He died a convicted killer. Now, Russell Woodhouse's family wants his name cleared in 1973 homicide

Clarence Woodhouse was jubilant, walking out onto the steps of Winnipeg's law courts with his family last fall.

Decades after he was convicted in a 1973 murder he always said he didn't commit, a judge had finally said the words he'd waited so long to hear: "You are innocent."

It was nice to be free after all those years, Clarence thought at the time. But months later, he's thinking about his brother Russell — and how he never got to hear those same words.

"He was innocent too," Clarence, now 73, said in an interview at his Winnipeg home. "I'd be happy to clear his name."

Russell Woodhouse, who died of cancer in 2011, and his brother Clarence were among four young men from Pinaymootang First Nation in Manitoba's Interlake area convicted in the 1973 killing of Ting Fong Chan. The 40-year-old father of two was stabbed and beaten to death near a downtown Winnipeg construction site as he walked home after his shift one night at the Beachcomber restaurant.

Clarence still remembers what happened next: the arrests and interrogations of the four young men, who ranged in age from 17 to 21, according to newspaper coverage at the time, the police brutality and manufactured confessions. He knows how their trial ended, with a jury convicting all four — three of murder, one of manslaughter — in the death of a man they'd never met.

It took decades, but one by one, three were exonerated. First came Brian Anderson and Allan Woodhouse, whose names were cleared before a courtroom that erupted into cheers in July 2023. Then came Clarence's October exoneration, where Manitoba Court of King's Bench Chief Justice Glenn Joyal apologized for a case he described as being "infected" by systemic racism.

But more than half a century after his trial, Russell Woodhouse remains the only one who hasn't been declared innocent — yet.

Now, his family is awaiting a decision from Canada's justice minister following a review of his manslaughter conviction. According to one of the lawyers pushing for Russell's exoneration, it's the first time that's happened for a person who has died.

"It's unheard of in Canada," said James Lockyer, founding director of Innocence Canada, the non-profit organization behind the exonerations of the men convicted in Chan's murder and dozens of other cases across the country.

"There's never been a ministerial review involving an applicant who's deceased, at least not that I know of."

WATCH | Family wants man's name cleared in 1973 Winnipeg homicide:

Family wants man’s name cleared in 1973 Winnipeg homicide

2 days ago

Duration 4:20

For more than 50 years, Russell Woodhouse has been considered a convicted killer. Now, there is one final step before his name can be cleared, as his family awaits a decision in his case from Canada’s justice minister – more than a decade after his death.

Still, Lockyer said it's hard not to be hopeful the justice minister will see the miscarriage of justice he did when Innocence Canada filed an application on Russell's behalf in September 2023 — and he's hoping for an answer soon.

"It's so, so obvious," Lockyer said in an interview. "I can't conceive of anyone, any minister, suggesting otherwise."

A spokesperson for the Justice Department said a posthumous application challenging Russell's conviction is ongoing, but did not provide further details.

The potential exoneration would be perhaps the final update in a case where early calls for justice for the men were ignored, where everything from the police investigation to the trial was marred by racism — and where even having their names cleared hasn't been enough to mark an end to a painful chapter in the lives of the men's families.

'Nobody was listening'

But Alvin Thompson knows all that.

Back in the late 1970s, he had just become the chief of his community — the same one the young men were from, then called the Fairford reserve — when he got involved in efforts to draw attention to the possibility the men had been sent to prison for something they didn't do.

With a small group of supporters researching the case, Thompson pored over court transcripts. Soon, they had the support of the Manitoba Indian Brotherhood, a predecessor to today's Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, in a plan to try to have the case reopened.

That included writing to a local newspaper. Thompson outlined issues ranging from the "considerable physical abuse and intimidation" the men faced from officers, to them being "forced to sign confessions which were actually phrased and written by the police" in a 1978 letter published in the Winnipeg Tribune.

They tried to set up meetings — with the premier, with the mayor, with the chief of police, with the lawyers who represented the men. 

"Nobody was listening to us," Thompson said in an interview at his home in Pinaymootang First Nation. "Not the court system, not the police. No one. You know, it was a dead-end case, in every which way we turned."

Eventually, the day came when Thompson said they realized they weren't getting anywhere, and their efforts ground to a halt. It would be decades before he heard another update in the case — this time on the radio, as he was driving home to Pinaymootang and heard the news that two of the men had finally been exonerated.

"I stopped on the side of the road and I broke down," he said, his voice heavy with emotion, thinking about the families he said were "ripped apart" when the men went to prison.

"I want to make it known that we had known the truth for a very long time, but nobody would listen to us. But the truth is out there now."

Now, Thompson said he hopes that truth will be taken seriously in the case of Russell Woodhouse — a kind, gentle man who he said always wanted to make people laugh.

"He was not a murderer. So undo that by exonerating him. And that will bring peace and tranquility to the family members — to his family, to the community. We'll have put something to rest in a good way."

Racism in justice system 'was overwhelming': lawyer

Decades after Thompson first sounded the alarm, the case came to the attention of the group that helped exonerate three of the men — and once it did, the red flags were unmistakable.

"What was particularly unsettling about this prosecution was that the racism was there from the beginning to the end — from the moment of the police investigation to the moment of their conviction and sentencing," Innocence Canada's Lockyer said.

There were the eyewitness accounts mentioning Indigenous people, which led police to target the men in the first place.

One witness living near where Chan's body was found reported being awakened in the early morning hours by people who she believed were Indigenous "because they had shoulder length hair and some were wearing headbands." It turned out it was almost two hours after Chan left work, Innocence Canada said in a court document filed in September

Another told police about "a lot of Indians fighting and yelling" a block or two away from where Chan's body was found. But at trial, the man was "not at all sure" about the day that happened, the court document said.

Then there were the confessions police said they got from the young men in fluent English — even though some of them barely spoke the language, and all said they had been forced or tricked into signing the admissions of guilt by officers who assaulted them.

Court heard Russell Woodhouse was assessed as being "mildly developmentally disabled," Lockyer said, and experts testified they didn't think he could have provided the detailed statement that police had claimed he did.

"Russell was convicted because he was forced to put his signature to a false confession in a language that he did not speak," Lockyer said.

There was also the Crown attorney prosecuting the men's case, George Dangerfield, who was also the prosecutor in four other wrongful conviction cases.

And there was the judge overseeing the men's trial, who Lockyer said "made it abundantly clear that when it was the word of white police officers against the word of young Indigenous men, there was no contest," in comments the judge made to the jury about the men's claims their statements were fabricated.

"Now, you can believe that if you want to, it is your privilege to believe it," Justice James E. Wilson said on March 5, 1974, to the jurors who would go on to convict all four men. "This, of course, is an indictment of the police force. It practically amounts to accusing the police of a conspiracy."

As he later sentenced Russell Woodhouse to 10 years in prison for manslaughter, the judge lamented what he called "an unprovoked attack on a peaceful citizen."

"This is not a jungle where we live," Wilson said. "It is not a wild land. We are not subduing this land from anybody, we are not still taking it from wild people."

Lockyer said it's "kind of hard to believe" just how much racism touched every part of the case against the men.

"You'd think in 1974 things would have been better than this, but they weren't. The racism in the criminal justice system was overwhelming."

Even after exoneration, 'justice hasn't been done'

For Brian Anderson, it meant a lot to have his name cleared — and he hopes to see the same happen for Russell, even though he won't be around to see it.

"He didn't see justice," Anderson said in a recent interview at his home in Selkirk, Man. "People out there should at least say they're sorry … that he had to go through all this."

While exoneration means Anderson no longer has to live under the restrictions of being out on parole, and the threat of being hauled back to prison over any missteps, it didn't undo everything he lost — those years spent in prison, that time he missed with his family.

"Fifty years later, it's too late," he said. "I'm an old man now, you know? I was just a kid back then. If only then [the exoneration] would have happened."

Even now, he and the other men exonerated in the case are still waiting to see if they'll ever be financially compensated by the government for the time they spent paying for a crime they didn't commit.

Until that happens, Anderson said he won't truly be able to put what happened behind him.

"Apologies just doesn't do it. Like, I can't put apology into my bank account," he said. "If that doesn't happen, well, then justice hasn't been done."

But Russell Woodhouse's family is still waiting to hear that apology one last time. For them, it would mean the world — one more step toward closing this chapter in their family's story.

"We've been dealing with it for a long time," said Justin Fritzley, Clarence's son, who remembers his uncle Russell as a kind, funny man. "When I heard … what they went through, it kind of hurt me inside."

And when Clarence thinks about his brother Russell, he said he knows an exoneration would have meant a lot to him, too.

"He would have been happy," he said.