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The families of nine young women who went missing or were found slain in the Montreal region decades ago are denouncing Public Security Minister Geneviève Guilbault for refusing to meet with them to discuss their proposed changes to the way police investigate major crimes.

The families of eight women who disappeared and were killed between 1975 and 1981 have been demanding a public inquiry into their loved ones’ cases and other cold cases, because they say Quebec’s police forces routinely destroy or lose evidence in murder cases, leaving families in the dark about where the investigations stand. The family of Marilyn Bergeron, who disappeared in 2008, has recently joined the fight.

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“I do not want this horrible incompetence to be experienced by other families in the future,” said Yvonne Prior, whose then-16-year-old daughter Sharron Prior disappeared from Montreal’s Pointe-St-Charles neighbourhood on March 29, 1975. Her lifeless body was found a few of days later in woods in Longueuil. Her family was later told DNA samples retrieved from the crime scene were destroyed, but were never told why or by whom.