Montreal police set up a command post Friday at Notre-Dame Street and 56th Ave. in Pointe-aux-Trembles -- that's where Patricia Ferguson was last seen on June 6, 1996.
She had been staying at a friend's home with her baby but later went out for a drink with a next-door neighbour and never returned.
Police hope the command post will allow them to gather more information on her disappearance. Forensic investigators were also on scene.
In 1996, the case barely made the news. Montreal police had very little information to go with, and the case quickly faded from memory. Now, investigators say they have new leads thanks to a true-crime series.
Progress began two years ago when a private investigator who works for an organization that supports the families of missing persons says she began to ask questions and discovered possible leads that hadn’t been followed.
"Neighbours had not been interviewed," said Maryse St-Germain from the group, Unsolved Murders and Missing Cases of Quebec.
St-Germain recently collaborated with journalist Marie-Christine Bergeron on a true-crime documentary on Ferguson’s disappearance. The pair managed to find relatives of the victim including her daughter, Sabrina Ferguson, now 25.
"I want answers, I deserve them," Sabrina said.
Their persistence paid off. After the series began airing on Crave last week, police sent a team back to Pointe-aux-Trembles, to reopen the case.
"They gave new facts that we didn't have in 1996,” said Lt.-Det Sebastien Levesque.
“New, important facts.”
For example, police now know which apartment Ferguson spent the night before going missing. Crime scene technicians spent the day looking for clues there that might have survived the passage of time.
"Yes it's 26 years ago, but we never went there. So, we had an obligation to go there," Levesque said.
St-Germain and Bergeron say they even confronted the man who last spent time with Ferguson. As far as they're concerned, he's the one with the information they're looking for.
Sun Youth is also offering a reward of up to $10,000 to anyone who can provide information leading to finding her.
When she disappeared, Ferguson was 23 years old. She was 4’10” inches tall, weighed 115 pounds, and had brown hair and brown.
Anyone who believes they have information is asked to meet the investigators at the command post or to contact police at 514-206-6513.
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