On Friday, the Canadian government and the province of Manitoba pledged to pay 40 million Canadian dollars (about 27 million euros) to find the remains of aboriginal women who may have been killed by a serial killer in 2022, AFP reports.

The bodies of Morgan Harris and Marcedes Miran are believed to have been dumped in Prairie Green, north of Winnipeg, the capital of this central Canadian province.

The remains of another victim, Rebecca Contois, were found in another landfill. The body of a fourth unidentified woman, referred to by Aboriginal leaders as “Bison Woman”, has not been found. The police have not released more details about the circumstances of his death.

The prime suspect in the case, Jeremy Skibicki, was charged in December 2022 with first-degree murder for four deaths earlier that year. The 30-year-old man is due to appear in court in April.

State and local authorities have agreed to share the costs of the search for the case, a local chief and family members of the victims said at a news conference after meeting with officials as part of their information campaign.

“Today and all the following days are going to be very, very difficult,” Morgan Harris’ daughter Cambria said at a press conference, praising the authorities’ financial “obligations.” “I pray that one day justice will be done,” she added.

In recent years, Canada has been rocked by reports of at least 1,200 murdered or missing aboriginal women and the discovery of more than a thousand unidentified children’s graves near the sites of former aboriginal residential schools.

According to a 2019 study, Aboriginal women are 12 times more likely to be victims of violence and seven times more likely than other Canadian women.

A search of a landfill in Manitoba was initially rejected because officials said there was no guarantee of success and the risk posed by the presence of asbestos and other toxic materials at the site was too great. But two reports later concluded that the operation was feasible.