Documentary in preparation offers new information about the disappearance of a BC teen

She’s not a household name, but for many in Vancouver, especially the North Shore region and surrounding islands, Jodi Henrickson will certainly ring a bell.

Henrickson was a 17-year-old girl from Squamish who went missing after a house party on Bowen Island during the then unusually warm summer of 2009.

She was last seen with her ex-boyfriend, a man two years older who had obtained a court order banning him from being in her company. Although he was a person of interest at the time, there was no conclusive evidence linking him to her disappearance. Her body was never found. Two missing persons posters, depicting a teenage Jodi with side-swept brunette hair, still hang on the walls of the island’s RCMP detachment.

Jodi Henrickson was, says filmmaker Jenni Baynham, also a family-oriented social butterfly who was popular at school. She was bubbly and funny, with a ‘colorful personality’. She loved to draw.

Contrary to reports, she was neither a troubled girl nor a runaway. Jodi had flaws, like all people, but she didn’t deserve this, Baynham says.

For four years, Baynham investigates the teenager’s disappearance as part of the upcoming documentary Finding Jodi.

The filmmaker and former journalist says she is about to find out what happened to Jodi in the early hours of that June morning. She has discovered a new person of interest and has “credible information” pointing to where the missing teen could be.

“I can’t tell you how close we are,” she says.

Documentary Finding Jodi has new information about the disappearance of 17-year-old Jodi Henrickson.

First foray into true crime

Baynham had started investigating Jodi’s story after hearing about her disappearance from a friend of a friend. Baffled as to how a popular teenage girl could disappear without a trace on such a small island, she had fallen down an internet rabbit hole of Jodi-related research.

“When I read this, there were all these interviews with the police saying she never left the island. I’m thinking, ‘It’s 50 square kilometers, how hard can it be to find her?’

Baynham, Scottish and in her mid-30s, was in another country and about the same age as Jodi when she disappeared in 2009. confidence in the world of true crime. The documentary filmmaker’s Vancouver-based production agency, Studio BRB, specializes in festive Hallmark films and feel-good Lifetime films.

Jodi’s story had presented itself to Baynham as nothing more than perfect documentary fodder. It’s a vision that is now “almost laughable,” she says, given the four years that would follow. After interviewing the missing teen’s friends and family, all of whom were still in a state of limbo, she describes how her reason for existence shifted and became less about making a successful film, and more about finding of peace to Jodi’s legion of loved ones.

That’s why, despite numerous generous offers from major streaming services, the filmmaker refuses to sell.

“I could release (the film) tomorrow based on the information we have, but there is a very specific ending that I want to this story, and I don’t want to stop until we get that ending.”

Baynham is quick to reassure that she’s not here to poke holes in the police’s initial investigation. Breaking open a case that could have remained cold forever is easier to do when you’re armed with the tools of the times, she says.

“Things have happened in 15 years that wouldn’t have happened then, so they couldn’t have discovered what we discovered now.”

If we pick up the investigation more than ten years later, this means that there are still fifteen years of more errors to be investigated, fifteen years of more people saying strange things, more people observing strange things and more time for those who were there that night. were to think. at times that they did not feel comfortable with at the time, she says.

Most of the teens interviewed at the time of Jodi’s disappearance are now in their mid-30s. What would have felt like fateful confessions at the time – Bowen Island parties involved underage drinking and drug selling and taking – have in retrospect become trivial teenage crimes. Those who were wary of police then, she says, are now more outspoken.

‘Really brand new’ pieces of information

Pete Cross is a retired RCMP officer whose last assignment before leaving the force was Jodi’s missing persons case. Drawn back into the game by the very real possibility that he might solve an assignment, much sleep was lost, Cross says he spoke to “30 or 40 people” who were at Bowen the night of the party. Numerous others who were connected in other ways were also interviewed.

“There are some really brand new pieces of information,” he says, describing how “amazing” the difference in testimonies was between then and now.

“The witnesses of people who were involved at the time have aged fifteen years, they have evolved into now parents and they are scattered everywhere,” he explains.

“What they remember now is different from what they remember then. They look at it from a different set of eyes, which I find interesting,”

Jodi Henrickson, a 17-year-old teenager from Squamish, went missing in 2009 after a house party on Bowen Island.

With neither Baynham nor Cross having access to the official police file, Cross sifted through old notebooks and forwarded new leads to the RCMP’s Integrated Homicide Investigation Team (IHIT), charged with investigating Henrickson’s case.

They are both aware that the public may have already made up their minds about what happened to Jodi in 2009. The relationship between Jodi and her ex-boyfriend Gavin Arnott was known to be tumultuous – a 2009 CTV News article describes an assault charge filed against Arnott following a complaint she filed. In the months that followed Jodi’s disappearance, Arnott explained how he and Jodi had had a falling out before they both went their separate ways. He has never been charged in connection with the case.

“People speculate about these things all the time, but the bottom line is you have to follow the evidence,” Cross says. He explains how he and Baynham spent years exploring all possibilities.

“Is it likely she went to someone else’s house?” That seems unlikely given the number of people we spoke to in and around where she was last seen,” he said. ‘Did she walk to the ferry? We’re pretty sure she didn’t walk to the ferry.’

According to him, suicide, drug overdose and driving under the influence are unlikely, but can only be ruled out once a body is found.

There are two suspects in the documentary maker’s investigation. One has since died, of whom Baynham “continues to follow the path”. She has requested an open conversation with the other person, during which she will be given the opportunity to tell their own side of the story.

Blame, she says, is not her approach to this investigation. Her goal as a filmmaker is to simply tell the story, “and let the audience draw their own conclusion.”Cape Roger Curtis on Bowen Island can be seen in this undated image. (Shutterstock)

There’s a common joke among Bowen Island residents that you have to have lived there for at least twenty years to be considered a local. Small, rural Xanadu, with a population of just over 4,000, is a bubble with a tight-knit community whose trust, especially when it comes to speaking to journalists, is not always the easiest to earn.

However, despite his reputation, Baynham says the Bowen community was more than willing to cooperate. Many of the people she has spoken to are “just as shocked about this” as the rest of the public. “They don’t want their island to get this reputation, or for a dark cloud to hang over it,” she says.

The only white whales interviewed are a small group, “two or three men” who still refuse to cooperate. Baynham believes they have information vital to the case, and for the investigation to progress and the documentary to come to fruition, they must come forward.

“I really, really need those people to respond to my voicemails, my emails and my phone calls,” she says.

To those ‘who are now adults’, who were on Bowen at the time but have since moved to other regions, who ‘have circles around them of people who have heard information second-hand’, Baynham urges them to to pick up the phone. .

“It will be anonymous,” she says, “but we need these people to get us across the finish line.”

Anyone wishing to contact Jenni Baynham can do so via email at [email protected], Instagram at @findingjodih, or via the anonymous tip line 1 236 712 3349.