No Weapon recovered in Richmond homicide
OTTAWA — Nearly one week since Melissa Richmond went missing, police have not found or identified the murder weapon used to kill the 28-year-old Winchester woman.
Police continue to question Richmond’s family and friends and have yet to identify any suspects or persons of interest in the city’s seventh homicide of the year.
Businesses in the South Keys Shopping Centre area have confirmed that Ontario Provincial Police, who are jointly investigating with Ottawa police, began seizing their video surveillance footage on Saturday, the day after Richmond’s gold 2004 Chrysler Sebring with personalized licence plate RPGGIRL was found in the parking lot by an employee at the South Keys Denny’s Restaurant.
Police began searching the ravine between the parking lot and Bank Street on Sunday morning, though they have not disclosed what prompted them to start looking in the area bushes. Police found Richmond’s body partially clothed with multiple stab wounds Sunday at 9 a.m.
The makeshift memorial fixed to a guardrail on Bank Street overlooking the ravine where Richmond’s body was found has grown; several bouquets of flowers, a candle and a small teddy bear now sit on wooden posts with messages of condolences and heartfelt sympathies.
On Wednesday morning, Richmond’s widower Howard posted on Facebook asking anyone who intended to send flowers to instead make a donation to the Winchester Food Bank. He added that Melissa would have wanted that. They used to volunteer together at the food bank. Melissa Richmond’s own Facebook profile has been deleted.
Family and friends heavily involved in a historical re-enactment society said Wednesday that they would no longer be speaking to media. When Richmond went missing, friends involved in the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group dedicated to re-creating the Middle Ages through costumes and activities, banded together to search far and wide for Melissa, who many of them knew as Lady Aevianna of Nordengel. In her daily life, Richmond was a woman who liked to play role-playing games, who had just passed her dental hygiene exam the year before, and was looking forward to her husband’s retirement so they could go on a two-year trip around the world.
“We just need to heal now,” said Shelley Rabinovitch, who had been serving as a spokeswoman for family and friends since the systematic search, spearheaded by soldier Howard’s military colleagues, began on Thursday. She hardly slept and religiously updated the now more than 1,800 people who belonged to a Facebook group to help find Richmond.
A funeral is planed for Saturday in Petawawa, where Richmond was originally from.
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