Mother of missing Kamloops woman providing DNA for search

LINK TO FOLLOWING ARTICLE IN VANCOUVER SUN NEWSPAPER, JAN. 22, 2008:

http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/story.html?id=6e69c255-780c-4608-b5b4-dbcb13bc9998&k=99275 

Neal Hall, Vancouver SunPublished: Tuesday, January 22, 2008

KAMLOOPS - A mother plans to provide a DNA sample to U.S. police to make sure a young women found in Texas in 2006 is not her missing daughter, who disappeared from Las Vegas the same year.

"The height and weight are the same," Glendene Grant of Kamloops explained Monday about the remains of the young woman discovered on Oct. 29, 2006 in Kilgore, Texas.

The remains are unidentified because the body was severely burned and can only be identified by DNA or dental records, she said.

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Grant's daughter, Jessie Foster, 23, went missing from Las Vegas on March 28, 2006. The former Boston Pizza waitress in Kamloops had been working for an escort agency, her mother learned after her daughter went missing.

"I don't believe it's Jessie," Grant said of the unsolved Texas case.

She believes her daughter is still alive and is being kept hidden by a human trafficking ring.

Jessie, 21 when she disappeared, twice travelled to the U.S. in 2005 after meeting a man at a party in Alberta who offered to pay for the trips.

Foster later phoned from Las Vegas and said she was moving in with her rich boyfriend, Peter Todd, who is believed to be the last person to see Jessie before she disappeared.

Grant said her former husband, Dwight Foster of Calgary, also plans to give a DNA sample to assist police investigating the Texas case.

Jessie maintained daily contact with friends and family before she disappeared. Since she went missing, she has not used her cell phone, credit cards, or accessed her bank accounts.

The case has been featured on a number of U.S. TV programs, including Geraldo Rivera, the Maury Povich show and Montel Williams.

A $50,000 reward is being offered for information about Foster's disappearance on a website devoted to Grant's daughter: www.jessiefoster.ca. A reconstructed composite image of the young woman found in Texas can be found on the website: http://doenetwork.org/hot/hotcase539.html. 

nhall@png.canwest.com