumped it against the river bank.
Now I am an avid reader and I read ALOT and a term came into my head that I couldn't have really described before I seen the way this pile was moving in the water. The lumpy parts were moving "loose-jointedly." Whatever was under those cloths was connected and held together somehow but in a PURPOSEFUL way.. (and I am sorry but even after five years I still cant describe it better any other way than it was "purposeful" .. it was "something".. not just a pile of garbage washing up on the riverbank and whatever that "something" was.. it was freaking me out.. to my very core .. in a way I had never ever ever been freaked out. I could sense something "dangerous" but on a level of alarm that had nothing to do with an understanding of regular danger and my head telling me to be careful. It was on a very different level than I have ever felt before .. it wasn't my logical thinking part of my head that was telling me the whole situation had a wrongness to it.. it was every cell in my body that screaming that they KNEW this was bad and don't go there and look.
I sat there and tried to talk myself out of what I was feeling and literally just couldn't take even a single step closer.. not one step...call me a coward.. I don't care.. I was NOT going near it.. something was wrong and I KNEW it. So I backed away... collected my freaked out dog and took my freaked out butt to the nearest phone and called the police and waited for them to take them to where I found it. I showed them where it was and stood waaaaaaaaay back... and I will never forget how as I watched two police officers bending down to pick up the cloths and poke around under them... I knew then that those folks could NEVER get paid enough to do that job.. NEVER. To have to do what most of us cringe from doing can never be compensated by money. I have the utmost respect for police, firemen, military, paramedics, etc. They go in .. when we can opt out.
So they confirmed it was a body.. but unable to say male or female.. just could say it was adult sized human remains. Later on when the forensics came back.. it was found to be the remains of an older homeless gentleman who lived in the downtown Windsor are and who had a history of suicide attempts and mental illness and had went missing the October before and had spent the winter months in the river, ending up less than a mile away from where they suspect he went in.
One of the police officers told me something that day that I keep replaying in my head right now as I follow little Bianca's story. He told me that the Detroit River is different than most rivers .. it is deep and the currents are very swift but it is also a very short river which has some narrow curves and twists once you get past the Detroit area itself. He said this river does not usually keep it's bodies. There are many natural areas due to the way the channel runs and the way the river bends, that bodies wash up on all the time. The area I found this body, is one, There are several areas on the Michigan/Ohio side that are "collecting" hotspots for bodies to be found also. Fighting Island in the middle of the river down near the Amherstburg area is another one. The officer told me that it is nothing unusual for police on each side of the river to find a hundred or so bodies a year, PARTICULARLY after the spring thaw. Mostly homeless folks, alchoholics and mentally ill that have either had accidents or met with foul play, but of course murder and suicide victims as well. He also said that the river does not seem to like keeping secrets.. it tended to toss these unfortunates back up for us to find and deal with. It just does it in its own time.
If Bianca is in the river... I have alot of hope that this babe can still be found and laid to rest, but no matter what.. she is a part of me now, just like she is a part of all of you following her story, and she always will be, and like the countless other missing children on this site. We will NOT let them go quietly into the night. We fight for them and we remember them.. even when it seems so hard to keep reading of missing child after missing child. Sometimes all we can do is keep them close in our hearts and let them know they are not forgotten.
MOO
pat
