CRACK DEALER LIKELY KILLED AYNSLEY KINCH

And She's Not His Only Victim

Women who work the streets say they're certain it wasn't a bad john
who murdered Aynsley Kinch on the weekend.

They say a well-known crack dealer has likely killed her and at least
one of the other 17 women slain after disappearing from Winnipeg.

The homicides remain unsolved.

Kinch's body was found off Murray Avenue in northwest Winnipeg early
Sunday morning. Like Crystal Saunders -- whose body was discovered by
a trapper near St. Ambroise in April -- Kinch was a drug addict forced
to sell her body to supply her habit.

Both disappeared from Winnipeg's inner city and both of their murdered
bodies were dumped on the side of the road.

Both owed drug debts. And by killing them, their dealer sent a message
to people to pay up, said a 59-year-old woman, who lives among many
sex-trade workers in downtown Winnipeg.

She knew Saunders well and lived in the same building as
Kinch.

She is afraid to have her name published.

Another woman at a downtown hotel Kinch frequented said she was killed
by her dealer who supplied her with crystal meth and crack cocaine.

"Really the only explanation I have is that she owed them a good
amount and they came calling to settle the debt," she said Wednesday.

A friend of Saunders called police shortly after her death in April to
tell them what he knew about Saunders' debt to her drug dealer and how
she feared for her life. He gave the RCMP the dealer's name and
cellphone number, but never heard back.

"The drug trade is predatory and vicious," said Kate Quinn, executive
director of the Prostitution Action and Awareness Foundation in
Edmonton, which has 22 unsolved murders involving sex-trade workers
since 1983.

She said Winnipeg, with 18 unsolved murders, has a similar
problem.

"The safe houses and addiction programs are few and far between," said
Quinn, who started the foundation to help make her inner-city
neighbourhood more safe.

She knows a 20-year-old woman living in a garage close to her home who
has HIV, hepatitis C and is a virtual sex slave to her dealer who
beats her if she doesn't work and give him $20 when he asks for it.

"If we want to create protection for our vulnerable citizens we need
to create safe houses and treatment programs quickly. That's what's
going to stop the deaths. Women have to have options so they don't
need to fear death."

Edmonton had 15 beds for women trying to get clean and off the
streets. They were closed in June 2004, when government pulled the
plug on its operating funds.

Six dead women later, Quinn and her foundation are advocating a safe
house for women who want to turn their lives around.

"We need some key leaders in police and government who are going to
say 'No more deaths -- we're going to turn this around and invest in
our citizens and we're not going to fill our jails with hopeless and
addicted people. We're going to go after the drug dealers and
profiteers,' " said Quinn.

Too often it's women left advocating change, she said. "We need a
strong male voice" to stand up to the johns and the drug dealers, she
said.

But there won't be any vanguard coming forward to help vulnerable
women until they're seen as real people with children, parents,
sisters, brothers and husbands and not just "sex-trade workers known
to police", said Rob McDonald, a media liaison for the Native Women's
Association of Canada.

"There were people who loved them -- they didn't deserve this," said
McDonald. The Ottawa-based advocacy group is compiling a list of
missing and murdered aboriginal women across Canada. It's verified
close to 400 in the last 20 years.

"Winnipeg is a hot spot," he said. The association is meeting with
social workers and sex-trade workers in Winnipeg at the end of August
to talk about safety strategies and how to raise public awareness of
the urgency of the problem of missing women and unsolved murders.

Over the next several months, they're looking at releasing the growing
list of missing and murdered aboriginal women. They're considering a
billboard campaign to elicit the public's help. It should raise
awareness about the dangers facing all vulnerable women, he said.

"It's not just aboriginal women being targeted -- it's women in
general," he said. "We as a society have to stand up and take notice."