Someone Knows Something - S5 Episode 2: Dead End

Episode Date: October 16, 2018

David speaks with the woman who discovered Kerrie's body to learn about the crime scene and meets with the police officer currently in charge of Kerrie's case. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/sks/someone-knows-something-season-5-kerrie-brown-transcripts-listen-1.4850662

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Listener discretion is advised. You are listening to Someone Knows Something from CBC Podcasts. In Season 5, David Ridgen travels north to Thompson, Manitoba to investigate the 1986 murder of Carrie Brown. This is Episode 2.

Dead End. Heading up Portage towards the Flying J, a trucker gas station out here on the outskirts of Winnipeg. Arriving at Flying J. Grey Dodge truck. Oh, I think I see a grey Dodge truck. Yep, that's got to be her there. Hello! Hi there. Hi, I didn't know where else to meet?

Donna Kovic is parked in empty lanes reserved for 18-wheelers, some distance from the truck stop. Traffic on the Trans-Canada Highway blurs by beside us and the place smells of diesel and prairie wind. You get in okay? Oh yeah. Thank you so much for doing this. No, it's okay. Donna is a long-haul trucker herself and knows these sorts of places well.

She's in a light blue t-shirt wearing a necklace with what look like two gold feathers attached. White hair, eyes already red with tears, and she's missing a finger from a mishap she had while unloading a truck. It sucks. At least you have your thumb. I do. My writing is terrible. I look like I'm a three-year-old. Index finger. Yeah, I lost it in 96. I got into trucking because I was always afraid to be alone. Too many weird things happened in Thompson. I had to leave.

And I just, I got into trucking just as a way to cope. That's interesting. Yeah, well, if you bury yourself at work, right? It just distracts you forever. Well, we go two to three months at a time. We're home for two or three days and gone. And that's the way we work. So I'm very lucky to have found you.

Donna says she had to move away from Thompson, lose herself and the trucker's life because of the trauma from a discovery she made one cold October morning in 1986. Tell me what happened on that day. We went out riding, a bunch of us went riding, and we come out this stable road, and we went up around the graveyard,

which is an odd place to ride, but in Thompson, you don't have much else. And we were coming back, and everybody was going up to the yard, and I looked at the one lady, and I said, you know, Joanne, I said, I'd like to go a little further. I think I'll go the next road down,

and then we'll come up, and then I'll go in. She said, I'll go with you. And we were riding along, talking, and all of a sudden, the horses started fussing. And they were fussing lots. And my horse was my best friend. I knew something was wrong. I didn't know what it was. All of a sudden, Joanne said, what is that?

I go, what? She goes, over there. Is that a mannequin? And I go, oh, this don't look good. You wait here because she had a green horse. And I went out there to see what I could do. And I checked for a pulse on her ankle. I checked on her wrist. And then I got up to do by the neck. then I noticed the head and that was it. She was wearing a black and pink leopard print outfit. She had on the cleanest white socks I ever saw. She was laying on, turned out to be a jacket. She had her one hand down and the other hand up.

When I first found her, you could see everything, but the head was down a little bit. It didn't look so bad. But once I got up, then you could see the face was smashed and the head was beat in, and you could see lots. I could tell the one arm was obviously broken just the way it was laying, the one that was up. Her clothes were very clean. You would not expect them there very clean, very nice. She didn't walk in there.

Somebody took her there and put her there. I talked to her the whole time. She deserved respect. I talked to her and I was so angry. And once I knew she was gone, I said, look, I'm going to go get help. I hate to leave you, but I'm going to go get help. And I said, I'm so sorry this has happened to you. I'll see they pay. And that was a bad thing to say because I feel like a let her down. Yeah, I talked to her. So you talked to her for a long time? I talked to her for a long time.

Well, ten minutes, yeah. I just... I remember telling her, I don't know who could do this to you. Why would they do this to you? You don't deserve this. I'm so sorry. You know, I cried.

I did everything. I just felt that bad. I just wanted to comfort her. But you can't lean down and give her a hug. You can't do nothing like that. I know enough about that. You can't do that. You can't do nothing like that. I know enough about that. You can't do that. You can't touch her. I touched her with two fingers in three places. Well, I had all my fingers in,

but I touched her two fingers in three places. And then I knew and I just talked to her. I don't know how, when she's already gone, it doesn't really make sense what you're thinking, but you just have to try and deal with it the best you can. And then before I left, I remember thinking, this is really hard, but this is going to be important. So I had to stand up and just stand back and look at her from head to toe and try and remember all the details I could, because I knew it was going to be important later. I asked Donna what happened next. So I stood up and Joanne said is she dead and I said well we're going to go slow back to

the yard and we'll handle this and her horse took off. So I had to jump on mine and go catch her. Well by the time we caught her there was so adrenaline, I just went back to the yard. We both did, on a dead run, which is never a good way to do it, but that's what we did. And it just went downhill from there. The horror stories that people have told her family that aren't even true are just heartbreaking. How could people see that? And what were they saying? They were saying she was naked. She was not. I found her. I know. They said that they had sticks shoved in her mouth

and up her private parts and whatever. How can you tell that with the clothes on? You know, she wasn't naked. She was not. I do believe they'd done things to her and then probably redressed her but I she was not naked if she was naked she was the same age as my daughter I would have taken my jacket off and covered her at least right I I know I found her I know I tried to help her I know what people did to her I know that I'm scared you know you change you change forever you change forever. You do. Things are never the same. And did you see anything else left behind by the people who left Carrie there? Did you see anything else?

Somebody had got stuck out there. And there was some stuff laying there, a mat or whatever. Did you see the mat or did you just read about it later? No, no, I seen it. We seen it going in because somebody got stuck there. We thought, well, what's somebody doing coming down this road? And where did they get stuck, right near Kerry? It was further down.

It's boggy out there, so that's why. But there were things we noticed, but mostly the horses noticed first. Do you know, my horse never wanted to go down that road again. But when I come up, I went around because I knew I didn't want to destroy evidence. When those cops come up, I was giving them hell left, right, and center. They sent me back out to my vehicle. I never saw such idiots in my life.

What were they doing? Just walking up everywhere. I knew enough to go around, not destroy evidence. Not the way they were. Not the way they were. One young cop got sick, another one passed out. Like, it was just ridiculous. And then they've proved absolutely nothing.

How can you have all of the things available to you today and not be able to solve it? The anger that came from seeing, as she says, police trampling evidence at the scene, along with the upheaval of discovering Carrie, then alerting police has altered Donna forever. I don't know how her family did it. I mean, I barely made it. I tell my two youngest kids, I feel sorry for them. They don't know the best part of me. I lost it that day.

So I don't know how her family handles it. Funny, 30 years later, it can still hurt like that, eh? How can these people live with themselves? What happened after police arrived on the scene? Was evidence properly gathered and where did it go after that? Where does the case stand now, over 30 years after Carrie's murder? Hello. Janet Emerald. Janet Emerald? Yeah. Hello. Coming in to see... Janet Amaral.

Janet Amaral? Yeah. Okay, I'll be doing a call and we'll get you all set up. Thank you very much. I'm here at RCMP D Division headquarters in Winnipeg to see Constable Janet Amaral. But they require a media person to be present while interviewing officers. Hi, David. Oh, hi.

Hi, I'm Tara. How are you? Tara Seal is that person in a grey cardigan, black skirt and shoulder-length hair. Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. I'm Jenna. Oh, nice to meet you too. Jenna's taller, wearing a black dress outfit, also with shoulder-length brown hair.

Trevor speaks comfortably about Jana, and I know that she's tried to keep in touch with the Browns from time to time. Sorry I came early. I thought I could nab some more time. Thank you. Are you both going to speak? Yeah, no, I'm not going to speak, but I do need to be here. My name's Constable Jana Amaro. I'm with the D Division Historical Case Unit in Winnipeg, Manitoba,

and we're here at D Division headquarters in Winnipeg. So I just want to start with the basics. Just tell me what your role is on the case now, how long you've held carriage of the case, the history of the case, I guess. I basically became involved in the investigation over five years ago. It is a file that is with our historical case unit and has been for quite some time, but through the years we're in the process of modernizing our investigations by switching it over into an electronic database

and just making sure that all of our investigations are consistent. So this was one of the files that I got assigned when I started in the unit. And I don't know when it originally came to the historical case unit because it is a 30-year-old investigation. So by the time I started with cold case, it had already been there for a bit. is it true that this case is the largest case largest in volume that rcmp has in manitoba in volume it would be and the file how big is the file it's massive it's about 45 bankers boxes over 14 000 documents numerous i can't even count how many people are i mean there's there's a number, I think it's

like 2,500 people are listed on the investigation, but that would include like investigators and witnesses and just names that have come up through the years on the file. A lot of people that have worked on it were very passionate about this investigation, given the circumstances behind what happened to Carrie. It's just a sad set of circumstances. So tell me the known facts of the case that the police know. School broke out at around 3.30 that day. And then she came home, had supper with her family. And then she left her house around 7 o'clock.

She went to a place called Thompson Billiards, is from what we were told. She was on foot, so she was picked up at her house by two of her friends and went on foot, and then she ended up at the house party, which was where she remained for the majority of the evening. So there was probably about 24-ish, approximately 24 people at that party, guys and girls, and for the at that party, guys and girls. And for the most part, it was a good night. Amaro's outline of the evening is similar to what we've heard from others.

The ex-boyfriend comes. Carrie and Nicole decide to leave. Nicole goes back in for her purse. When Nicole went to go back upstairs, Carrie wasn't there. And Carrie is never seen again. Forward to the next day, Friday, October 17th, 1986. Then about four o'clock, her dad called the RCMP, say that she was missing and they weren't able to locate her. Four o'clock in the afternoon. So posters and things like that weren't going up until afternoon of the Friday, would you say? I would say that. So the search continued for her.

There was radio broadcasts put out saying that she was missing. They weren't able to locate her. And then on Saturday afternoon, shortly after 2 p.m., the RCMP was contacted by two people that came across what they believed was a body in a more kind of remote wooded area just north of Thompson and so the members responded immediately to the scene and started processing it from there eventually like the coroner was called to confirm that they could move the body and then the body was that of a female,

but they didn't know for 100% certainty who it was. They transported her body to Thompson Hospital, and eventually her father was brought in to help identify her. And reports of an air mattress being found and rubber mats and things like that. In relation to where her body was located, is that what you mean? I won't get into those specifics, but I mean, I know that I've seen TV video that shows information and pictures of items found at the crime scene. Would we do that in this day and age? Probably not. But I mean, everybody, policing has changed through the years and how we deal with things and how, what information we give out to the public. So would

you say that you have all those items in your evidence department? Oh yeah. So anything that was found on the scene is still in evidence? Yeah. Police in charge of cold case investigations are trained to be short on detail at their discretion. And Constable Amero is not exceptional in this. Information kept out of the public sphere is sometimes called holdback.

And the theory is that holding information back can assist if cases move toward an arrest, finding the light of a courtroom. If police keep evidence that might only be known by those present at a murder scene, that evidence can then be brought forward and leveraged, untarnished by the rumor mill of public conversation. However, Carrie's unsolved murder is past the 30-year mark. Family is aging or dying, and have asked me and the RCMP how much longer should things be held back, especially information that has already been released in other media reports over the past decades.

Can you tell me about the DNA found at the scene and how many individuals were involved in that? No, I can't. Was there DNA found at the scene? Well, there's, I mean, DNA helps us focus our investigation. It does, and I don't think it's a secret out there that we have collected quite a few consent samples of DNA from various individuals either somehow associated to Carrie or who people thought might have been possibly

involved in her homicide. It's been confirmed to me that RCMP believe multiple people were involved in Carrie's murder and it has been reported that RCMP have collected people were involved in Carrie's murder. And it has been reported that RCMP have collected at least two different male DNA samples from the crime scene. So you collect DNA because you must have something to compare it to. That's usually what happens, yes. Okay. I mean, this murder happened before DNA testing was even out there. So our forensic unit, at the time when they analyzed the scene, they actually did some forward thinking,

and they were able to do some things that, looking into the future, probably assisted a great deal on the investigation without even knowing that they did. It was a fairly violent attack, and she had been sexually assaulted and bludgeoned. And what kind of a profile has RCMP developed about that kind of attack or the people that are persons that might have been involved in this? I mean, we've had contact with behavioral sciences, and that's who will do those type of profiles. As for specific suspects in the investigation,

at this point in time, our suspect pool is still vast. I mean, we're still looking for answers. It's a 30-year-old homicide where we don't have anybody charged or convicted, charged and convicted of her murder. No one was charged and convicted of her murder. This correction is important because there was someone charged. And they had a prime suspect. They had a prime suspect in the beginning, a guy by the name of Patrick Sumner. On Thursday, October 23, 1986, just five days after Carrie's body was discovered,

a 22-year-old Thompson resident by the name of Patrick Harris Burton Sumner was charged with first-degree murder. He was arrested rather quickly. It was very, very fast. Did you ever talk to Patrick Sumner before Carrie was murdered? No, no. How about after Carrie was murdered? No. I probably would have been too scared to.

There was a long suspect list, but they never singled in on anyone like they did on Sumner. Sumner was arrested, so then all that kind of finger-pointing stuff died down. Yeah, Sumner was the only name in pure and simple in the public eye. Everybody that I've talked to so far about the Kerry Brown case has had plenty to say about Patrick Sumner. And even some people you haven't heard from yet. It's pretty well cut and dried that it was fucking Sumner and Pat was a bit of a

fucking oddball. A preliminary hearing was held in February 1987, featuring many of Carrie's friends from the party that night, along with witnesses, many of whom I intend to interview. But this is a cold case, and as Constable Jenna Amaro said before, there was no conviction of Patrick Sumner, just an arrest and a preliminary hearing. And the investigators at the time and the prosecutor at the time felt that there was enough evidence to proceed and they charged him with first degree murder at the time and it went through a prelim and the murder at the time, and it went through a prelim, and the judge at the time said there wasn't enough to proceed to a trial with the evidence that had been presented. After a preliminary hearing, Provincial Court Judge Charles Newcomb

decided that there was not enough evidence to proceed to trial. And since that time, the february 1987 prelim has there been any information such as dna that has proven one way or the other in the rcmp's mind that patrick sumner was not involved like i said before so i can't really narrow down our suspect pool i would say that it's still quite vast at this point in time so i can't say at this time whether anybody really has been eliminated so so patrick is in the pool um i would say still anybody is pretty much in the pool that was brought up as being part of the investigation why was he focused on um that's information that i'm i think you'll be able to find out. It's not an area

though that I'm willing to venture into. Patrick Sumner will obviously be a major focus for me. I know that years later RCMP conducted DNA tests on many people in Thompson and area. One would assume Sumner had been tested, but he's still in the pool of suspects according to Jana. Lots to find out. The fact that there was a preliminary hearing should be helpful since it will lay out in public documents much of the main evidence police may have had, not only against Sumner, but about the surrounding case. Why did police focus on Sumner? And why was the case against him dropped at the time?

What would be really helpful is if I can get the prelim document, because it's a public document. If I could get that, that would help me, and I wouldn't have to ask you all those questions. Is it possible to get the proof? I honestly don't know. I don't believe we have it.

Oh, really? Even the police don't have it? I don't believe so. Somebody's got to have it. Can you leave that with me and I'll look into it? I'll look into it as well. Because it would be really valuable, but it's nice to have a document. It's nice to have something like that. And that's the thing with this investigation that is unique,

is it did go through prelim. So there is a lot of information out there regarding it, whether it's by memory of individuals or through some sort of document. I believe you're planning on going and talking to him, so, right? So, which would be expected. I'm going to try to talk to everybody. Yeah. I'll definitely be trying to speak to Patrick Sumner, but not before learning as much as I can from as many people as possible. I'd really like to speak to some of the RCMP members who were investigating the case at the time, including the two original lead investigators,

Dennis Heald and John Toast. Would it be possible to talk to Dennis Heald or John Toast? No. No? Jen is the lead investigator. So you're the lead, and that's how you guys would work it, right? Mm-hmm. And so are they allowed to talk to

me even if i tried to talk to them are they is there some rcmp rule that says you're not allowed to talk about things after you retire or do you know or i think one of them's still working right but okay okay i may try to contact them anyway see what happens um just being open about that and looking back at the file are you confident as an investigator that the evidence at the very beginning of the inquest was handled properly yeah i i don't have any concerns over that there's never been any issue with that in your mind in my mind i've never no and i it's not my job though to question what they did either have there been advances in policing through the years absolutely there have been but no i don't see no some things they did they did very well um have you re-interviewed

people in this case extensively or we haven't spent a whole lot of time re-interviewing people if new information came in then yes we would a lot of of time re-interviewing people. If new information came in, then yes, we would. A lot of the people have been, some of the people, I should say, have been interviewed multiple times prior to my getting involved in the investigation. And sometimes that isn't always the best thing. Like, the memories may have changed through time, or they may have gotten information through someone else and have taken it on as their own memory.

Amaro says she hasn't spent much time re-interviewing, and reconstituting memories can be problematic. But sometimes re-interviewing can yield fruitful results, like when Thomas Moore and I went back to talk to Klansman Charles Edwards four or five times in Mississippi. But Constable Amero has been active on Carrie's case in other ways. On October 16, 2016, the 30th anniversary of Carrie's murder, the Manitoba RCMP launched a social media campaign, sending out a series of tweets and Facebook posts written in Carrie's voice, as the 15-year-old would have made her way throughout her final day. And the Twitter campaign, what was the intention with it and what happened?

Carrie took over the RCMP Manitoba Twitter and Facebook pages the last day she was alive, so we were able to detail the events of her last day which she did that day up until the point she went to the party and then nobody saw her again we got quite a bit of feedback from it quite a few tips so it was good how many tips have you gotten to date oh gosh in total yeah on this file I don't even think I could venture a guess. There's been times I'm like, did this murder happen last week? You'll get numerous tips within a couple week period of time, and sometimes you don't even ever get that on homicides that happened a month prior.

We've had, yeah, I'd say a significant amount of tips come in on this investigation. So hundreds, thousands? Dozens? Hundreds at least. Yeah. Well, I think I'm good for now, but I can come back, right? I can at least ask more questions, and you can at least not tell me

the answers. But thanks very much for your time. Trevor contacted Jenna Amaro after my meeting. So I sent a message to Jenna, and of course I suggested to Jenna, I said, we must put something new out there, something new that has never been put out there before, something that they've been keeping close to the vest,

as they like to say, for over 30 years now. And as I said to her in my message, I said, look, where has keeping it close to the vest gotten us up to now so I really wanted to encourage her to to give us something to put something new out there in conjunction even I never began morning Dave how's it going man I'm good how are you I'm good man you ready to rock and roll I am going, man? I'm good. How are you? I'm good, man. You ready to rock and roll? I am ready to go.

Okay, I'm sorry. I was just finishing off my bagel here. Hey, no problem, man. Finish your bagel. Back in Thompson, I meet Trevor again at his place. Where's your dad? Is he... Upstairs. Is he asleep? No, he's not asleep. He'll be laying there on his bed, I imagine. Did you want to talk to him?

No, I'll talk to him another time. After breakfast, we make our way out to my rental SUV. Straight ahead here, eh? This one here? Yeah, let me just open it for you. You all right there? Good. Oh, yeah. Thanks, dude. My buddy Jack. Who is it?

Jack the Raven. I know his, I know his call. I heard him, did you hear him squawking there? He was talking to somebody. Anyway, sorry Dave. Nope, see, hear that? That's, that's Diane. They're mates.

That's Jack. Like to know what he's saying to her. After the Ravens fly off, I talk to Trevor a bit about the RCMP and ask him about his recollections of the police investigation. Do you remember at the time hearing or thinking anything about police and their investigation or any of the techniques? In the beginning of the investigation? Well, we know because we really didn't know what they had

until the preliminary hearing. They were very quiet about what they had gathered and what they had, other than they were very quick to let us know that Pat Sumner was the man. I do know that at the moment that they arrested him, it was a weird fucked up experience because they had no, nothing physical tying him to the crime scene. I know that. You have to look at all the circumstantial evidence and we couldn't dig up

that transcript. Hey, not yet. I did ask the RCMP for it. They said they're going to help. Help? Try to find it. You think they actually kept a copy?

They say over 45 boxes of material, so... Yeah. The Sumner prelim is important, and I'm looking into other ways to find the documents outside of the RCMP. And there's still a lot of case ground to cover in person while I'm here in Thompson. Trevor agrees to give me a tour of the town and of October 1986. Do you want to start at Doug's old house?

Why don't we? Let's go there. It's Trout, right? Trout, yeah. Let's go to the place where Carrie was at the party. Are you a child of chaos, Dave? I enjoy chaos, yeah. I hear you.

I'm a child of chaos. I know that through AA. AA taught me that. How long has it been? What was your sort of sobriety record? Two years, 11 months. You're now off the wagon. Oh, yeah.

I haven't been sober now. My last crack at it was 2010. I make no apologies, Dave. I smoke weed. It definitely helps me with my depression. It gets me out of bed, and I can get on with my day. Other than my shitty eyes, I do have alcoholism, which is a disease, I know. And I do have depression, and I'm pretty sure, Dave, I have undiagnosed PTSD.

Other than that, I'm healthy. Other than those things. Right. Here's Trout. Yeah, and Doug's would be not far from the corner, eh? I'm trying to remember. There's 11 Trout right there. There's the driveway.

Okay. Right there. There's the driveway. It's just a low bungalow, white house, vinyl panel siding. So have you ever been in that house? No. So you look at these houses, you look at the house, and you look for some clue, how long was the driveway, how long did she have to walk in that light dusting of snow that Nicole described and where did she get picked up because she was picked up did she know the people did she have recognition or feel she had familiarity with those people either she willingly got into the vehicle or she was taken into the vehicle

and whether that happened right at the end of the driveway or not is unknown but I would suspect that it would be close to the house where she was taken from. And she was headed to Nicole's which is a block away

and I'll be honest with you... Nicole's old address where Carrie was supposed to have stayed over that night and may have been walking to when she disappeared was at 3 Spoonbill Crescent. I set the

GPS to find the route but it turns out to be so close to Doug's house it's unnecessary. We could just leave here and let's go to 3 Spoonbill and see how far away that is. Yeah. Like I say, I don't know where she was headed or where she thought she was headed.

She could have been headed to Nicole's, but if she was going to Nicole's, why not just wait until Nicole comes out, right? Yeah. You don't need a four-wheel drive just to ride on the streets here. Yeah, they're awful. That's good old permafrost, Dave. So there we go, and there's Pintail. So if you turn left on Pintail, and then it's right there, you can actually see the house from here.

Yeah. See how short that is? You can see the house from Westwood. Yeah, if, uh, I would say that was like a two-minute walk. That's right. One solid block. No more than two, right? Yeah, there it is there.

That's it. It is an incredibly short distance from Doug's house to Nicole's. Just a couple of blocks. And between them, more of a main drive known as Westwood. Now she had, like me, I didn't mention today with my eye disease, I have night blindness. I cannot see in the dark. Right, nyctalopia they call it. My mom had it, I have it, my sister had it.

Although she didn't have this disease, she had terrible night vision. So I can totally see her sticking to areas with light as in streets which would make sense from that house to this house you'd have street lights all along the way I was on 19 Sandpiper that night my buddy Jerry's place what were you doing at 19 Sandpiper drinking yeah we were drinking Trevor hasn't yet told me what happened to him that day. Hearing about the day's events from multiple points of view helps me to gain a fuller perspective on all the moving parts. Well, I would have been in school that day, the Thursday. Grade 11 I was.

So I would have gotten home around 4 o'clock. And Carrie was home. Because I remember she was getting ready to go out. And after supper I remember sitting in the living room and talking to Carrie. And she had her outfit on that she wore out that night. It was around 5.30, and I remember the belt that she had around her waist. I could hear it jangling, and I looked at her and said, that's a cool outfit, and Rhonda Tennant came to pick her up, and then they left.

That was the last time I ever saw her. And, uh... I think by this time in the day, I had figured out what we were doing, my friends and I, and we decided at some point, I'll say by 7 o'clock, that we were going to stay in the city and not go out because we were considering going out to the stables to drink. According to Trevor, kids used to drink and hang out in the area

at the end of the dead-end stable road near where Carrie was found. One of the details that has always stuck with him, and now me, is that he was going to party there with friends that same night, but decided not to. We were just a close group of friends. I'd say there were only about six or seven of us there that night, just drinking beers and listening to music. Then we all head home, and I get home about day around noon on friday and uh there's no school and so that's the only reason we were out on a thursday but either one of us

carrie or myself there was no school that friday and uh phone calls start to come first ronda i want to believe and of course i'm telling him she well car Carrie's not here she spent the night at Nicole's because that's what she told my parents she was doing and then then Nicole calls and she's asking for Carrie and I'm like we thought she was at your house Nicole's no she's not with me she's not here when I got here but she wasn't here and oh that's not. No one knows where Carrie is. What timing was that? Maybe 1 o'clock, 12.30 on the Friday. But I know they were in touch with the police pretty quickly. I want to say around 3, 3.30, they were in our house

getting a description of what Carrie was wearing, a picture of Carrie. Friday night, we didn't sleep, none of us, and pacing the house. And then night becomes morning. Still no, nothing from the police. People are out looking physically in cars and stuff. I remember that.

And my next memory, of course, is the knock at the door. At 3 o'clock and it's Brian Lundmark and Geraldine Hornan. They come to the door and they say are you Trevor? You're Kerry's brother, right? Brian says they found a body at the stables and we can't get near it. You need to come out there.

Something to that effect. And I'm like, it's kind of like, why are you telling me this? Kind of thinking. And as I'm standing there with them at the door, the phone rings. And I don't move. I hear it ringing upstairs in my dad's room, my mom and dad's room. And I hear my dad pick it up. And I don't hear my dad talking. I just hear him saying, yep. Uh-huh. Yep. Just affirming what's being said to him. And then he hangs it up. I hear the hang up. And he comes to the top of our stairs, and I'm at the bottom

of the stairs, and he looks down at me, I'm looking up at him, and he says, that's my little girl. And like, I remember this feeling of, just, no way, it can't be. No, it can't be. No, it can't be. I'm going out there. We're going out there right now, and so I jump in their truck. Upon hearing the news, Trevor's first instinct was to go to the scene to prove to himself that it wasn't his sister. it is today. This brand new series created by Visit Mississauga celebrates a city 50 years

in the making, paying homage to Ontario's vibrant, diverse, and dynamic third largest city. Tune in to Visit Mississauga's brand new podcast, We Built This City, to learn more. Available now on CBZ Listen. Oh, that coffee smells good.

Can you pass me the sugar when you're finished? What are you doing? That's salt, not sugar. Let's get you another coffee. Feeling distracted? You're not alone. Many Canadians are finding it hard to focus with mortgage payments on their minds. If you're struggling with your payments, speak to your bank.

The earlier they understand your situation, the more options and relief measures could be available to you. Learn more at Canada.ca slash ItPaysToKnow. A message from the Government of Canada. Okay, so we're going to go to the site now. The power line near the horse stables where Carrie was found. We leave the site of the party where Carrie was last seen and drive down Thompson's main drag, Mystery Lake Road. Mostly a highway feel with a Walmart on one side and low-rise downtown sector on the other.

We come to some colorful statues of wolves and an old bush float plane welded to the top of a metal stanchion, part of a hiking trail around Thompson where bears are sometimes seen. And then we cross a bridge over the Burntwood River. The bridge, oh yeah, the Burntwood Bridge. I don't know if I told you this Dave, Kerry was absolutely petrified of bridges. Of this bridge right here. This one, this one specifically.

That we're on right now. This one specifically? The burnt wood drains into the larger Nelson River system and then beyond to Hudson's Bay. There's a local restaurant called Popeye's on the other side. This Popeye, she used to come here, right? She'd duck her head down in the back seat until we were over the bridge. According to people who knew her, Carrie was so afraid of the bridge, she would have never willingly crossed it without someone she trusted. So we're coming up on Cemetery Road here.

McCready Park is right here, Dave. Past McCready Park, which is actually a campground, and then Cemetery Road, we drive around a long bend. A gravel road on our left leads toward the stables, but if we continued along this highway, we'd drive by the hydro line where Kerry was found, but we can't go in that way. At the time, could they not have just turned left? Off the highway? There's a ditch. If they had a four-wheel drive, maybe. You'd need some serious four-wheel drive to do that. Off the highway into that ditch?

It was pretty steep. It'd be stupidity. I i mean it's not super deep but i why do it if you knew you could have an access road yeah so we're going left on the access road now down toward the stables so we're heading up towards the stable road and there's obviously horses around some road apples oh nice they make great hockey pucks i can see why trevor says that this area was once used as a party spot close to town but somehow instantly remote and not subject to any neighborly noise restriction no street lights nobody really had reason to come down this road past the stables because less than a kilometer later it dead ends right near the hydro line it wasn't a dump like it is now back then i'll tell you that

nobody was dumping out here like they are now so if we turn to the right we'll head up toward the power line area so this area is known as mystery Lake. It is. Which is almost metaphorical at this point. As we're driving, I'm just thinking this is, this can't be happening. This is, what's going on here? And we stop and we get out of his truck and there's cops all over the place. And they've got it taped off. You can see the yellow tape going from side to side on the hydro line. At least I could see that much. And as I crossed towards, I was greeted by a big cop. And he says, son, where are you going?

I said, I need to go see that body. I think that's my sister in there. He said, son, you can't go in there. It's a crime scene. Something to that effect. I was in a surreal place. They weren't going to let me go any further, so I got that sense. I turned around and I went back to the truck and I wanted to go talk to somebody.

I wanted to talk to the person that found her. Anyone that saw her. We found one of the, I don't know if it was Donna, that I talked to. Whomever I found, I started asking questions. I asked, was she wearing a Pittsburgh Penguins jacket? She said, no. I said, did she have blonde hair? She said, no.

I said, it's not her. That's what I said. It's not her. Because in my mind's eye, I'm envisioning what she should look like at this crime scene, right? All I'm getting back from her is no, no, no. And the reason I know now is because, well, she wasn't wearing her jacket. And the hair was matted with blood.

That's why it didn't look blonde to her. After some convincing and the help of Trevor's phone call, the RCMP sends me some of the original crime scene photos that were taken that day. I agree to describe what I see, but that we cannot publish them. I dread the email they came in, but I have to look. Thankfully, Carrie's body is not present in any of them. Until now, these photos have not been reported on in much detail. Not far. So this is the hydro line here.

The first photo, a wide shot, shows a clearing about 25 meters across, a corridor for the hydro lines through the black spruce, birch, and trembling aspen on either side. In the mid-ground on the left, next to one of several single wooden hydropoles stretching off in the distance, a police officer points to the right, indicating where Carrie's body was found, on the other side of the clearing, next to a muddy roadway

that stretches off into the distance. Okay, so why don't you come over and watch your garbage there. Yeah, illegal dump. Trevor and I have now stopped in front of where the rough hydro roadway begins. Today, the hydro clearing is a

tangle of cottonwood, grasses, and fireweed. And people have dumped old TVs, bedsprings, and drywall here. A rotten, puce-colored couch sits upright next to where I walk in, holding Trevor's elbow to guide him. Here, come on this side of me. The left? On this side here, yep. There you go. So back in the day, this was all clear, like right through. You could see right through to the highway. There were no trees or anything in here.

Here's the hydro pole here. So if we just go up under this tree, duck, duck, duck. Okay, lift your feet. I was only told, I asked Jennifer the coordinates, and I was only told about a quarter of the way in, off that back road. Okay. Donna told me that she left flowers here. Really? Yeah so there may be some dead flowers at the exact site. She, Donna remembers eh where she found her. Donna Kovic told me that she had recently visited the scene herself and left a bouquet of flowers. So at the time, somewhere along this road is where the vehicle had trouble getting out.

It got stuck, yeah. The next RCMP photos are taken much closer to the spot where Kerry was found, and focus more on the roadway, or more accurately, the tracks that were the roadway at the time. In one of the tracks, made by a vehicle or vehicles that clearly sank into the mud as they drove, there's a blue and red blow-up rubber air mattress, the kind used in the 70s and 80s for camping or floating. The blue on one side and red on the other is made up of a fabric stretched and formed over the rubber. There's a small brand symbol in white paint on one corner that I can't quite make out because the photo isn't high enough resolution. The mattress is deflated, covered in mud and debris, and folded over on itself. Some broken branches between about 5 and 13 centimeters in diameter have been jammed underneath it and placed there for traction. Somebody was using the air mattress

and branches to try to free their vehicle from the mud and left it behind. Nearby in another rut, another photo shows a squarish black rubber or vinyl floor mat from a vehicle used in a similar manner it seems to me that the mat and mattress were left by the people that killed carrie but that cannot be said for certain i don't remember the air mattress or the car mat ever being brought forth as evidence at the preliminary hearing. They couldn't link it to Sumner, that's why. I guarantee you that's why they never introduced it, because it didn't make sense that he would have that. I'd like to put some questions about the air mattress and floor mat and other evidence

to the lead investigators at the time, Dennis Heald and John Toast, if they'll talk to me. Okay, and then another high step here. We're getting into some mud. Nice. Ooh, some marshy mud there. It's a bit muddy here. They can see that this might have been a place where someone could get stuck, actually.

Yeah, you can feel the soft mud. It really wants to sink here. Other police photographs still closer give important clues as to what may have transpired at the actual scene. One shows a jacket, Carrie's new Pittsburgh Penguins jacket, on the ground in the woods. The other shows one of Carrie's shoes on the ground, upright with laces still tied, in a different location than the jacket. To me, this shows that Carrie was out of the vehicle at the muddy roadway, but also at these locations in the woods. Her jacket off suggests a struggle,

perhaps as she is grabbed from behind while running away and the jacket comes off. Her still-tied shoe comes off as she is dragged, or as she crawls. I think it must have been right around here. Right around here? Yep. I think she was... It's on the edge of the hydro line, I know that. There's a big branch here. Do a high step over this. The next series of photos show branches or splintered fragments of branches that appear to be taken from the same or similar source as the ones shoved under the air mattress. But these branches, about five to nine centimeters in diameter in the photo, have broken into pieces and are covered in blood. The branches would have broken and thrown off these pieces as they were swung,

and then violently impacted their target, likely Carrie. The place where I believe she was found shows bloody ground and grass on one side of the shot, with the bloody pieces also visible. I don't like fighting, and I don't like violence against people, but I hold a special dark place in my soul for the fuckers that did this to my sister, and I want to say, Dave, what I want to do to them are very bad things. One close crop photo shows possibly one of the most important images, here reported on in detail for the first time. A single shoe imprint in the mud next to a six-inch plastic police ruler set beside it for scale. This would likely be the imprint of one of the perpetrators.

The imprint is very clear of the front of the sole, but shows almost no heel, suggesting that the person may have been pushing the vehicle. The design on the bottom is indicative of a basketball or court shoe showing a tight zigzag herringbone pattern and a concentric circle under the area where the ball of the foot would be. The circle is called a pivot point and from our research the shoe looks like an Adidas brand sold between 1983 and 1986 known as the Concord or the Centennial. Based on what we can see, the size is estimated to be at least an eight or nine men's, but since the heel is difficult to make out, the actual size could be larger. Although it is sometimes done in the course of police investigations, estimating height using shoe size isn't a precise science. We're standing right where these photos were taken,

and it's still muddy in this particular area of the road. Right where this old rusty bed spring is here There's a tree here that's been cut off with a saw There's a part of the trunk was cut right off Looks like by a sweet saw a long time ago Oh, there's a raven coming. Too bad it wasn't cold out here right now. You get a freak July cool day and you can get a sense maybe of what it would have been like out there that night, Dave. Especially once it gets dark when the rain's falling. It's kind of creepy out here, I'll tell you. At night

when it's dark and it's wet. Yeah, you hear the sounds of the animals in the bushes and stuff. The dead end here, not. Well, in here, it's so far from everything. Like, look how far in off the highway you are. You would definitely have to know this area to come to it. You don't know about this area if you haven't been out here. I put this same question to another RCMP detective, now retired,

who was brought in as fresh eyes to look at Carrie's case in the late 1990s, Robert Urbanovsky. So, in your mind, what do you think, outsider, local? Let me ask you a question. Urbanoski, whom I've met at his home in a small Ontario town, preferred to be Socratic in some of his answers, asking me questions back instead of answering himself. And in this way I find the process somewhat more revealing than what I got from

the current RCMP on Kerry's case. We're sitting in Urbanovsky's living room on a big couch. With his close-cut, stylish, but graying beard, he looks young for his years, and he has the easy manner of someone used to catching people off guard. Okay, let me reverse the role here for a minute. You live in some small town, all right, and you've just done some dastardly deed, okay, to your significant other in your house. And you're going, oh my gosh, okay, what am I going to do? I don't want to go to jail.

What are you going to do with the body? You're facing it right here, right now. Depends on my state of mind. Well, okay. Let's say you've got the car. You're sitting in the driveway. All right, you get the car started. You're going to go down the driveway, and you're going to go,

I've got to drop this body someplace. I've got to get rid of this. Otherwise, I'm going to jail for the rest of my life. I'm going to go somewhere where I know somebody can't see me. So I'm asking you, are you going to turn right, or are you going to turn left? Am I going to drive aimlessly through areas that I have no idea where I'm going and arrive at some place that's going to be a great place to drop a body? Or wait a minute, I know a place because I used to, I go there fishing. Or I know a place because I used to

party there as a kid. And there's a spot, if I go up that road, I know it's nice and secluded and quiet. How do you find that spot? You know, with somebody in the vehicle to commit a sexual assault and a homicide, you just don't come across these things by accident. Dump sites or the scene of the crime is always significant. It's always significant. Seldom ever is it random. Somebody had to know. That was the place to go. That was a place where you could go, where you could be hidden away. Urbanovsky is basically telling me things without telling me.

I push forward to see what else can be revealed. Tell me about your involvement in Carrie Ann Brown's case. Well, my involvement came many years later. It's more from a review perspective on investigative strategies and things we can do or possibly could be doing. I mean, it was still in the early stages back. I looked at it before the development of significant DNA results and that type of thing. So, I mean, you look at it from the review. Is there something here that we're missing? Is there something else that we can do to try and further this case?

What are you able to tell me about what your findings were? Actually, I can't. There's a lot of things that we discussed that would be investigative strategies that I can't talk about even today. I can say that I know from my involvement that investigators at the time covered a lot of ground. Okay? An awful lot of ground. When I talked to RCMP in Winnipeg, they said that they interested still be interested to hear what Patrick Sumner has said and to me that just floors me because it's like he's still of interest

so what's the question here I'm just waiting for an answer there is no question that's the secret you know and I'm always hesitant to to say anything about potential suspects in something that's certainly not before the courts in ongoing investigation. I think it's clear when you look at the judge at the time, at the preliminary inquiry, said there simply wasn't enough evidence to proceed to trial. Okay. It's not a finding of guilty or not guilty, just not enough

evidence. You have to go back to square one and go, what are we missing? Police won't say a word about Sumner, so I'm back to square one. Was something missed or was there no evidence because Sumner is innocent? I try to focus down with Urbanovsky on what police knew. Carrie was brought to that site. Now, was Carrie murdered at that site? And the question is, was there some kind of measure of assault happening before she arrived? Was there any sense of how that played out at the crime scene that you can remember? This is not a situation, I think, where somebody

committed the murder elsewhere and took the instruments of the death and dumped them all in this area. Nobody's that well-organized with tree branches and that type of thing. Clearly, like you describe, a tree that you can see where it was broken off and used as a weapon. And the way the body was found there was clearly the area where the murder was committed. So when she left the party, if we look at just that part, would the person have been a random drive-by or someone who lived in the area?

Was there any idea of intention? We don't know. Okay. You don't know until you get that final DNA profile match and you sit down with the individuals. You don't know until you have a weak link that wants to be helpful. Okay. Or the weak link that, that wants to unload their conscience and say, you know, I can't live with this or I've got to talk to somebody about it. You just don't know. You never know intention until you find the person.

Often you don't. Let me ask you a question, okay? If you're cruising the streets and you're looking for a young female to abduct, rape, and murder, would you wait till you got to your crime scene to break off a branch, off a tree, to commit the murder? Or if you wanted to commit a murder, would you not say, well, I'm going to have to kill whoever I pick up tonight, so I better take a weapon. I better take a knife from the drawer, I better take a baseball bat, or I better take something, because I've got to be prepared.

Would you not do that? If you're planning on doing it, and you'd thought about it? If you are in a situation where you have to do it now, and you look around and go, what have I got? I've got a tree branch here, and I break it off, and that's what I use. I might tell you a little bit about pre-planning or intention. What? Does the level of anger, and that's a question that Trevor asks a lot, is like there must have been a huge amount of anger given the violence that was done to Carrie.

Does it make a difference in terms of your assessment of the crime scene? I mean, obviously profile-wise. If you are experienced at this type of thing and know exactly how many times you have to hit somebody with a tree branch, you might say, I just need to hit them twice. But you know what? You don't know. And you go down this path, and quite often it's going to look like overkill. And you go, is it because the person was really angry,

or is it because they knew that they needed to commit the murder and that they were committed to it, and they had to make sure. One of the things that we always look for is the victimology. It's important to know whether or not that person would fight back, because if the victim would fight back, that might be why there's more violence, because the person fought back.

The person used some sort of a weapon that they found in defense. And what that does is that causes a change in the offender behavior because now you've done something to me. So sometimes that can have an impact on the end result of the crime scene and what happens. Some evidence that perhaps maybe she escaped momentarily and ran through the bush where they had to chase that individual. You don't know.

Your emotions get pent up. You finally catch somebody and you're in the heat of a chase and the emotions are running high. People have said she would never have gotten in a car unless she knew the people. And if she got in that car with people she didn't know, she would have had to have been forced in the car. That was the victimology of almost everybody I've spoken to, from family to friends. And that she was afraid of that bridge. And if she knew they were going to drive over that bridge, she never would have gotten in the car.

Okay, and if all of your friends say, no, that's not something she would do, then you have to go with that. There's been a lot of information, or there's been significant information brought forward, and it's been in the media that, you know, there's two different DNA involved. You can't profile two people. They're not necessarily the same profile. You know, and it's been in the media that DNA evidence has indicated two people that have committed a sexual assault. It doesn't say that those two people committed the murder. It just says somebody committed a sexual assault or two people.

We have more clarity now. Okay. We have more clarity because DNA is advanced. And we're starting to see the picture starting to unfold. I'm going, okay. All right. In terms of DNA, other than what was found on Carrie, would there be DNA on branches that are the bloody branches

other than Carrie's DNA from hands, like epithelelial things like that? Like, is that possible? You know, there probably would have been contact DNA on Carrie Ann Brown, contact DNA on branches, contact DNA on the mattress. I would think that, you know, given that DNA is the strongest piece that investigators have at this point, I would suspect that those samples have been resubmitted to the lab multiple times. I'm very confident that that's what's happening. Trevor is also very focused on the idea of DNA evidence, hoping for a break in the case brought on by 30 years of technological advancements. There's some new developments where DNA can be used to reconstruct what somebody looks

like, so an approximation of the perpetrator's face can actually be seen through their genetic information. Janet Amaro has told me that the RCMP in Manitoba have researched this technology, but she wouldn't elaborate further on whether this might be explored as an option in Carrie's case. I've often wondered what the DNA evidence they have, like, is it sperm? Is it flesh under a fingernail? Blood? Back at the hydro clearing, we're packing up as Trevor and I continue to discuss the

evidence. Did she induce blood from them? Maybe she plowed someone in the fucking nose? She's got splintered blood on herself. I know she would have went down trying. It's stunning the amount of material that was left behind.

And I'm sure it's confounded the RCMP as well. I never thought about it before. Did she have mud all over her? If there was a struggle of any kind outside the vehicle, she'd be covered in mud. The autopsy will show. Right. I think that she was killed there based on the branches alone.

I do believe that she was raped inside of a vehicle. I don't believe she was raped outside. Now you start looking in town. Who drives this type of vehicle? Look at the details of that floor mat to determine what type of vehicle it came from. I'm convinced they did this because she told them she was going to tell on them. Because of what they did to her. They sexually assaulted her.

And she didn't go down without a fight either, I'll guarantee you that. She was a tough little chick, and she didn't take shit from nobody. And she would have fought back with everything in her heart, and I'm sure she plowed a couple of them. The people responsible for sexually assaulting and killing Carrie would have returned home at an odd hour. They would have likely had ripped clothes or scratches or signs of a fight on their body.

Found at the crime scene, muddy tire tracks, a deflated air mattress and a floor mat, branches for leverage, branches for killing, Carrie's jacket, Carrie's shoe, and her body and blood, and at least one very good shoe imprint. These are the things that we know about. As we drive out of the area at day's end, Trevor points to a place where he took part in a sweat lodge, trying to purify himself through a ritual led by a local Indigenous person he knows. I wanted to experience a sweat lodge. So I wanted to get rid of something that was in me.

It just was surreal being so close to where they found Carrie. Trevor says he liked the sweat and the process and experience, but that nothing can change his obsession for a solution to his sister's killing. We drive past the stables and turn right onto Mystery Lake Road, back toward town. Talking to police and Trevor and others so far has filled in some blanks, but brings more questions without answers.

But there was a suspect, an arrest and some documents, if I can find them. Anything official will help. And retired RCMP Bob Urbanovsky may have something else to offer. Some strategies for resurrecting Carrie's case. He was the prime reason another murder in the area was solved after sitting dormant for almost 15 years. A young indigenous woman killed in 1971 by four white men in the PAW,

about a four-hour drive from Thompson. Her name was Helen Betty Osborne. You have been listening to Episode 2, Dead End. If you wish to submit an anonymous tip about Carrie Brown's murder, visit cbc.ca slash sks or email the show at sks at cbc.ca. Join our new Facebook group and follow us on Twitter at SKSCBC. Someone Knows Something is hosted, written, and produced by David Ridgen. The series is mixed by Cecil Fernandez and produced by Chris Oak, Steph Camp, Amal Delich, Eunice Kim, and executive producer Arif Noorani.

Special thanks to Justin Heinrichs for his shoe print expertise. Original music by David Fetterman. Our theme song is Thompson Girl by the Tragically Hip. We'll see you next time. Someone Knows Something is a CBC podcast. Another show we think you might like is Uncover, Escaping NXIVM, which takes you inside the bizarre self-help group that attracted actors, politicians, and the super wealthy, and is now the center of an FBI investigation. Escaping NXIVM, from CBC Podcast's new investigative series, Uncover. Subscribe wherever you get Someone Knows Something, or visit cbc.ca slash podcasts. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.