True Crime Collection

Ardeth Wood

Ardeth Wood was the first daughter born to Brenden Wood and Catherine Ashley, on 28th October, 1975 in Saint John, New Brunswick. Ardeth spent most of her life in Ottawa, and graduated from Lester B. Pearson Catholic High School in 1994. She proceeded to undergraduate studies at Carleton University before pursuing a PhD in philosophy at the University of Waterloo. Ardeth was recognised as an exceptional student, and, in Waterloo, was co-editor of Eidos: The Canadian Graduate Journal of Philosophy.

Ardeth was on leave from her doctoral studies and visiting her family in Ottawa in the summer of 2003. She was riding her bicycle along a path beside the Rockcliffe Parkway in the Green's Creek area when she was last seen on 6th August, 2003. 

News of her disappearance was reported widely in Canada, and the entire city of Ottawa rallied around a search effort that involved hundreds of volunteers, the police, and the military. Her body was found in the woods around Green's Creek on 11th August, 2003. 

Ottawa police received many tips that a man on a bicycle was seen luring women into the woods along the path where Ardeth had traveled. A composite sketch of the murder suspect was compiled soon thereafter, and was widely distributed across Canada. 

Over 2 years after the murder, on 20th October, 2005, police arrested Chris Myers, a 25 year old man, who had been previously charged with assaults in North Bay, Ontario. Staff Sgt. Randy Wisker led the investigation into Ardeth's murder, and relied on a loose collection of tips prior to the arrest. 

On 8th January, 2008, Chris Myers pleaded guilty to Ardeth Wood's murder, and was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 10 years. 

Ardeth has been remembered with scholarships in her name at the educational institutions where she studied: 

- University of Waterloo

- Carleton University

A spectacular Bebb's oak tree in the Dominion Arboretum of the Central Experimental Farm was dedicated to Ardeth in 2007. The tree was split in half by a violent windstorm 27th September 2017, and Ardeth's brother now wants to clone the tree for this reason.