WARNING: This story contains distressing details. The Manitoba government has set out five stages to search a Winnipeg-area landfill by hand for the remains of two victims of an admitted serial killer — the first of which has now been completed, Premier Wab Kinew said Tuesday. That first stage included getting the licence approvals to search the Prairie Green landfill, which the province's environmental approvals branch gave on Tuesday.

Altering the Environmental Act licence for Waste Connections of Canada — which operates the landfill — was one of the requirements for a search to move forward listed in a feasibility study conducted about the search of the landfill just outside of Winnipeg. "At the end of the day, this is a very emotional process," Kinew said at a Tuesday news conference, after meeting with the families of Morgan Harris, 39, and Marcedes Mryan, 26, the two women whose remains are believe to have been taken to the landfill after they were killed by a man who is now on trial for first-degree murder in their deaths. "We can only imagine what it's been like for the families to find out this news, what it was like for them to have the search politicized last year, what it's been like for them to go through the trial period, and then now for us to engage with them and tell them, 'We are starting the search.

We are going to try to bring the remains of your loved ones home,'" Kinew said. Donna Bartlett, the grandmother of Myran, said she was glad to hear the se.