ENDERBY, B.C.—A bat flits around Denis Aubertin’s head in the darkness, its wings casting shadows on the underground tunnel’s soot-blackened walls. On hands and knees and wheezing with the effort, Aubertin presses forward, desperate for some sign of his missing daughter.

After crawling through 45 metres of tunnel beneath what appears to be a former grow-op on a farm in British Columbia’s Interior, he comes to a windowless room and a locked steel door. Rising to his full height, Aubertin throws his body against it. Over and over again he tries to break it down, but despite his tradesman’s strength the door refuses to yield.

“This tunnel has a lot to hide,” Aubertin says, pausing to catch his breath. But with little new evidence to go on, “we’re between a rock and a hard place.”

It’s late August — almost a year since Denis and Jane Aubertin’s daughter, 31-year-old Nicole Bell, disappeared. Aubertin thinks this farm, less than an hour’s drive south of where Bell lived, might hold some clue to what happened to her.

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The Aubertins are not alone in their search. Waiting above ground with Jane, beside the tunnel’s concealed entrance in a dark corner of a dilapidated outbuilding, is Cindy Simpson. Her daughter Ashley disappeared from the same area in April 2016.

Both families have kept up their desperate searches because they say police have not. Their daughters are among roughly 2,500 people who have gone missing in B.C. and never been found, most of the cases going back 10 years or more.

Canada-wide, there are approximately 7,000 open cases in which a person has been missing at least three months, a StarMetro-Toronto Star investigation has found. The RCMP says missing persons are an operational priority, especially in B.C. where there are a disproportionate number of people who have disappeared and never been found. Adjusted for population, the rate of unsolved long-term missing persons cases there is more than twice the national average, and nearly five times that of Canada’s most populous province, Ontario, according to the data.

The majority of B.C.’s cases have long gone cold, but roughly 150 people have gone missing and stayed missing in the last five years alone.

Over the past four months, StarMetro took part in ground searches, dug through public records, consulted criminologists and spoke to family members and friends of a dozen people who have gone missing in the province. Many feel abandoned by the RCMP — left on their own to uncover, report and take action on new leads. Some said their pleas for regular status updates have been ignored and their concerns about what they consider short-lived, half-hearted investigations minimized.

The RCMP has repeatedly not answered StarMetro’s questions stemming from allegations made by individual families and research revealing mysterious hot spots where people have vanished in clusters.

Hot spots like the one where Simpson and Bell were last seen — a 100-kilometre stretch of road leading from Salmon Arm to Kelowna through the farmland, valleys and mountains in the southern B.C. Interior. Five women have gone missing from that part of the Okanagan since February 2016.

A year ago the remains of one of these women — 18-year-old Traci Genereaux, last seen alive in Vernon, B.C. — were found on a farm 30 kilometres from the highway and only a few kilometres from where the Aubertins and Simpsons searched the tunnel. No one has been charged in her death.

The discovery came amid a weeks-long police search that included forensics teams and dogs. Curtis Sagmoen, whose parents own the farm, has been charged and denied bail on numerous assault charges stemming from allegations made by sex workers. None of the allegations have been proven in court and he hasn’t been charged in relation to any of the women who have gone missing in the corridor.

Meanwhile, Denis Aubertin said police have all but stopped looking for Nicole, something he refuses to do. He and his wife have driven over the mountains from their home in Calgary five times since their daughter disappeared, hauling their aging tent trailer and burning out the engine of their pickup truck.

Ashley Simpson’s family has made similar pilgrimages, spending more than $13,000 of their own money travelling from southern Ontario, to search for their daughter.

“You don’t get no help until they find a body,” Simpson’s mother, Cindy, says. “We’re Canadians, but we feel like third-class citizens.”

Families pressured to stay silent

Caitlin Potts, another of the women who went missing from the Okanagan hot spot, was last seen at Orchard Park mall in Kelowna in February 2016.

Police have said Potts, who lived in Enderby, was likely killed, but her remains have not been found and no one has been charged with her death. Her mother Priscilla Potts said, at this point, she doesn’t think police are “doing anything” to find her.

On one occasion, thinking something may have been missed by police, Potts decided to search the property of someone who knew her daughter.

The police, she said, were “shocked” when she told them about the search, demanding to know how she found out the address and sparking a heated exchange.

“Why do you get upset? Why do you not give us right information?” Priscilla said she asked the police.

Her relationship with the RCMP has changed since then, she said. She no longer trusts them, and they have stopped regularly updating her on the case, she said.

“I don’t even know why they’re there,” she said. “I don’t think they’re doing their job.”

Other family members of missing people whom StarMetro spoke to said they felt the RCMP do not take their loved ones’ cases seriously. The family members asked for anonymity, fearing the police will cut off communication if they speak out.

“They don’t do much of anything unless a body is found,” said one family member. “They don’t put enough resources behind it.”

Many families interviewed also said they struggled to get timely information and updates from the police, even about the most basic elements of their loved ones’ cases.

Some families said they had to take their complaints to the top RCMP brass in Ottawa, after being ignored for weeks, before receiving a response.

Last summer Dale Wertz was growing impatient. His sister, Deanna Wertz, was 46 years old when she vanished from her home in Yankee Flats, along the 100-kilometre stretch from Salmon Arm to Kelowna, on a rainy night in July 2016.

Wertz said his sister was battling depression and had called a suicide hotline before her disappearance, an experience which left her frustrated. Months after she went missing Dale said, communication with the RCMP “faded off” to the point where promises to conduct further searches were not fulfilled.

He eventually moved from Metro Vancouver to Salmon Arm to take the burden of dealing with the case off the rest of his family.

Frustrated, Wertz penned a letter to local media, criticizing the RCMP.

“I’m tired of sitting around, waiting for the RCMP to do absolutely nothing,” he wrote in March 2017. “I’m not going away. This issue is not going away. I am getting angry and I will be demanding results.”

Following the letter’s publication, the RCMP took Wertz on a helicopter search of the area. But, afterward, he was upset by an officer’s comment.

“Just as we were leaving, getting into our car, he made a smartass comment to me, ‘Is this good enough for you? You’re not going to go public again?’ or something along those lines,” Wertz said in an interview at his Salmon Arm home. “It was uncalled for. That was the last time I spoke to him.”

In August, Deanna’s missing persons profile was removed from the RCMP website. When asked why, B.C. RCMP told StarMetro it was an oversight.

It still hasn’t been reposted.

Desk-based investigations

When StarMetro first approached the RCMP about B.C.’s missing persons data, reporters were told every case is listed on the force’s missing persons webpage.

In reality, the site is only a snapshot of the cases open at any given time. There are a number of reasons why missing persons cases would not be made public, including requests from family and concerns about compromising ongoing investigations, RCMP spokeswoman Sgt. Annie Linteau later said.

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This spring, for example, the RCMP provided data that showed there were 30 cases in the past year of children missing three months or longer in B.C. Only one of those cases was listed online: 16-year-old Colten Fleury, from Prince George. A similar data query in August showed that number had dropped to 10.

Criminologist and former police officer Michael Arntfield said a major contributing factor to the frustration families feel is a lack of consistent standards across the country governing how missing persons cases are handled.

When someone is first reported missing, police will conduct a risk assessment based on factors like the person’s age, gender, how long they have been missing, the weather and the circumstances of their disappearance. That risk assessment — similar to an actuarial test that assigns a numerical score to a case — guides what happens next.

StarMetro Vancouver reporter Jeremy Nuttall discusses the sensitive nature of covering the search for missing loved ones.

“Depending on the score, you either investigate it, reassign it to a major crime section, or call for a full-scale ground search,” said Arntfield, who has written numerous books on criminal investigation practices and true crime.

But what comes after the ground searches have been exhausted is “imprecise,” he said.

In B.C., police have seen the consequences of not taking missing persons cases seriously. Based on recommendations made after an official inquiry into the handling of the case of Robert Pickton, one of Canada’s most notorious serial killers, the B.C. policing services standards were updated to provide more clarity about how police should handle missing-persons cases.

The initial risk assessment involves attempts to determine whether the missing person may have been a victim of crime, Linteau, the RCMP spokeswoman, said.

Indigenous women and girls are automatically considered to be at an increased risk of harm, she added. At regular intervals during the investigation, missing persons cases are reviewed by a supervisor to ensure procedure is being followed.

The B.C. policing standards require cases in which foul play is considered a possibility be handed over to a serious or major crimes unit. But that doesn’t always happen, Arntfield said.

“That decision is not consistent,” he said. “What’s suspicious to me and might merit reassignment ... might not be to an inexperienced sergeant supervising a small rural detachment.”

If the ground search options have been exhausted and the case isn’t handed over to a major crimes unit, there’s little police can do except work the phones and hope for the best, Arntfield said.

“It becomes a sunset position. It’s an indoor, telephone, desk-based position where you’re just sort of calling in for updates about whether the complainant has heard from the person. You’re not out pounding the pavement looking for the person,” Arntfield said. “Ultimately, it comes down to an individual person and how hard they want to work that day. It’s as simple as that.”

And that can leave families feeling like nothing is being done to find their loved ones.

Loved ones search on their own

When families do strike out on their own to look for answers, the lack of information they’ve received from the RCMP often hampers efforts, several told StarMetro.

Jane Aubertin said police won’t tell them where they’ve already searched, so they risk looking in places already scoured by professionals.

“Our biggest challenge to the search is not knowing where to go,” Jane said. “We don’t have any training. Today we were going up these mountains and we have no clue where to go.”

There are some financial resources available from the federal government to help parents who have missing children make ends meet if they take time away from work. Recent changes have increased the eligibility age of a missing young person to 25 from 18 and increased the amount parents can claim to $450 from $350 per week for 35 weeks.

It’s no help to families like the Simpsons and the Aubertins, whose daughters are too old to qualify.

“You can’t work,” Simpson said. “There needs to be funding in place so that’s one less worry. I went back to work cause I had no choice.”

Much of the support the Simpsons’ support has come in the form of donations from Enderby businesses or fundraising from community members. They recently raffled off a cooler of beer back home in Ontario. One person bought $500 worth of tickets.

When the Aubertins drive out to Enderby from Calgary, a local campground lets them park their tent trailer at a discount.

“Funding is a really big thing,” Jane Aubertin said. “That’s why we have fundraisers.”

‘We search for all of them’

For two days in August, socked in by the smoke from B.C.’s summer wildfires, the Simpsons and the Aubertins try their best to find any sign of the missing women.

They informed RCMP of their suspicions about the farm with the tunnel, but were told there would be no help in the search. The police would come only if the families were to find some piece of evidence that would justify searching the farm in force, Cindy Simpson says.

“Over here,” Ashley’s sister Amy says, calling to Jane as the duo make their way further onto the property.

An old shovel, rusted with the weather, sits on a lumpy pile of dirt that looks out of place on the farm. Jane begins probing it methodically with a narrow metal rod.

Amy joins her, the two of them on their knees, as Jane begins to dig into the pile, sifting slowly. After a few moments she stops, turning something round and flat over in her fingers.

“We’re not supposed to touch things,” Amy chides her gently. She turns the object over with a twig carefully, in case it’s a piece of evidence. Turns out it’s nothing, just a piece of rotting wood.

The search goes on like this for hours, with couples and trios of people stopping haphazardly around the property, inspecting anything they think looks suspicious.

Heading out with local volunteer, Tim Walker, Denis Aubertin drives up a trail barely wide enough for his battered truck. The road ends in a weed-filled clearing. The two men begin searching the periphery of the glade and find a dark, deep hole dug into the side of a bank.

They suspect it could be a bear den and Walker edges closer until he can carefully shine his flashlight inside. It’s empty.

After two days of searching, with the sun sinking towards the horizon, the families gather on the farmhouse porch to debrief the weekend. Denis never did get through the steel door, and no other sign of the missing women has been found.

As an orange glow sets over the farm, Cindy puffs on a cigarette on the back deck of the farmhouse.

A failed search at least means there is still one more area they can cross off their list, she says, one step closer to finding her daughter.

But even if Ashley is discovered tomorrow, Cindy says, her heart will still be with the other families of those missing from the 100-kilometre stretch from Salmon Arm to Kelowna.

“When we search, we don’t just search for Ashley,” she says. “We search for all of them.”

Jeremy Nuttall is the lead investigative reporter for StarMetro Vancouver. Follow him on Twitter: @Nuttallreports Jesse Winter is an investigative reporter based in Vancouver. Follow him on Twitter: @jwints Data analysis by Andrew Bailey With files from Michele Henry. Follow her on Twitter: @michelehenry

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