What you need to know
- Sasha Reid is a family lawyer at Legal Aid Alberta.
- Reid has a background in psychology, criminology, sociology, education and law.
- Reid’s interest in serial homicide led to the creation of a database of 6,000 serial killers and a database of nearly 12,500 Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
- Reid is Métis and embraces her role as an advocate for MMIWG and families.
- She works on child welfare cases at Legal Aid Alberta, informed by her diverse education and passion for advocacy.
“As a kid, I really did believe that there were monsters in the woods,” she explains.
That early interest in monsters set Reid on a wide-ranging educational and professional path — from developmental psychologist, criminologist, sociologist and teacher to, most recently, family lawyer with Legal Aid Alberta (LAA).
Her unconventional journey gives Reid an impressive toolbox of skills and experiences to understand how trauma, vulnerability and the justice system interact. Those insights inform her work with clients at LAA.
“I bring child developmental psychology to my work as a lawyer,” she says. “Everything I do, together, makes me better at what I do in all of my different fields.”
Her journey has also led to surprising pursuits, including creating Canada’s largest database of Missing, Murdered, Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) and becoming the subject of a Hulu documentary series on cold cases, Sasha Reid and the Midnight Order. By pursuing opportunities as they arise, she nurtures an academic’s need to understand while standing up for people who cannot advocate for themselves.
“I want to be able to advocate for the people who I see fall through the cracks every single day. It’s not enough to stand in front of a classroom and talk. That’s why I applied to law school, and I'm literally doing everything I'd hoped I could ever do as a lawyer.”
Canada’s largest database on MMIWG
Few of her advocacy efforts have drawn more attention or had more impact than Reid’s research into MMIWG. Now 10 years into the project, the work grew from her doctoral studies of serial murder, which involved creating a database of serial killers to better understand their behaviour and psychological development.
During that research, Reid also gathered information about victims. At one point, she identified a shocking and disproportionate amount of violence against Indigenous women and girls. When a friend went missing back home, and later was found deceased, the issue became more personal.
“I read stories all the time about people who go missing, but to actually have somebody in my circle who went missing and who ultimately was found deceased, that was a big moment,” explains Reid, who is Métis and a member of the Métis Nation of Ontario.
Uncertain what she could do, she compiled what she knew about her friend in a spreadsheet: who she was and where she was last seen. As she added details, she decided to keep going and add information about other Canadians who went missing or were murdered.
Today, the database includes nearly 13,045 people, and Reid has assembled a team of like-minded researchers, the Midnight Order, who assist. Over the past decade, there have been few days when she hasn’t added people to the database.
Advocating for MMIWG and their families
In the early days, details about the missing and murdered were often limited to a name, age and Indigeneity. It’s that invisibility that inspires the group to keep going — and hopefully inspires others.
Reid teaches a law course at the University of Calgary, where she earned her juris doctorate, on MMIWG. Her aim is for students to learn how to become effective advocates in the most traumatic field possible, and what it actually means when a family member of a missing or murdered person reaches out.
There’s less emphasis on textbook readings and more “getting messy, getting dirty and learning from the actual people who have on-the-ground knowledge and experience working with Missing, Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls and their families.”
This week, in the lead-up to the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day on Sept. 30, Reid will speak at a missing persons conference in Toronto. Her presentation will focus on the MMIWG database and how to identify serial killers and the pockets of vulnerable people who are going missing or being murdered at “statistically unprecedented rates.”
“We use this database to help communities. We use it to help families. We use it to help advocate.”
Advocating for children and families
Reid brings the same passion for advocacy to her work as a staff lawyer at LAA, which she joined in 2025. She specializes in child welfare matters and often works with parents who need help bringing children home under their care.
One appeal of joining LAA was the opportunity to help clients with complex needs, including women and girls facing their own struggles and traumas. Reid’s background helps her understand those psychological issues and how they manifest, while developing strategies to be the most effective advocate possible.
“Some of the most deserving Albertans are people who really do need assistance, but who otherwise financially can’t get the help that they deserve, that they need,” she says. “I love the work that we do. I love the advocacy and working with people whose hearts really are in advocacy.”