In September 2009, sixteen-year-old Hilary Bonnell vanished from her Mi’kmaq community of Esgenoôpetitj in northern New Brunswick, sparking weeks of frantic searches and deep concern across Atlantic Canada. Her body was discovered two months later, buried in a wooded area near her home. The investigation led to her cousin, Curtis Bonnell, who ultimately confessed to killing her after a night of drinking and attempting to conceal the crime. The case struck a painful chord in Canada’s ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, leaving a community mourning both a beloved teenager and the systemic failures that surrounded her death.