The movie “Never Seen Again” from Paramount+ tells the story of Tamra Keepness, who was 5 years old when she disappeared from her home on Ottawa Street in July 2004.
Even though investigators worked for hours, talked to many people, and put up a $50,000 reward, the girl hasn’t been seen since. Even though she hasn’t been seen in almost 20 years, the police are still looking for her. So, here’s what we know if you want to find out more.
What Was Tamra Keepness’s Fate?
Born in 1998 to Lorena and Troy Keepness, Tamra Jewel Keepness was reported missing from her home in the 1800 block of Ottawa Street in Regina, Saskatchewan on July 6, 2004. She was one of five children, and she had a twin sister named Tannis. The family is made up of people with Aboriginal roots. They are from the White Bear First Nation, which is in the southeast of the province. The 5-year-old was last seen going to bed on July 5. As per police reports, Tamra was living with her mother and her partner, Dean McArthur; Lorena and Trop separated shortly after the birth of the twins.
Lorena and Dean had a fight on the evening of June 5, and Dean then left the house. Russell Sheepskin, who stayed with the family sometimes, is said to have met him, and the two of them went out for drinks. Lorena stayed with her kids for a while before putting them to bed upstairs and going to a friend’s house a block away, leaving the oldest child in charge. As per police reports, Lorena also admitted having a few drinks at her friend’s house. Russell is said to have come back and even checked on the kids at midnight, but they were all asleep.
Russell would later tell the police that he had seen the kids sleeping in the living room. He and Dean were said to have gotten into a fight around 3 a.m., and Dean allegedly beat Russell so badly that he had to go to the hospital. Lorena came back soon after and found that the doors were locked. She went in through a window. She later said that she might have seen Tamra sleeping on the couch with her siblings while she was sleeping upstairs.
Dean said that he had gone to his aunt’s house to sleep early in the morning. Lorena said that the next morning, one of Tamra’s brothers or sisters, Raine, had dreamed that Tamra was getting out of bed. After about an hour and a half, when Tamra was still nowhere to be found, her family called the police. Police in Regina did one of the biggest and most thorough searches in the city’s history to find the missing child, since there were no signs of a break-in or struggle at the home.
What happened to Tamra Keepness?
One of the Regina Police Department officers thought back to the day Tamra was reported missing and said that the whole police force had been busy. Up until 2014, the police said they had gotten more than 1,700 tips and done hours of interviews to try to find Tamra. Since June 2014, there was also a reward of $50,000 for information about where the child was.
Tamra is smart, so Lorena is said to have called her “little Einstein.” She still thinks that her child will come back. When the mother talked about it, she said, “All I know is that someone stole her. My child was taken by someone. I try to think of everything, what and where, from the very beginning. I’m trying to tell the police.” Lorena said, “I still don’t feel like she’s gone. I don’t feel at all like she’s gone. I still think she can go home.”
Every year, the city of Regina has a barbecue at Pepsi Park on July 5, which is the day that little Tamra went missing. The police think it serves as a reminder to the family and makes them feel like they are not alone in the search for their child. Erica Beaudin, the executive director of Regina/Treaty Status Indian Services (RTSIS), said, “There are other people who miss her, wonder where she is, and support them as a family in bringing her home.” Even though she hasn’t been seen in 18 years, her family hasn’t given up hope.
Early Years
Tamra Keepness and her twin sister, Tannis, were born to Lorena and Troy Keepness on September 1, 1998. The family lived in Regina, but they were from White Bear First Nation, which is in the southeast of Saskatchewan.
Lorena and Troy broke up soon after the twins were born, so the two girls split their time between their parents. Most of the time, they lived at 1843 Ottawa Street, near downtown Regina, with Lorena, her live-in partner Dean McArthur, and their three siblings. People knew that the neighborhood had problems, especially with poverty and other social issues.
It wasn’t a secret that the adults in Tamra’s life had problems with drinking and drug use. Dean had already done two months of his three-month sentence for hitting Lorena while drunk. Due to these problems and reports of child neglect, Social Services helped the family a lot. In total, 50 reports were made to crisis workers.
Tamra was a smart and kind girl, even though her home life might have seemed unstable to some. She loved her brothers and sisters very much, especially Tannis, and she always had a big smile on her face. She was also known for being sassy and a little bit naughty, and she was always looking for something exciting to do. She could be found climbing her favorite pine tree at the end of the block when she wasn’t playing Mario Kart on her Nintendo.
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Set the stage for disappearance
On July 5, 2004, at night, Lorena, Dean, and all five of their kids were in the living room watching TV. Lorena and Dean had a fight at some point, but they say it wasn’t about anything important. Dean decided to leave the house around 8:30 p.m. to cool down. He ran into Russell Sheepskin, a man who sometimes lived in his family’s basement, while he was out, and the two of them decided to get a drink together. Dean stopped at a nearby 7-11 on his way to the St. Regis Hotel to buy milk for his and Lorena’s new baby, which he then brought back to their house.
Lorena was with her children for most of the evening. Between 10:30 and 11:00, she put them to bed and left her 11-year-old daughter Summer in charge while she went to a friend’s townhouse a block away. After a while, she and her friend went out to buy more alcohol, and Lorena stopped by the house to see how things were going. She called Summer when she got back to her friend’s house and told her to call if she needed anything.
At midnight on July 6, Russell came home after getting very drunk. He made some food for himself and checked on the kids. Some of them, like Tamra, were sleeping in the living room, which means they must have come down after Lorena put them to bed. A few hours later, while smoking a cigarette on the front porch, Russell met Dean. They got into a fight, and Dean punched Russell in the face and stomped on his head. Russell went to the hospital to get stitches after getting hurt. He says that when he left, he didn’t lock the front door.
Dean says that after the fight, he decided to walk to his aunt’s house, where he planned to spend the night. But he got lost, so he didn’t get there until two hours later, between 5:00 and 5:30 in the morning. According to the police reports, nobody saw him during this time.
When Lorena got home at 3am, she found that all the doors were locked. So, she went through a window to get into the house. She was drunk at the time, so she’s not sure if she saw her kids sleeping in the living room or not. She has said, though, that she remembers seeing Tannis and Summer before she fell asleep on the couch herself.
Raine, Tamra’s older brother, felt her get out of bed at some point in the morning of July 6. He doesn’t remember the exact time, but he does remember that it was getting light.
Tamra’s grandmother stopped by to see her at 9 a.m. and saw Lorena nursing a hangover. About this time, Lorena woke up because her mother needed her to open the door. Soon after that, Summer and Raine left the house to go to a nearby community center for a day camp.
When Tamra didn’t come down for breakfast, that was the first time anyone noticed she was gone. Lorena told one of the kids to go wake her up because they were going for a walk, but she wasn’t in her bed. Lorena reported her daughter missing around 12:15 that afternoon, after looking in nearby playgrounds and calling friends and family.
Investigation
Everyone in the city was interested in the search for Tamra, which would become the biggest and most expensive in Regina’s history. At first, patrol officers looked around the neighborhood to make sure she hadn’t just wandered off or gone to someone else’s house. When they couldn’t find her, they looked harder. The Regina Police Service set up a command post in the parking lot of a church in the 1900 block of Ottawa Street, and hundreds of volunteers, police, and RCMP cadets started searching on foot, by horseback, and in the air. They looked all over the streets, yards, neighborhoods, alleys, manholes, and trash cans for her. They also looked outside the city and at a local landfill. Even though clothes and a child’s shoe were found, they did not belong to Tamra. Overall, not much was found about the missing girl.
Since the first search, there have been more in downtown Regina and near the family’s house. Lorena signed forms that gave investigators permission to look through her house. Her DNA was also given to them. A window had been broken during Russell and Dean’s fight, but other than that, there were no signs of forced entry or a fight.
The police talked to sex offenders who lived in the area. They also got surveillance footage from bars, gas stations, convenience stores, and a Greyhound station near the crime scene.
Investigators brought in the family, including Tamra’s siblings, to talk about what happened the night before. This helped them figure out what happened. Dean, Russell, and Lorena were looked at very closely, in particular. At the time, investigators thought they weren’t giving them all the facts and weren’t happy with how the story of what happened was missing pieces and didn’t make sense. The three people denied the accusations and said that investigators were spending too much time on them and not enough time trying to find Tamra. To help move the investigation forward, they named five people they thought could be suspects. One of them was a pedophile who had been friends with Tamra in the past.
A few days after Tamra went missing, a “Red Alert” was sent out. Various things have been said about why it took so long for one to happen. Some sources say that at the time, Saskatchewan didn’t have the Amber Alert system yet, and a spokesperson for the Regina Police Service said that the circumstances of the disappearance didn’t meet the criteria for an alert.
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