Someone Knows Something - S5 Episode 3: Helen Betty Osborne

Episode Date: October 22, 2018

Another young woman was brutally murdered in northern Manitoba in 1971. But unlike the Brown case, a perpetrator was eventually brought to justice. What can be learned from the Helen Betty Osborne 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 3, Helen Betty Osborne. Just drove several kilometers out of the Paw, down some gravel roads, unmarked site until you come upon it. There's nobody else around. It's the end of the day. Cloudy.

There's no markers at all that would indicate that this is the way to the memorial for Helen Betty Osborne. You look it up online, there's GPS coordinates. I'm here where the memorial was laid. I'm just walking up to it here. It's a concrete structure. Here in Clearwater Lake Provincial Park here in northern Manitoba. Here we are. It's a bronze plaque embedded in the rock.

There's some pennies around it and some sweet grass at the top. Again, there's a picture of Betty. Helen Betty Osborne, July 16, 1952 to November 13, 1971. This plaque is in memory of Helen Betty Osborne, who died at the young age of 19. Betty attended school here at Guy Hill Residential School in 1969, prior to attending Margaret Harbour Collegiate Institute in the Paw, Manitoba. And over here there's a another rock and on that rock it says Guy Indian Residential School 1958 to 1979. This is the site of one of the notorious residential schools that the Canadian government forced Aboriginal peoples into.

So Helen Buddy was killed in November of 1971. And the first arrest in Helen's case came in October 1986, just before Carrie Ann Brown was killed in Thompson. And the second arrest in Helen Buddy Osborne's case came the same month after Carrie was killed. It's coincidental. Okay. See you, Helen. You've seen the movie, Dave? I think I did a long time ago, yeah.

Trevor's referring here to the Conspiracy of Silence TV series made by CBC in 1991 about the murder of Helen Betty Osbourne. That murder scene still bothers me. Out there in the woods. I watched the movie this past year, and it really bothered me, that scene of him killing her. Clearly, it takes me to Carrie in some way, shape, or form. And perhaps what she went through. Yeah, the memorial is a pretty lonely place out there,

and I just think it's important. I think it's important to remind people about Helen, Betty, and I think it's important when we're thinking about your sister's case because silence can be broken, right? People can know who did it and still not talk, but then eventually you can break the silence, right? And you can get the truth. So you can just imagine the average citizen who isn't involved directly, but has secondhand information,

perhaps even firsthand information on who did it. And just the only reason they don't come forward, I know for a fact, those that do know have never come forward, is fear. At the end of the day, that's it. There's nothing else, no other of the day. That's it. There's nothing else. No other way around it. It's fear. Yeah.

Whatever the fear is, who knows what kind of fear it is, but it's fear and that's it. And, uh, you have to be able to willing to walk through that. And until you're willing to walk through that, nothing changes.

I don't think, you know, it was so many years later too. It was, uh, what was shameful there too. 15 years later, you know,

that justice started to happen in that case. Yeah. And what's shameful about that case in the PAW was how many didn't want to get involved. The PAW is a town in northern Manitoba, about a four-hour drive from Thompson. And couldn't be bothered to share because they thought someone else would do it. They wouldn't have to. They didn't want to be brought into court, and they didn't want to be labeled as a rat whatever a rat really fuck i want somebody who knows the story of helen betty osborne to give me the story that you know it took also you know the pressure of rcmp urbanoski urbanos Urbanovsky. In the PAW. Of Urbanovsky, who was based in Thompson but worked in the PAW.

It was a dormant case, like in the early 80s. He picked up the file and then nothing had happened on it. I've already met with Robert Bob Urbanovsky about his work on Kerry Brown's case in the 1990s. Urbanovsky was an RCMP officer based out of Thompson in the early 1980s, and his main claim to fame is actually his work on Helen Betty Osborne's murder. Urbanovsky is largely credited for reviving Helen's case and getting it into the courtroom. Hey Dave, can we go to my place? I can change. Yep. Okay. We're done here. I want to hear from Urbanovsky himself,

his version of the story about how and why he went about reinvestigating Helen's murder. Maybe that, along with his familiarity with Carrie's case, can help Trevor and Jim and I in our own quest. But first, Norway House and the people who knew Helen Betty Osborne best. So, arrived at the ferry for Norway House. It's the C.F. James Norway House Cable Ferry. Appetag and Norway House Cable Ferry. Apatagan Norway House Cable Ferry, daily service 24 hours, departures every 15 minutes.

So the ferry sort of pulls itself along a cable. This is my first visit to Norway House Cree Nation, where Helen Betty Osborne was born and raised. The small car ferry I'm on is crossing the Nelson River, which flows out of Lake Winnipeg. Norway House is on the eastern bank of the Nelson, further up the road, and about three and a half hours drive from Thompson. God's Lake Narrows 260, God's River 310, Oxford House 206. I didn't know you could drive to God's Lake Narrows.

Maybe it's an ice road. Wow, that's beautiful here. It's beautiful because of the trees and the life in and around the rivers and swamps, and to me a feeling of openness that's hard to find in the south. Okay, so here we are coming into Norway House. Welcome to Norway House Crenation and God We Trust, and there's big pointer boats on sort of blue, splash blue rock, bald eagle on top of a sign. I guess I see some kids walking with books and stuff.

I guess the school's over. The large school they are coming from, constructed in 2004, goes from kindergarten to grade 12 and is named the Helen Betty Osborne Resource Center. I don't really want to go running around with all my recording equipment until I get sort of the proper dispensation to do that. It's early morning. Pretty sure this is the band office up here. Hi.

Is this the band office? Yes. Okay, good. Looking for Darlene Osborne. Hi, you're from CBC? Yes. Okay, I'll just have a seat. Darlene is on her way.

Okay, great. Did you drive it? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, last night. I didn't interview her. I'm just into the circular room where the band council conducts meetings at a monolithic table in the middle

around the edges on the walls art and photos from the community featuring eagles and wolves I see the pointer boats or york boats as they are called here, were used in the early days of the European fur trade on the Nelson River and Lake Winnipeg. Hello. Oh, hi there.

How are you? Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. Darlene Osborne is a band counsellor and a major force behind a 2004 Amnesty International report called Stolen Sisters, looking into missing and murdered Indigenous women. Her husband John was Helen Betty Osborne's first cousin. Counsellor Osborne arrives with a friend named Marion. Hello.

Darlene, and this is Marion Cesalius. That's Helen Betty's cousin. Ah, okay. Thank you for coming. Both women are 64. Darlene is taller with shoulder-length dark hair and glasses, wearing a blue blouse with a dreamcatcher embroidered on the shoulder. And Marion, shorter and older seeming, also in glasses with shorter, wavy, dark hair,

wearing a green raincoat over a light blue jacket. I'm not quite awake yet. Let's go see our office. It'll be warmer in there. Oh, is it ever nice in here? Oh yeah, this is warm and quiet, yeah. We move into Darlene's office. I'm struck immediately by a wall-sized quilt, half yellow, half blue, with a giant turtle in the middle circled by a braid of sweetgrass

with five feathers along the bottom. Around the quilt, the photos of 16 young women, all of them missing or murdered from northern Manitoba, and four of them from Norway House. Helen Betty Osborne's photo is prominent near the centre. At the top, written in giant yellow letters, never forgotten. At the centre, in red, missing and murdered Aboriginal women. These are our four girls from Norway House. This is Helen here.

Helen Betty. This is my granddaughter here. And this is Hilary, another one from Norway House. And Claudette Osborne, still considered as missing. And these are the other ones from all over Manitoba. These are just a few pictures that we could get. Never forgotten. That's good. Seems like a lot of missing women and murdered women.

Yes. In Manitoba. Yeah. Helen Betty's up there. Yeah. And we've got... Felicia Solomon Osborne. And we've got Claudette.

Hilary Wilson and Claudette Osborne-Tayol. The list of missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada is long and sickening. Felicia Osborne, age 16, disappeared in March 2003 from Winnipeg. Her remains were pulled from the Red River a few months later. Hilary Wilson, 18, was last seen alive in the north end of Winnipeg on August 19, 2009. Her body was found in a field the next day. Claudette Osborne disappeared in Winnipeg at the age of 21 in July 2008. She has never been found. Three Osbornes up there. So it must be a big family name in the Norway house.

It is. And they're all related. Darlene and Marion move into talking about their friend and cousin, Helen Betty. November 13, 1971 is when they discovered her body outskirts of the Paw, Manitoba. Clearwater Lake. Clearwater Lake. As I remember, we were forbidden to go to the Paw. We were afraid to go to the PAW. We were afraid to go to the PAW, period, because what had happened, because we were afraid what happened to Helen Betty.

It wasn't the people on the reserve, but it was the town area that I was always afraid of. And then when that happened, they had national inquiry at that time. In 1988, the Manitoba government created the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry. It was a response to Helen Betty Osborne's murder 17 years earlier, as well as the 1988 death of a man named J.J. Harper, who was shot and killed by Winnipeg police. The inquiry investigated how racism played a role in the cases and in broader Canadian society. I knew Helen Betty when I was young. So after that, when Helen Betty was discovered. It took them many years to find out who the killers were or who the killer was.

And I remember that time when Mrs. Osborne and other people went. I think it was in Vancouver when they went and met one of the men that did this to Helen Betty. Dwayne Johnson, I think it was Dwayne Johnson, they met him one-on-one and he did apologize to her and the family. Of course, Mrs. Osborne, you know, was a very kind woman and she accepted the apology. And if you knew Mrs. Osborne, you know, she was, she suffered silently because what happened to her daughter, that nothing came out of it. And those other men that were in a car with Dwayne Johnson,

I think they got away. They got away. It was just Dwayne Johnson that served. The inquiry was not acting as a trial to determine guilt, so their findings are not proven facts. But here's a summary of what the inquiry was told. In December 1987, 16 years after Helen's murder, only Dwayne Johnston, one of the four men who were involved, was convicted. He was sentenced to life imprisonment.

James Houghton was acquitted. Lee Colgan received immunity for his testimony against both Johnston and Houghton. And the last man, Norman Manger, who was allegedly drunk but present at the time, wasn't even charged. I don't know if they served because, you know, we're trying to, I guess it was, Helen Betty was forgotten.

Nobody cared what happened. And so when these guys finally were known that they did this to Helen Betty. I don't even know how many years Dwayne Johnson served. I think he did for a few years, not very long. Dwayne Johnson served only 10 years of his life sentence and was released in October 1997.

You know, she was stabbed so many times. And she was such a sweet little girl. It was very brutal the way we lost her. And all of us were in high school at that time. Marion, like Helen, went to Guy Hill, the same residential school in DePauw. And you went to Guy Hill, the same residential school in the PA. And you went to the one in... Yeah, where Betty and I went to school together.

There was about, I think, seven of us from Lurie House. I remember that day when they first flown us, Justine Osborne said to me, Hey, Marion, he says, Look after my little girl for me. Have you been interviewed about Helen Betty before? Have you ever talked about her before? They asked me, but I didn't want to. They asked me about three or four, maybe three times,

and I said no. I remember that morning, I guess when she got murdered, and then I seen my landlady crying, and she says, Marianne, come down here, and she was crying, and they didn't tell me what was going on. And then the cops were standing there, said, I'd like to ask you a few questions. I said, about what? We'll talk in the car, they said. So they took me to the police station that time. And they started asking me, do you know Helen Betty? And I said, yeah. That's my friend and my cousin. So they took me in this room. And then, can you identify

what she wore that night? So I started identifying her stuff. And then they started showing me pictures, what they did to her. And that's when I blacked out, I guess. And that's how I found out. So the police showed you pictures of Helen? Mm-hmm. They showed us pictures, shots, the clothes with her boots and her vest and stuff like that. Yeah.

To identify what she wore that night, yeah. Soon after they found her body, yeah. Did you see Helen the day she disappeared? Yeah, we actually seen her that night. We were all downtown. We were all out, and she was kind of intoxicated. Sorry to say, but we were all drinking that evening, that weekend. She was with, I forget who she was with,

she was with somebody else, a friend. That guy says to her, well I'm gonna take her home now, he says. So I don't know after that, that must have been about 10, 30, 11 o'clock that evening, we seen her. Because after that, we all gathered at this cafe we used to go to. We were all sitting there, and she said, bye. That's the last time we seen her.

When you saw the fellow that said, I'm going to take her home, was that one of the men that was arrested later? No, no, no, no. It was just a friend. Oh, okay. One of our schoolmates. I don't know what really happened. What I heard is he didn't take her right to where she's supposed to go.

I guess she wanted to go somewhere or something like that instead of taking her right to the door. This woman wrote a book like that, instead of taking her right through the door. This woman wrote a book about that, but what she wrote in there is not true. That Lisa Priest, yeah, because I had that book in some areas where she said we went and parted in a shack, where we burned a shack down,

which never happened. Yeah, there was a lot of stuff in there she wrote. I don't know where she got her information from. The residential school used to be on Clearwater Lake too, but further down, because that's where they found her body. That little boy that found her body, that was chasing a rabbit or something, that pump house. That's where they found her body, in the bush. They dragged her over there. Because that's where that little boy stumbled into that body. The memorial that's there now, the big concrete memorial. That's the site of the school. Okay. Because I was there, I stopped on the way in. Yeah, Guy Hill. That used to be

Guy Hill Residential School. And you went there? Yeah, we went there. We were there for two years. So what was residential school like in DePauw for you? No, never a good question. Never a good question in a residential school. Guy Hill was open from 1958 to 1979 and during that time was run by Catholic Oblate missionaries. The Cree language was banned at the school and brutal corporal punishments and sexual abuses of the Indigenous students at the hands of faculty were common. I remember we ran away from there, me and Betty and a whole bunch of us.

We ran away and I don't know where we were trying to go, but I remember we were all sitting in a campfire at night, sitting on a bunch of branches. We were trying to warm up and we can hear these wolves. And we started running. We started running back. school. I guess what's worse the wolves or the school? Twice we ran away and one time it wasn't far from that but there used to be a cabin in Pierwater Lake and then we ran away and we started

getting hungry. So we looked in the cupboards. All we found was dried macaroons. We started eating those. We started eating those. But, oh, did we ever get a strap after when we got back? You know, a strap

made out of metal in the middle. That's what we brought. A hitch you wear. Yeah strap made out of metal in the middle. That's what we got. And it hit you where? Yeah, on our hands. On the hands. Yeah. My hands were swollen for I don't know how many days. And it was always you and Helen that ran away?

No, there was about four or five of us. Yeah, it was hard being in a lot of stuff. I don't want to remember. I don't want to talk about. But we had our good times and bad times with Helen, you know. Helen Betty and Marion transferred to another school in the PAW that was integrated with non-Indigenous students from the town. Those guys that were involved in that murder, I think it was Dwayne Johnston, used to sit in front of us in the classroom. But they were real prejudice.

I think it was Dwayne or one of those other guys. They used to be in the same class as us. At that school? Yeah, at Margaret Barber Galleget. That's where we went to school. And they used to call us savages, you dirty idiots, you know, stuff like that. You guys are so dumb, why are you in a classroom for?

But Helen was smart, she was a very creative person. Very intelligent. Yeah, she was. And she used to say she wanted to be a doctor, a teacher, or a lawyer. She says, when I, or a lawyer. She says, when I get out of here. But there was lots of racism in that school where we went to.

The feeling in Darlene's office is one of tension mixed with emotional release. The experiences are raw and horrifying. The murder cold, heartless, and brutal. Here's the findings, verbatim, of the aboriginal inquiry for what happened to Helen Betty Osborne on the night of November 13, 1971. The description is graphic. While walking along 3rd Street in the Paw on that cold Saturday morning, Betty Osborne was accosted by four men in a car. Paul Houghton, who was driving, stopped the car,

and Dwayne Johnston got out, attempting to convince Osborne to go with them to party. She told them that she did not wish to accompany them. She then was forced into their car and driven away. In the car, Osborne was assaulted by Colgan and Johnston as Houghton drove. Johnston ripped at her blouse and Lee Colgan grabbed at her breasts. In spite of her screams and attempts to escape, Osborne was taken to a cabin belonging to Houghton's parents at Clearwater Lake. At the cabin, she was pulled from the car and beaten by Johnston, while the her assailants were afraid they might be heard, she was forced back into the car and driven further from town to a pump house next to the lake.

At least some of her clothing was removed by her assailants in the car. At the pump house, she was once more taken from the car by one or more of her assailants, and the beating continued. Her clothes, those which had not been removed earlier, were taken from her. Wearing only her winter boots, she was viciously beaten and stabbed, apparently with a screwdriver, more than 50 times. Her face was smashed beyond recognition. The evidence suggests that two people then dragged her body into the bush. Her clothes were hidden.

The four men then left, returned to the PAW, and went their separate ways. Her body was discovered the next morning, and the RCMP commenced its investigation. Capturing the rich history, culture, sports, music, and incredible individuals who have shaped Mississauga into the vibrant city 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 CBC Listen. Are you sure you parked over here?

Do you see it anywhere? I think it's back this way. Come on. Hey, you're going the wrong way. Feeling distracted? You're not alone. Whether renting, considering buying a home, or renewing a mortgage,

many Canadians are finding it hard to focus with housing costs on their minds. For free tools and resources to help you manage your home finances and clear your head, visit Canada.ca slash ItPaysToKnow. A message from the Government of Canada. Ask about Helen Betty Osborne. I mean, that's a file that, of course, for me, was one that stands out as being one that kind of shaped my career. I'm back with former RCMP investigator Bob Urbanovsky at his home in Ontario. I came across the Helen Betty Osborne case. My partner at the time actually had possession of the file

and was the investigator from the GIS section. And over coffee and many discussions, he told me about this case, and I became just so interested in it. And I looked at this, I thought, this is an incredible case. Why can't we get it to the point where we can lay charges? I try to hear all of what Urbanovsky says in a kind of parallel thought process with Kerry Brown's case. How can what Bob is telling me about Helen Betty Osborne's case help? The cases are different and the victims are different. But the violence in both murders is similar. The kind of location both victims were left is similar. Maybe there's a profile or investigative strategy

somewhere in Urbanovsky's experience. What was the date you took care of the case then? I would have taken it over probably in around 1981, 1982. And my involvement was to review all of the evidence that we had, all of the exhibits. And after about six months, I looked at this and I said, you know, I think we can make some headway in here. I see some investigative strategies that we might be able to employ.

And I was simply assigned to it full time and said, okay. Just before we get into your solutions or strategy, what were some of the problems with the filing? It was all secondhand. It was all rumor. There was no one person that we could say, okay, you have this bit of evidence that we can take to court. Okay, a good example is six months after the murder had taken place, the RCMP received a letter, anonymous letter, from Marquette, Michigan. Marquette, a city in northern Michigan on the coast of Lake Superior,

a drive of over 17 hours from the PAW. And in there, it stated that they'd been at a party and they'd been speaking with one of the individuals who identified himself as one of the four, and that he was distraught, and he was talking about his involvement and other people's involvement. And the letter clearly gave the investigators at the time the information that they needed as to who. And that was sort of the breaking point. That was the beginning of being able to piece together the bits of evidence. But that was anonymous. You know,

there was no person standing behind that letter that said, I had a confession and I can give this information as evidence in court. So there was a lot of that, you know, a lot of rumors around the town. But nobody that was coming forward that actually had firsthand. Other than an anonymous person coming forward and having firsthand evidence of a confession of sorts by one of the perpetrators. That's right. And that was one of the things that I wanted to do, was to try and figure out who that was. Because that person had key evidence that could put this over the top. That was the starting point. If we can find one, we can find another. So anonymous tips work.

Well, I mean, it broke the case for the investigators at the time. Nobody was coming forward. How many people knew, we don't know. But clearly, over the years since that time, a lot more people began to, I guess, get firsthand knowledge through discussions over a beer or something where somebody would say something and that type of thing. But that was really the breaking point, and that person was key.

This would have been 1971, 72 then? Correct. So we're into the spring of 72, the letter comes. I think it was about June or so. Okay. The perpetrators hadn't had priors like that before. There was nothing that indicated previous convictions or anything of that sort. I mean, this appeared to be, for all intents and purposes, a first-time event for all of them.

Autopsy revealed that there was no indications of a sexual assault. But when you look at the way she was found, with no clothing, just boots, clearly that was the intent. But even then, they're in the 70s. They were trying to profile it, trying to figure out who would commit this kind of murder, the viciousness that was involved in it. And they came up with certain characteristics that they thought that might be involved. They canvassed every mental hospital in the province trying to figure out who's been recently released because they thought clearly the person who did this was unbalanced, because they looked at it and they themselves saw this as a brutal murder. Canadian author Lisa Priest wrote her book,

Conspiracy of Silence, about the Osborne murder in 1989. The main premise of the book and subsequent film was that much of the town of the Paw knew the details of what happened to Helen Betty, but said nothing for years. I wonder if it's possible that many people know about Carrie Brown's murder and for whatever reason are sitting on the information. Urbanovsky and the Aboriginal Inquiry both suggest that the whole town of the Paw, at least, didn't know in Helen Betty's case.

And I think it's easy to look at it and go, well, you know, all these people know and nobody's talking. I think that it's probably an accurate title for a book if you look at it from the perspective of, here's a bunch of people that know, and nobody came forward. And you say, okay, why did they not come forward? I mean, we have all sorts of people today that are afraid to come forward. They don't want to become involved. They figure, well, you know what? Somebody will come forward. If I've heard it, so has somebody else. If I've heard it, the police must have heard it, because it's common knowledge.

And I think when you look at it from that perspective and you start saying, yeah, it could be a conspiracy of silence if you really looked at it and said, but an entire town, every single individual, everybody's involved in this conspiracy, everybody? I don't think so. Okay, you got to look a little deeper. And I think if you look a little deeper, and as I look deeper into it, I found reasons for people not to come forward. People that had been threatened. I reached out to Lisa Priest to ask her if she felt it was accurate

to say that the whole town of the Paw knew the details of Helen Betty's murder. But Priest said she was unavailable and that she didn't have the time to look through her materials for a case she reported on more than 30 years ago. Undoubtedly, there were probably some people involved in this that were racist and they didn't come forward because of that. The inquiry found that there was generally an atmosphere of prejudice and bigotry against Aboriginal people prevailing in the PAW at the time of the murder, one which formed a backdrop to all social relations and interactions between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people. However, the inquiry also found that

after hearing all the testimony and reviewing the evidence, we have concluded that racism played a significant role in this case, but it did not cause any delay in the investigation of the killing or in the prosecution of those responsible. Bob Urbanovsky. The letter writer, Y.B. Anonymous, she was scared to death. She told the story to her brother. And her brother said, well, let's write a letter. Let's send it anonymously. And let's send it right now. Well, right now

happened to be as they're driving through Marquette, Michigan. Everybody had thought, or people looked at and said, well, why would this letter come from Marquette, Michigan? If you look at Marquette, Michigan, and if you're driving from Winnipeg or driving from the PAW, going to Toronto, you've got two ways to get there. And that's really what it was. They were going to Toronto. They were Canadians. And they wrote the letter. But she was afraid.

She stated that in the letter. So is there a conspiracy for her? No. There's no conspiracy. She's scared to death. She was a young girl, a very young girl at the time. Come up to the PAW, working for the summer. Come back to the PAW to visit, attended a party.

And lo and behold, this information was laid out before her. And as the letter states, she was threatened. So what do you do? If you step forward, being a young girl in that environment, this person's already been murdered. Betty Osborne's been murdered. What do you do? You go underground. You hope that maybe somebody else would know. And eventually, her conscience, she told her brother, and they said, listen, this is what we can do. We can help. And they wrote the letter.

Is there someone out there now who could write an anonymous letter to help solve Carrie Brown's murder? It paid off, and that person came forward. And that person was one of the keys to us being able to take the case forward, as were others. So talk about your strategy then, to pull these people in to you. What did you do? The strategy clearly was to get people talking, to get it back out there. It had died off over the years, and discussion about it, it may have been mentioned from time to time, but it wasn't real chatter. There was no new information.

Nobody new was coming in and saying, oh, I heard this, or there was no rumors going around town. And I wanted to generate that. I wanted to get that chatter going again. But I wanted to go from the perspective of, I'm not looking for somebody who has something that can give me evidence in court. Because, I mean, that's the ultimate goal. But when I spoke to the media in the PAW and we released the news release, I said, we're looking for any information. Any information that you might know that you may not have heard directly, but even

information of somebody who might know. So you might know somebody down the street that had mentioned it before. I want that name. Just give me the name of somebody who might know. Urbanovsky and the RCMP wrote a press release looking for information and distributed it across the country to local newspapers. At the time, apparently unconventional. So it was a newspaper ad.

It was an ad. It was a news release saying, hey, we're looking for information. We put it in key areas where we could see some benefit. And we made sure that it was across the country, across Western Canada. And as it turned out, a little newspaper in, you know, bug-tussle Saskatchewan, our letter writer saw the note, saw the appeal, and came forward. She picked up the phone and called and said, I'm the letter writer. And it worked. Fostering an environment for anonymous tips and getting people talking about Carrie's case

should be the easier mountains to climb with our wide podcast distribution. But I might try something more direct along these lines as the series draws to a close. Bob tells me that by looking at the Helen Buddy Osborne crime scene, he was able to differentiate the degree to which those present participated in her murder. I wonder if the same approach could be applied to Carrie's killing, where, as we know, there was more than one person present. Could there be a bystander who didn't participate?

Carrie Ann Brown, I don't think you can split it out like that, at least not based on what I know of the crime. So I wouldn't venture there. You can't profile based on that because you don't know how to split it out. The evidence of the crime scene isn't definitive enough for you to be able to say, this belongs to this type of individual.

An example, the DNA indicates that two people had left DNA behind. From DNA, more than one person participated in Carrie's murder, though the other evidence gathered at the time is not as distinct. But Carrie's case has something else going for it. DNA and the potential for a weak link. DNA and the potential for a weak link. There's always potential for a weak link. There's always potential for somebody having some conscious. Looking at it and going, I did something wrong,

and I'm going to live with it for the rest of my life. And I think there's probably a good example of that is in Betty Osborne itself. You had some people that were very strong and you had one individual who was very weak. And it bothered him. And he drank and he told the story. And we capitalized on that. The anonymous letter writer capitalized on that. The anonymous letter writer capitalized on that. So, you know, the more people involved, the better chance you have.

But only if somebody has a change of heart or has a conscience that says, I've got to say something. Or it bothers me to the point where I have to talk about it to somebody. And if they do, then there's hope that those people will come forward. But, you know, who the people are, you don't know their personalities. You don't know what happened to them afterwards. You don't know if there's one personality in that whole bunch that says, you do not say anything or I will come for you.

I think when you look at the two different cases, Ellen Betty Osborne, we know who, what, where, why, how, and when. Carrie Ann Brown, we don't know who. But they've got a powerful weapon still in their arsenal, and that's that DNA. And that's not going away. You can't change that. No matter how much you deny at the end of the day,

that's not going to change You can't change that. No matter how much you deny at the end of the day, that's not going to change. From the day you left that to the day you die, that's going to be what's going to do you in. That's the race in the hole. And that's what they've got to exploit. That's what they've got to use as their leverage to try and figure out who done it. Urbanovsky's work, the eventual lifting of Helen Betty's case into the courtroom and the resilience of the people of Norway House gives me and the Brown family some hope that Carrie's case can be solved. But even with a solution, the damage to the community and family

can be deep and long-lasting. And then I remember my parents were good friends with Mrs. Osborne. Back at Darlene's office in Norway House, we started to talk about the Osborne family and the aftermath of Helen's murder. And then when I remember when Helen Betty got murdered after that, the families became very dysfunctional. She separated from her husband, right? And then the sons and the daughters, they became very angry.

And, you know, a lot of those sons ended up in jail, you know, and then out of jail because they didn't know how to deal with their sister's death because there was no help for them at all. Nobody helped them. Nobody paid any attention to them. Nobody cared. And it was just Mrs. Osborne that did her best kind and she was so forgiving. Can you imagine how she used to feel at the end of the day when it was time for her to rest? She always had Helen Betty on her mind especially when there was nothing that happened, justice, and it was hard. Helen Betty Osborne's brother Calvin was also murdered in 2008 at the age of 42 in Winnipeg.

But it's the generation, It's their kids now. You know, if we help those siblings when they first lost their sister, because they were very young, you know, when they started getting into trouble in school, they would be suspended. And they left. They left to high school and then never came back. They started getting into alcohol. And they started getting into fights.

And they ended up in penitentiaries. You know, it could have been really different for these families. Now it's their children. And now, still nothing is done. We have these treatment centers all across Canada for addiction. The problems that we have is the loss of a loved one. Like Helen Betty Osborne, we lost her. She was our friend, she was our cousin, she was our sister, daughter.

If there was a treatment, a family treatment, focusing on a loss of a loved one through murder, just to go there, you know, and talk about, or just to be surrounded by people that are going through the same thing. I think that's a good idea. You know, when we were growing up, I remember my late dad saying,

because they knew about Helen Petty. They were talking in Cree, and they said, Oh, you know, don't worry. It will come out. Eventually it will come out. And that's when people will start healing. Did anyone hear anything here about what might have happened?

Nobody ever said anything. Nobody ever talked about it. Even in Norway House? Yeah, everybody was just quiet about it. It was like she was forgotten.

It's not that they didn't care. I think it was the fear. Yeah. The fear that Anna Brodal, the way we lost her, I think nobody wanted to talk about it today. I turn to Marion. How did you get on after your friend was murdered? Actually, I got sent home.

I started drinking heavy. And then one night we were sitting in a cafe, me and my guidance counselor. I used to go have a talk with her after that because I couldn't concentrate on anything. And then we seen these guys coming in and they kept looking at me and looking at me. And then I heard one of those guys say, I'm gonna get that. Went like this to me, eh? I'm gonna get that dirty little Indian. And then I realized, I recognized one of those faces, it was one of those guys. And then, so I talked to my guidance counselor, I told her, can you please send me home? I said, why Marion? I said, I can't do it anymore, I told her.

None of us, none of us came back for Beatty's funeral. To this day, I never went back to the PAW, right into the PAW, but I only went to that monument, memorial, and that was it. Never went back. Brings too many memories, bad memories, I guess. Yeah, I turned to alcohol, and nobody would listen to us. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. It's like we were making up these stories. You had to learn to be a fighter. Yeah. You had to fight when they called you a brown Indian, brown bannock, or you're so dumb, why are you here? That were nothing but savages and drunken Indians. You'll never accomplish.

All these things that were said to me, I kept those. And I wanted to prove to them that I'm not a dumb Indian. You use it as a fuel. I used it and I was a fighter. I learned to be a fighter. That's why we are still here. We're 60 plus years old and we're going to go on. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Well said. What she said.

Darlene and Marion offered to give me a quick tour of the community. We visit the school and a Hudson's Bay Company historic site close to the river connected to the fur trade. Look across. Look across there. You'll see that brand new ferry. Is the ferry, has it always been 24 hours? Does it always just run? No.

Way back in 1980s and 90s, it used to run only till 10 o'clock in the evening. Okay. And now it's we're gonna have a new ferry. A bigger one. How did it work then if people got here after 10 what would they do? You know what that happened to me a lot of times? I had to go back to Thompson because I got there late. And you wouldn't just sleep at the other side or something? Oh, yes, we did. Oh. Oh, yes, we did.

I'm afraid of Sasquatch. Tell me about Sasquatch. Well, you're in a territory where Sasquatch roams. Really? Mm-hmm. Have you seen them? You know, but not us. You know where the ferry crossing is?

Yeah. That's where they seen that Sasquatch. And over here, too, further down up here, Bapanagus, this is Bapanagus Road. That's where they heard and smelled them. I'm interested in the Sasquatch story. The creature in the woods is something that seems universal to me.

The fear of that creature, the unknown darkness they live in. What makes them appear to us? The thing that can destroy you and that smell or that feeling of secrets that precedes it all. Time to get back to Thompson, to Trevor and Jim and the hydro road off Mystery Lake Road to dig deeper with what I've learned from these women and from the Helen Betty Osborne case,

silence can be broken. You have been listening to Episode 3, Helen Betty Osborne. Want a place to discuss episodes with others and discover exclusive content? 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, The series is mixed by Cecil Fernandez and produced by Chris Oak, Steph Kemp, Amal Delich, Eunice Kim, and executive producer Arif Noorani. Original music by David Fetterman. Our theme song is Thompson Girl by the Tragically Hip.

Thompson Girl, we're down to the dead house plan Thompson Girl, we're jettisoning everything we can Someone Knows Something is a CBC podcast. Another show we think you might like is The Shadows, a fiction series about the anatomy of a relationship by award-winning audio artist Caitlin Prest of The Heart. Subscribe wherever you get Someone Knows Something or visit cbc.ca slash podcasts.