Search for Katelyn Noble comes up empty

Trekking through dense bush, overgrown fields and dilapidated sheds, volunteers combed the countryside near Radisson, Sask. over the weekend, trying to find a girl who went missing several years ago at age 15.

And though their search for Katelyn Nobel came up empty handed, Katelyn’s mother Leona Noble said she won’t give up hope that her daughter’s body will one day be brought home.

“All I do know for sure is that they’ll never give up. And I’ll tell you right now, they messed with the wrong mama. Somebody’s going to have to pay for this,” Leona said.

“We just want to bring her home to B.C. I want her back there so I’ve got some place to go and there’s some place I can go to talk to her and just sit or bring flowers.”

Searchers spent three days checking different locations around the town. Leona said dreams from friends and words from psychics gave them clues to look for.

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Some of the volunteers were local but some drove for as many as six hours to take part in the search.

Louis Puewapisconias drove from North Battleford to lend a hand. For her, Katelyn’s disappearance could have been her reality.

When she was 18, Puewapisconias said she was kidnapped, repeatedly assaulted and threatened by a member of her reserve. She didn’t speak about if for 25 years, until she faced her abuser.

Today, Puewapisconias said she has overcome her past and uses it as a motivator to find other missing women.

“I am a voice for the person’s voice who has been silenced through death, I am the person’s legs to do these searches, I am the person’s arms so I can look. That’s why I do what I do,” she said.

Katelyn went missing on August 27, 2007. The teen, who dreamed of becoming an interior designer and driving a Harley Davidson, moved to Saskatchewan from British Columbia with her 36-year-old boyfriend Greg.

At the time the legal age of consent was 14 and Katelyn’s mother Leona Nobel said Greg asked for her blessing. Leona said she and her daughter exchanged phone calls every other day but when the calls stopped coming, she knew something was wrong.

“We were okay, She had to go away to be with her boyfriend. She called me or I called her almost every second day,” Leona said.

During their last phone call around Aug. 17 Leona said Katelyn and Greg were planning to move to Ottawa and Katelyn would begin correspondence for an interior design class. They never got there.

Three days later Leona received a call from Greg asking if Katelyn had taken a bus back to B.C. The couple had argued after Greg saw Katelyn embracing another man; an acquaintance named Eduard Baranec.

Greg told Leona that Katelyn allegedly ran away from their home outside Radisson but Leona said police have evidence she was murdered at the house. Leona said an attendant at the Red Bull gas station saw Katelyn with Baranec the night she disappeared.

“The lady tried to speak with Katelyn and Katelyn was kind of shut down by Eduard. She said Katelyn looked like she didn’t want to be with this guy,” Leona said.

Baranec was later arrested in 2011 and charged with murdering a woman from Surrey, B.C. in 2007. He will go to trial for that case in January 2014.

No charges have been laid in Katelyn's case, but RCMP consider her disappearance suspicious.

This was Leona’s third visit to Saskatchewan. She said she hopes to come back again soon, but with finances tight and volunteers scarce, she worries it may be a while before her search comes to an end.

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