Domestic terrorism charge would help track 'mobilization of violence' online, former FBI agent says

Guest: Fredrick Brennan, Clint Watts

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VOICE: We must recognize that the internet has provided a dangerous avenue to radicalize disturbed minds and perform demented acts. We must shine a light on the dark recesses of the internet and stop mass murders before they start.

LL: That is President Donald Trump after two mass shootings left more than 30 people dead in the U.S. this past weekend. Today, Trump is planning to visit both El Paso, Texas and Dayton, Ohio, where the killings took place. In El Paso more than 20 people died when a gunman opened fire in a Wal-Mart and in that case there may be a connection to a website called 8chan, known for allowing anonymous hate speech. A racist manifesto posted on the site is believed to have been written by the suspect in those killings. If that's true, it is the third time 8chan has been linked to mass shootings. The suspects in both the New Zealand mosque shooting and the California synagogue attack are reported to have also posted there. The site has been mostly unavailable since Sunday after its web security service pulled its access, but there are calls now for it to be shut down permanently. Fredrick Brennan founded 8chan in 2013, but stopped working for the site about three years ago. And he is in Manila in the Philippines today. Hello.

FREDRICK BRENNAN: Hello.

LL: Tell me what's been going through your mind this week since the El Paso shooting and what's what's come after that.

FREDRICK BRENNAN: I woke up on Sunday morning and I discovered that there had been yet another shooting. It seems like it's becoming such a common occurrence in the United States that I just I don't understand why politicians there can't seem to do anything to get a lid on it. But anyway, I quickly discovered that there was an 8chan connection and then I knew, oh here we go again, the next few days for me are going to be just full of media interviews and that turned out to be accurate.

LL: You started the 8chan message board in 2013. Why did you create it?

FREDRICK BRENNAN: I had a few reasons. One was I had a grudge against the owner of 4chan and I had maybe a dream at the time to supplant him. But when I created 8chan I never really expected it to get as big as it got. And I mostly used it in the early, in the first year, just as like a portfolio piece. In those days I was doing programming work for other small image boards and I used that just to show them that I had basically the skill to change the software in big ways.

LL: But when you started to see the kind of content that got onto that site, why didn't you just cut it off to begin with a long time ago?

FREDRICK BRENNAN: Yeah I understand and of course you know I'm guilty to a certain extent of allowing it to go in the beginning, but I never expected it to get this far. I never expected there to be so many mass shootings connected to 8chan. And I never expected the administration to be so callous and incompetent with dealing with mass shootings.

LL: But OK. So what was the breaking point for you then? When and why did you decide to cut ties?

FREDRICK BRENNAN: So for me I cut ties in April of 2016 just because I thought that the owners were not living up to what I had hoped 8chan would be. But it wasn't really related to all of the content on the site. You know when I quit it was pretty mild compared to what it's become. You know there weren't just mass shootings and people cheering them on. It was just you know the worst things that were posted were maybe the personal details of a journalist that somebody didn't like and you know maybe some alt right conspiracy theories propaganda, but it was nowhere near as toxic as it is today. It was toxic, but not as toxic as it is now.

LL: I wonder if you still though even though you left feel some responsibility for that toxicity?

FREDRICK BRENNAN: You know there's nothing I can do to shut it down, nut I went back and forth on this after the Christchurch shooting and seeing how poorly the administrators have dealt with 8chan recently, if I could I would uncreate 8chan just so that this wouldn't be in the news right now and wouldn't have had to happen. If I could, I would not have even given it to Jim Watkins, but I can't go back and remake those decisions. The current administrators are not even willing to do the minimum in the event of mass shootings. They're not willing to care about the victims at all. They had a slogan on their website until it was shut down after all three shootings, the two words "embrace infamy." So I mean it's clear that the owners of 8chan aren't taking this responsibility seriously.

LAURA LYNCH: Now you just raised Jim Watkins name. He is the current owner of 8chan and I want to play Ia clip of him speaking on YouTube yesterday.

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VOICE: 8chan is an empty piece of paper for writing on. It is disturbing to me that it can be so easily shut down. Ours is one of the last independent companies that offer a place you may write down your thoughts free from having to worry about whether they're offensive to one group or another.

LL: Just to give you a visual on that. You could hear the taps playing in behind him and he's sitting in front of a picture of Benjamin Franklin and he's sounding defiant. I'm wondering what you think about what he had to say there, that 8chan is just a blank page for writing on.

FREDRICK BRENNAN: It might be true that 8chan is a piece of paper, but it's certainly not a blank piece of paper. You know maybe it was closer to blank when I was its admin. You'll have to be the judge of that based on history, but the administrators of 8chan have made certain moves to make neo-Nazis and other white nationalists feel comfortable on their site and they have done nothing when 8chan has become a message board where manifestos are uploaded and celebrated by users. You know all they would have had to do was take down those two words "embrace infamy" and they could have shut down the politics board for 20 for 48 hours and just roll out of respect for the victims in El Paso. We are shutting down this board because it contains incitements to violence that might be offensive to the victims and their families. That's it.

LL: Now we've learned today that Jim Watkins has been called to testify before Congress before the House Homeland Security Committee. Do you think that he will answer that call? Will go there?

FREDRICK BRENNAN: He wrote on the official 8chan Twitter account that he's going there. So it'll be interesting to see what happens. I have no idea. He said that he's not even in the Philippines right now.

LL: And you haven't spoken to him in recent days. I know you live close to him, but you say he's out of the country.

FREDRICK BRENNAN: Yes I haven't spoken to him in recent days. All I can say from that audio that you played me, he doesn't really seem to get why people are not accepting what he has to say.

LL: To what extent then do you think 8chan can be blamed for these mass shootings, in El Paso, in the mosque in Christchurch and the synagogue in California?

FREDRICK BRENNAN: Certainly 8chan can't take all the blame. I mean that's silly cause obviously there are problems in American society that are leading to these shootings beyond 8chan. You know politicians take some of the blame also. It's not only 8chan, however it is clear to most people that 8chan has served as a forum for radicalization. Many people say that they began using sites like 4chan, 8chan, certain boards on Reddit, YouTube even and they became radicalized and it could lead to mass shootings. Now I'm not a sociologist, so I don't really know what the answer to this problem is, but I do know that it would help if the platform would do at least the bare minimum.

LL: So this almost though, you know the way the Internet works and a lot of people are saying that if no service providers agree to host 8chan, it's like whack a mole and another 8chan like site is going to pop up. What do you say to that?

FREDRICK BRENNAN: Here's what I would say to that. Yeah. Here's what I would say to that. It's real simple. There's technical barriers in the way and 8chan losing CloudFlare was a big blow because now they have the option of not using a CDM or a protection against denial of service attacks at all, in which case they're completely open to the Internet and they can be shut down repeatedly, just from anybody who can afford to bombard their servers with requests. That's happened before. So losing CloudFlare is a big deal and the fact that BitMedicate also fell through rapidly. Epic fell through. Tucows fell through. They are quickly running out of services that can host them and the hope is that whatever site takes over 8chan's mantle will realize that they have to be willing to play ball. They have to be willing to at least do the minimum and hopefully if another mass shooting occurs linked to an image board, the owner of that site with take serious action and wouldn't egg on the shooters and would take it seriously.

LL: All right Fredrick Brennan, I thank you very much for your time.

FREDRICK BRENNAN: Alright great. Thank you.

LL: Fredrick Brennan is the founder of 8chan. He was in Manila in the Philippines. Our next guest is an expert in monitoring terrorism and extremism online. Clint Watts is a senior fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and he was an FBI special agent. He's the author of Messing with the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians and Fake News. We reached him in Washington D.C. Hello.

CLINT WATTS: Good morning.

LL: What do you make of what Fredrick Brennan had to say?

CLINT WATTS: Yeah, I think we'll consistently find this as long as there's an Internet and there's a way for people to connect, you'll find that bad people will try and seek each other out and that they'll try and motivate motivate each other through communications and rhetoric. I do have to say though that these site going offline does disrupt these networks considerably. I'd like to use some parallels such as the Islamic State al-Qaeda. They were using, if you rewind back to 2011 and 2012, they were using mainstream social media platforms, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube to propagate their messages and the big social media companies push them off. And so that damages their ability to radicalize and recruit because they can't reach as large of an audience. That also means they go to these fringe social media sites and the case of ISIS it was telegram became quite popular for them. In the case we see with white supremacists it was Gab, last year we were talking about. Now we're talking about 8chan. And so every time we get support from social media companies, they push out these extremist, extremists naturally try to gather somewhere else. They're usually a smaller number, they can't reach as white of an audience, which is good, but they can also plot and plan you know in a much more obscure way which means from the law enforcement perspective, if you want to get out in front of these extremist groups, you have to use a lot more human intelligence and it's much more resource intensive to go at it that way. It's much more difficult to monitor.

LL: And I want to ask you about that because your work with the FBI focussed on foreign terror threats. I'm wondering how the FBI deals with ISIS and al-Qaeda online activities versus right wing extremist activities.

CLINT WATTS: Yeah. Not just online, but even in terms of on the ground investigation, it's treated as two entirely different things. In the international terrorism space there's a foreign terrorist organization designation or a foregin terrorist designation that comes out of the U.S. State Department and that becomes the predicate by which the FBI would launch a case to investigate al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda inspired terrorism, the Islamic State, Islamic State inspired terrorism. These would be the people we were really worried about three years ago during the summer of 2016 that were being inspired online and then conducting attacks locally. We have a very similar phenomena with domestic extremism in the United States now. White supremacist has been the largest part of it, but there's several other variants as well that are inspired online. They're inspiring each other online, conducting attacks and then using their manifestos to guide ideology between each other. But the US government doesn't approach it the same way if it's domestic. If it's a domestic extremist ideology, they treat it as either a straight conspiracy to commit a crime in the federal code or as a hate crime potentially, depending on what the orientation of the group is. That does not allow them to really connect the dots as easily. They can't go out and say this is an individual that's inspired to white supremacist ideology and they're mobilizing towards violence, let's look into this case. Let's focus on 8chan because we know that that's where a lot of them will come from. It doesn't work that way. They have to have an individual identified from the beginning and then they have to work that case like a criminal case and I think it's quite poignant here the former Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, he had said you know you'll never stop this if you're trying to prosecute it after the violence has occurred. And I think that is kind of the setting we are in in terms of domestic terrorism in the United States.

LL: So then do the laws need to change and the amount of resources need to change to target this right wing extremism?

CLINT WATTS: Yeah resources I'm sure needs to be shifted. Maybe the shift from international to domestic or trying to find ways to be more efficient about pursuing international domestic together. The other thing that the FBI needs to be able to do is to have a designation of a domestic terrorist organization. That would allow them to open up a case, a nationwide case, where they look at white supremacists inspired terrorism. Once they can do that then they can go and do what's called an assessment, where they identify something online. It looks like mobilization to violence. They see someone speaking or writing in a pattern that's very similar to other mass shooters that they've seen and now they can work with local state and local partners. They can go out there and try and do pre-emption. They could look at community partners. They could do undercover operations if they think it's that close to violence, but it gives them more latitude to look into these investigations. Right now they just can't do it that way.

LL: What about a couple of other things that could change, things like if the law was changed then someone could be prosecuted for possibly funding a right wing extremist or a white supremacist. They can't be prosecuted for that now.

CLINT WATTS: Yeah that's exactly, right. You could be an accessory to a murder, but that is a pretty high bar. You know usually, this is like an accomplice, you know in an attack. But material support was one of the key provisions in the international terrorism era that we've been working through of going at people that were on the fringes that were providing let's say motivation and ideology, financial resources, assistance in plotting and planning. If we had that ability for domestic terrorist organizations then you could actually pursue people on the fringes that helped facilitate this. That could be something like an 8chan. Right? A communications platform that's not being effectively policed. So we put a strong downward pressure, not just on the domestic extremists themselves, but their entire network of supporters.

LL: Now Trump supporters like the presidential counsellor Kellyanne Conway pointed out that the Dayton, Ohio shooter allegedly supported far left groups like Antifa. Is it fair to compare the Dayton shooter with the El Paso gunman?

CLINT WATTS: Well there's something about the Dayton shooting, which is that it's still not entirely clear. They pointed to a few social media posts, but the Dayton shooter also killed his own family member, sister. So there's some complicated dynamics going on there and I haven't seen enough evidence to declare what their orientation is. Even if there was a far left extremist bent, it should be treated you know investigatively the same, but the scale is by no measure is the scale right now of extremism on the left equivalent to what we've seen from this white supremacist terrorism. We could point to dozens of attacks around the world. This is really a global phenomenon. By the way that stretches outside the United States that have been conducted on behalf of white supremacy at this point. And so to mark them as equivalent is just blatantly deceptive, I believe.

LL: Now we spoke to Eleanor Stavinoha, the communications director of another open source social network called Mastodon and it was created actually as a way for users to be able to moderate and safeguard against hateful content. But now Gab, the social network that's popular with the far right has found a way to be hosted on Mastodon. Listen to Eleanor Stavinoha.

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VOICE: Their goal was basically to take over the gederated space that Mastodon currently occupies and drive away the kind of like marginalized user that Mastodon explicitly set out to protect. Personally it makes me angry about it because I think it goes against the spirit of what Mastodon is all about because we want to defend our marginalized users in a way that Twitter and Facebook and other social media sites have frankly failed. And I think it's raised a lot of questions, at least in the open source community, sort of about the nature of free software and allowing absolutely anyone to use the software, even if it's to spread hate.

LL: Now I'm wondering when you hear that, what can be done when these groups just migrate from one network to another?

CLINT WATTS: Yeah this is fairly consistent and you know Mastodon has some additional features right, that were made to make it attractive for protecting people, but those same features can be used to protect people that want to say bad things.

LL: I just want to ask you now with this move to get Jim Watkins from 8chan before Congress, there seems to be some desire to tackle this. How optimistic are you that things are going to change?

CLINT WATTS: I'm not too optimistic. I've not seen significant momentum from the Republican Party and the Senate. It's two things, right, it's domestic terrorism legislation and it's also dealing with the impact of assault weapons. I just don't see much momentum, actual change coming before the 2020 election.

LL: I thank you for your time.

CLINT WATTS: Thank you.

[Music: Theme]

Someone Knows Something: Season 5, Episode 8

LL: Three decades later, the murder of Kerrie Brown still haunts her family, but some mysterious behaviour and unsettling conversations had family members wondering if someone close to Kerrie might have been involved in her death.

[Music: Theme]

LL: This summer on The Current we're playing some of the best of CBC original podcasts. This week it's the latest season of Someone Knows Something, David Ridgen's investigation into the 1986 murder of Kerrie Brown in Thompson, Manitoba. In Episode 8 of Season 5, we learn more about Kerrie's troubled brother, Ian. And a warning that this episode contains mature and sometimes disturbing subject matter.

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TB: You know what, it’s in my genes. It’s in my family, Dave. Alcoholism. I’m kind of cursed. I think we’re all cursed in ways, genetically. Like my mom’s side, Dave, it’s all mental illness. We have Alzheimer’s, we have schizophrenia.

We have bipolar and we have...

DR: Autism.

TB: Autism. Yeah. In our family. It’s all on my mom’s side, all of it. And my dad’s side, well, we have alcoholism and… yeah. Dysfunctionalism.

DR: [laughin] What’s that disease?

TB: I don’t know. My dad’s dysfunctional.

DR: He’s used to having you around?

TB: Always. Always. Yeah.

DR: That’s why you came back, to take care of him, right?

TB: I did. I came back to take care of my dad cos I was really, really saddened by the thought of the cops coming to my door and telling me sorry to inform you, your father’s dead. That was the greatest thought in my mind when I was in Winnipeg. I knew he wasn’t doing well cos I was calling him periodically and I knew, I could tell from the sound of his voice that he wasn’t doing well and… I said I’m coming home. So I came home.

DR: It's clear but mosquitoey outside, and Trevor and I are on another late night drive around Thompson. We're re-tracing again the possible routes Kerrie may have taken the night she disappeared. Ian, Kerrie and Trevor's half brother, comes up in conversation.

DR: Ian your brother, was he able to...

TB: Ian. I haven't talked to Ian in over a year. Yeah. Ian was older. My mom had Ian before she met my dad. Well, before she married my dad. Yeah, he's not doing well. Ian has severe mental illness. Exactly what, I'm not sure....He was diagnosed with schizophrenia when he was young. But then a senior psychologist, quote/unquote, overrode the guy that diagnosed him with schizophrenia and said he doesn't have schizophrenia, he has something else. Ian was never properly diagnosed, I don't think, and Ian had a tough life. Well, here in Thompson, Kerrie and I went to Juniper School. Ian went to Juniper School...and Ian ended up in what they call special ed. Developmentally challenged people, and some of the people in that classroom were Down syndrome. My brother Ian's off, I know that. I'll tell you that. Ian had sexual proclivities.

DR: What does that mean?

TB: He had deviances, my brother Ian. He had sexual deviances towards young girls and stuff… I'll tell you this, Dave. My brother got shipped off to Winnipeg when we were teenagers, when Kerrie and I were teenagers. Because of sexual... something happened. I don't know what, Dave. And I'll be honest, I don't.

DR: Did you ever ask your dad about it?

TB: I've talked to my dad about it. He won't talk about it. But my brother got shipped off to Winnipeg because of something that happened in Thompson with a young girl. Before he moved back into the house... I know for a fact when I was 14, Kerrie would've been 13 or 12. Ian got sent away to Winnipeg.

DR: Right. And you still don't know why?

TB: He had his own place in Highland Towers on Thompson. That place with the wolf on the side?

DR: Yep.

TB: And something happened in there with a young girl's underwear being found in his apartment.

DR: Ian had lived in a local Thompson apartment building when he was about 18 but was evicted, according to Trevor, because he wasn't keeping his apartment in a livable condition. At some point later, when he was around 19 Ian then went back to living in the house with his mother and Jim, Trevor, and Kerrie.

DR: So was your brother ever treated as a suspect in this case?

TB: Not that I'm aware of, although I will tell you this... my dad became suspicious of my brother years later. Like not long ago actually. I want to say maybe 10 years ago? My dad asked, you know, my dad talks about my brother. And… his movements on the night that Kerrie died. And I don't trust my dad's memory. I don't. But my brother worked at the... at the Highway Inn.

DR: So your brother's movements on the night Kerrie disappeared, what were they?

TB: Well, we don't know. He should've been at home. He was living in our house...my dad will tell you that he remembers my brother coming in through the basement window of our house.

DR: On that night or morning?

TB: I don't know. My dad's memory's a wreck. Fucked, I'll be honest with ya. But my dad remembers my brother bringing muddy footprints inside the house. And my dad asking him why the hell did you come through the basement window? He said I didn't want to wake anybody up. My brother was living in the basement...He had a room in the basement...

DR: When your sister disappeared.

TB: Right.

DR: Okay. Have you ever seen Ian be aggressive or have a switch that would turn on or off?

TB: He had an aggressive side. He used to hit… he lived common law with this woman in Winnipeg. I lived in Winnipeg...and Ian lived in Winnipeg at the same time. He was common law with a woman for almost 20 years. And at the end, he was knocking her around.

DR: And is she still alive?

TB: Oh yeah.

DR: Unfortunately, I’m not able to find Ian’s ex-girlfriend to get her version of Trevor’s recollection.

We pass by the stable road entrance and continue our now meandering drive north toward the Thompson airport.

DR: So Ian, your brother, was he able to drive at the time?

TB: I don't think he had a licence.

DR: How did he get around?

TB: Walked.

DR: Did he have any friends?

TB: Not many.

DR: Yeah. So he probably didn't have the ability to mobilize on his own and get out here.

TB: No.

DR: Right? All the way out this road here.

DR: However, I’ve found a different story that contradicts Trevor’s memory. Rollie Becker.

RB: Uh, her brother actually bought a car off me, I remember her brother was just this tiny little unassuming guy that I sorta almost felt bad for.

DR: That would be Ian.

RB: Yeah.

DR: I'm back in Rollie Becker's garage. Rollie's sitting at an office desk covered in car parts and paperwork, and smoking a cigarette.

DR: What kind of car did Ian buy from you?

RB: [laughs] Some big old '67 Meteor [laughs] he almost would have to tie blocks to the gas and brake pedal. [laughs]

DR: When did he buy that from you?

RB: Ohh...well obviously before this incident.

DR: Oh, before Kerrie was murdered.

RB: Yeah. So you know I remember like Ian would come by and I think it was Trevor, little brother would be tagging along with him. And he had come you know, and Ian had just turned 16 or whatever, so this was his first car. So you know, and then he had come by the shop many a time you know, kind of looking at different things and whatever, so Kerrie actually may have even come by at one time with them, I don't really recall.

DR: So, Ian apparently did drive, and he had an old muscle car too.

DR: Do you know what colour that car was?

RB: The Meteor? ...Hmmm… I can't even remember. I think it was a silver blue, but I could be wrong.

DR: Is that a straight 8?

RB: No big V8 big uh '67 Meteor

DR: Did Ian seem different to you as a person…

RB: Ian? He was just a little non-assuming guy and you know...you could tell he'd probably be the kind of guy that'd be picked on a lot because he was so little or whatever so you know, which is why...I went out of my way, I didn't even really want to sell him that car, but he insisted he wanted it and I probably even did some repairs free of charge [laughs] cuz I just felt bad for the little guy. Like I said, little Ian come around the shop a lot, sold him a car, ripped my heart out when I heard what happened to his sister [emotional] [sniff]... and I'm just recollecting things the best that I can.

DR: Trevor doesn't seem to have direct knowledge about Ian's car, but Ian apparently drove it without a licence, and parked it away from the Brown house. It all makes me wonder again, about the car seen coming out of the stable road that night.

TB: My dad literally told me he thought Ian might have something to do with Kerrie's murder, years later. Years later.

DR: Does he still talk to you or not?

TB: I haven't seen him. Like I said, I haven't seen him for over a year. I haven't talked to him in over a year. He hasn't called our house in over a year. Last I know, he was in Selkirk, Manitoba. He's an alcoholic. Drinks every day. Doesn't take medication.

DR: He self-medicates

TB: Self-medicated.

DR: Most times, as you know, when there's a murder, and it's a family member, and there are family members in the house, they're often treated as suspects right off the bat….Even yourself and your dad...

TB: The fact that I was so geographically close to Kerrie that night is another factor.

DR: So you would've been looked at. Your dad would've been looked at.

TB: Proper protocol. Clear those avenues, clear those avenues.

DR: You have to clear the closest people to her, yeah. So did you ever get interviewed by the police as a suspect kind of thing?

TB: No.

DR: No.

TB: I had my DNA taken in 2001.

DR: Yep.

TB: When I was in treatment.

DR: What was your brother Ian's relationship like with Kerrie?

TB: Uhh... tenuous. Uh...she didn't trust my brother, I don't think.

DR: Kerrie didn't trust your brother?

TB: I don't think so.

DR: Why not?

TB: Well, I remember an incident where she freaked out that she thought he was looking at her through her mildly open bedroom door. She was changing. I remember her freaking out: why the hell are you looking at me? I'll never forget that. And I went out into the hallway from my... I was sure I was in my bedroom. And I went out into the hallway: "What's going on?!" She closed her door. She slammed her door closed. 'Cos I don't know what's going on. And that's all I said. And so that's... I don't know what happened with Ian.

DR: Did Kerrie ever say anything to you that suggested she might have been afraid of Ian?

TB: She told her friends she was.

DR: Who did…

TB: Nicole.

DR: She told Nicole that?

TB: She told Nicole she didn't trust Ian. And somebody, maybe somebody else? Yeah, no... they were far from close.

DR: Kerrie's friend Nicole says that Ian was loud, would shout, and swear and that she and Kerrie were uncomfortable around him and tended to avoid him. She also says they were young and didn't understand Ian's diagnosis.

DR: Okay. I'm just interested in the relationship.

TB: Yeah, no, no. It's relevant. It's relevant, Dave. It is. Our family's far from perfect.

DR: And what was Ian's behaviour like after Kerrie was found dead?

TB: : That I don't remember.

DR: In the aftermath and the weeks following, was he upset or was he...

TB: Well, Ian was indifferent. Indifferent….I don't think he was capable of the same emotion that the rest of us were. I asked Ian, kind of last ditch, did you have anything to do with this?

DR: At that time, Trevor says Ian denied having anything to do with Kerrie’s murder.

TB: I don't think he did. I don't think he did, Dave.

DR: Okay.

TB: I know he would've said something. My brother's a talker. He says things when he shouldn't say things. God almighty...he would've said something to somebody by now, no question.

DR: If I asked your dad about it, what would happen?

TB: He would tell you what he thought.

DR: Okay. Maybe I'll ask him about it.

DR: I wanted to talk to you about your son Ian...

JB: We don't even see him or hear from him. Like uh...he really never accepted me as his dad. He knew I wasn't his dad. Eventually he said I'm going to go and find my dad.

DR: Trevor and I have found Jim in the kitchen cooking a stew on the stovetop.

TB: I gave him money to go on the bus to Ontario. He wanted to go and look for his dad. He went there, and he went to the door. They wouldn't even let him in the door. Wouldn't even speak to him. He wound up staying the summer at my mother's place in Ontario, just helped mow the lawn, do this and that. But eventually, he come back here. He said I guess you are my fucking dad after all. [laughs] But he's a kind of a little guy that...would not keep clean or anything...the only way you'd get his stuff into the laundry is while he's sleeping. Pockets full of cigarette butts that he picked off the street, that sort of thing. But every time he'd come home, I'd get him fixed up, cleaned up, new clothes. And he'd be on his way again. And I couldn't look after him here because I was afraid of the house burning down. He'd lay on the couch and drink and smoke. And I had to stay awake all night to make sure that the damn house isn't on fire. But no, Ian was Ian. If he had five bucks in his pocket, he'd decide to go across Canada. Hitchhikin’. You know. But that's the way he was. It wasn't all bad times or anything. I actually spoiled him more than my own two kids. Bring home tools. He loved tools. Fooled around with that stuff and…

DR: What was his relationship with Kerrie like?

JB: He was okay. He was the same with us all. It was just, he was himself. When he get out on his own he wouldn't be in an apartment a couple of months. He skipped out because windows are broke, and fridge is full of dirt, stove, nothing cleaned up, what-have-you. But he was, for many years off and on, just a street person. He'd have a tent, go and pitch it anywhere and spend the night. Yeah. He was slow to learn how to talk to start with. So he just kind of fell behind all the time. But yeah, I would say he had some kind of disorder of some description. His mother did. And he probably did too. He was always a problem at school. I was over there a thousand times. Ian's doing this, he's doing that. What's he doing with all these keys, handfuls of keys that belong to somebody else? [laughs]

DR: Was he ever violent or aggressive?

JB: No, no. He wasn't a strong person or anything like that, that he could fight. He would stick up for himself a little bit, but he would get bullied more than, more than not. Yeah. No. He wasn't like a quarrelsome guy at all, no.

DR: Do you think that he was ever a suspect in Kerrie's murder?

JB: No.

DR: No?

JB: Well, we all took the DNA. He did, Trevor did. I did. But I mean, that's just natural to do. But no, there was nobody ever come question him here or took him somewhere else and questioned him or anything. He was not… in fact, that night, I believe he was working at the bus depot. He cleaned the washrooms out after the bus left.

DR: Oh, okay.

JB: When they'd come in and went out, he had the job going in, cleaning that up. I believe that's what he was doing that night. But he had his own little room in the basement down there….but he had his own privacy.

DR: So Ian, was he ever in trouble with the law or the police?

JB: Uhh... I don't think nothing serious. He stole a car one time...and he wound up out the highway there and went to miss a rabbit or something on the road and rolled the car over and ruined that. That's a stolen car and...

DR: Could he drive?

JB: He had no licence at that time. He did eventually get his licence. Do you think Ian had some kind of a disorder?

TB: He was mentally ill. Don't you remember, Dad?

JB: I do remember talk of it, yes.

TB: And you left something out that I don't know if you don't remember, or if you're just not wanting to say it. But Ian got shipped off to Winnipeg when he was a teenager, dad. When we were young. You remember that?

JB: No.

TB: Wow.

JB: For what?

TB: Well, you would never talk about it, you and mom.

JB: I didn't send him anywhere.

TB: You guys did. Somebody… and do you remember that incident in Highland Towers with the little girl and the underwear?

JB: I don't...

TB: You don't remember that?

JB: I know it was something about a car there that he was pissing around, working with a car and the little girl come there, and there was maybe something said about him touching her or something?

TB: Right. This all went on. You and mom had to deal with this. But you never talked about it with me and Kerrie. You guys were very tight-lipped about it all, and why Ian left home, why he wasn't here anymore. You just didn't want to talk about it, you guys.

JB: I remember him going to school there. That's all I thought it was, a school.

TB: That's a group home for boys that get into trouble.

DR: Jim, I don't want your stew to burn there. Sorry.

TB: Burning stew.

JB: It's okay. It's on low.

TB: Hey dad. You did at some point consider Ian might have had something to do with Kerrie's murder in a strange way. You were so...out of your mind with who did this a few years ago, that you considered Ian might have something to do with it. And I confronted him on it. I told him what you had said to me about the muddy boots and coming in.

DR: So tell me about Ian and the time of Kerrie’s disappearance? Do you remember how he came home that night?

JB: I remember he was working at the bus depot...but I heard him come home. I was sitting at the table doing a hockey pool. And he didn't come through the door. He come through the basement window. And so when he come in, I went to the cellar door. I said 'you're home are you?' He said 'yes. Is Kerrie home yet?' I said 'Kerrie's sleeping over.' And that's basically all I know about that.

DR: Okay.

JB: But I found the next day — and the police said I should have told him — he left a pair of rubber boots at the step had a lot of mud on them. And I thought that was kind of odd.

DR: So the footprints. Trevor had said muddy footprints, but the footprints weren't in the basement then. I don't know nothing about that.

DR: But muddy boots.

JB: The boots were out there.

DR: Out here?

JB: Yeah.

DR: Just out on the front steps. Okay.

JB: I told Tost about the boots later and he said 'you should have told me earlier.' I remember that. Yeah.

DR: What time was it when you were sitting there?

JB: Oh! No idea. Just that it was late...

DR: So it would have been...you think after midnight or…

JB: Could have been. Could have very well been. Yeah.

JB: But Jim's suspicions were raised even more by a conversation that took place in the period following Kerrie's murder. Something he didn't tell Trevor about until much later.

JB: The part that got me with him that concerned at all, we were up in the bedroom. Your mother was crying, and I'm in the same room, and Ian comes in. And he said...

TB: He said...

JB: "She got what she deserved. She just wouldn't fucking listen." That's exactly what he said. "She would not listen." And I told you that on the phone when you were in Winnipeg, and you were more or less going to go right over there.

TB: You didn't use those words.

JB: Yes, I did.

TB: No. You didn't use those words that you just said.

JB: I'm not going to say another word about anything if I'm going to just argue with you.

TB: No, it's not that, Dad. I'm telling you what I remember you saying to me and it was… I could recall it if I thought about it. You're on the right track, but you were suspicious of him. And you gave reasons to me why. "Maybe she deserved it", is what you heard Ian utter under his breath. And then you said what the fuck did you say? You yelled at him. But that's what he uttered to you under his breath: maybe "she deserved it."

JB: I remember him saying "She would not fucking listen." Them words. She would not fucking listen.

TB: That would imply that he was there and saw it.

JB: Your mother was sitting right in that chair, same chair that's up there right now. And I was going into the clothes closet to get a jacket or something.

DR: So something that you probably wouldn't forget, that interaction. But maybe you would, I don't know. But that's an interaction with your stepson.

JB: Right.

DR: Your wife's there. Ian is her son.

JB: Mhm.

DR: And did you talk to your wife about that after?

JB: Uh... not particularly. She was, in that point in time, for about three weeks, just steady crying. She was so upset. I don't believe Ian had anything to do with that, really.

TB: I don't either.

JB: I would say Kerrie would overpower Ian.

TB: She would've, physically.

JB: He wouldn't have been able to manhandle her.

TB: No.

JB: In my mind, anyway.

TB: No.

JB: The DNA anyway...and...the DNA didn't match. They've got two DNAs there and certainly nobody in our family matched. It wasn't one person.

DR: I don't know if it even would be worth talking to him or would that confuse him or cause trouble in a way that you don't want?

JB: Well, you feel like talking to him, you can get a hold of him. But like I say, we haven't even heard from him in a long time.

TB: Over a year.

DR: It's just, you know, one of those tiny percentages that I'd like to explore. But is it going to cause trouble for you?

JB: No, it won't cause no trouble for me. Like whatever we got to do to get answers and not necessarily convict him or anything, but eliminate him.

DR: Yeah, it'd be interesting to eliminate him because you wonder the theory that Trevor has, and I think you, is that she may have known the person, right? So he may have been somehow in the car. Who knows…

DR: In the hours after Kerrie was known to be missing Trevor says Ian was going around town helping to put up posters. And Sean Simmans says he remembers driving Ian around door-to-door looking for Kerrie. On one hand, Ian's actions seem to be normal under the circumstances, but on the other — muddy boots, coming in through the basement window, his utterance to Jim, the car - some questions linger.

TB: Sunglasses…

DR: Trevor and I decide to get on the road, to see if we can locate Ian and talk to him. But nobody seems certain of what Ian's state of well-being might be. It's an eight hour road-trip and Trevor's nearing the front door to leave with a big suitcase when he's intercepted by his father...

JB: You got your suitcase?

TB: I got my suitcase. Suitcase is packed. Gonna say goodbye. Come on, Dad. Say goodbye.

JB: Say goodbye? Just get! I’ll be glad to get rid of you.

TB: [LAUGHING]

JB: Carry on.

TB: Alright. We’ll see you when I get back.

DR: Nice suitcase you got there.

TB: That's old school, Dave. That's the road case. You like that?

DR: Packed with beer and drugs?

TB: No beer. No beer. Alright, I'll see you in a few days, Dad. Bye. [laughing] No beer. Today I thought when I was having a shower this morning I got to think 'gee, I'm going on 48 now.' Kerrie left when I was 16. And I did some quick mental math...and it just kind of hit me all the sudden like 'holy frig! I've been around for almost half a century, and I've been living with this for two-thirds of my life.' I thought 'man, I'd like to solve this.' I'd like to figure out the answers that we're looking for, so I don't have to keep thinking about it anymore. We've been looking for the killer of Kerrie... the killers for Kerrie twice as long as she was with us.

DR: Do you think Jim's gonna miss yah?

TB: No. [laugh] No. He'll enjoy the quiet. The house to himself. He's an introvert like me.

DR: We drive on for a while making idle conversation...

TB: Why does a 9V battery look physically different than all the other batteries, the way it's designed?

DR: Like the square?

TB: Yeah, like the...

DR: Stopping for short breaks so Trevor can smoke or when we see a full adult bald eagle fly up from the side of the road.

DR: Did you see that huge bald eagle come up right there!?

TB: Yeah, that was awesome man…

DR: I'm going to go get a shot of him.

DR: And listening to Trevor sing.

TB: On a long and lonesome highway east of Omaha; You can listen to the engines moanin' out its one note song…

DR: Before Kerrie was murdered Trevor had considered a career as a singer. Someone even told him he could do opera.

TB: And here I am, on the road again [TB starts beating the dashboard]; and here I am, I’m up on the stage;

DR: Kerrie used to hold up her phone to Trevor's room so her friends could hear him practising singing rock songs in his mirror.

TB: Here I go, playin' star again; and there I go, turn the page...

DR: But he hasn't sung much in the over 30 years since then.

TB: With the echoes of the amplifiers ringin' in your head; FUCK! That was awful. I can't sing as good as I use to. I got ... I haven't taken good care of my voice. But I love that song. I can sing it better when I'm listening to it when Metallica is singing it or something. I can let it rip then little better, but ... yeah. That's my adlib version.

DR: It was pretty good I thought.

TB: [clear throat] My voice isn't where I'd like it to be. That's for sure.

DR; What's the title of the song?

TB: Turn the page. Turn the page. I wish I could turn the page. [silence]

DR: It's late evening when we pull into Selkirk. We pass a giant statue of a catfish and continue to the downtown area.

DR: So now we're heading out to see Ian, Ian Brown. And he's staying at a little hotel downtown. And we're going to try to find him and. And hopefully, he's okay to talk tonight….You haven't seen your brother in a long time.

TB: No.

DR: You'll have questions for him that are much different probably than I do. I'm just focused on finding out...his knowledge of Kerrie, that evening, that whole time that she was missing, the aftermath.

TB: Assuming we see him. Maybe he knows something that he's not aware that he knows about that evening? About people? I don't know.

DR: And just kind of go through it, his timeline…

DR: We park on a deserted street and walk toward a building on a corner in the distance. An old prairie style hotel with a bar downstairs and rooms for rent above it. A sign on the side says "Friendliest Place in Town", in the distance against the darkening sky, we can just make out a bridge with a river flowing underneath.

TB: Selkirk at night. I can honestly say I've never done this.

DR: Well, there's a fire escape going up, but I don't want to go up that. Looks like it's being held up by a two-by-four.

TB: Nice.

DR: There's a little door at the back that says open.

TB: Oh.

[Sound: Train horns]

DR: Yeah. let’s go in here....

TB: Yeah.

DR: I hook my arm into Trevor’s, and I lead him into the packed bar — past a row of tense dart games — and I approach the bartender.

BARTENDER: Hello.

DR: Hi.

TB: Hi, how's it going?

BARTENDER: Good.

DR: Where's the entrance to the rooms?

BARTENDER: Oh, at the front. Like if you go out that way...

DR: Okay.

DR: Behind a steel fire door we find an ancient staircase with a threadbare carpet over wooden steps.

TB: It smells fresh here.

DR: I look up into the gloom and see some yellow light coming from an open doorway at a landing several flights above.

DR: It's kind of musty. Okay, here we go.

DR: Maybe that's the floor where we'll find room number 18.

DR: Here's 17. Here's 16. Here's 18.

DR: Somewhere, I can hear a television blaring a hockey game. We've passed a few open rooms with nobody in them. Then a kind of common area with a group sitting around a table playing cards. Then ahead we see it. Room 18 is on an internal corner with no windows.

DR: Do you want to knock?

TB: I can't see. Which…

DR: It's here. That's the door.

[Sound: A knocking on a door, someone says come in]

MAN: I just said come in.

[Sound: Door opening]

DR: Room 18.

TB: Room 18. Ian? Ian?

DR: There's a TV on or radio.

IAN BROWN: Trevor?

TB: Ian? Yep.

IB: Where are you?

TREVOR BROWN: I'm down here! I'm in your head. I'm just an auditory hallucination.

IB: Ohhhh. Fuck you, asshole!

DR: It turns out that Ian isn't in his room, but down the hall in another watching the hockey I'm hearing on a big TV.

IB: Where are you?

TB: I'm over here, you knucklehead.

IB: Oh, you fucking son of a bitch!

TB: How's it going, man?

DR: Ian's had a few drinks from the sounds of it.

TB: Come on, give me some love.

IB: Oh! Oh! Should I punch him? Yeah, I promised Mommy. I will not live...fucking [unintelligible]

TB: Okay.

IB: Okay?

TB: Okay.

IB: You were there.

TB: So you're having a few pops tonight. You watching the hockey game?

IB: Come on in.

TB: What's that?

IB: Come on in. Let’s talk.

DR: Ian is small of frame with a deeply weathered complexion and long greying goatee beard. And he's wearing a big blue ball cap. The initial greeting feels a bit awkward — with no closeness amidst the bravado — but that seems to pass. Ian leads us into the room, which is mostly filled with a king sized bed and the television. On the bed, another man watching the game intently.

TB: Which room is yours? This one?

IB: No. This is a friend of mine.

TB: Oh. Hello. Hi. Who's winning?

IB: This is my fucking brother.

TB: Is it still one-one? I'm his brother, Trevor. Hi guys. Nice to meet ya.

FRIEND OF IAN: From Thompson?

TB: Yeah.

FRIEND OF IAN: Hey Trev.

TB: You're having a few pops. So Ian, I'm here with a guy.

IB: Yep.

TB: We're working on a documentary about Kerrie, okay?

IB: Yeah.

TB: Aaand…

IB: Come in. Come inside.

TB: A documentary about Kerrie. And he'd really like to talk to you about, just a lot of stuff because you're her brother. Of course.

IB: No shit Dick Tracy!

TB: You're having a few pops tonight. I think he would prefer to do it with you when you're sober and this is serious.

FRIEND OF IAN: First thing. First thing in the morning.

TB: In the morning. Ian.

IB: Yeah.

TB: So we'll see you in the morning, okay bro?

DR: Ian, I'll see you tomorrow morning, okay? Nice to see you.

IB: The side door.

DR: Okay.

IB: Bang on the side door. Just let me know when you guys are going to show up.

DR: Probably nine o'clock.

IB: Okay.

IB: OK I'll be here.

DR: We'll see you.

IB: Okay.

DR: Thanks man.

TB: See you in the morning.

DR: Enjoy the game.

IB: Oh, thank you.

[Sound: talking in background, laughter]

DR: We can go down this staircase here.

TB: Okay.

DR: Careful. Okay, come on down.

TB: I'm right behind you brother. Right behind you.

DR: Okay.

TB: Hey Dave. Buy you a six pack if you want?

DR: No, it’s okay...

DR: Okay, let’s go.

DR: The next morning we arrive just before nine and make our way to the same hotel.

DR: Take my hand?

TB: Yeah. Boy, that sun's right in my eyes right now.

DR: In the daylight, some things seem a bit more cheerier.

DR: There's a pole right in front of you.

TB: Oh, I see that now. Thanks.

DR: Oh, there's a pile of puke right there.

TB: Oh really?

DR: Yeah, just hang on. There we go. Secret door found.

[Sound: Walking and a knock on a door]

MAN IN HALLWAY: Hey. I heard him leaving a while ago.

TB: Sorry?

MAN IN HALLWAY: I said I heard him leaving a while ago.

TB: Leaving? Really? Oh.

DR: He left?

TB: Ian.

MAN IN HALLWAY: Yeah, he... about half an hour ago I heard his door shut, so he must've went out for a walk, I guess.

TB: He knew we were coming. What time is it, Dave?

MAN IN HALLWAY: Nine o'clock.

TB: Yeah, we told him we'd be here at nine.

DR: Okay, well we'll go look for him. Do you know anywhere where he goes for a walk or anything?

TB: He might hang or head to?

MAN IN HALLWAY: He just goes up and down the streets, going to different places, I guess. I don't really know if he goes to the soup kitchen or not.

DR: Trevor and I go outside, and after a bit of looking Ian appears around the corner. He’s in the same clothes now covered with an oversized black fleece pullover.

DR: So Ian, you want to get in the front seat of this Jeep here?

IB: Yep.

DR: Rather than go back inside the hotel, we decide to chat in the rental.

[Sound: Doors open and close]

DR: Great. Thanks for doing this. I was going to put the window down a bit. Give us a bit of freedom here. There we go. So just Ian, tell me who you are and where we are here.

IB: Oh, okay. My name is Ian Scott Brown. I'm originally from Thompson, Manitoba. I moved here from Winnipeg just to get away from the crime and everything. Uh… After my mum died, and my sister was murdered... I... needed just to get away and find myself and sort life out. There's been many times over the years I thought of dropping off that fucking bridge, and just walking in the river. Just ending it all. I had... a brown Meteor in Thompson. I drove down to Winnipeg, ended up getting stranded down here. I ended up selling it for 100 bucks, enough for a hotel room for the night until I could get a hold of welfare and find out what my options are. And I've been here ever since.

DR: Mhm. What was your relationship like with Kerrie?

IB: It was a little strained. We... really didn't often see eye-to-eye together. Trevor was more closer to her than I was. Being a year apart from each other. And I was in Greendale Group Home for fucking two years down in Winnipeg, so. I didn't really get to know her that well. As much as I would've loved it, you know what I mean?

DR: Can you tell me what you can remember from the time when your sister was murdered? On that Thursday, the Friday and the Saturday. What was going on in your life, what you were doing, and...

IB: Well... I was — me and EB Dockhorn — were working at Highway Inn with... And.. it was a long day. I'm getting tired, suppertime. The mechanic's wife came into the restaurant for her fucking supper. She sat down, and EB was right beside the window, and I sat on the outside. And we started talking. EB said Ian, let her read your palms. I put my hand out, and she put her fingers across my palms. And then all of a sudden, she just got up and walked right out of the restaurant...She had a strange look on her face like she'd seen something. But she couldn't tell me what it was. And I knew something… something bad was going to happen. I just had that funny feeling. And so I called the house, and Kerrie answered the phone.

DR: It’s at this point that I realize Ian’s version of events seems skewed, different from what Trevor and I have heard before.

IB: Her girlfriend was at the house. [cough] They were going to a party at Ray's stables. And we were supposed to meet there after work, but we got called in because there was a double bus coming in. So we were there all night, so. I called and let her know that I couldn't make the party at Ray's stables. I told her just stay home. Don't go anywhere. Stay put until you hear from me. I'll try and get there as soon as I can possibly get. Okay? But she didn't obviously listen and... things happen. So. Me and EB... what was it, next day, I think?

DR: This would be the Friday then?

IB: Yeah. Next day, we went out looking for her. And... you know okay, maybe she stayed over at Ray's Stables, at Ray’s place for the night. And her and Rhonda. And EB went over there. They haven't seen her. And well, where can they be?

DR: I tracked down Erwin Dockhorn or EB as Ian calls him. The man Ian says was with him on the Thursday night and Friday of Kerrie’s disappearance.

ERWIN DOCKHORN: My mother used to babysit them.

DR: Oh, is that right?

ED: Yeah.

DR: What can you tell me about Ian… Ian Brown?

ED: I know it hit him pretty... well all of them hard but... I know Ian... yeah... I...think it still affects him nowadays. I mean, he's not the same guy as he was.

DR: Dockhorn remembers going around with Ian to look for Kerrie on the Friday...but he cannot remember looking for her at at the stables as Ian says they did.

ED: And we looked around a few places but we didn't look at the stables. I'm kind of glad we didn't. I wouldn't have to wanted to have found her but…

DR: So how did you get around then when you were...

ED: I can't remember. Maybe we had somebody else… I don't know but I didn't drive either.

DR: Dockhorn also can’t remember who drove or who’s car they were in. He says they looked into the notion that Kerrie might have been picked up by a cab and dropped off somewhere, but it ended up going nowhere. And he says he wasn’t with Ian the night before on the Thursday when Kerrie was at the party on Trout Crescent.

DR: I was hoping, because I talked to Ian, and he said your name and that you had been

with him... I was hoping that you had been with him on the night Kerrie disappeared so

that I could account for where Ian was, so that I could understand what his movements

were on that night. So you don't recall being with Ian?

ED: No. I never hung around him as if... back then, I was freshly on my own and you go to the bar,

you do this and that with your friends and he wasn't one of them that I went with [laugh]. I had my

own, different people that I hung out with, you know, different friends. And the thing with that night... 1986?

DR: Yeah.

ED: Ok yeah. I'm trying to think where I was working at the time. But no, I never hung around with him, like I wouldn't have been with him that night.

DR: Back to Ian in the van, and he continues his version of events on the Friday after Kerrie disappeared.

IB: And I pulled up to home, and didn't know until the next day, which is I guess Friday.

DR: Next day would be Saturday afternoon.

IB: Saturday afternoon… And then I find out they found a body. Couple of riders found Kerrie's body on the hydro line. And… You were there, Trev. Fuckin' you know what I'm talking about.

TB: No, not everything... a lot of what you're saying makes zero sense to me. Zero. As far as... you having a conversation with Kerrie that she was going to a party at the stables — that I've never heard before. And she never had any plans of going to a party at the stables, I can assure you. She was going to Doug's house that night and she knew it.

IB: Then I don't know what happened.

TB: That's just — you're asking me — I'm hearing stuff that I've never heard before...So sorry. Your memories are what they are, but I just don't recall what you're saying and...like about talking to her, when you were working. And..Ian, I'll be honest...I don't know where you were that night. I was at Jerry Armitage's. Kerrie was at Doug's. And then you know, maybe take Dave from there. Who were you out looking for her with?

IB: Um... well, like I said. EB.

TB: Where did you go publicly? Do you recall any of the places you went publicly in Thompson...

IB: Went to Ray’s stables.

TB: What made you go up there?

IB: Cos... um... you know, um... that's where they were going to party, on those hydro lines.

TB: No, no, no.

DR: You remember talking to Kerrie, and she said she was going to go to the stables?

IB: Yeah. To Ray's stables. They were going to have a little get together there. I guess it was somebody's birthday or something. And I said well, we'll see if we can meet you there at a certain time. Me and EB. And never did show up.

TB: That's my other problem, Ian. Kerrie would not want to be drinking with you. You didn't drink with Kerrie. I didn't drink with Kerrie. Kerrie had her own very close-knit group of friends that she drank together with, Ian. They didn't go drinking in the bush, I can assure you. They drank at people's houses because they could.

IB: Anyway, that's the end of this.

[Sound: Shuffling]

DR: Ian who has appeared increasingly uncomfortable, reaches for the door handle.

IB: I don't wanna...

TB: Ian, the car... Ian, the car you said was brown?

IB: Yeah.

TB: The Meteor?

IB: Yeah.

TB: You didn't have it at the time of Kerrie's death, did you?

IB: Yep. I did.

DR: You had the brown Meteor?

IB: Yep.

DR: Did you used to drive it around?

IB: Yep.

DR: Do you think you would've been driving around that night somewhere in it?

IB: Maybe. I don't remember. That was a long night. I didn't get home from work until about five o'clock the next morning.

DR: Even in the likely event that he had nothing to do with Kerrie’s disappearance, could Ian’s car have been seen coming out of the stable roads the night Kerrie disappeared?

TB: But you couldn't be driving your car, Ian, because you weren't insured, and you had no licence. So how were you out driving around everywhere?

IB: I don't know.

TB: You had no insurance…

IB: Anyway.

DR: Ian.

TB: Ian. Hold on, Ian. It's okay.

IB: No.

DR: Again, Ian grabs the door handle. Ever since he said off the top, he'd considered walking off the bridge ahead of us I've felt sick. I try to calm it down a bit and motion for Trevor to try to slow his pace and tone of questioning.

DR: You don't need to…

TB: Sorry.

DR: Just let him talk. It's okay. You can just tell me what you remember. It's okay. We don't have to make it a tense situation. Are you okay?

IB: I just don't like talking about it.

DR: Okay.

IB: Okay. I just... I...

DR: Do you remember talking to police about Kerrie or anything about what was going on? Did they ask you any questions?

IB: Yeah. They asked me a few questions. They asked where were you kind of thing. I told them I was at work. When I... What kind of car do you drive? I said old Meteor. And they said well, we checked the car out from Pat Sumner and it was like a car, just like mine.

DR: Did they ever look at your car?

IB: Yeah.

DR: They searched your car?

IB: Yeah. Yeah. Yep. They checked the whole nine yards.

DR: Based on my information it’s not clear that police did look at Ian’s car.

DR: But did you ever think that they were looking at you as possibly having something to do with Kerrie's murder? Did you ever think the police were...

IB: Yeah, I was kinda bending that way. Why are they searching my car? Like what did I do now? You know? And I was in Winnipeg and I did the DNA test down here. And he came back, it wasn't my blood. So shrugged it off. Okay. And then once things settled down, it finally hit me. The look on your face when you got the phone call from the hospital. After dad went and identified fucking 'sis.

TB: I went down there with him.

IB: That's what I'm saying. Trev and dad get home and it's... it's just...they had a look in their eyes that... you just... can't forget. It was ... a...big loss. And just... so.

DR: Jim said to me that he remembered you came in late that night and you came in through the basement window...? Do you remember that? With muddy feet or something?

IB: No, I don't remember that.

DR: Okay.

IB: I wish I could help you guys out more. But with all the concussions I've had over the years... my memory's not the greatest these days, so.

TB: That's okay.

DR: It's okay. Do you remember driving around with Sean Simmans on the Friday? Did he drive you and EB around looking? In a truck? A red truck?

IB: Might have been.

DR: You went to Santa Maria and met him there and said...

IB: Could've been. Yeah. I might've. But I mean, that was a long time ago and you know, you're talking years here.

DR: What do you think happened to Kerrie? What do you think happened that night?

IB: For one thing, I can tell you right now. She would not have crossed the bridge. She was afraid of bridges. Even going up to the cabin. Eh, Trev?

TB: Bang on, brother. Bang on.

IB: She would duck on the fucking floor.

TB: Duck down.

IB: Yeah. And... so, she wouldn't be going crossing that fucking bridge without somebody being with her there that she could trust. Because they knew how she got.

DR: Ian, I just want to know one thing...have you ever had a diagnosis for any condition that you've had? Do you have an official diagnosis?

IB: Yeah. Paranoid schizophrenia.

DR: And are you taking medication?

IB: Yes, I am.

DR: Okay. Is it helping?

IB: A bit.

DR: That's good.

IB: Okay.

DR: I want to get a picture of you two together.

IB: Yeah.

TB: Grab your bag and I'll go to the other side.

DR: And with that, the interview with Ian draws to an end.

IB: I wish you would've let me know you were coming down here.

TB: Well, we didn't let anybody know we were coming. Dave likes to work that way.

IB: Oh, okay. Ohhhh, okay!

TB: Be safe.

IB: You got my address.

TB: I have your address. I have your address. And both stay in touch, okay?

IB: Okay.

TB: You don't have a phone in your room, right?

IB: No.

TB: Okay.

IB: Not right now.

TB: I can send you mail though.

IB: Yeah. Send it right to the hotel.

TB: I'll write ya. I'll write ya.

IB: Okay.

TB: Okay, bro? I love you, man.

TB: Take care, bro. We'll talk soon. He's lost a ton of weight. He's really thin. He's dying, I think.

DR: Yeah.

TB: I'm sorry I went off there for a second. I bit on his bait. He says what do you think, Trev? I don't remember any of this. Like he's never... some of those things he was saying, I've never heard it. He's never told me that story about talking to Kerrie and meeting at the stables for a party. And it never happened. She didn't party with him. She didn't party with me. She had her own circle, and she knew where she was going then. It wasn't the stables. The car's intriguing, eh? I don't remember him having it at that time, Dave. But I could be wrong.

DR: Well, all the reports are he did have it. Rollie said he had it.

TB: Kay.

DR: And he said he had it… Brown car.

TB: Meteor.

DR: Similar to the one that was seen.

TB: Right.

DR: And driving around, he doesn't remember... like it's really hard, you know. I don't know how to go further with Ian. I think... you know, it's difficult with his condition. He says he's been diagnosed...he's got medication. How can you dissect or take in and examine what he says? You're here. You know your information, and he has his version of information. I mean we all manufacture facts out of thin air. But his facts and his thin air are a bit different on the spectrum, right? Or they may be. They may or may not be. But I'm intrigued. He did have a car that looked like…

like one of those.

TB: And who's to say someone else didn't get their hands on it at the time other than him, right? Knowing that... Ian, he might've given it to someone, let someone use it. He's like that.

DR: So Ian is going to have to remain that. There's going to be a question mark on Ian cos I don't think that any... I mean he himself said DNA was taken. That doesn't mean that there wasn't some kind of transit involved or some kind of... something he can't remember, right? I have someone in my life who has OCD, and uh you have to train yourself to be comfortable with the unknown. You have to be comfortable with uncertainty. And I guess I have to be comfortable with this uncertainty around Ian.

DR: Trevor says he doubts that the RCMP looked at Ian's car though they did take the whole family's DNA according to he and Jim. I ask former RCMP investigator Jon Tost what he remembers about Ian Brown.

DR: Did you ever look into Ian Brown as a suspect?

JT: I can tell you yeah, we did. We looked at virtually anybody. There were inquiries made with regards to Ian. Can I ask you? Is he still alive?

DR: He is.

JT: Is he in touch with the family at all?

DR: He is.

JT: Alright. All I want to say with regards to Ian is there were inquiries made. But I don't think he was ever identified or developed or seen as a suspect or a viable suspect, if that makes sense to you.

DR: Ian was not developed as a viable suspect according to Jon Tost. Trevor's gut feeling is that Ian had nothing to do with Kerrie's murder, that Ian would have eventually told someone, but he and Jim still had questions. And so did I. Ian's answers weave in and out of agreement with Trevor's understanding of events and what I have heard from others. Kerrie was at Doug Krokucz's and probably wouldn't have arranged to meet Ian at the Stables for a birthday party. But Ian's car, and his whereabouts, Erwin dockhorn denying being with him across the period that Kerrie disappeared or with him while searching the stables, muddy boots and coming home through the basement window, and his tenuous relationship with Kerrie still seem undefined. Ian now lives homeless in a tent near the same bridge that he used to ponder every day. But these questions and people may have to take a back seat for a while. Because I’ve finally found the woman who says she took that mysterious phone call to the RCMP after Kerrie disappeared. And she wants to talk.

LL: We've been listening to the latest season of the CBC podcast, Someone Knows Something. We'll continue with Episode 9 tomorrow when host David Ridgen tracks down the civilian phone operator who says she received a suspicious call the night Kerrie Brown disappeared. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to The Current.

The Current Transcript for August 7, 2019

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Aug. 7, 2019 episode transcript

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