ARTICLE #93) Jessie Foster reward upped to $50,000

Thursday, December 27, 2007
Jessie Foster reward upped to $50,000
The Kamloops Daily News by Jason Hewlett

The reward for information leading to Jessie Foster’s whereabouts has been raised from $10,000 to $50,000 in hopes of generating more interest in the missing woman’s case.

Glendene Grant said Thursday the extra $40,000 is being put up by Jessie’s father, Dwight Foster, and will be offered through Crime Stoppers.

“We hope to entice more information about what happened to Jessie and $50,000 is the next best step,” Grant said, adding her former common-law husband’s plan is to shore up the funds through equity on his Calgary home.

“If need be, it’ll go up even higher.”

The family upped the reward after learning that a woman who may have information on Jessie’s disappearance seems to have slipped through the fingers of Canadian authorities.

Grant has been trying to speak to American Yvonne Hubrechtsen – an alleged sex-trade worker – since Jessie went missing.

Jessie gave her mom Hubrechtsen’s number as a contact number after moving to Vegas, but Grant never needed to use it until she lost contact with her daughter.

When Grant eventually tried the number, the woman who answered refused to co-operate.

“I have never been able to talk to her,” Grant said.

Then she learned through the media that Hubrechtsen had been living in Vancouver until authorities arrested and deported her back to the states on Dec. 19.

Vancouver police arrested Hubrechtsen on a Canada Border Services warrant for having illegally entered the country by not revealing her criminal record.

Grant is convinced Hubrechtsen, 22, is part of a group of acquaintances that brought her daughter to Vegas with promises of a lavish lifestyle, then forced her into a prostitution ring.

Jessie was 21 when she went missing in March 2006. Once a straight-A student, she traveled to the U.S. in the spring of 2005 with a man she met at a party who promised to pay the way.

She wound up meeting another man, Peter Todd, a pimp, a short time later and ended up in the sex trade.

Todd has told investigators he has no idea where Jessie is.

For more information, go online at http://www.jessiefoster.ca.