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SKS Episode 2: Dead End

You are listening to Someone Knows Something from CBC Podcasts.

[Sound: A car is being driven]

[Sound: A GPS issues instructions]

[Sound: A cell phone text message alert]

DR: Hi there!

[Sound: The closing of a car door]

SFX - Car door close.

DR: You get in ok?

DR: Thank you so much for doing this.

DR: Donna is a long haul trucker herself and knows these sorts of places well. She’s in a light blue T-shirt, wearing a necklace with what look like two gold feathers attached. White hair, eyes already red with tears. And, she’s missing a finger from a mishap she had while unloading a truck.

DR: At least you have your thumb.

DR: That's interesting.

DR: Right. It just distracts you forever.

DR: So I'm very lucky to have found you.

DR: Tell me what happened on that day?

DC: We went out riding a bunch of us went riding and … we come out the stable road, and we went up around the graveyard, which is an odd place right, but in Thompson, you don't have much else. And we were coming back, and everybody was going up to the yard, and I looked at the one lady, and I said ‘you know Joanna’ I said ‘I would like to go a little further. I think I'll go the next road down and then will come up and then I'll go in….She said ‘I'll go with you.’ And we were riding along talking, and all and then the horses started fussing. And they were fussin’ lots. And my horse was my best friend. I knew something was wrong. I didn't know what it was. All the sudden Joanne said ‘What is that?’ And I go ‘What?’ She goes ‘over there! Is that a mannequin?’ And I go ‘Oh, this don’t look good.’ I said… you wait here because she had a green horse, and I went up there to see what I could do. And I checked for a pulse on her ankle. I checked on her wrist. And then I got up to do by the neck, and then I noticed the head and that was it. She was wearing a black and pink leopard print outfit. She had on the cleanest white socks I ever saw….She was laying on turned out to be a jacket. She had her one hand down and the other hand up. When I first found her, you could see everything but the head was down a little bit. It didn't look so bad. But once I got up, then you could see the face was smashed and beaten. The head was beat in. And you could see lots. I could tell the one arm was obviously broken just the way it was lay and the one that was up. Her clothes were very clean. You would not expect them. They're very clean. Very nice….She didn't walk in there. Somebody took her there and put her there. I talked to her the whole time. She deserved respect. I talked to her, and I was so angry. And once I knew she was gone, I said ‘look, I'm going to go get help. I hate to leave you but I'm going to go get help.’ And I said ‘I'm … I'm so sorry this has happened to you. I'll see they pay.’ And that was a bad thing to say because I feel like I let her down. [cry] Yeah, I talked to her.

DC: I talk to her for a long time. Oh, 10 minutes! Yeah! I just … I remember telling her ‘I don't know who this could do … who could do this to you. Why would they do this to you. You don't deserve this. I'm so sorry.’ You know, I I cried. I did everything. I just ... I just felt that bad...I just wanted to comfort her. But you can't lean down and give her a hug. You can't do nothing like that. I know enough about that. You can't do that. You can't touch her. I … I touched her with two fingers in three places. While I had all my fingers in, but I touched her two fingers in three places, and then I knew and I just talked to her. ...I don't know how when she's already gone. Does it really make sense what you're thinking. But you just have to ...try and deal with it the best you can. And then before I left, I remember thinking ‘this is really hard, but this is gonna be important. So I had to stand up and just stand back and look at her from head to toe. And try to remember all the details I could because I knew it was going to be important later.

DC: So I stood up, and Joanne said ‘Is she dead?’ And I said ‘well, we're going to go slow back to the yard and we'll handle this.’ And her horse took off. So I had to jump on mine and go catch her. Well by the time we caught her, there was so much adrenaline I just went back to the yard. We both did. On a dead run, which is never a good way to do it, but that's what we did. And it just went downhill from there. The horror stories that people have told her family that aren't even true are just heartbreaking. How could people say that?

DC: They were saying she was naked. She was not. I found her. I know. They said that they had sticks shoved in her mouth and up her private parts and whatever. How can you tell that with the clothes on, you know? She wasn't naked. She was not. I do believe they've done things to her and then probably redressed her. But she was not naked. If she was naked, she was the same age as my daughter, I would have taken my jacket off and covered her at least, right? I know I found her. I know I tried to help her. I know what people did to her. I know that ... you know you change. You change forever. You do. Things are never the same.

DC: Somebody had got stuck out there, and there was some stuff laying there. A mat or whatever.

DC: No. No. I seen it. We've seen it going in because somebody got stuck there. We thought well what somebody's doing come down this road?

DC: It was further down...It's boggy out there, so that's why. But there were things we noticed, but mostly the horses noticed first. Do you know my horse never wanted to go down that road again. But when I come up, I went around because I knew I didn't want to destroy evidence. When those cops come up, I was given them hell left right and centre. They sent me back out to my vehicle. I never saw such idiots in my life.

DC: Just walking up everywhere. I knew enough to go around, not destroy evidence. Not the way they were. Not the way they were. One young cop got sick. Another one passed out. Like it was … it was just ridiculous. And then they proved absolutely nothing. How can you have all of the things available to you today and not be able to solve it?

DC: I don't know how her family did it. I mean I barely made it. I tell my two youngest kids I feel sorry for them. They don't know the best part of me. I lost it that day. [silence & crying] So I don't know how her family handles it. Funny 30 years later, it can still hurt like that, eh? How can these people live with themselves?

[Sound: A door opens]

FRONT DESK OFFICER: Coming in to see…

FRONT DESK OFFICER: Janna Amirault?

FRONT DESK OFFICER: Ok. I'll give her a call and we'll get you all set up.

DR: I’m here at RCMP ‘D’ Division headquarters in Winnipeg to see Constable Janna Amirault. But they require a media person to be present while interviewing officers.

DR: Oh, Hi!

DR: Tara Seel is that person. In a gray cardigan, black skirt, shoulder length hair.

TS: Good. Nice to meet you.

DR: Oh, nice to meet you too.

DR: Janna’s taller, wearing a black dress outfit, also with shoulder length brown hair. Trevor speaks comfortably about Janna, and I know that she has tried to keep in touch with the Browns, from time to time.

TS: Yeah. No, I'm not gonna speak but I do need to be here.

DR: So I just want to start with the basics. Just tell me what your role is on the case now? How long you've held carriage of the case? The history of...the case, I guess.

DR: Is it true that this case is the largest in volume that RCMP has in Manitoba?

DR: And the file. How big is the file?

DR: So tell me the known facts of the case...that the police know.

JA: School broke out at around 3:30 that day. And then she came home, had supper with her family....And then she left her house around 7:00 o clock. She went to a place called Thompson billiards, is what we were told. She was on foot. So she was picked up at her house by two of her friends...and went on foot...and then she ended up at the...house party, which was where she remained for the majority of the evening. So...there was probably about twenty four-ish, approximately 24 people at the... party, guys and girls. And for the most part it was a good night.

JA: They had recently broke up.

JA: So they started up the basement stairs.

JA: And when Nicole, when she went to go back up stairs, Kerrie wasn't there.

DR: 4?

DR: So posters and things like that weren't going up until afternoon of the Friday would you say?

JA: in relation to where her body was located?

JA: I won't get into those specifics, but I mean I know that I've seen … TV video of that shows information and pictures of items found at the crime scene. Would we do that in this day and age. Probably not. But I mean, everybody, policing has changed through the years and how we deal with things and how and what information we give it to the public.

DR: So anything that was found on the scene is still in evidence?

DR: Police in charge of cold case investigations are trained to be short on detail at their discretion, and Constable Amirault is not exceptional in this. Information kept out of the public sphere is sometimes called, “hold-back” and the theory is that holding information back can assist if cases move toward an arrest, finding the light of a courtroom. If police keep evidence that might only be known by those present at a murder scene, that evidence can then be brought forward and leveraged, untarnished by the rumour mill of public conversation. However, Kerrie’s unsolved murder is past the 30-year mark. Family is aging or dying, and have asked me and the RCMP, ‘how much longer should things be held back?’ Especially information that has already been released in other media reports over the past decades.

JA: No. I can't. I'm not able.

JA: There .. Well there's, I mean, in [Janna moves a lot here] DNA helps us to focus on our investigation. It does. And I don't think it's a secret out there that we have collected quite a few consent samples of DNA from various individuals. Either somehow associated to Kerrie or who people thought might have been possibly involved in her homicide.

DR: So you collect DNA because you must have something to compare it to?

DR: It was a fairly violent attack. And she had been sexually assaulted and bludgeoned. And what kind of a profile has RCMP developed about that kind of attack, or the people or the persons that might have been involved with this?

DR: “No one was charged AND convicted of her murder.” This correction is important. Because...there was someone charged.

NZ: He was arrested rather quickly. It was very very fast.

RT: No.

RT: No. I probably would have been to scared to.

DK: Sumner was arrested. So then all that kind of finger pointing stuff died down.

DR: Everybody that I’ve talked to so far about the Kerrie Brown case has had plenty to say about Patrick Sumner. And even some people, yet to come.

DR: A preliminary hearing was held in February 1987, featuring many of Kerrie’s friends from the party that night, along with witnesses, many of whom I intend to interview. But this is a cold case, and as Constable Janna Amirault said before, there was no conviction of Patrick Sumner. Just an arrest, and a preliminary hearing.

DR: After a preliminary hearing, Provincial Court Judge Charles Newcombe decided that there was not enough evidence to proceed to trial.

DR: So Patrick is in the pool?

JA: Ummmm ... [clears throat] That's information that you'll be able to find out. It's not an area though that I'm willing to enter into.

DR: What would be really helpful...is if I can get the prelim document. Because it's a public document...If I could get that, that would help me and I wouldn't have to ask you all those questions. Is it possible to get the prelim.

DR: Oh really? Even the police don't have it? Somebody’s gotta have it!

TS: You know. Can you leave that with me and I'll look into it.

DR: Cause it would be really valuable. But it's nice to have a document. It's nice to have something like that.

DR: I’m going to try to talk to everybody...you know and…

DR: I’ll definitely be trying to speak to Patrick Sumner. But not before learning as much as I can, from as many people as possible. I’d really like to speak to some of the RCMP members who were investigating the case at the time, including the two original lead investigators: Like Dennis Heald and Jon Tost.

TS: Yeah. No.

TS: No. Janna is the lead investigator.

JA: Yeah.

TS: No. There's no rule for that.

JA: Hmm mmm.

JA: Yeah. I don't have any concerns over that.

JA: In my mind, I've never. No. And I ... it's not my job though to question...what they did either. Have there been advances in policing through the years? Absolutely. Absolutely there have been. But I … No, I don't see [laugh] something they did. They did very very well.

JA: We haven't spent a whole lot of time re-interviewing people. If new information came in, then yes we would. A lot of the people have been, some of the people I should say, have been interviewed multiple times prior to my getting involved in the investigation. And sometimes that isn't always the best thing. Like the memories may have changed through time, or they may have gotten information through someone else and have taken it on as their own memory.

DR: And the Twitter campaign. What was the intention with it and what happened?

DR: How many tips have you gotten to date?

DR: Yeah.

DR: So hundreds? Thousands? Dozens?

DR: I think I'm .. I'm good for now...But I can come back, right? I can at least ask more questions and you can at least not tell me the answers...

DR: But thanks very much for your time.

TB: So I sent a message to Janna. And, of course, I suggested to Janna is that we must, we must put something new out there. Something new that has never been put out there before. Something that they have been keeping close to the vest as they like to say for over 30 years now. And as I said to her in my message where I said 'look, where has keeping it close to the vest gotten us up to now?' So, I really wanted ... I really wanted to encourage her to ... to give us something ... to put something new out there.

TB: Morning Dave, how's it going man?

TB: I’m good man. Umm... you ready to rock and roll?

DR: I am ready to go.

DR: Hey, no problem man finish your bagel.

DR: Where's your dad? Is he...

DR: He's asleep.

DR: Nope. I'll talk to him another time.

DR: After breakfast, we make our way out to my rental SUV.

TB: Straight ahead here, eh? This one here?

TB: You bet, Dave.

TB: Oh yeah, thanks Dave.

TB: My buddy Jack.

DR: Who is it?

TB: Jack the raven. I know his caw. I heard him did you hear him squawking there? He was talking to somebody. Anyways, sorry Dave. Oh see, hear that. That's Diane...they're mates. And that's Jack. I’d like to know what he’s saying to her.

DR: Do you remember at the time hearing or thinking anything about police and their investigation or any of the techniques er..?

DR: Not yet. I did ask the RCMP for it. They said that they’re going to help.

DR: Try to find it.

DR: They have, they say, over 45 boxes of material, so...

TB: Do you want to start at Doug's? Old House?

TB: Let's go there.

TB: Trout, yep.

TB: Are you a child of chaos, Dave?

TB: I hear ya. I'm a child of chaos. I know that through AA. AA taught me that.

DR: And you're now off the wagon?

[BOTH LAUGH]

TB: Right!

DR: There's 11 Trout. right there. There's the driveway. Just a low bungalow. White house. Vinyl panel siding. So, have you ever been in that house?

DR: You look at these houses, you look at the house...and you look for some clue. How long was the driveway? How long did she have to walk in that light dusting of snow that Nicole described? And where did she get picked up? Because she was picked up. Did she know the people, did she have recognition or feel she had familiarity with those people? Either she willingly got into the vehicle, or she was taken into the vehicle and... whether that happened right at the end of the driveway or not is unknown, but I would suspect that it would be close to the house where she was taken from.

DR: Nicole’s old address where Kerrie was supposed to have stayed over that night and may have been walking to when she disappeared was at 3 Spoonbill Crescent. I set the GPS to find the route but, it turns out to be so close to Doug’s house, it’s unnecessary.

TB: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like I say, I don't know where she was headed or where she thought she was headed... She could've been headed to Nicole’s. But if she was going to Nicole's why not just wait until Nicole comes out, right?

TB: Yeah, they're awful. That's the good old permafrost Dave.

TB: Yeah. See how short that is!?

TB: That’s right. One solid block. No more than two. Right.

TB: That's it.

TB: No she had... like me. I didn't mention to you Dave, with my eye disease, I have night blindness. I cannot see in the dark.

TB: Right. Nictalopia, they call it. My mom had it, I have it, my sister had it. Although she didn't have this disease, she had terrible night vision. So I can totally see her sticking to areas with light, as in streets. Which would make sense, from that house to this house, you'd have street lights all the way.

I was on 19 Sandpiper that night. My buddy Jerry's place.

TB: Drinking. Yep. We were drinking.

TB: Well, I would’ve been in school that day, the Thursday. Grade 11, I was. So I would’ve gotten home around 4 o’clock and Kerrie was home. Cos I remember she was getting ready to go out. And after supper I remember sitting in the living room and talking to Kerrie. And she had her outfit on that she wore out that night. It was around 5:30. And I remember the belt that she had around her waist and...I could hear it jangling. And I looked at it and said that’s a cool outfit. And then Rhonda Tennant came to pick her up and then they left. That was the last time I ever saw her [pause] and uh… I think by this time in the day, I had figured out what we were doing, my friends and I. And we’d decided at some point, I’ll say by 7 o’clock, that we were going to stay in the city and not go out cos we were considering going out to the stables to drink.

TB: We were just a close group of friends. I’d say there were only six or seven of us there that night? Just drinking beers and listening to music. Then we all head home. And...I get home about I’ll...say around noon on Friday. And there’s no school. And so that’s the only reason we’re out on a Thursday, either one of us, Kerrie or myself. [There was no school that Friday] And...uh... phone calls start to come. First Rhonda, I want to believe. And, of course, I’m telling them well, Kerrie’s not here. She spent the night at Nicole’s because that’s what she told my parents she was doing. And then Nicole calls. And she’s asking for Kerrie. And I’m like we thought she was at your house. Nicole’s like no, she’s not with me. She’s not here. When I got here she wasn’t here. And oh, that’s not good. No one knows where Kerrie is.

TB: Maybe one o’clock? 12:30?...on the Friday. But I know they were in touch with the police pretty quickly….I want to say around three, three-thirty, they were in our house getting a description of what Kerrie was wearing, a picture of Kerrie. Friday night...uh…we didn’t sleep. None of us...and uh pacing the house. The night becomes morning. Still no, nothing from the police. People are out looking physically in cars and stuff. I remember that. My next memory, of course, is the knock at the door. At… at three o’clock. And it’s Brian Lundmark and Geraldine Hornan. They come to the door and they say are you Trevor? And...you’re Kerrie’s brother, right? And I say yeah, why and they... Brian says they found a body at the stables. And we can’t get near it. You need to come out there. Something to that effect. And I’m kind of like why are you telling me this, kind of thinking. And as I’m standing there with them at the door, the phone rings. And I don’t move. I hear it ringing upstairs in my dad’s room, my mum and dad’s room. And I hear my dad pick it up, and I don’t hear my dad talking. I just hear him say yep. Uh huh, yep. Just affirming what’s being said to him. And then he hangs it up. I hear the hang up. And he comes to the top of our stairs and I’m at the bottom of the stairs. And he looks down at me, I’m looking up at him and… he says that’s my little girl. [breaking down] And like, I remember this feeling of just no way. It can’t be. No, it can’t be...I’m going out there. We’re going out there right now. And so I jump in their truck.

[Sound: Car engine turning]

DR: The powerline near the horse stables where Kerrie was found. We leave the site of the party where Kerrie was last seen and drive down Thompson’s main drag - Mystery Lake Road. Mostly a highway feel with a Wal-Mart on one side and low-rise downtown sector on the other. We come to some colourful statues of wolves and an old bush float-plane welded to the top of a metal stanchion - part of a hiking trail around Thompson where bears are sometimes seen — and then we cross a bridge over the Burntwood River.

DR: That we’re on right now…

DR: This Popeyes, she use to come here, right?

TB: McCreedy Park is right here, Dave.

DR: Past MacCreedy Park, which is actually a campground, and then Cemetery Road, we drive around a long bend. A gravel road on our left leads toward the stables. But if we continued along this highway we’d drive by the hydro line where Kerrie was found. But we can’t go in that way.

TB: Off the highway?

TB: There's a ditch.

TREVOR BROWN

If they had a four wheel drive, maybe. You'd need some serious four-wheel drive to do that. Off the highway into that ditch, eh. It was pretty steep, wasn't it? That'd be stupidity. I mean, it's not super deep but why do it if you knew you an access road.

TB: Oh nice. They make great hockey pucks.

TB: It wasn't a dump like it is now back then. I'll tell you that. Nobody was dumping shit out here ...like they are now.

TB: As we’re driving...I’m just thinking this can’t be happening. What’s going on here? And we stop and we get out of his truck… and there’s cops all over the place. And they’ve got it taped off. You can see...the yellow tape going from side to side on the hydro line. I could see that much. And as I crossed towards...I was greeted by a big cop. And he says son, where are you going? I said I need to go and see that body. I think that’s my sister in there. Son, you can’t go in there. That’s a crime scene. Something to that effect. I was in a surreal place. And they weren’t going to let me go any further, so I got that sense. And I turned around, and I went back to the truck. And I wanted to go talk to somebody. I wanted to go talk to the person that found her. Anyone that saw her. And we found one of the… I don’t know if it was Donna...that I talked to. Yeah. Whomever I found, I started asking questions. I asked was she wearing a Pittsburgh Penguins jacket? She said no. I said did she have blonde hair? And ...said no...and I said it’s not her. That’s what I said... It’s not her. Cos in my mind’s eye, I’m envisioning what she should look like at this crime scene, right? And all I’m getting back from her is no, no, no. And the reason I know now is well, she wasn’t wearing her jacket. And the hair was matted with blood. That’s why it didn’t look blonde to her.

DR: So this is the hydro line here….

TB: This is the hydro line here…

[Sound: Car doors opening. Car door close & lock horn]

TB: Yeah. Illegal dump.

[Sound: Walking through garbage]

TB: The left?

TB: So back in the day...this was all clear like right through. You could see right through the highway. There were no trees or anything in here.

TB: I was only told, I asked Janna for the co-ordinates, and I was only told about a quarter of the way in, off that back road.

TB: Really?

TB: She... Donna remembers, eh? Where she found her.

DR: So at the time, somewhere along this road is where the vehicle...had trouble getting out.

DR: The next RCMP photos are taken much closer to the spot where Kerrie was found, and focus more on the roadway, or more accurately, the tracks that were the roadway at the time. In one of the tracks, made by a vehicle or vehicles that clearly sank into the mud as they drove, there’s a blue and red blow up rubber air mattress. The kind used in the 70s and 80s for camping or floating. The blue on one side and red on the other is made up of a fabric stretched and formed over the rubber. There’s a small brand symbol in white paint on one corner that I can’t quite make out because the photo isn’t high enough resolution. The mattress is deflated, covered in mud and debris, and folded over on itself. Some broken branches between about 5 and 13 cm in diameter have been jammed underneath it and placed there for traction. Somebody was using the air mattress and branches to try to free their vehicle from the mud and left it behind. Nearby in another rut, another photo shows a squarish black rubber or vinyl floor mat from a vehicle used in a similar manner.

It seems to me that the mat and mattress were left by the people that killed Kerrie, but that cannot be said for certain.

DR: Okay and then another high step here. We're getting into some mud.

DR: It's a bit muddy here. I can see that this might've been the place where someone could get stuck actually.

DR: Other police photographs, still closer, give other important clues as to what may have transpired at the actual scene. One shows a jacket — Kerrie’s new Pittsburgh Penguins jacket — on the ground in the woods. The other shows one of Kerrie’s shoes on the ground, upright with laces still tied, in a different location than the jacket. To me, this shows that Kerrie was out of the vehicle at the muddy roadway, but also at these locations in the woods. Her jacket off suggests a struggle, perhaps as she is grabbed from behind while running away and the jacket comes off. Her still-tied shoe comes off as she is dragged, or...as she crawls.

TB: Right around here?

TB: It was on the edge of the hydro line, I know that.

RD: Do a high step over this...

[Sound: Ravens far off in the distance]

[Sound: The raven speaks]

TB: Too bad it wasn't cold out here right now. You’d have freak July cool day and you can get a sense maybe what it would have been like out there that night, Dave. Especially once it gets dark when the rains falling, it’s… it's kind of creepy out here I’ll tell you at night when it’s dark and wet. Yeah, you hear the sounds of the animals in the bushes and stuff.

DR: I put this same question to another RCMP detective, now retired, who was brought in as fresh eyes to look at Kerrie’s case in the late 1990s, Robert Urbanoski.

BOB URBANOSKI: Let me ask you a question.

BU: Ok, let me reverse the role here for a minute. You live in some...small town. Alright. And you've just done some dastardly deed, okay, to your significant other in your house. And you’re going ‘oh my gosh.’ Okay. What am I going to do. You know. I don't want to go to jail and, you know …. what are you going to do with the body? ...you’re faced with this right here right now.

BU: Well, okay. So let's say you've got in the car, you're sitting in the driveway. Alright, you’ve got the car started, you're going to go down the driveway, and you’re going to go ‘got to drop this body someplace. I got to get rid of this. Otherwise, I'm going to jail for the rest of my life.’

BU: So I'm asking you, are you going to turn right or are you going to turn left? Am I gonna drive aimlessly through areas that I have no idea where I'm going, and arrive at some place that's going to be a great place to drop a body. Or wait a minute, I know a place because I used to go there fishing. Or I know a place because we used to party there as a kid. And there’s a spot if I go up that road I know it's nice and secluded and quiet. How do you find that spot? You know with somebody in the vehicle...to commit a sexual assault in a homicide. You just don't come across these things by accident. Dumpsites or the scene of the crime is always significant. It's always significant. Seldom ever is it random. Somebody had to know that was the place to go. That was a place where you could go where you could be hidden away.

DR: Tell me about your involvement in Kerrie Anne Brown's case.

DR: What are you able to tell about me what your findings were?

DR: When I talked RCMP in Winnipeg. they said that they'd be interested, still be interested, to hear what Patrick Sumner said. And to me that just floors me because it's like … he's still of interest? [chuckle] Like...

DR: I'm just waiting for an answer. [laugh] There is no question. That’s the secret.

DR: Police won’t say a word about Sumner. So I’m back to square one...Was something missed? Or was there no evidence because Sumner is innocent? I try to focus down with Urbanoski on what police knew.

BU: We don’t know.

BU: You don’t know until you get that final DNA profile match, and you sat down with individuals. You don't know until you have a weak link that wants to ...want to be helpful. Okay. Or the weak link that that wants to unload their conscious, and say, you know, ‘I can't live with this’ or ‘I'm going to talk to somebody about it.’ You just don't know.

BU: Often you don’t. Let me ask you a question. Okay. If you're cruisin the streets, and you're looking for a young female to abduct, rape, and murder. Would you wait till you got to your crime scene to break up a branch of a tree to commit a murder? Or if you wanted to commit a murder would you not say ‘well, I'm going to have to kill whoever I pick up tonight. So I better take a weapon. I'd better take a knife from, you know, from the drawer. I'd better take a baseball bat, or I better take something because I'm gotta be prepared.’ Would you not do that if you're planning on doing it and you’d thought about it? If you are in a situation where you have to do it now, and you look around and go ‘what have, I got? I've got a tree branch here,” and I break it off, and that's what I use. It might tell you a little bit about pre-planning or intention.

BU: If you are experienced at this type of thing and know exactly how many times you have to hit somebody with a tree branch, you might say ‘I just need to hit them twice.’ You know. But you know what, you don't know. And you go down this path, and quite often it's going to look like overkill. And you go, is it because the person was really angry or is it because they knew that they needed to commit the murder and that they were ... they were committed to it and they had to make sure…? One of the things that we we always look for is …. is the victimology… It's important to know whether or not that person fight back. Because of the victim will fight back that might be why there's more violence because the person fought back. The person, you know, used some sort of a weapon that they found, okay, in defence. And what that does is it causes a change in the offender behaviour because now you've done something to me… Okay, so sometimes that can have an impact on the end result of the crime scene and what happens. Some evidence that perhaps maybe, you know, she escaped momentarily and ran through the bush, you know.... where they chase that individual. You don't know. Your emotions get pent up, you know, you …. you finally catch somebody and your in the heat of a chase and the emotions are running high.

DR: Back at the hydro clearing, we’re packing up as Trevor and I continue to discuss the evidence.

TB: Did she induce blood from them? Maybe she plowed someone in the fucking nose. Splattered blood on herself. I know she would have went down trying.

TB: I never thought about it before. Was she ... did she have any mud over her. [DR tries to cut in] If there was a struggle of any kind outside the vehicle, she'd be covered in mud.

TB: Right.

DR: The people responsible for sexually assaulting and killing Kerrie would have returned home at an odd hour, they would have likely had ripped clothes or scratches or signs of a fight on their body. Found at the crime scene...muddy tire tracks, a deflated air mattress and a floor mat, branches for leverage, branches for killing, Kerrie's jacket, Kerrie's shoe, and her body...and blood and at least one very good shoe imprint. These are the things that we know about. As we drive out of the area at day's end, Trevor points to a place where he took part in a sweat lodge, trying to purify himself through a ritual led by a local Indigenous person he knows.

DR: Trevor says he liked the ‘sweat’, and the process and experience, but that nothing can change his obsession for a solution to his sister’s killing. We drive...past the stables,and turn right onto Mystery Lake Road back toward town. Talking to police and Trevor and others so far has filled in some blanks but brings more questions without answers. But there was a suspect, an arrest, and some documents - if I can find them. Anything official will help. And retired RCMP Bob Urbanoski may have something else to offer. Some strategies for resurrecting Kerrie’s case. He was the prime reason another murder in the area was solved after sitting dormant for almost 15 years. A young Indigenous woman killed in 1971 by four white men in The Pas — about a four hour drive from Thompson. Her name, was Helen Betty Osborne.

AT: You have been listening to Episode 2: Dead End. If you wish to submit an anonymous tip about Kerrie Brown’s murder, visit: www.cbc.ca/SKS, or email the show: SKS@cbc.ca.

Join our new Facebook group and follow us on Twitter: @SKSCBC. Someone Knows Something is hosted, written, and produced by David Ridgen. The series is mixed by Cesil Fernandes and produced by Chris Oke, Steph Kampf, Amil Delic, Eunice Kim and executive producer Arif Noorani.

Special thanks to Justin Heinrichs for his shoe print expertise.

Original music by David Federman. Our theme song is “Thompson Girl” by The Tragically Hip.

TRANSCRIPT: Someone Knows Something - Season 5, EP 2

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