Diane was 36 years-old when her body was found dead in a Windsor, Ontario ditch on February 15th, 1995. She had last been seen at a Wendy’s restaurant and hitchhiking on Huron Church Road the day before she was killed.

Authorities determined that Diane died from multiple blows to the head (likely from a steel bar) and her killer then dumped her remains in a ditch on Brighton Beach.

Diane struggled with alcoholism and ran with a rough crowd, but was beginning to turn her life around at the time of her murder. Diane worked as a taxi driver and was studying nursing at Windsor Hospital. She was fun-loving, known to have a young spirit and is a mother to three.

Diane was on her way to visit her children in Kingsville.

Aspiring nurse buried in unmarked grave

Diane Dobson, 36

Home community: Saugeen First Nation, near Southampton.

Slain: In Windsor, February 1995. Unsolved.

What’s known: Born on the Saugeen First Nation, the third of 10 children, she was adopted by a Toronto family but ran away at 13.

A mother of three, she struggled with drugs and alcohol. She’d worked as a taxi driver and in the sex trade, but had begun exploring her roots and was attending Windsor’s St. Clair College, hoping to become a nurse. She was last seen about 5:45 p.m. on Valentine’s Day walking on a road in west-end Windsor where she lived. Her body was found the next morning at Brighton Beach, just outside the city. She died of multiple blows to her face. She had no defensive wounds.

Every year, staff at Windsor’s Can-Am Urban Native Homes remember Dobson at their Sisters in Spirit vigil.

“I say a little bit about Diane so we remember in our own community we have a woman who was murdered and her murder remains unsolved,” said Melanie Garrett. “She was a community member and an Anishnabe woman. She was murdered many times over, and the fact that the person who murdered her is still out there is a scary thought.”

Dobson was buried in an unmarked grave. A few years ago, a friend began raising money for a proper headstone and a service was held in her honour. “Her family felt it was a bit of closure for them. They didn’t want their mom in an unmarked grave,” Garrett said.