Tania Murrell’s brother has died

Per this article: Tania Marie Murrell‘s brother, John, has passed away. The 37-year-old, it says, “had battled drug addictions through most of his adult life.” He was living in a halfway house when he took an overdose of methadone and was taken to the hospital. He convinced a friend to sneak him out so he could make it back to the halfway house by curfew time. They found him dead in his bed the next morning.

Obviously it’s very sad. Drug and alcohol addiction is caused by a lot of complex factors, both genetic and environmental, but I’m sure the disappearance of his sister when he was a child was a great trauma. It may not have caused his later problems but it certainly didn’t help. He was the one who was supposed to have walked home from school with Tania that day. She went the other way instead, and never came back.

I happened to speak once to a psychologist who, I think as part of his PhD, studied one particular family who had lost a boy when he was a child — literally lost, the boy was kidnapped and is listed on Charley. (I’m not going to identify the psychologist or the boy because I don’t want to upset anyone or get anyone in trouble. I’m not sure it was appropriate for the person to have confided this knowledge to me.) Anyway, the psychologist told me the boy came from a very large family and, in spite of having had a good upbringing with loving working-class parents, the kids were all pretty troubled and several of them became addicted to drugs and alcohol later in life.

John and Tania’s sister has her brother’s ashes and hopes to scatter them at Niagara Falls. If only she knew where Tania was.

Several Canadian cases

As I noted, the twentieth anniversary of Michael Dunahee‘s disappearance. Well, in honor of that, a Canadian news site has run an article about Michael and several other missing children from Canada.

The other kids mentioned are Tania Murrell (age 6, missing from Alberta since 1983), Courtney Struble (age 13, missing from Saskatchewan since 2004), and Mariam Makhniashvili (age 17, missing from Ontario since 2009).

I wish I could profile Canadian cases on Charley. But I really don’t have the time. Mariam’s case seems quite intriguing, from the headlines I’ve seen about it. She was a recent immigrant from the nation of Georgia (home of Joseph Stalin, born Ioseb Besarionis dze Jughashvili, gotta love those Georgian names) and I don’t think she spoke English well. She was also supposed to be really shy, hadn’t made any friends yet in Canada and wasn’t the type to run away. I wonder if human traffickers got her.

Tania Marie Murrell’s mother has died

According to the Toronto Sun, Vivian Murrell died on New Years Day. She was the mother of Tania Marie Murrell, who disappeared from Edmonton, Alberta at the age of six in 1983. Tania was never found and there were never any strong leads regarding her disappearance.

Vivian Murrell was only 55 years old. Her death was unexpected and they’re still awaiting the autopsy results, though it seems to have been natural causes. Tania’s father, Jack, died in 2005.

There remain two siblings. This article says a sister, Elysia, lives in Ontario and a brother, John, “has spent his life in and out of jail.”