Crime Immemorial

Cynthia Kudjick was born in Nunavik, the Inuit region of northern Quebec, and like many Indigenous women from remote communities, she had migrated to Montreal in search of opportunity. However, the city offered little respite from hardship. Cynthia, a homeless sex worker, navigated the precarious world of street survival in the area around Cabot Square—a historic public space in the Sud-Ouest borough that has long been a hub for Indigenous migrants but also a hotspot for violence and exploitation.

At thirty-five, Cynthia’s life in Montreal was fraught with dangers exacerbated by poverty, addiction, and discrimination. According to reports, on the cold night of January 3rd, 2005, she had sought refuge at the nearby Midway Bar but was denied entry due to her intoxication—a decision that likely sealed her fate.

Details of her slaying remain harrowing and incomplete. Cynthia was reportedly beaten savagely at her boyfriend’s apartment on Rue de Bullion, suffering multiple blows to the head and abdomen that proved fatal. Paramedics found her stripped naked on the street, a detail that has fueled speculation of a sexual motive behind the homicide. The autopsy confirmed death by blunt force trauma, but the weapon and exact sequence of events were never conclusively determined.

Her boyfriend was interviewed by Montreal police (Service de police de la Ville de Montréal, or SPVM), but no charges were filed. Initial investigations pointed to possible robbery or interpersonal violence, with some community leaders controversially suggesting involvement from other Inuit individuals who may have stripped and robbed her post-mortem. However, activists have dismissed such claims as victim-blaming rhetoric that deflects from broader patterns of predation against Indigenous women.

Cynthia’s death was the first documented murder of an Indigenous woman in Quebec that year, setting a grim tone for a crisis that continues to claim lives disproportionately. In the weeks following, her case drew quiet attention from Native advocacy groups, but it quickly faded from public view amid a lack of media coverage—a common fate for victims from marginalized backgrounds.

The SPVM’s handling of Cynthia’s murder has been criticized for its brevity and insensitivity. No arrests were made, and the file was shelved as a cold case within years. Forensic evidence, if any was collected, yielded no leads, and witnesses from the transient community around Cabot Square were scarce or reluctant to come forward.

Compounding the tragedy, Cynthia’s case intersects with allegations of a serial predator targeting Indigenous sex workers in the Cabot Square area. Advocacy site Justice for Cabot Square documents at least a dozen unsolved deaths of Inuk and other Indigenous women between 2003 and 2010, many involving similar modus operandi: beatings, nudity, and abandonment in public spaces. Groups like the Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) have called for a unified review of these cases, arguing that police dismissed connections due to biases against homeless and sex-working victims.

In 2014, the broader Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) inquiry highlighted Montreal as a “ground zero” for such violence, citing inadequate resources and cultural insensitivity in investigations. Cynthia’s name appears on national lists of unsolved homicides, underscoring how her story fits into a national epidemic: over 4,000 Indigenous women and girls have gone missing or been murdered in Canada since 1980, with conviction rates hovering below 50%.

As of 2025, no breakthroughs have been announced in Cynthia Kudjick’s murder, despite advances in DNA technology that have cracked other cold cases in Quebec, and her killer remains at large.