Front Burner - He was a ‘danger to the public.’ Why was he released?

Episode Date: January 26, 2023

WARNING: This episode contains disturbting details about the deaths of two women and an Indigenous girl, in addition to allegations of sexual assault. Key First Nation member Noelle O’Soup died at just 14 years old. Police found her body in an apartment in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside, where they also found the bodies of an unnamed woman and a man immigration officials deemed a “danger to the public” – but released from custody anyway. CBC Vancouver reporter Michelle Ghoussoub has been investigating that man’s nearly three-decade criminal history, including selling fentanyl and accusations he used drugs to lure women for sex. She found the man had received an order for deportation, and that this wasn’t the first time a woman had died in his presence. Today, Ghoussoub discusses why O’Soup’s family is outraged at authorities' responses before and after her death, and how the case fits into a surge of violence against vulnerable women in the Downtown Eastside.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson, and before we begin today, a warning. This episode contains some very upsetting details about the death of two women and an Indigenous girl, as well as sexual assault. Please take care while listening. It makes me sick to my stomach, because, like, how many other lives could have been saved? And just imagine to think if the guy would have never got caught, too. Because, like, how many other lives could have been saved?

And just imagine to think if the guy would have never got caught, too. This could have happened to many other women. Like, if he wouldn't have died and overdosed in his apartment. Cody Munch's niece, Noelle Asoup, was just 14 years old when she died. Police found her in an apartment in Vancouver's downtown East Side last year, where they also found the remains of an unnamed woman and the body of a man officials had deemed a danger to the public, but released from custody anyway. He'd been convicted 13 times as a result of VPD investigations between 1994 and 2007. And at the time of his death in February,

he was wanted on a Canada-wide warrant. CBC Vancouver reporter Michelle Gassoub and our colleagues have been investigating this man's almost three-decade criminal history. He sold fentanyl, was repeatedly accused of using drugs to lure women for sex, and had orders to be deported from Canada. None of that stopped him from being free in the downtown Eastside before police found him, a woman and a girl, dead in his apartment. So today I'm talking with Michelle about the many ways Noelle O'Soup's family say authorities failed her before and after her death,

and about how her case fits into a surge of violence against vulnerable women in the community. Hi, Michelle. Thanks very much for being here and doing this today. Hi, thanks for having me. So to start, I'm hoping you can just tell me a bit about Noelle O'Soup, just 14 years old. What do we know about her life before she died? Yeah, so Noelle was from the key First Nation in Saskatchewan, but she did have a lot of family here in British Columbia, both in Vancouver and in northern parts of the province. But she was living in a group home in Port Coquitlam. Group

homes are part of the foster care system here. She ran away from that group home in May of 2021. And at the time, her uncle Cody, who you mentioned there, was trying to get custody of her. He was hoping that she could come live with him and his family in northern BC. But she ran away from the home in May 2021. And a year later, her body was found on the downtown east side. So awful. And I understand the police actually entered the apartment where they found Noelle a couple of months before they discovered her body. And what did they first find in that apartment back in February 2022?

Yeah, so when they first searched the apartment, they found the body of a man who was the tenant of that apartment. Very small apartment, SRO single room occupancy, which is a type of housing here in Vancouver. But they did not find the two other bodies that were also in the room at that time. Right. This is probably sounding incredibly shocking to people who are listening right now. Why did police re-enter the apartment months later in May? Yeah, so neighbors in the building were complaining of a smell coming from the apartment. One woman who I talked to said she complained to the landlord multiple times, and the language that she was using, she was telling her landlord, you know, please do something,

it smells like death. And she told me, you know, I was using that language to explain just how bad the smell was, but she never imagined that there were actually bodies in that room. The stench was months, months and months and months of that smell. And I should warn people again, this is very disturbing, but police do believe the man who died in February was living alongside the bodies for some time before he himself died. So these bodies were there for months, the body of this 14-year-old girl and then an unnamed woman who I understand the police have identified. They do know who she is. Yes, yeah. Yeah. There's actually a neglect of duty investigation over this, right? Yeah. So, you know, we should underline that we don't know exactly what happened in the apartment,

how these people died, the exact timeline. But there is a neglect of duty investigation for one officer who did search that room. Again, this is a very, very small room. We have seen one photo of what the inside looks like because it was posted on Craigslist when one room in that building became available for rent. And this room has a stove, it has a fridge, but it doesn't have a kitchen counter, it doesn't have a bathroom. Very, very small. So lots of questions about how two bodies could be missed in a search. Now police said the bodies weren't found because Pham was an extreme hoarder and they didn't have a search warrant when they found his body and said there is no way the bodies could have been found

just because the amount of things that were in the room. But a sexual assault accuser who we've spoken to says that the apartment was very neat when she was inside. So, you know, conflicting information there. Very understandably, Noelle's family is outraged that this man in the apartment wasn't behind bars prior to her death, right? And let's talk about why. When you started investigating him, what did you learn? Yeah, so when police first put out that press release that two bodies had been found, they didn't name the tenant who had been found in the apartment prior. So we, through reporting, were able to identify him as Van Trung Pham. And we accessed all the court records and immigration records that we could find about him.

What we have found was that he came to Vancouver in the 90s as a refugee from Vietnam. And very quickly, he fell into a life of crime. He racked up 13 charges in just a few years, most of them related to drug trafficking, using and selling drugs on the downtown east side. At one point, he was actually banned from parts of the downtown east side because it was determined that he was a danger to the community there. downtown east side because it was determined that he was a danger to the community there. And there was a previous death surrounding Pham, right? A few years before this case with Noel? Yeah. So in June 2019, another woman died in a room that he was renting at Canada Hotel, another SRO in Vancouver. That woman died of an overdose. Pham was investigated

for homicide, but not found guilty. But yes, there was just as recently as 2019, yet another woman died in his presence. So I understand that Pham was actually ordered deported by the Immigration Board. And why? 2016 Pham was ordered deported and he was kind of in and out of immigration detention. But most recently in October 2020, he was in immigration detention and authorities were wanting to deport him back to Vietnam because he'd been determined a danger to the public. But they were having a lot of trouble securing the right travel documents for Pham because they needed the Vietnamese government to provide those documents. And so they kind of ended up in this debate of, you know, what do we do given that we have this person, we can't keep them detained indefinitely, but we also can't deport them. And we got the audio

recordings from the tribunal. We're not able to broadcast them, but we can report on exactly what was said. So we have recreated some of those moments from the tribunal where you can hear them debating what to do about this person. I do find that you pose a danger to the public. The only reason I am releasing you is I do not believe that there is any possibility that CBSA will be able to get a travel document for you and return you to Vietnam. I think it is important to note that, you know, the timing of this, this was October 2020, kind of peak of the pandemic where travel was a lot more complicated. And the Immigration Board had also been criticized at the time for detaining people on immigration warrants

without a plan for them when they were also at higher risk of getting sick with COVID when being held into detention. So that's some of the other factors that were at play during this time. In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. Hi, it's Ramit Sethi here. You may have seen my money show on Netflix. I've been talking about money for 20 years.

I've talked to millions of people, and I have some startling numbers to share with you. Did you know that of the people I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income? That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. All right, so he's released back into the community, back into the downtown Eastside,

a location where he had previously been banned from. And then I understand just a month after his release in 2020, Pham allegedly drugged and assaulted this woman that we have mentioned. And you spoke to that woman. And what did she tell you about her experience? Yeah, so he was released, you know, without conditions. There was no public warning issued when he was released and he moved into that Heatley Block apartment just after he died. Only a few weeks later, the young woman we spoke with says that she met him. She kind of noticed him around the neighborhood. He was always kind of hanging out on the downtown east side. He almost always had a different girl with him. I probably met like four or five different girls that he was with. And he offered her drugs. They went to a bar together. They went back to his apartment, did the drugs, and she immediately felt like there was something wrong. These drugs were much more powerful than what she was used to. She said she couldn't move and then she was sexually assaulted by him.

I was, I think I left without my shoes on and like not fully clothed. And yeah, I left really fast. She then went to the hospital as soon as she was able to leave that situation. She called police and Vancouver police went to the hospital to do an interview with her, but she kind of panicked. She was overwhelmed by everything that was happening. So she left before police were able to get her full name. But police did put a lot of effort into kind of tracking her down. Right. And I know you and some of our colleagues actually got the search warrant that the police executed on Pham's apartment unsealed. And tell me a little bit about some of the details in that search warrant.

Yeah, so the unsealed search warrant kind of provides an interesting look into how police went about investigating Pham after this sexual assault. police went about investigating Pham after this sexual assault. So, you know, they, first of all, beat cops on the downtown east side worked to track down this woman. She told them about the assault. She decided to press charges. All the police had to go off of in order to find Pham was the name Jimmy, because that was one of many different nicknames that he had on the downtown east side. They had a description of what he looked like, and they had his cell phone number. And they obtained a production order from Rogers in order to track his cell phone. They found that he spent about 49% of his time at the Heatley Block apartment, most of it between the hours of 1 a.m. and 10 a.m. So, you know, that kind of indicates someone is living in the apartment. It tied him really definitively to the scene where she says

the assault happened. They went and spoke to his landlord, who said that he was very frequently bringing women up to the apartment. And it was actually when they were going to tell Femme that he was going to be charged with the sexual assault that they found him dead inside his apartment. Right, right. Dead inside the apartment that the two other women were in at the time.

I think it's because there is no justice that will ever happen for the other girls, for me and for past girls that I've never known about or will never know about is, I think that's what's most upsetting. Although it's been tough, this whole thing up until now, I'm still glad that I did it because it's still unfolding a lot of things that need to be dealt with. Really, Michelle, like the details of this story are so upsetting and there were so many warning flags here. What has Noelle's family had to say about the ways authorities handled her just disappearance and fam? Yeah, I mean, I think this has just been so difficult for them because they feel like at every single level there has been a failure. I mean, Noelle was in the care of the province when she disappeared from the group home and the family was not notified that she had gone missing.

I don't understand what went on in that group home. You know, we wanted to ask questions about everything that happened following up to her death and all. And they didn't want to talk about any of that. MCFD doesn't want to talk about any of that stuff. There was no amber alert issued for her when she went missing. They didn't even let her brothers know until after two months of her being missing. They didn't say nothing. They didn't say hey your sister's been missing for two months have you heard from her? Nothing. Then when her body was missed in the search of the apartment, then to also learn that the person whose apartment she was found in had been deemed a danger to the public and was released without any kind of warning to the public. Who

went looking? How many times did you guys go look? Did you guys ask questions? Did you follow up on the people that were, you know, we're trying to call you? Like, to me, that just makes no sense. So there's just so many layers of frustration. They've also been frustrated with communication from the police. Now, police have been limited in what they can say about this case because there is an ongoing investigation into the deaths of Noelle and the adult woman. And the immigration officials say that they don't really comment on these kinds of decisions, but that Canadian law regards detention as an exceptional measure. Police have said sometimes when people are released from

immigration detention, if they do have a violent history, they'll issue a public warning. You know, sometimes as journalists, we get those notices to put out to the public that someone's been released. Police says in this case, they had no communication from immigration that they needed to do that. And MCFD, the province, says they can't comment on this due to privacy. So, you know, everything we've learned about this case has been from the court records that we've been able to obtain. But no one official has given an interview about this case. You know, just listening to some of what you have been saying today, it's also shocking to hear that the police basically had to work so hard to find this guy in the first place, considering he was considered such a threat to the public by the immigration board, right? police first were in the apartment and didn't find the two bodies, you know, they were in that apartment to tell someone that they were being investigated for sexual assault that had occurred

in that apartment. So it raises the questions of, you know, the sex crimes unit was working very hard to track this man down, and yet the apartment wasn't searched properly, and there's now an investigation into that. So there's just many, many questions. I know your reporting has also touched on the fact that these deaths happened amid a surge of violence against women in the downtown Eastside last year. And what do advocates believe was driving this violence? Yeah, so, you know, I spent most of last summer recording on, you know, there's been at least three cases in the downtown east side where Indigenous women have been found dead. The case of Noelle O'Soup, she's by far the youngest of the victims.

But advocates believe that, you know, COVID-19 played a role in this just because there was a deterioration of the neighborhood even further than, you know, what had already been seen. Services dried up. The opioid crisis in BC is only getting worse and worse. And affordable housing only getting further out of reach for many people. So they say that that is a driver of this violence. But at the same time, this is a kind of violence that we've seen in Vancouver since the 90s and even earlier. Right.

I mean, certainly women in this area have long said this goes beyond Robert Pickton, right? Like the serial killer Robert Pickton. And what do you think that this case tells us about how threats against these women in this community are, I think it's fair to say, going ignored. Yeah. I mean, advocates say that it's almost like we haven't learned the lesson from Picton. I mean, there have been multiple deaths on the downtown east side. Not to say that those deaths are necessarily all connected, but in the case of Van Chung Pham, we know of at least three women who died in apartments that he was renting. We know of one woman who says that she was sexually assaulted by him. So, you know, there are even questions from the community now, like,

why won't police release a photo of Van Chung Pham so that other women who may have had encounters with him can come forward and share their stories? You know, why is there such a delay when someone goes missing for an investigation to get started? So, you know, despite all the kind of findings from Picton, there is a concern that not enough lessons have been learned and women continue to bear the brunt of the violence on the downtown east side. Okay. Michelle, I want to thank you for coming on and taking us through this really incredibly disturbing story. And thanks for sharing the story. All right. That is all for today. I'm Jamie Poisson. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.