Note: Transcripts may contain errors. If you wish to re-use all, or part of, a transcript, please contact CBC for permission. Please check the corresponding audio before quoting in print. Copyright © CBC 2019

SKS Episode 1: Ravens

[Music: Eerie piano music]

TB: Affect her? Ah, it devastated my mom. My mom was blind at the time already. My mom has, had, a disease called retinitis pigmentosa. I have the same thing actually. Fortunately, I haven't gone blind from it, but my mom did at a fairly young age. So she wasn't in a good space when this happened and this just drove her into a darkness... she never came out of. And then at the end, in the end, it was cancer that took her. My mum died... 15 years after Kerrie's murder. She last...she died at the age of 57.

TB: Yeah, she had a tough life, my mom.

TB: I have a brother, an older brother, Ian. He lives in Selkirk, Manitoba. Yeah, Ian. My brother Ian, he's a survivor….he kinda lives day-to-day.

DR: Kerrie Ann Brown was 15 at the time. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police say her's is their largest cold case investigation...in Manitoba.

DR: That's fascinating what you say about the ravens and crows ...the corvids in general, are as you say, they have fantastic memories and they do communicate with each other. And they do have memory for human faces.

DR: No...it is incredible.

DR: It would stick out.

DR: Yeah.

DR: Forward to July 2017…

DR: It's a pretty compact little town... so far. A few signs of it being a mining town. A big tower, big smokestack on the way in.

[Sound: A GPS issues directions]

DR: Thompson was built as a planned community by Inco, the mining company, starting in 1956. It’s actually named after the company’s former chairman John Thompson. The town's seen more vibrant times with some of the best ore deposits in the world but, there's just been news of more layoffs at some of the still-working shafts now operated by a South American corporation. And Thompson's been at the top of the list of Canada's most violent communities several years running. The place is actually built on and around the mines, but you can't see that unless you get the right perspective.

DR: And all the streets are named after minerals, trees...or other animals.

DR: There it is right there. It's a white row house. Brown trim. There's Kerrie Anne's picture right on the door.

TB: Dave?

TB: Oh my god, Dave. I was just thinking about you man.

TB: What do you have with you, brother?

TB: Yeah, eh?

TB: Well, I'm glad you made it safe.

DR: I step into a small white utilitarian townhouse, passing through a screen door with a colour photocopy taped to the front. On it, a plea asking anyone with information about Kerrie's murder to contact Crimestoppers….A poster like this has been taped to this same screen door since the day Kerrie disappeared over 30 years ago — October 16th, 1986. The photo of Kerrie, taken by a friend on a nearby street just weeks before her murder, shows the profile of a light-haired teenager smiling back at me.

JIM BROWN : Yep.

JB: Yeah, I'll be right down.

JB: I'll put a pair of pants on.

DR: Trevor is tall, in jeans with long greying brown hair, and wearing a royal blue hockey hoodie for the Buffalo Sabres. He looks like a country western star a few records past his prime. He's soon joined by Jim, his father, who's wearing a clean shirt and smiling dourly with pale skin and a soft handshake. Trevor's gregarious and speaks, I feel, almost as fast as he thinks. And Jim's more of a loner.

JB: Mr. Ridgen, how are ya?

JB: I'm full of arthritis, I am. When you phoned the other day I was on the bed there, and I ignored the phone because we get so many calls and... it rang about four times and I thought, I'd better answer it and see who it is.

JB: Yep.

JB: This is pretty well all that's left of Kerrie's stuff, is her Teddy Bear.

JB:And this is the belt that she had on that night when she was at the party. And Trevor just got it from a girl... what about...?

DR: We've moved into the living room where Trevor sits on an aging love-seat with an open beer in front of him and an arm around a large worn brown stuffed bear propped in the corner. Around its waist and draped over its little shoulders, a 1980s style belt made out of metal loops.

TB: A wedding or something?

TB: At the party. She took it off. Part of her outfit, and gave it to her friend. That's the belt. And Kerrie just took it off and gave it to her. That's how Kerrie was.

TB: Hey dad, does he have a beard? You shaved your beard!

TB: Oh, okay.

DR: Yeah. So tell me about your vision.

DR: So when you look at me, what do you see?

DR: Well, that's a blessing for me, that you can't see me…

DR: Another thing I quickly learn about Trevor is that he likes to ask lots of questions.

DR: No.

DR: Oh.

DR: I saw that coming in.

DR: What did you used to do there, Jim?

DR: Jim's not used to having people around much anymore. He goes out once or twice a week for a drink. But other than that, he's home watching hockey or the Hamilton Tiger Cats, or resting.

TB: The dry, Dave, is the surface. Working on surface.

DR: Oh, ok.

JB: Mainly nickel, but a bit of everything.

JB: They've got a few precious metals as well and a bit of copper. Little bit of gold.

DR: No.

DR: Tell me about Kerrie.

TB: Bullies. She hated bullies.

TB: She was maybe five feet tall, maybe 80 pounds. And she stood up to this bully that was picking on her friend and the girl backed away. The toughest chick in our school. I'll never forget it. I was in grade 7? She was in grade 6.

JB: She had to get a hold of my shirts. Once she was a teenager.

TB: My jackets.

JB: She goes out the door with my shirt on.

DR: Yep. Oh yeah.

DR: Kerrie was small but strong and wiry. And she had a lot of friends. On the night of October 16, 1986, she went with some of them to a party at Doug Krockucz's place. Doug went to the same High School as Kerrie, RD Parker, and lived on Trout Avenue.

[Sound: DR walking up to Doug' house and knocking on Doug's door. A dog barks as the door opens]DOUG KROKUSCZ: Hey, come on in.

DK: Well, party is the word that people use. But I don't think that's really it because that group of people, I mean definitely it was a party. But it wasn't like there was invitations or it was planned or ... we hung around quite a lot through that period of time, and it was the exact same group of people all the time.

DK: Oh for sure. Yeah. Her and Rhonda were very close. And Nicole. I think Kerrie was staying at Nicole's house that night.

DR: And so you say that it wasn't an invitation party that wouldn't have been...

DK: Same thing as anybody. Like there be music playing and telling stories and, you know, I can't really remember. What does anybody do at a party, you know, other than talk, play music.

DK: No. No. No. And that got asked a lot. There wasn't...yeah. There wasn't. A few people came and went over the evening, but nobody that ... nobody that was unknown. Nobody that was unknown to us. Nobody that didn't attend high school with us or wasn't in class with us. Nobody that wasn't part of that community. Nobody who's, you know, parents we didn't know. You know, that sort of thing. It's a small town. Small remote town. Like it's...it's different than in small rural, you know, southern Canada. Northern Canada. Like, you know, it's three-and-a-half hours to the Paw. Like there was really...it was a very tight knit community. Not a lot of people came and went as far as living there. Wasn't...I think it's more transient now than it was back then. It's tragedy on so many fronts like .... yeah, I wouldn't change anything about growing up there other than obviously. That kind of ruined it for everybody.

DK: Yeah. Well, I remember...I know I talked to her for quite a while and then um...She was going to leave and...I remember having a bit of an, not an argument, but asking Kerrie to just wait in the porch and not to go outside until Nicole, her and Nicole were going to walk home. And I talked to Kerry at the bottom of the stairs for quite a while and...I may have even gone to the top of the stairs, but I can't remember. And then I went back in to go find Nicole because Kerrie asked me to...And then some time later...Kerrie was gone.

DK: No. One at a time.

DK: One at a time.

DK: They did. Yeah. They did me. They did quite a few of us. I don't know who exactly. It was quite terrible. And I can't help but think that, and I know it's not true, but I can't help but think you would know if you .. [getting choked up] like how could you do something like that? [silence] And...how could you do something like that and live amongst people normally? So that gets me to 'no' I don't think. I don't believe not for a second that it was anybody with us that night. I hope I'm...[choked] I hope I'm not wrong but…

DR:No, no. I don’t have expectations.

DR: No, I just come and this is what it is.

DR: Back at the Brown's place in Thompson, Trevor gets up and moves toward the sliding glass door that defines most of the back wall of the living room. Beyond it, a communal backyard green-space for the whole townhouse block.

DR: Well, it's nice to have…

DR: Really?

JB: I know you wanted to get some pictures and stuff. Everybody that came to the house wanted this wanted that...I sent everything to Trevor in Winnipeg because they told me about four times now that I was dead. You know, I've been in the hospital.

JB: So... give everything away pretty much. And Trevor, he moved and moved in Winnipeg, left stuff behind.

TB: I lost all our photo albums.

TB: In a move. A move...I'll be honest, I'd relapsed. I was in recovery and I'd relapsed after three years of sobriety almost. And I lost my job, I lost my apartment. And when I lost my apartment, I lost everything that I had. Yeah, I lost a lot of family--I lost the--the photo albums, I think, is what I miss most. I had rings...like my sister had a daughter's pride ring and my mom had a--I had my mom's engagement ring from my dad. And I lost it. I was saddened by it, but it's gone, so what can you do? Did I bring my beer?

TB: Yeah I'm going to grab it. Do you wanna sit and chat for a bit?

DR: Trevor goes to the kitchen to grab a fresh beer and returns swiftly.

JB: I took Kerrie uptown to see about a winter coat. And she's a kind of a girl that likes a little jacket that's not warm enough. And took her to different places up there and we couldn't find one that she liked. So went to the bake shop, picked up some bread. She said Dad, could I get a donut? The donuts were all fresh there. I said sure, go ahead. And so she got a couple of donuts. We come home. Had a big supper on the table. Roast beef and potatoes and vegetables. And when it was over, these two donuts were there and of course, Trevor, Ian, my wife what are we going to do with two donuts? So it was my fault. I should've got a dozen, you know? So there was a little conflict there and she kind of went upstairs a little bit... go ahead, eat them then. You know, that sort of thing. And then it was okay. It blew over. A little later on, Rhonda come over. You’ve heard Rhonda's name, I think.

JB: They went upstairs. Kerrie got her gear on, pantsuit and that. She had her Pittsburgh Penguins jacket. I noticed that. The belt on her, that belt there. She had her jacket open. The one thing I didn't notice was if she had her purse with her. And if she was staying overnight somewhere, she would have a bag or something. Her purse never showed up anywhere, unless the police found it in her room and took it. They took a bunch of stuff out of the room, like a telephone and answering service and stuff that that had.

JB: I have no idea. No.

JB: It would be just a little black purse. Not a big bag or anything.

JB: Yeah. Well, like I say, Rhonda come along. She got into her pantsuit, and that and they come down the stairs. "Don't wait up for me, Dad." No school tomorrow, which was a kind of a natural thing with her. If there was no school, she slept over at one of her friend's places. But there was nothing specific. Of course, with kids, they're all over the place. They're at this house, that house. You have no way of keeping track of them. My wife and I drove the car down to the garage and left it there and walked back home. Took a big walk around Juniper up by the hospital and back up home. Eventually, the boys were out and I settled down to do my hockey pool. And so I did that, went to bed and went to work the next morning. Got a taxi to work. Caught a ride home. My wife phoned about dinner time. She said you know, Kerrie hasn't showed up at home, and she's a kind of a girl that would change her clothes. Very clean. Changed her clothes pretty regular. Not like her to sleep around for a day or two or anything like that. But I said well, she'll be with one of her friends and so by the time I come and got my car picked up about 4:30 in the afternoon and come around home, Kerrie is nowhere to be found.

JB: Yeah.

JB: So we get what we could and phone taxis to see if she had left that place in the taxi. It got on into the evening. I start driving around. I can't drive very good at night. My eyes weren't that good even then. But the taxi said they took somebody over to a certain area and I went over there. There was a gate locked and I couldn't get it open. But anyway, she wasn't there, and I drove around a little more to another number. Similar, but a little different street. The door was open in there, so I knocked anyway. But no answer. So I walked in and it was completely empty. No furniture, no nothing in there. I give it a good thorough look. She certainly wasn't in there. So I come back home. The police came here after that. There was a bunch of visitors here consoling us and what have you, that we're looking for her, we can't find her. But the police took me to the police station, and a good long interview like asking different questions. What colours did she like, what did she eat. What food did she eat, and that sort of stuff. I spent a good time there.

JB: Not particularly, no.

JB: Oh no. No, not at all.

JB: My wife was steady crying and... [pause] I couldn't console her or anything. It was just all muddled up. God. But...I knew the next day, as soon as police phoned. We found a body they said. They said we need you to come to the hospital over to identify the body. I took my wife with me, but I didn't take her down there. Like she's blind anyway. She couldn't see nothing, but. I went down.

TB: I was with you, Dad.

TB: And that it was matted all through her hair.

TB: The fractures that incurred on her skull were simultaneous — they were one after the other. There were multiple fractures to her skull and her jaw and her neck and her chest. Her upper body was completely hammered. And... Uh... yeah. To me it was yeah, it was a mess. And uh...they used sticks. The cops would have the sticks. But I think they used a tire iron too. I don't know that, but I think.

TB: I used to. It was in that photo album move that I lost all my pictures in.

TB: They were all in Winnipeg. Her body was sent to Winnipeg.

TB: Yes. Yes. Yes. Winnipeg. All her forensics are in Winnipeg. The coroner's office has the copy. If we were willing to pay for it— I remember the final autopsy report I couldn't afford.

DR: Yeah.

DR: I’ll sit here is that okay?

RT: Ahhhhh my name is Rhonda .... I've probably lived in Sudbury well my dad moved us here after the murder. I was 16. So I've been in Sudbury ever since.

DR: So why did you move to Sudbury?

DR: What was it that brought you two together as friends?

DR: What was Thompson like before Kerrie was murdered? Like as a place to grow up, how would you describe Thompson?

DR: You and Kerrie. Was Nicole with you too?

DR: Can you tell me anything about the party?

DR: At the party that night, do you recall anybody drinking anything?

DR: Including you and Kerrie and the rest?

DR: How much would you say was being ....taken in?

DR: When you left she wasn't stumbling around ...

DR: Or like slurring speech ...

DR: or out of control in any way?

DR: And did you talk to Kerrie at the party?

RT: Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. She was .. her and Nicole and .. [cough] but after I said goodbye to everybody and I left.

RT: No. No. She was in a good mood. She was fine. But then... the next morning, her mom called my place.

RT: It was early morning. Because with me, Nicole and Kerry, we use to sleep at each other's places. So her mom called me first thing in the morning.

RT: Well, it was probably 9:30-10.

RT: Asking if Kerrie had slept at my place. I said no. I had to leave the party early. Maybe she slept at Nicole's. So I guess her mom had called Nicole, but then Nicole called me and said 'what do you mean she didn't sleep at your place'. I said 'well, I left before you guys'.

[Sound: DR parks his car as a dog barks]NICOLE ZAHORODNY: Stop!

NZ: Hi.

NZ: I am. Yeah.

[Sound: Car door closes]

NZ: Harley.

NZ: Harley!!!

NZ: He probably wouldn't.

NZ: No. He's never bitten anybody.

[Sound: Harley sounds angry]NZ: Ok! Ok! Ok!

NZ: Yeah. We'll go in the house.

NZ: I don't care. Whereever you want. Wherever you are comfortable. We can sit at the table. Couch. I don't care.

DR: She leads me into her living room where I sit on a huge leather couch underneath a giant moose’s head mounted on the wall. Above Nicole, a blown up photo of a blue half-ton truck from the 1970s on a backwoods gravel road. Nicole’s in the driver’s seat leaning out the window pointing at something in the distance and laughing. In the back, leaning forward and smiling, Kerrie Brown.

NZ: Yup. Everything is squared away.

NZ: I don't like them around when I'm talking about this for obvious reasons.

NZ: I had like 7 years of psychotherapy. I think I went into it when I was probably 18 into therapy. Which was probably when I actually admitted she died ‘cause I pretended up until then. So 7 years of solid therapy. Like I can talk about it, but it just changes you... a lot. Like PTSD, survivor guilt, you ... that doesn't go away. No matter how much therapy you have.

NZ: I was 14. It was October, I was 14 and I turned 15 in February.

NZ: I called her Kerrie.

NZ: Yeah. We called her Kerrie. But ... I mean her name is Kerrie Ann Brown. One of my kids is Carly Anne. [laugh] We were friends. We were best friends. Kind of grew up together. She went on all our family trips with us. My dad is a bush pilot, and we took her up North. And we had a fish packing plant way off in the middle of the bush, and we would take her wherever we went. She was a part of our family. We went to school together, elementary, and beginnings of high school. And then I had to do her eulogy. And that's an amazing thing to do when you are a teenager. Most definitely. I… I would say that's probably the hardest moment of my life. But ... the phone call was actually probably harder when we uh… wow! There's this flood of emotions.

NZ: It's a .. it's good to talk, but it's sometimes hard, and I don't like to be emotional. And it's been 30 years, but I can see it in my mind's eye like I see you. I replay that night so much. You… I can see us skipping down the road arm-n-arm going to this guy's house, and you know, we're gonna hang out. There was a large group of people that we, we actually hung around with. Like I don't know, maybe 50 people. There was a lot and... so we were at this guy’s house, Doug's, in the basement and we were all... everybody was happy. Hotel California I hear over and over and over in my head. And when I hear that song...The Eagles...I see the basement. And I was sitting in this chair, like one of those old lazy-boy rocking chairs, and she would always sit on my lap like I was like the guard dog and that was how it was. And she was sittin’ on my lap, and um we were happy. And then her ex-boyfriend walked in and then she wasn't happy anymore, and we were leaving and...

NZ: Charles! Charles Gregoire. Yup. And he went by Chuck. He showed up. Like he had been dating this other girl before Kerrie. Then had dated Kerrie, and then they had just broken up within a few days or ... less than a week anyways of this party....And he came walking down the stairs holding that girl's hand...which upset Kerrie right away. And then she wanted to leave.

NZ: Nope. No. There was no... like there was no arguing or bad blood or anything like that. It was an awkward situation. He had gone back to his ex-girlfriend. And we were teenagers, so it was pretty upsetting. And we were just gonna leave.

NZ: We...went out and I forgot my purse, and I said 'no, I'll get it tomorrow'. And we kind of went back and forth. And she was like...'no, get it now'. And we walked back into the house and I went down to get my purse and...

38:12.500

DR: Ok. So then...you saw Kerrie come back into the house?

DR: And how long between the time you went downstairs, she was on the landing, and the time you went back up you would say. ‘Cause you say you met an ex-boyfriend of yours on the way back.

DR: Your ex-boyfriend.

DR: What was the gist of what he walked to talk about?

DR: When you were arguing with your ex-boyfriend...did you see Kerrie at the top of the stairs?

NZ: She was standing there.

NZ: She saw me arguing with him.

NZ: The next thing I know she wasn't standing up there any longer. She must have just gotten sick of it and stepped outside….I went out when I finally got fed up with him anI went out. And PTSD is funny, hey? Because as I talk about it, I can feel and smell everything that I did back then. And it was just starting to snow. It was October but it was Thompson. [laugh]And it was just slightly snowing, and I could feel little [laugh] snowflakes on my face. And I was calling her and... And I walked around back of the house, and I could see her footprints in the slight snow.

DR: Did you notice any other footprints next to hers from the house?

DR: So can you remember anything about the tire tracks?

DR: When you last saw her at the stair there when you looked up. What time was that?

DR: Right away. The next day.

DR: On the Friday.

DR: Tell me what it was like at the time in Thompson?

NZ: No. I'm pretty tough.

NZ: I got four really good life preservers.

NZ: Yeah. Yeah. Go chase the sheep and we got some little pigs last night.

NZ: They're hiding in the trees. We could go look and see if they're there but they've only been here for a day or two so they've been hiding a lot.

DR: Nicole has created a little therapy ranch on part of their large property. She's a social worker in a school system here and she says she's at her best with children and with other animals.

DR: She's brought in sheep and pigs and built a kind of sanctuary for them, and for her. I wish Trevor and Jim had something similar.

[long pause]

TRANSCRIPT: Someone Knows Something - Season 5, EP 1

Social Sharing