There’s a Doc in Production About This 15-Year-Old Vanmag Story and the Producers Want Your Help

We’re not usually in the habit of reporting on true crime these days—we gratefully leave that to our skilled comrades in the news world—but one particular not-so-cold case has recently caught our attention: the still-unsolved disappearance of teenager Jodi Henrickson from Bowen Island, 15 years ago.

In 2011, this very magazine ran an in-depth story about the mysterious circumstances surrounding the missing 17 year old girl, reported by Bowen Island resident and journalist Neil Boyd. Henrickson was last seen in 2009 with her ex-boyfriend, Gavin Arnott after leaving a party. No body has ever been found. 

But a forthcoming documentary from Vancouver production company Studio BRB hopes to change that… and has used that very Vanmag article as an important jumping-off point for reopening the investigation.

“The police said she’d ‘never left Bowen Island’ and it’s a 50 kilometre-squared island… how can they not find her?” asks Jenni Baynham, executive producer for the film. (Full disclosure: she’s also a former editor with Vancouver magazine, but wasn’t on staff at the time of the publication of Boyd’s “Where’s Jodi Henrickson” story.)

Though it’s been more than a decade, Henrickson’s case is still considered as ‘active’ by the RCMP, which means her police file is off limits to outside investigators. “This meant Neil Boyd’s article in Vancouver magazine was the only comprehensive account of Jodi’s last-known movements that we had to work from,” says Baynham. “We used it as a template to kick off our initial investigation and once we started asking the right questions to the right people, we couldn’t believe how many were willing to talk.”

Over the past four years, the production team says they’ve made progress with the help of their interviews and information from former RCMP investigators. Now, after connecting some important dots, they’re taking the search for information public.

That’s where you come in: the producers are now actively looking for witnesses who have information about Henrickson’s disappearance, and asking anyone with the following information to contact them by calling the tip line set up on (236) 712-3349, by filling out this form, or by emailing findingjodi@gmail.com.

When completed, the still-untitled documentary aims to shed light on the tragedy that rocked Bowen’s small island community—but Baynham is conscious of treating the story with care, whatever comes next.

“We are cognizant that this is an open investigation,” she says. “Our priority is for the person or people responsible for Jodi’s disappearance to be held accountable in a court of law, not in the court of public opinion.”