Image: Supplied by Laura Hall / Hope-area resident April Lee-Ann Parisian went missing in March 2020. She lived in Spuzzum but frequented the surrounding areas of Boston Bar, Hope and Chilliwack. Her sister, Laura Hall, wonders if the human remains found at Ross Lake in October 2023 have any connection to her missing sister.

By Mike Vanden Bosch

Missing woman

UPDATE: RCMP tells family of Laura Hall, sister of missing Hope-area woman, that remains found at Ross Lake are not those of April Parisian

Jan 15, 2024 | 6:56 PM

**Update at 12:45 p.m. Tuesday, January 16: Laura Hall, the sister of missing woman April Lee-Ann Parisian, says the RCMP have advised her brother that the remains at Ross Lake do not belong to Parisian.**

Original story below:

HOPE — After the B.C. RCMP confirmed last week that human remains found inside a suitcase at Ross Lake in Washington state in October 2023 were those of a Canadian, the sister of a Hope-area woman who has been missing for nearly four years had been hoping for some answers, and a possible match.

However, the RCMP have advised the family of Laura Hall, the sister of missing woman April Lee-Ann Parisian, that the remains do not belong to Parisian.

Laura Hall told Fraser Valley Today in an online interview over the weekend that her sister, Spuzzum resident April Lee-Ann Parisian, was last seen up Silver Skagit Road in Hope in 2020 but has never been seen since.

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Parisian’s partner and fiancee, Paris Margesson, was found dead in April 2020 inside her camper from what police believe was a self-inflicted wound. The Integrated Homicide Investigation Team said at the time that detectives believed Parisian may have met with foul play.

Her body has never been recovered, despite an extensive rescue effort that Hall says enlisted over 100 volunteers, including area search and rescue crews, to search Boston Bar, Hope, Chilliwack, Princeton and the Silver Skagit Road corridor with the help of drones and cadaver dogs. The family conducted searches almost daily for months, Hall said.

“We searched all the way up to the gates up Silver Skagit,” said Hall,

Of all the places that were canvassed, volunteers did not check Ross Lake, Hall confirmed.

An online post alluding to the discovery of human remains at Ross Lake National Recreation Area in October 2023 came from an individual named Chris Johnson, who detailed the circumstances on PNW Fly Fishing dated Sunday, October 15, 2023. In the post, Johnson details what his nephew allegedly discovered at the lake.

“We went up to Ross Lake Resort Thursday morning (Oct. 12) for our annual family weekend,” Johnson wrote on PNW Fly Fishing. “In the late afternoon, my nephew, who got there the day before, pulled up in his boat and told us he had been up north by Hozemeen and he and his buddies had found a suitcase in the lake. He and his boat partner had spotted the case and told their friends in the other boat. The other boat went back and dragged the suitcase up on to the beach.”

Image: R.Seifried, via U.S. National Park Service / Human remains found last year inside a suitcase at Ross Lake in Washington state are those of a Canadian.

Johnson described the suitcase as a large case with buckles on three sides. Individuals broke open the suitcase and found quarry rocks and plastic bags inside.

“They looked in one bag and saw a human foot, so they left and ran back to the resort and told the office,” Johnson wrote in his post. “The next day we were up there Friday (Oct. 13) and there was a National Park ranger there on the beach. The dudes who pulled the case out of the water went over and show (sic) the guy where it was and then came back and fished with us. Two hours later, the resort’s big boat showed up with half a dozen people in it and retrieved the body. The lake was as low as I have ever seen it and we were fishing in a huge field of stumps, so you had to pick your way through them to get to the fish.”

Johnson also alluded to Silver Skagit Road in his post, saying the road to Ross Lake from Hope has been washed out the past two years, so no one has visited the lake from the Canadian side in some time.

“Strange things come to light when a lake drops low enough,” Johnson said.

RCMP Staff Sgt. Kris Clark, based out of Surrey at E Division headquarters, says the RCMP will continue to collaborate with the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office on the investigation involving human remains found at Ross Lake.

“I can confirm that the RCMP has been engaged, as the victim was determined to be a resident of Canada,” Staff Sgt. Clark wrote in an email dated January 10. “The victim has been identified. The RCMP will continue to work with the Whatcom County Sheriff’s Office to advance the investigation and determine the circumstances that led to the recovery. No further details are available at this time.”

For Hall and her grieving family, their quest for justice won’t stop until Parisian is located.

“The only person, (I assume) who knew where she was killed himself,” Hall said. “There was no justice there.”

When asked if there will ever be closure if Parisian’s body is found, Hall said, “It will for us all. We can finally lay her to rest, and we can rest as a family. She was well known in her community and in the Indigenous community. There are so many people who love her. She had a huge, huge heart and loved the outdoors. Her love for the outdoors was life.”