`Statement from Battered Women’s Support Services on the Identification of Nicole Bell and Ongoing Calls for Justice
The identification of Nicole Crystal Bell—seven years after she was reported missing from Sicamous at the age of 31—brings painful confirmation to her family and loved ones, and reignites longstanding calls for justice for the women who have disappeared or been murdered in the North Okanagan.
Nicole Bell was one of five women who went missing in the region between 2016 and 2017. She was a mother of three. The RCMP now confirms that she was a victim of foul play and that the person responsible for her death is also the primary suspect in the death of 18-year-old Traci Genereaux, whose remains were discovered on a 24-acre farm owned by the family of Curtis Wayne Sagmoen.
Sagmoen is a known violent offender with convictions for assault and weapons-related charges. Despite multiple red flags—including a rare RCMP warning to sex workers in the region—Sagmoen was acquitted in 2020 of threatening a woman with a firearm. The systemic failure to meaningfully intervene earlier allowed violence against women to continue unchecked. Sagmoen’s name has never been publicly tied to the murders by law enforcement, despite the overwhelming evidence of a pattern.
Other women connected to this tragic cluster include:
- Deanna Wertz, 46, last seen July 19, 2016, in the Enderby area. She remains missing.
- Caitlin Potts, 27, last seen February 2016 in Enderby. She also remains missing.
- Ashley Marie Simpson, 32, went missing in April 2016. Her remains were later found, and her boyfriend, Derek Lee Matthew Favell, pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.
- Traci Genereaux, 18, was reported missing in June 2017; her remains were found during the RCMP’s search of the Sagmoen family farm in October 2017.
Despite RCMP claims that the women’s disappearances are not all linked to a single serial actor, the public deserves transparency and accountability. The failure to connect these cases sooner—and the failure to issue meaningful public alerts—reflects whose lives are treated as expendable. These women, many of whom were Indigenous, poor, or involved in criminalized economies, were met not with protection, but with invisibility.
We renew our call for justice in the case of Deanna Wertz, who is still missing, and echo the demand for a full investigation into the broader patterns of violence connected to this region and to Curtis Sagmoen. We also reiterate that additional parties to these offences have not been ruled out, and this must be urgently pursued.
We offer our deep gratitude to Jody Leon of the Splatsin First Nation for her tireless leadership and years of advocacy on these cases. Her unwavering commitment to the truth and to honouring the lives of missing and murdered women in the Okanagan has been a beacon in the face of institutional silence.
Violence against women in this province is not random—it is systemic, it is targeted, and it is preventable. It is time for British Columbia to reckon with how little has changed since the early warnings about Sagmoen, and how many more women might be harmed if the same patterns of inaction continue.
This case is a tragic reminder of why public safety must be designed with survivors in mind. We need survivor-centred legal systems, real accountability for violence, and public policy that addresses the root causes of harm. Anything less is complicity.
