Canadian True Crime - 39 Giant Mine Murders

Episode Date: February 1, 2019

Yellowknife, NWT A labour union strike at a gold mine escalates over time, turning bitter and violent, eventually leading to a tragic incident.Support my sponsors! Here's where the discount codes are:www.canadiantruecrime.ca/sponsorsLearn more:Music producer from Australia: SoularflairJoin my patreon for $2 a month to get ad-free, early-release episodes: www.patreon.com/canadiantruecrime Credits:Research: Enya BestWriting, narration, music arrangement: Kristi LeeAudio production: Erik KrosbyDisclaimer voiced by the host of Beyond Bizarre True CrimeMusic Credits:Podcast intro theme music created by We Talk of Dreams.Music for the rest of this episode by SoularflairAll other credits and information sources can be found on the page for this episode at www.canadiantruecrime.ca/episodes.Support the show. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

My name's John Weir. You don't know me, but you're gonna, because I know the people that have been watching you, learning about you. They know you've done well for yourself, that people like you and trust you. Trust you. Now imagine what they're gonna do with all that information that you've freely shared with the whole world. Now imagine what they're gonna do with all the information you have at it. Yeah, I'll be in touch. Radical starring Kiefer Sutherland, new series now streaming exclusively on Paramount Plus. I didn't see myself as a Black hockey player. I saw myself as a hockey player.

My name is Dean Barnes. I've collected hockey cards since I was 8 years old, and I recently completed a 100 plus card collection of all the Black and biracial players who made it to the NHL. When you're on a hockey card, it's pretty cool. I'm going to talk to all the players in the collection. We are proudly working with eBay to amplify these important stories. So, find my hockey hero wherever you get your podcasts. The Northwest Territories is the area of Canada north of the provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta and part of British Columbia. To the east lies Nunavut. To the west is the Yukon. The Northwest Territories covers a massive space and is known for its rugged yet beautiful terrain, perfect for those seeking adventure. It's an ideal vantage point to see the northern lights in autumn and winter.

There's Great Slave Lake, the deepest lake in North America, as well as national parks and reserves with awe-inspiring scenery and landscapes. For all its expanse, the Northwest Territories has just 44,000 residents in total, and just under half of those live in its capital city, Yellowknife. Because of there being so many bodies of water in and around Yellowknife, the area is known for having a large mosquito problem. In fact, there are such pests that weather reports are frequently accompanied by mosquito reports. If you ever go there, bring your bug spray. Yellowknife was named after a local Dene tribe that's a tribe of First Nations who inhabit the northern Arctic regions of Canada, now referred to locally as the Yellowknife's Dene First Nation. Another thing Yellowknife is known for is gold. It is said to have been literally built on gold, the gold mining industry, to be exact.

In the 1930s and 1940s, gold mines began opening around Yellowknife Bay on Great Slave Lake, about 400 kilometres south of the Arctic Circle. There are two gold mines just outside of Yellowknife, one called Konmine and the other called Giant Mine. Located about 5 kilometres outside the town of Yellowknife, Giant Mine has been owned by several different companies over the years. One company owned the mine from 1948 to 1986. In the beginning, they were getting a great yield of gold from the ore, or raw mineral, that was mined and processed, almost an ounce of gold from every ton of ore. But by the late 1980s, they were only getting about a quarter of that. In 1988, they gave up and sold the mine to another company. Two years later, the situation worsened by the falling price of gold.

It was becoming more expensive to mine it than it would sell for. And Giant Mine itself was aging and not doing that well financially. But this wasn't a deterrent for Margaret Peggy Witt, a mining executive from Kirkland, Washington in the US. Peggy was only in her late 30s, but was known for being ambitious, ruthless and not afraid to make tough decisions that others would balk at. She decided that she could make Giant Mine profitable again. Peggy's company, Royal Oak Ventures, purchased the mine in 1990, with the intention of implementing drastic cost-cutting measures to improve profitability. But what ended up happening there would spark one of the largest murder investigations in RCMP history, with a fallout that would continue for decades. This is Christy, and you're listening to Canadian True Crime, Episode 39.

When Peggy Witt and her company took up Giant Mine, it was a good time to be a gold miner. The average worker at Giant was pulling in $77,000 a year, and this was in the early 90s. Today's money is calculated to be over $122,000 a year, and that was just base hours. Miners who were clocking overtime were making upwards of $100,000 a year, or almost $160,000 in today's money. But Peggy needed to improve her bottom line, so she didn't waste any time making changes. Because the price of gold was declining, she suggested pay cuts to the miners. This was shut down by the Union, the Canadian Association of Smelter and Allied Workers. Labour unions like this are organised groups of workers who come together to make decisions about their working conditions,

like wages, the hours they'll work, workplace health and safety, benefits, and more. They use the concept of strength in numbers to ensure that they are treated fairly. In theory, Labour unions provide a way to balance the power between employers and employees in a cooperative and collaborative way. But in practice, the relationship between the Union and the employer is complex and frequently tense, sometimes resulting in a workplace that is hostile and combative. In this case, the Union that Peggy was dealing with was upset by her ruthless tactics and made it known that she wasn't making any friends. Feeling frustrated, Peggy wanted to prove a point.

She would show her shareholders that she would make the mine profitable. She wasn't someone to be messed with. Within the first year, she axed 13 people from the mine, several of them Union activists. It seemed like the decision was completely arbitrary and relations between management and employees got worse as a result. When Peggy announced again that she was going to initiate pay cuts, it was the last straw for the Union. They had grave concerns that safety in the mine was being compromised because of Peggy's pursuit of profit. In fact, the government of the Northwest Territories noted in a memo that the site was not secure and that there were considerable concerns about the health and safety of the workers down there.

Enough was enough. The Union employees decided they were going to refuse to work in the mine until Peggy backed down. They planned a strike. But Peggy got wind of the intended strike and pounced first. On May 22, 1992, the day before the strike was supposed to begin, she locked out the Union. A lockout is the reverse of a strike when the employer won't allow Union employees to work until they accept the proposed terms of employment. In this case, obviously Peggy wanted to force lower wages on the unionized employees, only allowing them to come back to work when they had accepted her proposal and backed down.

Lockouts are usually implemented by simply refusing to admit employees onto company premises. They might change the locks, hire security guards for the premises, or both. Peggy did both. The lockout was one thing, but the situation was made exponentially worse when Peggy broke an unwritten labour rule in Canada. The next day, she flew in about 100 workers from across Canada to replace those who were striking. Strike breakers. Although this tactic was illegal in a handful of provinces, strike breakers were allowed under the federal labour laws that governed the Northwest Territories. The replacement workers were airlifted by helicopter over the picket lines and onto the mine site, where they were housed and fed in temporary shelters.

These tactics only served to undercut the strike and enraged the Union members. They angrily spoke out about the scabs, a commonly used word to describe workers who break the unwritten rule that you don't cross a picket line. Bill Scram, a Union leader at the time, said quote, When somebody scabs you, it's worse than being robbed in the street. They rob your family, they steal the food off your table, take the roof over your head. They're thieves of the worst kind. The striking miners saw this as a mammoth betrayal. They hurled insults at the replacement workers from the entrance gates and harassed them with air horns at night to keep them from getting sleep.

The replacement workers themselves were more pragmatic. One of them, who had been flown in from Toronto, said quote, There's a long welfare line and you don't turn down $16 an hour when you're unemployed. Peggy would say that her primary responsibility was to her shareholders to keep the mine operating no matter what. The striking miners also reacted angrily to the security guards hired to keep the Union out, fueling their determination to continue to strike until the company offered a new arrangement that met their demands. They set up picket lines at entrances to the mine site, along with Union signs that mocked mine managers and called Peggy Miss Piggy. Early on in the strike, they hurled rocks at mine buildings, assaulted a security guard, burned down a shack and knocked down a power pole that delivered electricity to the mine.

In response, Royal Oak flew in private security guards from Pinkerton's, an iconic private security guard company in the U.S. that had a proven reputation of successfully ending coal mine strikes through brute force. These guards tried to physically intimidate the strikers and increased the tension even more. The RCMP responded by bringing in a riot squad from Edmonton. The next month, June of 1992, a mob of strikers wearing balaclava stormed the mine property, breaking windows and assaulting the Pinkerton guards until the RCMP ended it with the firing of warning gunshots. Thirty people were charged and Royal Oak dismissed about 40 striking miners who participated. The government of the Northwest Territories had run out of options, so they pleaded with the federal government in Ottawa to put an end to the violence by forcing an agreement on the two parties.

But the government refused to intervene, calling the whole thing a private dispute. Things continued to escalate over the summer of 1992. Yellowknife was a small town, and the ongoing dispute caused a lot of strife and anxiety in the community. Residents were divided against each other. A handful of union members had made a painful decision to cross the picket line and go back to work, joining the SCAB replacement workers. Even mining families that had once been friends and on the same side were now at odds. 29-year-old Chris Neal was one man who went back to work. He described it as like crossing the front line of a war zone.

He felt so threatened by his decision that he installed security devices all over his house, effectively turning it into a fortress. But this didn't make a lot of difference to his sense of comfort, because every time he heard the faintest noise in his house, he immediately assumed it was someone trying to attack him for his decision. Striking posters with profanities littered the route along the highway to the mine. A Miss Piggy doll dressed in underwear was mounted on a stake, with a noose around her neck, head dangling down. Both sides screamed insults and vulgarities across the gate at the mine entrance. A small group of the most radical union members formed what they called the Cambodian Cowboys. They began sneaking across the picket line at night, attempting to sabotage the operation and harassing the Pinkerton security guards. One night, three of them went into the mine and graffitied the walls and machinery with anti-scab messages.

Two of the most militant members of the Cambodian Cowboys were Al Shearing, nicknamed the Nightcrawler, and Tim Betger, nicknamed the Bear because of his large size and bushy beard. In July of 1992, Tim used a stick of high explosives to try and tip over the mine's huge satellite dish. He ended up blowing a hole in it, and a month after that, both men set off a larger set of explosives near the equipment that pumped air into the mine's ventilation shafts. These incidents were intended as a warning to Royal Oak. The strikers could shut down the entire mine at any moment if they wanted to. In fact, a member of Royal Oak Management said it was known that the Cowboys were always talking about blowing up the mine. On the morning of September 18, 1992, at the height of the labour dispute, it happened. There was a large explosion deep inside the mine, sending shock waves through the mine and the general area. It didn't take long to establish that it was a bomb that had been set off 750 feet, imagine the height, of a 75-story building, under the ground.

Yellowknife Hospital was on standby for casualties, but none came. CBC reporter Eric Sorensen reported from the site. The explosion around 8.45 this morning in a transportation corridor more than 200 metres underground. A small rail car was taking several miners to a work area when the blast occurred. Everyone in the area was killed. The cart was carrying nine miners. Six of them had crossed the picket line to go back to work, some straight away, and others after a few weeks. One of the miners was 29-year-old Chris Neal, the man who secured up his house as a fortress. In the mine car with him were fellow original miners Joe Pandev, age 55, Norm Howry, age 53, David Vodnowski, age 25, Shane Riggs, age 27, and 36-year-old Vern Falulka. The other three miners in the cart were replacement workers who had been flown in from Ontario and Bathurst's New Brunswick,

Robert Rausel, age 37, Malcolm Soller, age 38, and 41-year-old Arnold Russell. All nine men were instantly killed in the powerful explosion. One miner nearby, Jim O'Neill, ran into the area desperately looking for his best friend, Chris Neal, and was confronted with the sight of human remains blasted around the tunnel, driving bits of flesh and bone deep into the hard rock ceiling. Jim O'Neill ended up with severe PTSD as a result of everything he'd seen. Everyone wondered what had happened and what caused this. Fresh on their mines was another mine explosion that had happened just a year beforehand, the Westray Mine Explosion in Nova Scotia. The blast was caused by a methane explosion and killed all 26 miners working underground at the time. An inquiry into the explosion concluded that it was caused by a number of safety-related factors related to poor decisions made by management.

But for this explosion at Giant Mine, happening right in the middle of a dramatic and violent labour dispute, everyone wondered if this was an act of sabotage. The Vice President of Royal Oak, John Smerck, addressed this to the media. I've attended the underground site myself where the explosion has taken place and I regret to inform you that there's been extensive damage and fatalities. The area in which the explosion took place is not an area at all where explosives normally are found. One man who was working at the mine heard the explosion and says he believes the blast was deliberate. Another who was working this morning agreed the explosion was no accident. What do you think happened? They put a bomb on the truck where the mad courier was taking the men into work.

A Union spokesperson was quick to shoot down claims that any of the striking miners were involved, but the RCMP immediately treated the case as a criminal investigation. The explosion happened on a transportation corridor where there shouldn't have been people and explosives at the same time. Anything contravening that was a breach of the rules under the Mine Safety Act, so it was unlikely to have been just an innocent mistake. The mine investigation team worked at the bomb site for six days looking for clues. They bagged up around 5,000 artefacts from the bomb site. The RCMP investigators had found a blasting cap and several other items that indicated the bomb had been set off intentionally. One important piece of evidence they found was a set of fresh footprints that were determined to be from size 11 chemique boots. The footprints were traced from an abandoned shaft into the mine, the route the police believed the person responsible had taken.

The RCMP began interviewing everyone at the mine, from the striking miners to the replacement workers that had been flown in to the mine management. Every person was asked for a personal history and an alibi and then about their routines in the mine. In the first few days after the blast, the list of murder suspects changed every hour. As for the status of the labour mine strike, the explosion made no difference. Royal Oak firmed up their resolve, saying they wouldn't discuss any possible negotiations until the people responsible for the blast had been arrested. After a week, mine inspection professionals declared that the mine was safe to reopen, but by this time, a foul smell had started to seep out of the site. A crew went down to the area where the blast happened and saw the flesh that had blown up into the cracks in the rock. But now, a blanket of white mould had started to grow. The site was horrific, described as a macabre undersea garden with fungus creeping down from the ceiling.

A memorial service for the nine miners was held on October 3, 1992, two weeks after the blast, at the Yellowknife community arena. The city of Yellowknife shut down for the memorial, with banks, stores and government offices closing so people could attend the service. Three thousand people filled the arena, noticeably missing were the men from the union and their wives who stayed away as they didn't want to cause drama at the memorial service. The investigation for the person or persons responsible for the blast and the nine miners who lost their lives was one of the biggest and most labour intensive in RCMP history, more than 300 police were involved. Very soon into the search, investigators turned their gaze to the Cambodian Cowboys, the radical subgroup of striking miners, particularly Al Shearing and Tim Bedgar. They had already committed acts of sabotage to involving explosives and had been heard saying they would blow up the mine. The police watched their every move for months, bugging their phones, cars and houses. They got nothing. Al and Tim were not impressed, saying that the RCMP had set their sights on the pair and weren't investigating anyone else.

They believed that the force wasn't conducting an honest investigation. But in reality, the RCMP weren't able to find much evidence pointing to any particular individual, but it wouldn't be long before someone new fell under their radar. The foreman of the giant mine, Noel O'Sullivan, had gone to the police with some interesting information. The morning of the blast, his mine superintendent had seen one of the striking miners in his car in an area of the mine site where he shouldn't have been and had no reason to be, close to the entrance that led to the blast site. The miner's name was Roger Warren. The 49-year-old married father of two was a striking miner, wasn't in the radical miner Cambodian Cowboys Group and had a long productive and honourable career in the mines. He was known as the ace for his skill at blasting and breaking rock in the mine and was considered a top tier member to have on any mining crew. Foreman Noel couldn't bring himself to think that Roger had actually set the bomb himself. He was well respected and earned good money. There was no reason for him to suddenly become a radical union activist who would commit a terrorist act like this. He just didn't seem like the type.

But perhaps Roger knew something about the people that were involved. The RCMP interviewed Roger, who told them that he'd seen two shadowy men on the mine property at 2am the morning of the explosion. And while he said he hadn't clearly seen the faces of either man, he thought one of them was a union striker named Conrad Listerway. The police soon got some more information. At 6am the morning of the explosion, almost three hours before it happened, a supervisor saw a man fitting Roger Warren's description. He was walking along an area close to the portal where the police determined that the person responsible for the explosion had accessed the mine. They'd also heard words from an elderly resident of Yellowknife that he'd seen Roger at a local coffee shop the morning of the blast, looking noticeably nervous and distracted. There was clearly more to Roger. A month after the explosion, Roger was asked to produce the clothes that he had on that night.

No trouble, he said. He laid them out for the police, a green ball cap with a logo blackened out, and the hood from a khaki jacket. He explained that he'd spilled gas on the jacket and left the rest of it outside for some fresh air, but someone stole it. Hence why he showed up with just the hood. Then he produced a pair of boots, a pair of size 11 kamik boots, the exact same shoes, size and brand that were determined to have made the fresh footprints leading out of the mine. This was huge. The officers took the boots back to the station where they were photographed and compared with the casts and photos of the footprints the RCMP had originally found. A comparison found they were similar, but the soul of Roger's boots also had numerous melt marks and cuts. But this was a month after the explosion, so this didn't necessarily rule the boots out. I didn't see myself as a black khaki player. I saw myself as a khaki player. My name is Dean Barnes. I've collected hockey cards since I was eight years old, and I recently completed a 100 plus card collection of all the black and biracial players who made it to the NHL. When you're on a hockey card, it's pretty cool.

I'm going to talk to all the players in the collection. We are proudly working with eBay to amplify these important stories. So find my hockey hero wherever you get your podcasts. Do you have a passion project that you're ready to take to the next level? Squarespace makes it easy for anyone to create an engaging web presence, grow a brand and sell anything from your products to the content you create and even your time. When I launched this passion project six years ago, I needed some kind of online hub to manage all the non-podcasting tasks that come with podcasting. I chose Squarespace because it's an all-in-one platform that seamlessly helps me achieve multiple goals. It's important to have a website that looks good, and I was inspired by Squarespace's wide selection of clean and modern templates. They can be easily customized with pre-built layouts and flexible design tools to fit your needs, and you can even browse the category of your business to see examples of what others have done. I use the built-in blogging tools to create a new page for each episode, and there are so many intuitive options from embedding an audio player so listeners can stream episodes to scheduling posts to be published on a certain date,

an easily moderated comment section and automatically displaying recent episodes on the homepage. Every Squarespace website and online store includes SEO tools to help you maximize your visibility in search engines, and I love the powerful insights I can get from the analytics tools, helping me better understand who's visiting the site, where they came from and how they're interacting with it. Do you have a passion project or business idea or something to sell? Go to squarespace.com.ctc for a free trial, and when you're ready to launch, use offer code CTC to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com.ctc with offer code CTC, and get your passion project off the ground today. So, who was Roger Warren? He was born on December 17th, 1943, and was one of five children from Assault of the Earth working-class family in Milton, Ontario, just northwest of Toronto.

As a child, Roger was good at sports and played junior B hockey in the New York Rangers farm system, designed to train up the next generation of pro hockey players. He didn't end up making it and got lost somewhere along the way, involving himself in petty crime and even stealing a car, a crime that sent him to prison at one point. In the 1960s, he settled down and started working in the mines, first two in Ontario and then four in Manitoba. He met his wife, Helen, in 1968, and they married two years later, before having two daughters in quick succession, Patty and Anne. Roger was said to have spoiled his two daughters, showering them with gifts and attention. At the time of the explosion, 21-year-old Patty worked as a hotel administrator in Peace River, Alberta. 20-year-old Anne still lived with her parents in Yellowknife and worked as a secretary in the government, same as her mother Helen. In a book written on the case, called The Third Suspect, The Inside Story of the Hunt for Yellowknife's Mass Murderer, authors David Staples, Greg Owens and Gray Owens describe how Roger was known as a problem solver.

He was an expert rock blaster and would plot ahead exactly what he was going to do at work the next day. He loved to calculate how much rock he'd broken. He was also a highly regarded mechanic, being known for getting locals out of a bind in the snow by fixing their snowmobiles. As far as the mine went, Roger was known as a man who had strong opinions and didn't mind talking about them. He had previously spoken to a reporter from McLean's magazine while he was out picketing one night. They reported that he spoke bitterly about Royal Oak's decision to hire replacement workers. He also told the reporter that the man he called Scabs would certainly be victims of retaliation if they worked at other mines once the strike was over. Roger clearly had an axe to grind.

He was contacted to see if he would come in for a polygraph. Roger's wife Helen answered the phone and told them that Roger was in hospital because he thought he'd had a heart attack. It turned out that after his last interview, Roger said he felt a strong pain in his chest and also going up and down his arm. Tests concluded that Roger hadn't had a heart attack. He had an irregular heartbeat that was likely caused by anxiety. The doctor prescribed him with medications to help and released him a few days later. The police again asked him about the boots. Where did he get them from and why were they melted and marked? He said he'd bought them a few months beforehand and they got burnt one night when he was standing too close to a bonfire. He said he had to cut off the melted parts of the rubber sole and then decided to make the same cuts to the other boot for consistency.

When he was asked further questions about the boots, he became defensive. Why are you making such a big deal about my boots? He then went on to say, I just can't believe it is one of our guys. After a few weeks, Roger was again contacted by the RCMP, trying to convince him to take that polygraph. They told Roger that he was the best witness they had, but he had to understand that there was evidence, like the boots and the sightings of him that morning, that implicated him as a potential suspect. And the best way to clear this up was to take a polygraph test. They also assured him that some of the most radical union men had already taken the test and passed, so Roger had nothing to be afraid of. The officer slipped in that one of these men was Conrad Lissoway, the shadowy figure that Roger said he saw near the mine. Roger said he was open to taking the test, but he didn't think his health was up to par right now.

The RCMP did some research of their own and found out that his reactions might be slightly delayed because of the heart medication he was on, but he was still a viable candidate to take the test. While the investigation continued, so too did the labour strike. In this time, Peggy had put on a show of trying to negotiate with the union for the benefit of federal mediators and the Canada Labour Relations Board, but the talks were just that, a show. Always with her eye on the bottom line, Peggy was paying the replacement workers less than she had to pay the union workers who were now on strike, so she was actually saving money while the strike continued. She had no reason to put it to an end.

On December the 5th, two and a half months after the explosion, Roger Warren finally took the polygraph. The RCMP ensured that they read him his rights and made sure he understood that he was volunteering to take the test. The polygraph technician tried to make him feel comfortable, sitting with his feet flat on the floor, looking straight ahead and closing his eyes so he could concentrate on the questions. Roger denied any involvement in the explosion, and unfortunately his results didn't reveal much. One experienced RCMP officer looked at the results and said he'd never seen such a flat chart. It was clear that Roger didn't respond to stress the same way that others did, either that or he'd taken some extra medication before the test. The polygraph technician had noted that Roger's posture was fairly open, but he didn't make a lot of eye contact. When he was asked if he had any involvement in the explosion, the technician noted that his body went into a defensive posture.

The test was deemed inconclusive. Roger consented to taking another polygraph and again got the same inconclusive results. The RCMP were disappointed. They didn't know if Roger did it himself, but they strongly suspected he was at least involved or had some kind of knowledge about who was responsible. Meanwhile, Roger told them that he'd heard some more rumours that Conrad Lissoway, the shadowy person he thought he saw, was involved. To the RCMP, it seemed like Roger was always deflecting and blaming someone else. Months passed, with the RCMP firmly believing that they had the right suspect, but unable to find anything but circumstantial evidence to pin it on him. They tried to use every tactic they could to get information out of him, but nothing worked. In the meantime, an RCMP polygraph expert from Calgary, called Greg McMartin, had spent a lot of time going over Roger's polygraph results and transcripts of his previous police interviews.

He would say that they were, quote, riddled with the kind of verbal ticks and overly precise recollections that are common to people who were lying. Greg McMartin wanted to interview Roger. He had some questions of his own. In October of 1993, just over a year after the explosion, Roger agreed to come back for another interview. This time, Greg tried nudging him for hours to get him to give up more information. He tried an appeal to Roger's ego, telling him that he was sure there were a lot of striking miners who admired what he did. Roger sat up, quote, they admired it. Officer McMartin said yes and tried to nudge him for more information. At first, Roger tried to answer in hypotheticals, quote, I'm just saying that if anybody wiped out nine guys, anybody like me hypothetically wiped out nine guys.

I'm telling you right now, I wouldn't even be fucking around. I just go out and gas myself, something gentle so my wife wouldn't have to look at a mess. Officer McMartin told Roger to stop with the hypotheticals, quote, you're a man. I'm a man. We can sit and we can talk. What was going on up there? He told Roger that if he confessed, he might come out of the whole thing as a winner. He could avoid getting a life sentence and he would skip right past more investigation hardships. He said his confession might even end the strike or instigate legislation to stop the scabs. Roger took the bait, quote.

What it is I'm talking about is a guy can set something up underground whereby an orcar, hypothetically an orcar going by could get smashed against the wall. An orcar's got steel that thick. There's not going to be much happening with an orcar. McMartin clarified that the intention is that someone might get hurt, but they're not going to get killed. Roger agreed. A bunch of RCMP officers were watching the interview from the next room. They were super excited. He's right there. Take him. They set up a secondary recorder in case the first one failed. They saw a full confession coming and didn't want to take any chances. Back in the interview room, Officer McMartin got a picture of a man car for Roger to use to explain. Roger was clearly feeling comfortable now and made eye contact for the first time in all of his RCMP interviews.

He said that the investigators had been suggesting that fishing wire had been strung across the tracks, but they were wrong. Instead, he said a man could potentially set up a bomb and string the trip wire from the ground to the ceiling beside the tracks. He explained that this way, man car containing miners could pass the wire without tripping. However, an ore train, a series of carts containing the ore or mined rock, was different. These carts were designed to have what was called a dump wheel sticking out from the side on a hinge that dumps excess ore down the ore pass. In this situation, as the ore train passed the bomb wire running next to the tracks, the protruding dump arm would hit the trip wire and ignite the blast. Roger drew pictures of the scenario to explain how it was designed to work. He explained that the fact that a driver would have been driving an engine to push the ore cuts was taking into consideration.

The planning involved there being many ore cuts between the first one that tripped the blast and the engine at the back that was being driven by a driver. The driver would have been far back enough to survive the blast, Roger said. He went on to say that the mine had been rigged with one bag of explosives and about 30 sticks of powder. And the only way that the man car could have triggered the blast instead of an ore cart was if something was hanging out from the side. Roger was still talking in hypotheticals, but he knew and the RCMP knew what he was saying. He had not intended on killing anyone. He intended on proving a point by blowing up ore carts containing mineral instead of man carts containing miners. All he wanted to do was scare off the replacement workers and cause embarrassment for Royal Oak.

He was asked why he didn't just tell them earlier. Roger replied that it was out of fear. Quote, I felt horrible about the fucking guys, I still do, I can't barely sleep sometimes. He then dropped all mention of it being hypothetical. Quote, I was gonna go out to the mineshaft and really fuck that shaft up with nobody in it. Of course, but how you gonna do this shit by yourself? Who wants to involve somebody? I ruined my whole life. I ruined 120 or 140 guys that are left. They're fucked. What else can you do? As they went through a map for Roger to explain the route that he took, he said, quote, I figured, you know, with the car, the thing goes off.

The company is gonna be in a lot of shit. It's gonna be an unexplained explosion. Roger was again asked why he burned the boots and they established that he threw the boots he'd been wearing away, burning them in a rural area. He said he later cut up and burned the soles of his size 11 kameek boots because he was scared. He also threw his jacket out because it had mud on it. It didn't have gas spilled on it and it wasn't stolen, as he'd first stated. So the RCMP finally had a confession, but to strengthen it, they asked Roger to show them what he did in the mine and he did. He took them to the mine and showed them how he'd put the bomb together, setting up the sticks of explosives connected to the trip wire made of fishing line, waiting for one of those passing ore carts with a dump arm hanging off it. The whole thing was videoed and photographed. Here's some audio of that confession.

And you're stating that your furnishing plan was to damage the shaft. In what way were you gonna damage it? I was gonna put some couple one or two bags of powder in there and come back up the drift away probably with about three rolls of lead wire and blast it. So you were gonna blast them by hand on your own? Yeah, sabotage it. Right at the end, he led the officers to the pond out of town where he discarded his bag of supplies. Afterwards, Roger asked what was going to happen now and was told that they were waiting for the crown to lay the charges. He was officially arrested and charged with nine counts of second degree murder. As word spread about Roger's arrest, people who knew him couldn't believe it.

Tracy Neal, the widow of Chris Neal, the miner who enhanced the security in his house, said quote, I was hoping the suspect would be someone we didn't know. A fellow striking miner called Terry Legg said quote, I've known Roger for 15 years. It doesn't fit his personality. He's got too much respect for life. The police then announced they had also arrested Al Shearing and Tim Betka, two of the Radical Union subgroup who called themselves the Cambodian Cowboys. They'd been arrested for their acts of sabotage during the strike, leading up to the explosion. The CASAW Union issued a press release saying it was deeply shocked that some of its union members had been charged. Meantime, the Union had complained to the Canada Labor Relations Board about Royal Oak's negotiating tactics during the strike,

specifically the sham negotiations that Peggy made a show of and the fact that they refused to talk any further until a suspect had been arrested for the explosion. Hearings were held in Yellowknife in November 1993, a month after Roger's confession. The Board heard testimony from both sides of the argument and then made its decision. Royal Oak had indeed failed to bargain in good faith. After 18 months of violent and bitter strike, the Board ordered an end to it, finally. It asked Royal Oak to put forward the same agreement they had tabled just before the strike started, the one that had been rejected by the Union. There were four small items that Royal Oak had changed its position on, but the contract was virtually the same. The mine and the Union were given 30 days to settle the issues, and if this didn't happen, then the Board would impose compulsory mediation.

By this point, everyone just wanted it over, so 96% of the Union voted to accept the agreement. In the book written on the case, the third suspect, the inside story of the hunt for Yellowknife's mass murderer, the authors describe how Roger Warren felt glorious when the Canada Relations Board ended the strike. That was the whole reason that he'd done any of this, including his confession, to take one for the team and spark the end to the strike so his friends could go back to work. He believed that he'd succeeded, it was his confession that did it, but soon afterwards, he decided to get word out to his Union friends that the confession was false. He only confessed to end the strike, he wasn't responsible for the blast and he wasn't the murderer, and many of his mining colleagues believed him. A groundswell of Union people declared they stood behind Roger's claim of innocence. He didn't do it, he just wanted to end the strike. Roger's trial started in September of 1994. He pleaded not guilty to nine counts of first degree murder.

Because he had given a taped confession and a videotaped tour and description of what he did, the Crown didn't have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Roger was guilty. It was up to the defence to give the jury reasonable doubt that the confessions were false. Only then could they consider Roger's claims that he hadn't committed the murders. That was the key to getting the jury to vote not guilty. Many family members of the nine miners who died attended every day of the trial. On most days though, every second chair in the courtroom was empty. But when word got out that Roger's reenactment confession video was going to be played, more people showed up. Four TVs were positioned so everyone could see. The video held everyone's full attention as it showed Roger leading the RCMP officers into the shaft, showing them where he got his explosives and then at the blast site as he kneeled and mimicked the construction of the bomb. Many attended who believed the new narrative that Roger was innocent. But when this video was played, the media described their reactions as suddenly and clearly realising that Roger was most likely guilty. Roger took to the stand in his own defence, saying that he'd been having heart trouble and the medication had left him listless and impotent. He said that at the time he'd also found a growth in his groin which he strongly believed was likely to be cancer.

He mentioned that Royal Oak owner Peggy Witt had said publicly that she would not negotiate until someone was charged with the murders and Roger said after this, voices in his head started urging him to sacrifice himself so his friends could go back to work. And so he did. Things did not go so well under cross-examination. As the crown went through his statements pointing out the lies, Roger stumbled over his answers. He was left with very little credibility. On January 20th 1995, word came that the jury had its verdict. They found Roger Warren not guilty of first degree murder, but guilty of second degree murder. Roger was convicted of nine counts of second degree murder and sentenced to life in jail with no parole for 20 years. Later that year, Al Shearing and Tim Betger pleaded guilty to their acts of sabotage. Al was sentenced to two and a half years in prison. Tim was sentenced to three years in prison. He received an extra six months for his individual attempt to blow up the television satellite dish. He spoke to the media after his sentencing saying, quote, there was an unreal environment at the time. Normal avenues to end the dispute were coming to nothing. Everything was tilted. None of the rules of the world seemed to apply any longer. The fact that I descended to the company's level only contributes to my shame. For what it's worth, I want to apologize to my family. Tim did say that union members felt provoked into the labor dispute by management and its blatant disregard for safety standards, and then by bringing in union busters and thugs, likely referring to the replacement workers and security guards.

Tim said that at one point during the strike, an RCMP officer showed him his gun and then offered to use it on him. Quote, when the guys you are supposed to complain to are the bad guys, who do you complain to? Tim went on to talk about Roger Warren, quote, despite our forced removal from the intimacy of our friends and families, Al and I have resolved to continue the fight for justice for Roger Warren and whatever manner we are allowed. To that end, we are intending to aid Roger's lawyer in any way at our disposal. Roger Warren continued to proclaim his innocence after he was jailed, and many continue to believe him. In 1997, he tried to appeal his conviction, but wasn't successful. In 1998, he sat down for a jailhouse interview with CBC reporter Lee Selick. 1993 was when you initially confessed to this crime, and then during the trial you said that you hadn't done it. So which is the true story? The latter is the real story. The original was an attempt to, I guess in my mind, at the time to get the strike over with. And I think it was helped along a little bit by a slight touch of either mental illness or depression or whatever. I mean, I can't even explain it to myself, but, and it was almost like an obsession or a fascination with this, the whole thing. Looking back at it now, how do you feel about that decision? Well, I mean, a couple hundred people got their jobs back, but here I am. It was, I definitely wasn't in a rational state of mind. There's no question about it.

I think if you see films of some of that reenactment there, you can, my sister-in-law remarked on it herself, and I mean, she's only a nurse, but she said there's a sign of somebody that's seriously depressed. I mean, I don't think I actually ever actually sat down and said, well, I'm going to deceive the police here, you know, and make a false confession. I don't think I, I think that was a nondespot decision. A book was written on the case that was supportive of Roger Warren, and McClain's magazine published an article on the 10 year anniversary of the explosion, titled, 10 years later is the right man in jail. The publication spoke to many experts, including polygraph experts and those who specialize in false confessions. Everyone seemed to have different opinions about whether Roger was innocent or guilty. McClain spoke to Roger himself in jail and asked him how he responds to the widows of eight of the men killed in the blast. He was observed to have paused for about 10 seconds, shifting uncontrollably in his seat, before replying that nothing he said could ever be adequate and that nobody wants to suffer that kind of loss. He then crossed his arms, quote, I didn't have nothing to do with killing their husbands. That's all I can say. The association in defense of the wrongly convicted, the legal group behind several high profile overturned verdicts similar to the innocence project, also looked at Roger's case, but ultimately they decided not to pursue it.

Doreen Howry, whose husband Norm was killed in the blast, had sat through the entire trial. She spoke to the media saying she didn't know how anyone can doubt that Roger was a murderer, and she was frustrated, quote, Nobody is writing the story about these men, our husbands, who paid this ultimate price. People are so worried that Roger was wrongfully convicted, my husband was wrongfully killed. The following year, 2003, there was a huge revelation. Roger had been seeing a clinical psychologist and had decided to confess again, this time for real. He said that he hoped to atone in some way and wanted the families of the nine miners who died to know that their loved ones were not targets of hate, but unfortunate victims of a, quote, reckless act by me. He wrote a letter to his lawyers, calling the bombing an ill-advised act. The Edmonton Journal went to Manitoba's Stony Mountain Prison, where Roger was living out his sentence, and asked him how he felt after this next confession, quote, It's a relief to be able to say you're the guy, there are no mysteries here. Roger Warren continued to live out his sentence until 2014, 22 years after the blast, when he applied for day parole. He'd been in prison for 18 years.

Now 70 years old, he was said to have choked up when he told the parole board of Canada, quote, All I can say is, I'm sorry, I'm sorry for all the pain I've caused. The parole board also heard from relatives of three of the miners who died. One of them, Pam Sauler, was the daughter of 38 year old Malcolm Sauler and was only 14 years old at the time of the blast. She lived in Ontario while her father worked at the mine and said that in the early years since his death, she had struggled with depression and had attempted suicide, quote, Roger Warren took my sense of security away from me. The parole board granted Roger day release, saying that he would not be an undue risk to the community. In December of 2017, Roger Warren was granted full parole. Two years after the explosion, the Northwest Territories Workers' Compensation Board filed a civil lawsuit against several parties, wanting compensation to support the nine victims' families, which included 17 kids. The parties they were suing included the territorial government, the Canadian Association of Smelter and Allied Workers Union, and the Royal Oak Company. Also included was Pinkerton's, the security agency, and Tim Betger, one of the Cambodian cowboys who tried to blow up the satellite. In 2004, the families were awarded 10.7 million between them, a sum that was to be given to the Workers' Compensation Board that had been providing the families with a standard pension.

But four years later, the parties appealed on the ground that none of them were responsible for the actions of Roger Warren. The judgement was overturned. Doreen Howey, wife of Norm Howey, was the only one of the widows to attend court, and she was furious. Quote, the enablers don't want to stand up to the plate and take their part of the responsibility for what happened. She went on to say that people expect that time will ease the pain and there'll be closure. Quote, it doesn't. When something like this happens to your family, the pain stays with you, the hurt stays with you, and your husband stays with you. She said she still stayed in touch with the other widows, although some of them were in poor health. Quote, it's been a struggle for the families. Some children were in grade one when this happened, and they haven't had a chance at secondary education. There's no money. This plays on your health, on your emotions, financially, everything. It's really hard. In April of 1999, the Royal Oak Company went bankrupt and walked away from giant mine. It was taken over by Miramar Mining Corporation.

But the mine closed permanently a few years later in 2004, leaving behind it a massive environmental liability due to deadly arsenic trioxide dust, a byproduct of gold extraction. The dust is everywhere, underground, in the soil, and in over 100 buildings on the site. Giant mine is now considered to be one of the most contaminated places in Canada. In 2012, McLean's magazine named the mine town site as number one on their list of 11 ghost towns to see before you die, but quickly edited the entry when they found out the mine had been closed to the public for years. Currently, a group of stakeholders have banded together to try and figure out what to do with the site, including how to clean up the massive chemical and safety hazards left behind. It's estimated that the cleanup will cost a billion dollars. As for Peggy Witt, the ruthless mining boss, she landed back on her feet. In 1995, Shatterlane magazine called her Woman of the Year. The headline read, Gutsie Mine Boss, how she beat betrayal at work, heartbreak at home. She changed her name back to her maiden name, Margaret Peggy Kent. Ten years after the explosion, she told McLean's magazine that she didn't regret the decision to impose the lockout, adding that her primary responsibility was to her shareholders to keep the mine operating no matter what. Quote, you sit for hours and days and soul search for what you could have done differently, but once we had the reins, there weren't a lot of choices. It was a life and death situation in terms of economics. She added that she still thinks of the widows and families of the miners who died. She went on to leave mining for a while, going into the meatpacking industry, but in 2009, she surfaced as president and CEO of another mining company, and today is listed as chairman of the board of yet another.

According to her biography, she is the recipient of several industry awards, including Northern miners' Miner of the Year in 1991, Canada's top women CEOs in 1997, and IBM top 50 women in the world in 1998. In an interview with the Northern miner website in 2018, Peggy reflected on her time at Giant Mine. Quote, what I would say is that everybody has some winners and some losers. I probably took more risk than 95% of the mining executives out there. In the interview, she referred to her time running Royal Oak as controversial stuff. Quote, all the headaches of running mines, 2,000 employees, five operating gold mines, three labor unions, spanning the country from the East Coast all the way up to the Northwest Territories. I think that probably put more grey hair on me than anything. As for the victims, Doreen Howrie, widow of victim Norm Howrie, was right. There hasn't been a lot of information about the nine miners who lost their lives that day. The books written on the case concentrate on union relations and the blast and the investigation, not those who lost their lives. Their families didn't speak much to the media, and to this day, most of the other miners refused to give interviews. In 2015, a plaque monument was unveiled near the legislature in Yellowknife to commemorate all miners who have lost their lives on the job, particularly the nine miners who lost their lives at Giant Mine that day. Verne Faloka, Norm Howrie, Chris Neal, Joe Pandev, Shane Riggs, Robert Razzle, Arnold Russell, Malcolm Sola, and David Vinoski. Thanks for listening and thank you to Anya Best for researching this episode. Thanks also to April G for helping me out with some details on the Yellowknife introduction.

I also wanted to give a huge shout out to the music producer known as Solar Flare, who provided all of the music underscoring this episode. I randomly came across his music last year when I was recording the Shafia Family episode. To find out more, visit solarflare.bandcamp.com. That's S-O-U-L-A-R-F-L-A-I-R.bandcamp.com. As always, there's a link in the show notes. If you're on social media, come and find me on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Just search for Canadian True Crime. If you left me a good review on iTunes or somewhere else, thank you so much. In this episode, I'm saying a huge thank you to these listeners who support me on Patreon. To find out what benefits you can receive, visit www.patreon.com. Canadian True Crime.

Thanks to Janice M, Chris M, Sherri V, Alexander T, Kirstie S, Sarah T, Stephanie P, Andrea L, Deborah H, Megan F, Laurel K, Molly, Ray K, and Matthew C. This episode of Canadian True Crime was researched by Anya Best, written by me, and audio production was by Eric Crosby, the host of the Beyond Bazaar True Crime podcast, Voice the Disclaimer, and the Canadian True Crime theme song was written especially for this podcast by We Talk of Dreams. I'll be back soon with another Canadian True Crime story. See you then. I didn't see myself as a black hockey player. I saw myself as a hockey player. My name is Dean Barnes. I've collected hockey cards since I was eight years old, and I recently completed a 100-plus card collection of all the black and biracial players who made it to the NHL. When you're on a hockey card, it's pretty cool. I'm going to talk to all the players in the collection. We are proudly working with eBay to amplify these important stories. So, find my hockey hero wherever you get your podcasts.

Imagine what they're going to do with all the information you have at it. Yeah, I'll be in touch.