Front Burner - Sex workers, a rural property and an alleged serial rapist

Episode Date: January 18, 2024

The trial of Richard Mantha, 59, is set to begin this week in Calgary. Mantha is charged with more than two dozen counts related to seven women, including drugging, kidnapping, and sexually assaulting his alleged victims. In this episode, CBC Calgary reporter Meghan Grant walks us through the troubling case, and the allegations levelled against Mantha by women working in the sex trade. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

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 Damon Fairless. Before we get started, I just want to give you a heads up that in this episode, we're going to be talking about sexual violence. Earlier this week, a trial was scheduled to begin in the case of a man accused of sexually assaulting seven women in the Calgary area. But the trial's been delayed. Richard Mantha, who also goes by the name Poncho, is accused of drugging, raping, kidnapping, and assaulting his alleged victims,

all of whom were working in Calgary's sex trade. CBC Calgary reporter Megan Grant has been covering the case, and she's here to tell us about it. Megan Grant has been covering the case, and she's here to tell us about it. Hey, Megan, thanks for coming on Frontburner. Thanks for having me. Okay, so let's start with the alleged victims here. So as it stands, Richard Math is facing charges related to seven women, and that number, the number of charges and his alleged victims, has gone up since the original charges last spring. And I know the names of these women are protected by a publication ban, but what can you tell me about them?

Yeah, so basically these are all very vulnerable women. They are women who at some point were working in, or maybe still are, in Calgary sex trade. And they all at some point as well frequented what's known as the Forest Lawn Stroll. So it's this area in Calgary known to be frequented by sex trade workers. And that's where a lot of johns will go if they're looking to pick up women. And what Richard Mantha is accused of doing is kind of using that area as a sort of hunting ground. And so a lot of what we know comes from unsealed court documents, documents that the media fought to have unsealed. And in those documents, a lot of what's included are interviews with these women.

So women who told police, you know, about their drug addictions and about their interactions with Richard Mantha. So we hear about this a lot, predators preying on vulnerable sex workers in areas like Forest Lawn. I'm just wondering if you're hearing things from people who are part of the scene. Yeah, for sure. And, you know, most of my contact has been with one of Mantha's alleged victims who, you know, has shed a bit of light on what her lifestyle was like. But these charges were laid last April. And so there was a bit of a word of mouth situation going on around that time about Richard Mantha. Some of the women, you know, had told each other about their experiences with him.

They called him Poncho. They would talk about Poncho, avoid Poncho. And so, you know, these women came up with rules for themselves. Some of them, you know, would only work during the day. So there really was a bit of a community already on edge by the time these charges were laid. You mentioned, I'm assuming that when you're talking about this one woman you're talking to, we can't say her name because of the publication, but you refer to her as Avery in your reporting. Is that who you're talking about? Yeah, exactly.

That's Avery. And so Avery on and off has worked in the sex trade. She's dealt with drug substance addiction in her lifetime. And she knew this man called Poncho, who we now know is Richard Mantha. He was an acquaintance of hers. And back in April of 2022, he actually offered her to do some manual labor at his place. And so he was living about 30 minutes east of the city. So she took him up on that. And she says that she arrived understanding that she would be doing some of this manual labor, not sex trade work. But once she arrived, she said she was attacked by Mantha. She says she was sexually assaulted, beaten, stabbed.

And she fought back. She says she ran through farmers' fields to get to the highway. She described sort of as she was running, feeling like she was being sucked down, pulled down into the ground. So she believes she was drugged. There are charges now that reflect that police also believe she was drugged at the time. She got to the side of the highway and was discovered kind of bloodied and injured at the side of the highway by a passerby who was able to get her to a hospital, get her some medical help. And she kind of credits that incident with helping her to get clean. So within a few months of this incident, she says she turned her life around.

She's been clean for over a year. She's out of the sex trade. She hasn't touched drugs or alcohol in over a year. It was a few months after that that she actually got clean. And within those months, she described being back in that area on the stroll. And, um, she was threatened that, um, you know, if she went to police, bad things were going to happen to her. Um, now she, she says she was threatened by women that she believed Mantha had approached and paid to, um, you know, come in and issue those threats in, in order to keep her from reporting to police. And we should point out too that this woman, Avery's experience, this is a lot of the stuff is described in court documents, but these charges, the charges we're discussing, these

haven't been proven in court yet. I just think it's worth mentioning that. I want to go back to, I know that there's an advocate group in Calgary for sex workers called SHIFT. Do you have a sense of whether they've commented on the case or not? Yeah. So quite a few advocacy groups came out after the announcement of charges and really just called this the tip of the iceberg. This, the tip of the iceberg, you know, the organization talked about the violence and stigma facing sex workers, you know, kind of in hopes that the community would really see what these women were up against. And so they came out, they applauded the courage of the women who came forward and spoke to police. Because typically, historically, there has not been a great relationship between police and sex trade workers. There has not been a great relationship between police and sex trade workers.

But it really seemed like in this case investigators kind of tried to build relationships with the women. They treated them as victims and humans, not criminals as, you know, maybe they had tended to do in the past or as often the women were afraid they would be treated as. So, you know, SHIFT came out and really praised these sex trade workers, but so did the police. A couple of times in their statements, police thanked the women for their courage in coming forward and applauded them. And I think just to kind of put a finer point on how vulnerable some of Panther's alleged victims are, I understand one of the women has actually since passed away just living on the street. Yeah, that's right. And we have to be really careful about how alleged victims are. I understand one of the women has actually since passed away, just living on the street. Yeah, that's right. And we have to be really careful about how we talk about the circumstances because we can't, even in death, the publication ban on sexual assault complainants' identity holds up. And so, but yeah, in the last couple of months,

one of Mantha's alleged victims died in quite tragic circumstances in Calgary. Okay, so let's talk about the accused now. We're getting a better sense of who Richard Mantha is, what he's accused of having done. What do we know about him? Can you lay that out for me? Yeah, sure. So he's 59 years old right now. He will turn 60 during the course of the trial if we get there. He is originally from Quebec, but had been living on this rented rural property near an area called Chestermere. That's about 30 minutes east of Calgary. So he has these French-Canadian roots. I think I also mentioned he went by the nickname Poncho.

That's how a lot of the women knew him. Frequented the Forest Lawn Stroll. And last spring, both Calgary police and RCMP were looking into complaints from local sex trade workers. And that's how they sort of started to build this case. Now, he's facing a lot of charges. And one of the things I've noticed is kind of every news story had a new set of charges related. So they've kind of been growing. So I was hoping maybe you can kind of just sum up what exactly he's accused of in this case.

Yeah. So this case. Yeah. So this case actually sort of starts with Avery, that woman I was just telling you about. So she's kind of victim number one, if you want to call her that. So police initially laid charges against Mantha and accused him of sexually assaulting her. accused him of sexually assaulting her. They ended up re-examining that once more women came forward and laying additional charges like administering noxious substances, so accusing him of drugging her. But that's basically what he's accused of doing is, you know, getting women to his property or into his car or to a hotel. He's accused of offering them beverages that police suspect he had drugged in order to, you know, cause them to pass out or not be able to move.

And then he's accused of sometimes assaulting, but in every case, sexually assaulting these women. Often some of the charges, if you read them, involve accusations that he used a knife or a gun. And so really, yeah, like you mentioned, so it started with one victim and then, you know, more women came forward to police. So now we are up to seven alleged victims who all pretty much tell police a similar story. And I'm curious about his relationship with them. The woman you talked to, Avery, it sounded like there was an ongoing relationship of some sort.

Was that typical of his other victims? Yeah. I mean, keep in mind these women are often drug addicted. Some of them are experiencing issues with homelessness. drug addicted. Some of them are experiencing issues with homelessness. They all pretty much were in positions where they needed money. And so some of them had regularly scheduled appointments, for lack of a better term, with him. And it seems like there are allegations that his behavior may have sort of escalated. So it's not necessarily that, you know, they were having the same experience with him every time. But yeah,

some of these women, it was 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.

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There were just, it just, there were some similarities. We've got this really vulnerable population of sex workers as alleged victims, a rural property, some of the violence and threats that seem to be escalating. And then there was this weird, like really disconcerting detail of a pig mask that Mantha apparently wore. Have you been thinking about that comparison at all? Yeah, absolutely.

So Picton, known as the pig farm killer, accused in the deaths of dozens of vulnerable women, many of them sex trade workers, right? Ultimately convicted of, I think, six murders, but for sure accused of many more than that. RCMP seized thousands of pieces of potential evidence when they raided Robert Pickton's Port Coquitlam pig farm in 2002. Pickton was convicted of killing six women. of potential evidence when they raided Robert Picton's Port Coquitlam pig farm in 2002. Picton was convicted of killing six women. The DNA of 20 other victims was found on the farm. But in 2010, Crown decided not to try Picton again because he's already serving the maximum sentence. So last spring, when we hear of this five-day search on a rural property, you know, the homicide units involved, the missing person units involved, police have brought out cadaver dogs. And then, you know, they make this announcement

of all these charges. We have charged one man in an investigation into the alleged kidnapping, drugging, and sexual assault of multiple women in the Calgary area. I think at that time there were four alleged victims and all of them from the sex trade in Calgary. I think, of course, one of the first things that people were thinking was it sounds a little Pictonesque, right? Then, as you mentioned, there's this disconcerting detail about the pig masks. So some of the women told police that Mantha would drive up and down the stroll after he's accused of assaulting them, wearing a pig mask and threatening them with a gun, you know, in theory to keep them from going to police. So, yeah, all that really made people kind of concerned that there were some picked-in aspects going on here.

Well, let's talk more about that property search. You mentioned that back in the spring and April, I think, the police carried out this extensive search of the place where Mantha was staying. Can you give me a better sense of that spot? Yeah, so this was a five-day search. It went day and night. It involved RCMP officers, Calgary police, dozens of investigators. You know, at night they would have floodlights set up. I think I mentioned there were cadaver dogs, members of different police units involved.

They were searching the outbuildings, the property itself. There was this large Quonset on the property and inside of that Quonset there was a fifth wheel trailer. So that's where Mantha had been sleeping. Now, the folks that he rented off of did not know that. They believed he had rented it as a storage facility. But, yeah, he had a trailer there. And that's where some of these women say that they were taken and where he's accused of some of these sexual assaults. For folks who aren't familiar with Quonset Hut, just a huge kind of outbuilding, right? A big kind of cavernous steel roof building. Right.

So what did that search turn up? Yeah. building. Right. So what did that search turn up? Yeah, so we know that police collected over a thousand pieces of evidence. We don't know, you know, the details on each piece of evidence. We know they were looking for bodily fluid DNA samples that they could gather, you know, in theory to be able to prove who was there. We know that based on what some of the women told police in their interviews with police that they saw, you know, piles of women's clothing on the property. So, you know, I'm sure that made up part of what police sees. They were looking for that pig mask, just those key pieces of evidence, which also included videotapes. Some of the women said that they woke up from, you know, being drugged,

suspected druggings, to find Mantha not only sexually assaulting them, but also videotaping it. Okay, so he's now facing about two dozen charges related to these seven alleged victims we've been talking about. The case was supposed to start on Monday. That hasn't happened. So what's causing the delay? Right. So the big delay here is that his lawyer wants to make a severance application. And so what that is, is, as you mentioned, there's seven victims. They were set to all be tried together. All of the allegations were going to go before one judge in one trial. And now his lawyer wants to separate each of the victims. She wants to run seven different trials.

With separate judges? Separate judges, yeah. The other thing that struck me is that he's also requested, Mathis requested to have a trial in French. He's got the right to do that. He's a Francophone. What I'm wondering is with seven separate judges all in French, is this like, is this just a delay tactic or what's the rationale here?

I mean, I can tell you that Avery, the victim that I have had communications with is feeling that way, that it's a delay tactic. I can tell you that she feels his English is very good and there would be no need for him to have a French trial. And that maybe there's a feeling that he's trying to exert some control wherever he can in this process. He's trying to exert some control wherever he can in this process. In Alberta, as I'm sure you can guess, we don't have a huge French population. So a French trial is somewhat uncommon for that reason. This trial is taking place in Alberta's provincial court.

We have a handful of provincial court judges who are French-speaking, bilingual, able to conduct trials in French. But certainly we don't have seven in Calgary. I don't know if we have seven in the province. So, you know, if this is granted, that will be something that will, you know, they'll have to figure out. I'm curious what the prosecutors said about this idea of seven separate trials. for one trial. And a huge reason, there's many reasons, a huge reason for her, she said, in court on Monday, is that multiple trials will mean that these women are going to be forced to testify multiple times. You know, the Crown expressing some concern about kind of traumatizing these women over and over again. Okay, so Megan, we're recording midday Wednesday. These proceedings are underway, but it's unclear what the schedule is. Do we have any sense of when we're expecting to get this trial underway?

The judge has already indicated she would strongly like to give her decision Friday morning and then proceed to trial right after her decision. So it looks like if everything goes according to plan, the trial will actually get underway Friday with a witness. So no matter what the decision is, whether it's to proceed with one complainant or all seven, the judge wants to make use of this trial time that's been set aside and plans to get it going on Friday.

Okay. We'll be watching, uh, as it develops. Thanks so much, Megan. Really appreciate you coming on. You're welcome. That's all for today. I'm Damon Fairless. Thanks for listening to Front Burner.

I'll talk to you tomorrow.