Disappearance of Emma Fillipoff

Emma Fillipoff, born January 6, 1986, was a 26-year-old Canadian woman who went missing from Victoria, British Columbia, on November 28, 2012, last seen near the Empress Hotel between 7:15 and 8:00 p.m. that evening after an acquaintance called 9-1-1 to report a woman in severe distress. Victoria Police officers spoke with her for about 45 minutes, concluded she was not a threat to herself or others, and released her; she has not been reliably reported seen since. Her red 1993 Mazda MPV was later found in the Chateau Victoria parking lot with nearly all her belongings inside — passport, library card, camera, laptop, and clothing — leading investigators to believe she had used it for storage.

Fillipoff had arrived in Victoria in 2011 from Perth, Ontario, and took seasonal work at the Red Fish Blue Fish restaurant before leaving the job on October 31, 2012, telling coworkers she would return in the spring. Unbeknownst to her family, she had been staying intermittently at the Sandy Merriman House women's shelter. On November 21, 2012, she hired a tow truck to move her Mazda from Sooke to the Chateau Victoria parking garage, reportedly in preparation to move back to Ontario; two days later, security footage showed her entering and leaving the Victoria YMCA repeatedly, as if avoiding someone outside. In the days before she disappeared, Fillipoff repeatedly called her mother in Ontario asking to come home, then asking her not to; on their final call her mother learned of the shelter stays and flew out immediately, arriving at Sandy Merriman House about 11:00 p.m. on November 28 — three hours after she was last seen by police.

On the morning of November 28, 2012, Fillipoff was recorded at a 7-Eleven on Government Street buying a pre-paid cell phone, then returning to buy a $200 pre-paid credit card. She left the shelter around 6:00 p.m., hailed a taxi toward Victoria International Airport, then exited before arriving, citing insufficient fare. She was next seen walking barefoot in front of the Empress Hotel, where police responded to the 9-1-1 call above and, by midnight, classified her as a missing person. The pre-paid phone was never activated; her credit card later surfaced near the Juan de Fuca Community Centre and was used by a stranger to buy cigarettes, a purchase police traced. Investigators have explored more than 200 leads and found evidence she had planned to return to Ontario, but no proof she ever left Victoria.

Fillipoff's poems from her time in Victoria did not indicate she was being stalked; some reflected depression, but experts for CBC's The Fifth Estate said the writing lacked hallmarks of suicidal ideation, though her mother said shelter staff described her as needing physical and medical intervention. In March 2016 her mother and brother were charged with money laundering and drug and weapons offenses in an unrelated Ontario Provincial Police investigation her mother called unconnected to the disappearance; charges against the mother were dropped by November 2016. In May 2014, Vancouver business owners reported a man discarding a $25,000 reward poster for Fillipoff, claiming she was his girlfriend who had run away; captured on video but never identified, he is now called the Green Shirt Man by investigators. A 2018 tip about a woman matching her description the morning after the disappearance led to an unsuccessful search of Victoria's View Royal area. On the ninth anniversary in 2021, and again in November 2022, police released new images, including an age-progression photo, to generate leads; the case has since drawn a CBC documentary, several podcasts, and a docuseries.