There are some stories that stay with you and others you quickly forget.

The disappearance of a teenager near Manotick is an event that has always stayed in my head because it seemed so baffling.

Every reporter sooner or later ends up reporting on a missing person. Some of the cases turn out to be runaways, others suicides. Some of the cases have no ready explanation, while others have the hallmarks of an abduction by a stranger.

If you stay in this business for as long as I have — more than 30 years — some of these stories stick with you.

For me, that was the case of Shafiq Visram — a smiling, good-looking 19-year-old student who vanished on May 30, 1994.

I was assigned to do a television report on his disappearance.

The area where Visram had disappeared was already familiar to me. When I'd moved back to Ottawa in 1992, I reunited with a high school friend who was living only a few houses away from the Visram family home. I also drove by the spot every week for visits with my young daughter.

The housing development is still on the outskirts of Manotick. All the homes are big and lavish — an enclave for the wealthy.

I met many of Shafiq Visram's family members and learned they had roots in Kenya. His older brother, a doctor from London, England, was appointed as the family spokesperson.

I interviewed him on the deck of the family home. We then videotaped the kitchen, including the kitchen sink. Dishes found in the sink suggested that Shafiq had something to eat before leaving the house and disappearing forever.

19-year-old Shafiq Visram disappeared in 1994. The CBC's Simon Gardner reported on the search for the missing teen. 1:40

In the spring of this year, I got a call from the same friend who still lives a few blocks from the former home of the Visram family. He had a news tip. A jaw bone had been uncovered by construction workers at a new subdivision in the same area.

I wish I could say I instantly made the connection, but that would not be true. People at the site of the jaw bone discovery assumed it had been trucked in with loads of top soil. So, it may have come from anywhere.

Earlier this week, the police confirmed the remains are those of Shafiq Visram.

Looking back on the interview with the older brother, I recall nervously asking him about foul play and he conceded that, given the lack of any other explanation, it was possible his younger brother had been abducted, maybe worse. After all, he'd left the house without his wallet or any ID.

Ottawa police dug through and sifted soil at a construction site on Cabrelle Place inn May after several bones were found. (CBC) What's chilling to me now, is the realization that while we were chatting about Shafiq Visram, his corpse could have been very close by, possibly in a shallow grave.

Did he have an accident? Was he murdered? Did he take his own life? Family members say he was stressed out about an upcoming exam, but insist he was not suicidal.

One thing seems clear to me: the case is suspicious. And that is exactly how the police have classified it, a suspicious death.

After all, when he disappeared the Ontario Provincial Police conducted a ground and air search of the area. If his body had been above ground you would think it would have been sniffed out by a police cadaver dog.

On the day the police confirmed the identity of the remains I left a voicemail with a Manotick businessman I've interviewed in the past. He called back a few days later saying most people in the village believe Visram was murdered.

What really happened may never be known, but to no one's surprise, the case is now in the hands of the Ottawa police major crime unit.