'Not supported by foreign forces': Critics dispute China's claim Hong Kong protests fuelled by West

Guests: Nathan Law, Galileo Cheng, Louisa Lim

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds from protests in Hong Kong]

LL: Another weekend of protest in Hong Kong where riot police fired rounds of tear gas into the crowds. Around 50 people were arrested and about two dozen injured. Protesters gathered at the Yuen Long metro station on the outskirts of Hong Kong in defiance of police orders. Just one week earlier, Yuen Long was the site of a brutal attack against protesters and bystanders by men in masks and white T-shirts, believed to have connections to Triads, powerful organized crime syndicates in Hong Kong.

SOUNDCLIP

[Sounds from violence in Yuen Long]

LL: Some have accused the Government of hiring the gangs. Authorities call those accusations baseless. These pro-democracy demonstrations have rocked Hong Kong for almost two months now. What began as protests against legislation that would have allowed the extradition of suspects from Hong Kong to China has now grown into a general pro-democracy and anti-police brutality uprising. China's central government spoke out about the protests today, calling on the people of Hong Kong to oppose violence and reiterating support for Hong Kong's leader Carrie Lam and local police. A spokesperson for China's Hong Kong and Macau Affairs Office accused what he called irresponsible figures in the west of soaking turbulence in Hong Kong. I'm joined now though by two people who have been witnessing the protests up close. Nathan Law is the founding chair of the pro-democracy group Demosisto. He was at the protests this weekend and Galileo Cheng works with the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong. He was injured by attackers at Yuen Long station the week before and they are both in Hong Kong. Hello.

GALILEO CHENG: Hello.

NATHAN LAW: Hello.

LL: Nathan Law, let's begin with you. You were at the protests this weekend. Tell me what you saw.

NATHAN LAW: Yeah. For the previous two days there have been massive rallies and demonstrations took place in Yuen Long in the city centre of Hong Kong Island and bulls were faced huge suppression from the police side especially the one took place yesterday when I was at the sites. The police were firing tear gas in a very intense manner and also firing rubber bullets at people's head. And I believe that the fire they had used yesterday was far more than any of the other events previously. So it was quite brutal. You can hear the gunshots everywhere and the interviews were very short every 10 seconds there were shots and that was really terrifying. It was just like a battlefield.

LL: Let just be very clear about this. When you say gunshots, you're talking about rubber bullets?

NATHAN LAW: Yes rubber bullets, bean bag guns and also guns for the teargas. There has not been like real guns, but I think rubber bullets aimed at people's heads are already lethal and we are very lucky that no one died at the scene, but it's pretty close to death.

LL: Galileo, I want you to tell us what happened to you when you were in Yuen Long last weekend.

GALILEO CHENG: Well actually I was there finishing the work then just go home for the rest because the protest was on the streets. And Saturday when I arrived at the station the train was stopped by a group of citizens. They're calling that the men assaulting every citizen everywhere in the Yuen Long. So we have no choice but immediately trying to find exit in the station. Then we witness all kinds of chaos and fights from the men using kind of wooden bats and weapons, umbrellas or even steel bars. And at one point we saw female journalist during the livestream she ran out of the gate. She was assaulted by one of those guys very aggressively attacking on her head. So I just can't stand it and so I jump up in the gate and trying to stop her and that's why I'm assaulted by three or five or seven or six guys. Yeah that's all I can remember.

LL: And what injuries did you suffer?

GALILEO CHENG: So the area around the nose and mouth is under severe care and I just removed the stitches. About seven stitches. My back and my shoulder got lots of bruises and some one at one point the skin was penetrated so I have to take antibiotics four times a day.

LL: Right. So you had some cuts that required stitches and bruising on top of that. Galileo I'm wondering what do you think about the way police responded to the attacks?

GALILEO CHENG: Well it was quite unimaginabe because I get off to at 10:44 P.M. and until I left at 12:20 or something there's no police arrive. I know that they only arrived after I left. So that's about 12:30. You will notice that the event started at about 10:00 p.m. so there's about two and a half hours of police empty time inside the Yuen Long station.

LL: OK. So you say they didn't show up. And I'm wondering Nathan Law, you know about what happened there last week, even though you weren't there. A video later surfaced showing police speaking to two men in those white shirts and masks and holding sticks and the police patted one on the shoulder and walked off. Nathan Law, I'm wondering what you think of these attacks and the way you see the Hong Kong police.

NATHAN LAW: Well these attacks were definitely an example of the collusion between the government and at these Triad gangsters because while starting from 2013, we've witnessed a trace of this kind of collaboration. Dirty works that the government wanted to attack the protesters or tried to structure them were normally not conducted by the police, but by these Triad gangsters us. And I think the same rational applies on this such a horrible attack on ordinary citizens and the government just wanted to create fear among people so that they could create a scene of Hong Kong in a situation out of order and chaotic and tried to blame the protesters creating that scene.

LL: But at the same time the government denies that they had any role in these actions by these men who may suspected of being part of Triads and they are saying that the protesters are being somewhat organized or there's some behind the scenes collusion with Western influences. What do you say to that?

NATHAN LAW: Well there have been many incidents showing that the police were intentionally avoid to arrive to the scene in order to control everything. If you look at when that incident took place when those gangsters rushed into the entire station, which I think it was around 10:00 p.m, it took 40 to 60 Minutes for the police to arrive and that's absurdly long. And given that there were so many attacks and so many people injured.

LL: But what do you say to the suggestion though by the government in China, mainland China, that there are Western influences at work within your group, within your protest movement.

NATHAN LAW: Well it is very ridiculous that every time Hong Kong has a protest that the Chinese side will accuse that we are funded or supported by foreign forces. The truth is I'm not supported by foreign forces. I'm not subsidized or in any way is being paid to do anything like that. And I do believe that every single people, every single Hong Kong citizen coming out, they come out because they care about the city. They want political reform and their basic human rights. So I think it is absurd that they always stigmatize our movement. And I think the world, the international media could clearly see that the spirit of Hong Kong people and they're not manipulated by any foreign forces.

LL: Galileo Cheng I'm wondering how optimistic are you that Hong Kong residents will trust their government.

GALILEO CHENG: I would say the common sense among the citizens that I've been talking to except my mom anyway, has those confidence of this government for quite a few years. After takes office in 2012 and he has to carry out all kinds of oppression or passive tactics over the protestors or those who want to raise concern about the government using as Nathan spoke about using Triads. Using the Internet in this regard to do their job. And as you may remember what happened like five years ago in Macau the Triads attacking the common citizens. So most I have spoken to they just lost confidence many, many years ago. So it's all about how the citizens trying to save themselves and raised concerns to the international media and to the international scene rather than relying on the central government or the Hong Kong government to improvise themselves. Some of them may have the idea of trusting caravans at first, like some parties in the full Democratic, but after this incident since April, I guess no one the patience to wait for the government to take any action anymore. They were just trying to do everything because they want to save Hong Kong ourselves.

LL: Nathan Law, just last question to you briefly. What will it take for you and other protesters to stand down from more demonstrations?

NATHAN LAW: Well I think that government has to respond to the demands of the people like political reform and investigative body to look into the police brutality and retreat the proposal immediately.

LL: We will leave it there. I thank you both very much.

GALILEO CHENG: Thanks very much.

NATHAN LAW: Thank you very much.

LL: Nathan Law is the founding chair of the pro-democracy group Demosisto. Galileo Cheng works with the Catholic Diocese of Hong Kong and both were in Hong Kong. And we did request an interview with Carrie Lam who is Hong Kong's chief executive or anyone in her office. We haven't heard back. We also reached out to the Embassy of China and Canada and the embassy directed us to two press conferences from last week conducted by foreign ministry spokesperson Hoa Chunying on July the 23rd. She is quoted as saying in part, "what happened in Hong Kong recently I've had nothing to do with the freedom of speech and assembly. It is radical and violent behaviours that violate law. We support the police in punishing the perpetrators of such illegal violence to safeguard social stability in Hong Kong." Well police have now arrested about a dozen people for last week's Yuen Long attack, but questions remain about who the attackers were and what if any links they had to the police or government officials in Hong Kong or Beijing. And those questions are leading to even bigger questions about the future of the government's relationship with its citizens. For more on that I'm joined by journalist Louisa Lim. She's a former China correspondent for the BBC and NPR and she's a senior lecturer at the Center for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne in Australia. And she is in Melbourne. Hello.

LOUISA LIM: Hello.

LL: I'm wondering what you were thinking as you listened to Nathan Law and Galileo Cheng.

LOUISA LIM: I think the protesters in Hong Kong have this sort of remarkable unity of purpose. Much of what they said is what they have been saying really for eight weeks now. This is primarily a political problem that requires a political solution, but what we've really seen has been that the Hong Kong government has refused to respond. And although the chief executive Carrie Lam promised that she would be more open minded, that she would speak to the people, there's really been no attempt at dialogue with the protesters in any way and that's really fuelling the anger.

LL: Now one of the new things that happened and what we've been talking about is this use of apparent Triads to beat people. It'shappened that Yuen Long station last weekend. How much evidence is there that those attackers had ties to the police or even the government?

LOUISA LIM: Well I mean we really only see, we see circumstantial evidence as you talked about in the videos that we've seen, but there have also in recent days there have been some other signs that have emerged. So actually one of Beijing's men in Hong Kong actually spoke at a community banquet in the New Territories on July the 11th and he addressed a crowd there and he told the residents that you know they shouldn't allow protesters to come and make trouble and that they should chase them away. They should have persistence and courage to protect their homes. So that sounds a lot. Like in the context of what's been happening that sounds like a lot like encouragement and we've also seen some quite high profile pro Beijing figures who have public events set similar kinds of things. This one very controversial legislator solicitor called Junius Ho. And on the night of the attacks he was seen in Yuen Long and he was actually seen shaking hands with these guys in white shirts and telling them you're my hero. And since then his office has been defaced and he said of course that he didn't know these protesters, that he just happened to be in the area. But you know Hong Kong is a very networked place. Everybody is online always and everybody knew what was happening that night in Yuen Long. You could watch it you know on all these live streams as it was unfolding. So those kind of denials are quite hard to believe.

LL: Is there any precedent for governments in mainland China hiring thugs or gang members to coerce or control residents?

LOUISA LIM: Well on the mainland it's really quite a common way that local governments might use if they want to sort of push through some unpopular measure and if they want to kind of divorce themselves from that. So thugs are often used when it comes to cases of land expropriation. So sort of kicking rural residents off their land or forced demolition, knocking down houses where people are refusing to leave. In those kind of cases local governments do quite often use thugs. In Hong Kong, as your earlier guest said, there has been precedent, particularly in 2014 during the Umbrella Movement, but we've never really seen a case like Yuen Long. It was so blatant, so organized. That they were all wearing white shirts. They were all masked. They were all carrying you know the same weapons, which were either long bamboo sticks or metal rods. So it's a kind of new level I would say of sort of violence in Hong Kong.

LL: You've heard some a little bit of the view from China on all of this in the statements they provided to us, including their contention that there are Western interests involved. What do you make of what they're saying?

LOUISA LIM: Well this has been the line all along and it's you know it's really a line out of the Tiananmen playbook that trouble is caused by hostile foreign forces stirring up unrest. In the case of Hong Kong, to make this kind of argument really ignores the basic demands that people are asking for.

LL: Well then so the next is the crystal ball question, Louisa. What do you think is going to happen in the days and weeks to come?

LOUISA LIM: It's very hard to know what's going to happen next. I mean every week we seem to see this terrible ratcheting up of violence. So it's becoming like a weekend insurgency with running battles in the street, although the violence is mainly from police to protesters or Triad gangs to protesters. I think what's interesting is what wasn't said in that press conference in Beijing by the Hong Kong and Macau Affairs office. We have seen a very hard line coming out of some of the pro-Beijing newspapers particularly on the mainland. These kind of warnings that under the Basic Law the Chinese army, the PLA could be deployed in Hong Kong. And that wasn't mentioned in the press conference. But the fact is that there were no new ideas that were mentioned. There were really no solutions. The spokesman for the Hong Kong and Macau office said the local government should do more to work on economic issues, but again you know it's a political problem and until the Hong Kong government starts to address those political demands it's very hard to see any solution in sight.

LL: Alright. We will have to leave it there Louisa. Thank you very much.

LOUISA LIM: Thank you.

LL: Louisa Lim is a former China correspondent for the BBC and NPR and she's a senior lecturer at the Center for Advancing Journalism at the University of Melbourne in Australia. She's also the author of The People's Republic of Amnesia: Tiananmen Revisited. She was in Melbourne.

Someone Knows Something: Season 5, Episode 1

[Music: Theme]

LL: This summer we've been taking the opportunity to play some of the best of CBC podcasts. For you today, we're bringing you the latest season of the cold case podcast, Someone Knows Something. In the fall of 1986, 15-year-old Kerrie Brown disappeared from a house party. Her body was discovered less than 40 hours later in a wooded area outside of town. In this episode, David Ridgen travels to Thompson, a mining town in northern Manitoba. Together with Kerri's older brother Trevor, David speaks to witnesses as well as suspects and uncovers some shocking new evidence that may help move the case forward. From last October, here is Episode 1: Ravens.

SOUNDCLIP

[Music]

TREVOR BROWN: Yeah. This has destroyed my dad. It destroyed our family. It just did. Someone could have just dropped a nuclear bomb on us. It wouldn't have it any worse.

DAVID RIDGEN: And your mother, how did it

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

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

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

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

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

DR: No...it is incredible.

DR: It would stick out.

DR: Yeah.

DR: Forward to July 2017…

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

[Sound: A GPS issues directions]

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

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

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

TB: Dave?

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

TB: What do you have with you, brother?

TB: Yeah, eh?

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

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

JIM BROWN : Yep.

JB: Yeah, I'll be right down.

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

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

JB: Mr. Ridgen, how are ya?

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

JB: Yep.

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

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

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

TB: A wedding or something?

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

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

TB: Oh, okay.

DR: Yeah. So tell me about your vision.

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

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

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

DR: No.

DR: Oh.

DR: I saw that coming in.

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

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

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

DR: Oh, ok.

JB: Mainly nickel, but a bit of everything.

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

DR: No.

DR: Tell me about Kerrie.

TB: Bullies. She hated bullies.

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

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

TB: My jackets.

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

DR: Yep. Oh yeah.

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

[Sound: DR walking up to Doug' house and knocking on Doug's door. A dog barks as the door opens]

DOUG KROKUSCZ: Hey, come on in.

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

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

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

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

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

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

DK: No. One at a time.

DK: One at a time.

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

DR:No, no. I don’t have expectations.

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

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

DR: Well, it's nice to have…

DR: Really?

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

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

TB: I lost all our photo albums.

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

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

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

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

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

JB: I have no idea. No.

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

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

JB: Yeah.

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

JB: Not particularly, no.

JB: Oh no. No, not at all.

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

TB: I was with you, Dad.

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

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

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

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

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

DR: Yeah.

DR: I’ll sit here is that okay?

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

DR: So why did you move to Sudbury?

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

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

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

DR: Can you tell me anything about the party?

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

DR: Including you and Kerrie and the rest?

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

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

DR: Or like slurring speech ...

DR: or out of control in any way?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

NZ: Hi.

NZ: I am. Yeah.

[Sound: Car door closes]

NZ: Harley.

NZ: Harley!!!

NZ: He probably wouldn't.

NZ: No. He's never bitten anybody.

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

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

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

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

NZ: Yup. Everything is squared away.

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

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

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

NZ: I called her Kerrie.

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

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

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

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

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

38:12.500

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

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

DR: Your ex-boyfriend.

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

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

NZ: She was standing there.

NZ: She saw me arguing with him.

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

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

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

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

DR: Right away. The next day.

DR: On the Friday.

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

NZ: No. I'm pretty tough.

NZ: I got four really good life preservers.

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

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

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

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

TB: I see a pig. Hi. Hi pigs. Hi Piglets. Oh guys. No this way.

JB: One thing that bothers me is the time frame between Kerrie and Nikki. They're both going together somewhere leaving that party. Nicole went back in the house. Apparently what I understood was to get her purse and for her to disappear, get out the door and completely disappear, that's the time frame that bothers me. When she came out Kerrie was completely disappeared. I mean I drove over around there. I'm not good with streets or anything, but I went round and round there and from that house you could see quite a bit both ways the way the street run and I can't see how she could disappear unless somebody just grabbed her into a vehicle and took off. That's just my opinion, but like I said I can't see her disappearing that quick. That's bothered me quite a bit. When somebody says I know how you feel, they don't know how you feel until it happens to you. My psychiatrists, psychologists, whoever the hell she was at the hospital, she said to me I know just how you feel. My granddad died 82-years-old in his sleep. I mean compare that with a little girl getting her head beat in, raped and scared to death, that's what bothers me the most is that she was scared. She had to be scared because she's the only one there and there's not one person to help her. And I blame myself. I never trained her to do anything out on the street. Kerrie was always with somebody and for her, one time in her life to be alone and she got hurt. My wife was sick all the time long before that happened and I was giving most of my attention to her. I should have given it to Kerrie. The one time when she needed me, I wasn't there.

DR: Kerrie was found on the other side of the Burntwood River just off Mystery Lake Road on the outskirts of Thompson. How did she get there? I know Trevor wants to take me to the spot. He goes there once a year each October. And what happened that night after she left Doug's house? The raw ghosts of the fall of 1986 haunt every moment of every interview and it's draining for everyone. But for now, enough questions. I say goodbye to Jim and Trevor for the night and head for my hotel on the other side of town. I need to meet with the RCMP to see if they'll share anything new about their investigation. Why did Kerrie's case become as they say, the biggest in Manitoba history. In the hotel parking lot I get out of my truck and carrying my gear and luggage just before entering the building, a single raven's feather falls at my feet. There's a breezeway roof overhead, so I'm not sure where the feathers come from, but I hope it helps.

[Music]

LL: We've been listening to the CBC podcast, Someone Knows Something. It's hosted, written and produced by David Ridgen. We'll hear more of the podcast throughout this week. I'm Laura Lynch. Thanks for listening to the summer edition of The Current.

The Current Transcript for July 29, 2019

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