After the initial widespread suspicion of Ross' boyfriend, her next-door neighbour turned himself in to authorities and was sentenced to life in prison for second degree murder.
Her boyfriend, Sean Hine, went to her house after she failed to answer a call on her cell phone for the second time (he had reportedly tried to contact her just after midnight, and again at around 10:00 am on the 17th).
[2]The fact that none of Ross' important belongings were missing led police to suspect that something may have happened to her, although they did not immediately deem the case "foul play".
By August 19, a police crew and 60 volunteers had been scouring nearby ravines around Ross' Markham, Ontario home.
On August 29, the National Post reported that Ross' boyfriend Sean Hine had stopped cooperating with investigators and refused to take a polygraph test.
However, in private phone calls with Ross' mother Sharon Fortis, he had "told her how much he misses her daughter and asks how she is coping.
"[4] News began to surface that Hine considered himself "pretty much the prime suspect" of the investigation, and of his somewhat unusual decision to report her missing after she failed to answer just two phone calls.
[6] Media attention to the case began to wane in late August due to the lack of new leads and the ongoing devastation of Hurricane Katrina in the southern United States.
On September 2, 2005, the York Regional Police dismantled their campaign post in Thornhill, Ontario, because students were returning to the school they had been using as their command centre.
[7] The case lay dormant for over a week, until Jennifer Teague, an 18-year-old woman in Ottawa, Ontario was reported missing, and Ross' mother Sharon Fortis once again became the subject of stories about how she and the family were coping and looking for closure in Alicia's disappearance.
[8] The body was found more than 50 miles from Ross' Markham home, where she was last seen by her family and her boyfriend of six weeks on the night of August 16, to a wooded area outside the small village of Creswell, Ontario.
Ross' neighbour, 31-year-old Daniel Sylvester was charged with second-degree homicide,[9] after turning himself in, in the company of a lawyer, to police.
The Edmonton Sun said, With public suspicions firmly focused on Sean Hine, Alicia's boyfriend and the last known person to have seen her before she disappeared, the news that her next-door neighbour, an enigmatic and little-known character on his own street, had been arrested shocked the city.
[10]Toronto Sun columnist Mike Strobel wrote an apology piece to Sean Hine on behalf of a "presumptuous public", and Sean's father, Ken Hine went on to speak to the Toronto Sun and "set the record straight," saying that his son was "going through a lot of emotions" and "finding out his girlfriend was murdered and not coming back.
The untimely disappearance of a young woman about to enter a very exciting and productive period in her life shocked the nation, and Montreal's 940 News wrote about "the fear it evoked across the country.
"[22] Canadian singer-songwriter Kathleen Edwards, on her 2008 album Asking for Flowers, wrote a song entitled "Alicia Ross", written from the perspective of the young woman in her last moments of life.