Someone Knows Something - S5 Episode 9: Marnie

Episode Date: November 12, 2018

David tracks down the civilian phone operator who says she received a suspicious phone call the night Kerrie disappeared. 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 9, Marnie. When Carrie Brown went missing, it was a Thursday night. Friday, the posters were put up around town. Saturday, her body was located. So it was around Saturday afternoon when I heard about it. But in between those days, on the Friday,

I received a call in the early morning hours of the Friday morning. This is Marnie Schaefer, the civilian RCMP phone operator that Jean-Marc Villeneuve told me about. Well, ideally, I would love to use anything you told me in the podcast. I had a lot of thinking over the last couple of months. You know, do I, don, I would love to use anything you told me in the podcast. I had a lot of thinking over the last couple of months. You know, do I, don't I? Marnie worked at the Thompson detachment for 10 years, 22 years in total for the RCMP.

She was on duty the night Carrie Brown disappeared. And she took a while to get hold of. And I think the thing that made me say, okay, you got me, was when you tried to contact me on Facebook and you got my house phone number. And then I thought, yep, he's persistent, okay. Marnie's straightforward, though cautious voice on the other end of the phone

is the same I heard in the off-record interview that APTN's Ken Jackson had conducted over five years ago. And did any police ever speak to you about this on record? Like, do you remember any RCMP officer interviewing you and writing down what you're saying? Nobody. Nobody. Marnie has never been interviewed by police, has never told her story publicly, and Trevor and Jim are anxious to hear if she'll tell me what she knows. Okay. All right, well, you can call them and tell them that I'll go ahead with it.

I think that they would be overjoyed. I know, in fact, that they will be. I just wish that something could have been done at the time, and that's the worst part of the whole thing for me, is if it would have been done at the time, something would have come of it, I think. I feel it in my gut. There you are. Hi.

How are you? I'm good, how are you? I'm good. You're good. Nice to see you. I'm good, how are you? I'm good. Good, good. Nice to see you. I meet Marnie several weeks after our first phone call at a quiet park she's suggested in a western Canadian city. It's a genuine oasis, and I've spent most of my time waiting for her to arrive,

just watching a wood duck quietly leading her hatchlings around a verdant pond nearby. We get this one in the center. Sure, sounds good. If it rains, we can be under there. duck quietly, leading her hatchlings around a verdant pond nearby. We get this one in the center. Sure, sounds good. If it rains, we can be under there. We sit at a wooden picnic table next to a permanent gazebo structure, decorated along the roof with what look like stylized poppies and wheat in repeated red tiles. Marnie herself is all in black,

wearing glasses, brown hair tied back. Blue eyes, serious, here to get something off her conscience that has been there for over 31 years. And you went to school in Thompson? My dad was in the army. My dad is himself an indigenous person from Hazleton, B.C. My brothers and I were all adopted. Mom and dad lived in Germany for a while. He probably did about 29 years in the army, retired, went to the rocket range in Churchill. So we grew up in Fort Churchill and then from

there worked for the government in northern Manitoba, So you got around. So I got around, yeah. Tell me, Marnie, what happened and when it happened, the whole story of beginning, middle, and end. So I was working in telecommunications center in Thompson Detachment, and it was on a Thursday night to Friday morning. Probably around, and I'm guessing because it was so long ago, around two o'clock in the morning. I know it was the early hours of Friday morning when I received a phone call from a male who was quite stressed. He seemed to be terrified that I was recording the conversation that we were having. He kept saying it over and over,

you're recording the conversation, I just want to speak to, and then he gave a French member's name in Norway House Detachment. And I kept trying to explain to him that I can't get him to phone you if you don't give me a phone number or even your name. And he kept going back to the fact that I know you're recording this and he sounded to be quite scared. He had said that he had just killed someone and had to talk to this member. The caller told Marnie he had just killed someone and wanted to speak to an RCMP officer in Norway House. And she did get it all on tape. To our best research, there were no other murders recorded in the area that

night or in the preceding period, and Carrie wasn't even reported missing until the following afternoon. In my 20-plus years experience with the RCMP, the calls that I've received, not too many people will call up and tell you that they've just murdered someone if they haven't. Never. Had Marnie been talking to one of the men who killed Carrie Brown? I probably told him about three different times that you have to understand that I need a name or a phone number. How else is he supposed to contact you? And he just kept going on and on about being afraid

and that I was going to be recording him. So in the end, the phone conversation only lasted maybe about two minutes. It wasn't very long. I was trying to calm him down. It wasn't doing anything. He was quite afraid. He did not sound like he was intoxicated. And the phone conversation ended.

I was concerned because of the fact of what was in that conversation, that he had stated that he had just murdered someone. I decided that I had to pass this on to someone, and that would be the member that he requested to talk to. And I phoned him up. Marnie says she phoned the RCMP member who worked in Norway House the member that he requested to talk to. Marnie says she phoned the RCMP member who worked in Norway House immediately after hanging up from the call from the self-professed killer and later tells me about playing the recording to the officer. So what I did was I called up the member.

I played back the conversation that I had with this person and let him listen. Back then, we have tape. It's not like the technology that we have today. It was a single-closet-type machine that housed a large reel-to-reel tape. You can't really hook up a phone to a tape or anything like that. I had a desk phone, so I pretty much just held out my arm as far as the phone would go, and the tape housing for the tape equipment that we had was probably about five feet away or so, and I played back the tape to him. It was hard because the clarity of the conversation,

for him to be able to hopefully identify the voice, was really not there. It wasn't close enough to the machine. He listened, and from what he he could hear he did not recognize the voice of the person that was calling. It's unfortunate because if he would have been in the room it would have been a lot more clearer for him and he may have been able to recognize the voice but as you know there was not even a report of a missing person at that time when the call came in, let alone somebody that had been killed. So that's all that we had to go on. And we basically ended the conversation with, if he calls back again, try and see if I can just get a little bit more information from him that would be able to make contact between him and the member. And that didn't happen. There was no further calls that came in.

Marnie cannot recall the member's name, but he comes up again later. Back in the park, I try to dig further on the caller's voice. Tell me what you can about the caller and what they said and what you could tell from their voice. Well, it was someone who was very paranoid that I was going to find out who he was. He was panicked. And all he knew in his mind was that

he wanted to talk to this member. It was a specific member. So to me, that said that he knew this member personally and probably felt comfortable with him. He never gave me any details about what had happened or if anybody else was involved with him. There was no details at all. It was just that one sentence that he had just murdered someone and he didn't even go into descriptors to say if it was a male or a female or anything accent yeah from the community um from the northern areas i'm assuming was from norway house because he asked for that specific member so So an Indigenous person? Yes, yes.

So, you know, I can't decipher the different accents, even though I did a lot of my work in Thompson and looking after the outlying areas, Island Lake, Shematoa, Norway House Cross Lakes, so many different communities in northern Manitoba. I can't really decipher between the accent of, say, people who live in Norway House compared to people who live in Shimatowa. Did he say during the call, I'm calling from Norway House? He never did.

Okay. No. Despite Marnie's convictions here, the background of the person on the call is as of yet unconfirmed. And it's also unknown if there is a Norway House connection beyond the RCMP member the caller mentioned. So my shift ended at around 7 o'clock in the morning. This is the Friday. This is the Friday.

17th. Yeah. And I went home, slept, and the next day was a Saturday. Marnie says she set the call aside, but not for long. So it wasn't until Saturday morning, probably the early afternoon, actually, I had found out from someone at the detachment I was off, I wasn't working, that they had found a body in Thompson, and it was Carrie Brown. That phone call that I had Thursday night was still in my mind. When I heard that her body had been found, I immediately just connected the two.

I went straight to the detachment. I pulled the tape of that phone conversation, and I tagged it. And then a lot was going on at that time. You had the city detachment members, you had GIS, different sections coming together to work on this, and they were extremely busy. The General Investigation Section, or GIS, was in charge of the Carrie Brown case, led by Dennis Heald and John Toast. When I had the time to get a hold of John Toast, who was at that particular time the lead investigator of this call that they were on, I contacted him and asked him when he had time

if he could come to the detachment to see me and listen to this tape. In my mind, the time frame, with it being Thursday night, she went to this party. It was the early hours of Friday morning. Nobody knew that this girl had been murdered, except for the person who committed that crime. So I thought that it was very important that somebody listen to this tape. If somebody could listen to this tape, I was hoping that maybe they could identify the voice and go from there. So keeping this tape would have been extremely important, I thought.

So tell me what happened after that. You called John Toast on Saturday. Yeah, I called John Toast on Saturday yeah I um I called John Toast I don't think he actually got around to coming into telecoms until a couple of days later and he I had the tape and I had it queued up to where the call had come in and he was not really interested in the tape. He said that he was pretty confident that they had the person that they were looking for. I told him that I'm going to keep the tape anyway. I tagged it. I marked the tape itself for John Toast. And I told him that I would leave it in the office in our center. They were extremely busy. There was a lot going on. It was a terrible, terrible case for sure. So at that time it was near the beginning of my career with the RCMP and

I felt that I had passed this on, I kept the tape there and that he would take care of it. You know I looked up to members in the force that had been there and had time in and felt that they know what they're doing so I felt pretty good about it at the time. How do you mark that with a piece of paper then? You put a piece of paper in, you cue it up to where it is, stick a piece of paper in, and then you... Right. And so you write a little marker what's on the paper.

You say this is the call from the guy. Yeah. Okay. So there was never a moment where the piece was clipped. No. It was always just left on the big tape. It was stuck in between the tape itself. Right.

At the exact spot. It couldn't have fallen out or... And it wasn't until later on that I realized that the tape was still there. How much later? Probably about a month later. We had bulk tapes that recorded everything that came through. And these bulk tapes would be put in a system where they would probably be used over again in about a three month period. So once you got back to that tape it would be bulk erased and then reused. So I

was pretty sure that nobody had come in to make a recording of the tape. It was still sitting where it was and didn't look like it had moved at all. And that was the last time you ever saw the tape? That was the last time you ever saw the tape? That was the last time. Do you know if a copy of the tape exists? Not to my knowledge, no. I don't know. I had asked former RCMP investigator John Toast about this call that Marnie says she recorded.

And on the phone call, which was taped by one of the ops at the Thompson station, somebody said, I've just killed somebody. So I need to ask you, and the person who took the call was named Marnie Schaefer. Do you remember anything about a phone call coming in after Kerry went missing and with that description? No, I don't. I recall no such thing. I really don't. Had we heard that, we would have followed up on it. Okay, so there was, to your recollection at the time, there was no phone call or no follow-up on a phone call like that? No, absolutely. I don't recall ever being advised of it. I can tell you I didn't follow up on it, but I can certainly tell you

if we'd heard of anything along that line, that we certainly would have. I'm aware of something years later I heard of something along that line, but no. And where did you hear about it years later? Just basically a little bit of social media. So John Toast denies knowing about the call at the time, and he says the first time he heard about it was on the Internet through a post by Jean-Marc Villeneuve in January 2014. I take Toast's answer back to Marnie.

John Toast said he'd never heard of the skull. Well, I'm sorry, but I disagree. That's not true. I don't know what else to say. I just wish that I hate the hiding things. I just don't like that.

I suppose with John saying, no, I didn't know anything about this call, it's probably a godsend to know that at least somebody else heard about this being Mark. Sometime shortly after the investigation into Carrie's murder began, Jean-Marc Villeneuve says he heard a heated discussion between John Toast and Dennis Heald about the call

near his desk at the Thompson detachment. Villeneuve says at the time, he heard enough to know the discussion was about a call Marnie had received and that Norway House was discussed. Afterwards, over time, as details became filled in by Marnie, he says he realized what the conversation was about. What do you think of Jean-Marc Villeneuve? What's the credibility of Jean-Marc? Well, you know, I think he was, you know, an average member.

There wasn't anything that was negative about him at all. I think that he really has, you know, I'm sorry to say this, but it sounds like he's a little bitter. I don't know what happened at the end of his career with the RCMP. I know he really wants to find out what happened with the Kerry Brown murder. But I found him when he spoke to me to be a little bit forceful, and I was still working there. And I thought, I don't want bitterness and anger, and I understand how it hurt Mark. He wasn't involved in the investigation other than being there that day, but she's a 15-year-old

girl, so I understand that. But it should be done in the right way. It should be done to me to not be stomping all over the RCMP. A mistake was made. Where do we go from here? I didn't want to be a part of let's blast the RCMP for all their wrongdoing and everything else. I just didn't want it to be like a circus. In this case, I've read lots of the social media out there and there

is commentary from a former RCMP officer Jean-Marc Villeneuve and his comments online are stunning to me. In the interview with RCMP that I conducted months before I spoke to Marnie in person I asked Constable Janet Amaro about the phone call and Jean-Marc Villeneuve's online post about it. He says that there was a phone call that came close to the time that Carrie Ann disappeared where the person said I I killed

somebody help or something like that and got in touch with the civilian answering service at the RCMP precinct at the time in Thompson do you know anything about that or did that call come in I had heard about I had heard that that had happened in my contact with the investigation i don't know like john mark isn't isn't listed as an investigator involved in the file i know he used to work in thompson at one point in time but he's not listed as one of the investigators that have ever worked on the file but he did work up in thompson did work in Thompson. He was an RCMP member. Yep. And did the call ever get looked into? Yeah, it would have been followed up on,

but whether he was privy to the information as to whether it was followed up on. If it's usually with homicide investigations, they hold the information close to their investigators. So, yeah. So John Toast says he didn't hear about the call until January 2014. Jana Amaro, in 2017, tells me that she had heard about the call

in her contact with the investigation and that it would have been followed up on. But when was what followed up on, and how? Marnie says she told someone else about the tape in October 1986. Did you tell Dennis Heald about the tape? Dennis Heald was the other lead investigator on the Brown case from the beginning and would have been John Toast's superior. You know what? I did tell Dennis about it.

We had a conversation, and it was a very kind of short one, and I had asked him when the file was going to not be kept under lock and key, if there was at some point where I could just pull the file and read it. I wanted to know if anything had come up with the state. Marnie is referring here to the investigative file on the Carrie Brown case. And back then, it's not like now. Back then, people in telecommunications did quite a bit more. We kind of saw it from A to Z, right, from the whole part of it.

So asking to see a file that the members were working on was nothing out of the ordinary back then. Dennis told me that he would leave it on his desk. At the end of the day, I was working midnight shifts. This was probably about, I'm going to guess, that it was probably about three weeks to maybe even a month, but I don't think it was that long after getting after getting the call that you talked to Dennis and when you talk to

Dennis did you tell him about the call or did you ask him to read the file or both I asked him to read the file and this part I'm not sure if I brought it up or not when I asked him to read the file is that I have a tape. Did John look in telecommunications from the tape? I've got it tagged. Do you know if anything came of it? And I can't be certain if I said that to Dennis or if I said it to the watch commander. I feel pretty confident to say that I did say it to Dennis because normally I'm pretty open about a lot of things like that. So the watch commander or Dennis but for sure you would have told one of them as well as John Toast. Yes. Who was the watch commander? I'm not sure who we had the watch commander at that time. Okay. John Toast told me that Dennis Heald was ill and had Parkinson's

and that John Toast would would ask on my behalf Dennis Heald was ill and had Parkinson's and that John Toast would ask on my behalf, Dennis Heald, if Dennis would talk to me. And I said, okay. And I'll just text you back, John said. So he texted me back the next day and said, Dennis Heald does not want to talk to you. So I said, okay. And then I thought, I need to try to talk to Dennis Heald. I have to hear him tell me he won't talk to me. So I called Dennis Heald, and while initially he seemed hesitant, he did speak to me about the case. During this call, Dennis Heald confirmed he has been suffering from the effects of Parkinson's disease and said that his memory may be affected as a result.

It's hard to give you any information because I have Parkinson's and I don't remember a lot of stuff. Can I ask you one question that John didn't recall? John didn't recall getting information from Marnie Schaefer about a phone call that she received just after Carrie had disappeared. Did you hear about that phone call? No. You never heard about that call?

No, not during the investigation. Okay. And did you hear about that phone call? No. You never heard about that call? No, not during the investigation. Okay. And did you hear about it after the investigation? I think you should actually talk to Marnie. Okay. Do you remember her coming to you and saying, Dennis, this call came in and I think it's important? No.

And so you never asked an investigator to go down to Norway House, even if John didn't know? No I didn't. Basically John would do it. We worked in tandem I guess because most of the stuff we did, we did together. We knew about it. Okay. If stuff came in tomorrow morning, well John should have heard about it. if he didn't, I should have heard about it, but I didn't either, so. Okay, and any kind of... Maybe it makes some difference if it did, but I don't know. Dennis Heald says he never heard about the call at the time, and therefore he says he never looked into it or ordered anyone else to.

And I tell Marnie that. And I asked him if he heard about the call, and he said he'd never heard about the call. I can't, you know, I really don't have anything to say. I can't change what he said. I mean, I know what I know, right? It was so many years ago. It's time to just get on with it and try to do the best that they can to try and solve this.

I agree. But Marnie says Dennis Heald did share the Brown investigative file with her three to four weeks after Carrie was murdered in October 1986. Dennis left it there for you, the file of Carrie Brown's investigation as RCMP undertook it up until three or four weeks into the investigation. So then you had the file. What happened after that? I i read through the file i didn't find anything about the tape not a mention not nothing did you read the whole file i read the whole thing i had time it was on a weeknight during a midnight shift and things were slow and i read it and there were some things in there that you know one thing stood out in particular and that was when she was placed in the body bag there was a black coarse hair

not belonging to her she had blonde hair And I did bring this up with someone after the fact. I said, I don't understand. Why would this be in there? And I think it was John that I had spoken to. And he said that sometimes hairs can be left in there from a previous deceased person. Jean-Marc Villeneuve says he heard about this hair from Marnie. No media was ever published about this black hair, and John Toast separately confirmed to me that such a hair had been found on the sheet that was wrapped around Carrie's body. This all helps to indicate to me that there was indeed a hair

and that Marnie did read the file. Was the hair sent for testing? Did it mention anything about testing? No. That a hair was found? That it was found. And it just added to what I was feeling, that the person that they were looking at was not the right person.

And the person that they were looking at at the time was fair-haired as well. Patrick Sumner. Yes. I can't say exactly when. It was within a short period of time that they started looking at Patrick Sumner. And then, you know, I'm not involved in the investigation, so I can't say if they looked at anything else or didn't look at anything else. But from what I did see with them coming into our office,

we had windows that overlooked an inn across the street. And they would be looking at Patrick Sumner in the parking lot with binoculars. It was obvious that they wanted him to see them looking at him. I knew that that's who they had their mindset on. I think the only thing that I thought of was, initially I thought, pass on the information that you have, and you think in your mind that the people that are looking after this investigation will be looking into everything. And as time went on, when I found that they weren't really looking at the whole thing, otherwise part of this would be in that file. At least a mention of it that somebody had spoken

to the member in norway house that was being asked for something but there was absolutely nothing and i think that's when i really was not feeling too good about the whole thing so you weren't feeling too good about it then and then we're here 30 years later. So you've held that. Well, I haven't held it as if done nothing. When this whole thing started, in the end, Patrick Sumner, there wasn't enough evidence. There wasn't enough. He was let go. And I had transferred later on to Winnipeg.

They had amalgamated Thompson Telecoms with the other telecommunications centers in Manitoba and put us all in headquarters in Winnipeg. So I had that move, and I ended up, not too long after the move, phoned to Thompson's subdivision, who now had the file. I spoke with a member at that time that was looking after the file, and I asked him, is there anything on the file about this? I thought maybe there was a chance that they put it in later on or... What time was that? What time period would that be? How many years later?

Probably about five or so. Who would the person have been? Do you remember the name? No, and I'm sorry, I don't. Okay. So you asked the person, is this in the file? Yeah. And they had said no, that nothing was in the file. I told them my story about what involvement I had with it. And I thought, okay, it's been said again. And then probably later on, and this would probably be a good 10 years or so, the file had now gone to Winnipeg headquarters. And I spoke to someone in headquarters about it, and they didn't know anything about it either. So I felt like I was hitting my head against a wall. I couldn't understand why, especially after Patrick Sumner was let go, you'd think, okay,

there isn't enough evidence to bring anything against him. Everything they were putting out into the media when it came to her murder and that they were looking for help or anything. I thought this would be when you would be writing about that one little thing. Even if the tape has been erased and gone and there's nothing that can be done about it, to me I thought, what about going into the community? What about asking people some questions? Somebody knows something. 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? Whoa, whoa, whoa. 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 at Canada.ca slash ItPaysToKnow. A message from the Government of Canada. Without the tape, it's impossible to know the identity of the male caller

Marnie heard on that early Friday morning of October 17th, 1986. The caller may have nothing to do with Norway House. Maybe he somehow knew of this RCMP member but had never met him. But the mention of Norway House and the RCMP member who may have been there might ring a bell to someone listening. But there's more to the story here. After I contacted Marnie on the phone, she undertook some investigation of her own.

So I contacted you, and then after we made our first contact on the phone, you decided to call headquarters to discuss... Why did you call RCMP at Winnipeg? Why did I call? This should all be about trying to find who was responsible for this. That's all I'm sure the family wants. They can't do anything to get their sister or their daughter back. And from what I understand, it's devastated them for all these years. That hurts me to know that. And I'm sure it hurts anyone else around who has has heart so what I wanted to do

from this conversation was to let them know look nothing's come of it it bothers me and now I have somebody from the media who wants to talk with me about this and I'm considering talking to you. And I thought, if anything, maybe this will make something be done. I told her everything about the call, the French member. She told me that she was going to look into this, and that she would call me back, and I waited to hear from her before I contacted you because I wanted to know. Hopefully they would tell me something that was good. By the next day I received a phone call from the woman that I was speaking to.

This is Jenna Amaro? Okay. That's in charge of the file right now. Constable Amaro gave me a very basic, even vague answer when I asked about the phone call Marnie received. But she's apparently more forthcoming when talking to Marnie. And she said that I had guessed a name of the member in Norway House as close to the French name as I thought it was when I was speaking to her the day before. She told me that I was pretty close with the name,

and then she had told me the name. What was the name? So, you know what? I'm back to that. I can't really... Can't remember? After a bit of discussion and rumination, it's decided that the last name Lafreniere or Lafreniere rings a bell.

That's what I thought it was. Lafreniere? Yes. Okay. Something around that. If this RCMP member is listening, please reach out. I'd like to talk to you. His name wasn't so important to me when she called me the next day.

I really didn't care about his name. It was, what are you going to tell me? What are you going to do? Can you talk to David from the CBC? Can something be done to help with this case at all? So she had told me that, in fact, a member, and I think she said a female member, did go into Nori House and did speak to the French member who this person had requested to speak to. When? I don't know when. And I said to her, well, you know, I read the file and I didn't see anything in there about anyone going into Norway House. And I didn't let her know how much of the file I had read or anything. And then she said, well, she said, this was a file that was separate from the file. And I thought, what do you mean a file that's separate from a file?

Like back then, I'm sure it's true today too, you have a file, it's one file, you add volumes and volumes and volumes to that file depending on how long the case goes, but everything's together. There's no separate and away from an existing file. And she said, but I just wanted to let you know, because I knew it would make you feel better, that this was looked into.

So immediately when I'm on the phone, this made me feel good for those first few seconds, thinking that, oh, isn't that wonderful? You know, they did. They sent someone. They looked into it. Nothing could be done. So I got off the phone with her. I thanked her very much. And then at the same time, to make me not feel the need to talk to someone in the media, that it was taken care of and that was it. I started thinking about the other people that I had talked to at headquarters and at Thompson subdivision that never knew

anything. Why didn't they tell me? Why didn't they say, yes, Marnie has been looked into? My second question was, why is there a file for this visit to Norway House that's separate from the other file? I couldn't understand this. And when she was on the phone with me, she said that John didn't know about it. John Toast, the investigating member at the time, did not know that someone was sent to Norway House. And that again, too, bothered me.

Why would the investigating member not know what's going on with this file? What would be the reason to hide something from him? So I went away with more questions than answers. And because of the types of answers that I received, I felt it's enough. This is enough. And then I gave you a call. What do you think went on? I'd hate to think that she wasn't being truthful with me, but then again, it's questionable for me. It doesn't make too much sense.

Did she tell you what the member found in Norway House? That nothing was found. Nothing. And that they went and spoke to the member found in Norway House? That nothing was found. Nothing. And that they went and spoke to the French member in Norway House and nothing came of it? No. So, according to Marnie, Constable Jana Amaro told her in this recent phone call that someone went to Norway House and came up with nothing. What was done and when? And why was mention of it allegedly put into a separate file?

And by who? And if this member went to Norway House to speak to the French member we were speaking of, why would it be done under the table, right? I just, um... It just didn't make sense. Lead investigators Dennis Heald and John Toast say they did not hear about the call at the time and therefore did not follow up on any information that could be related to it. So

if something was followed up on by RCMP, would it have been done without both lead investigators' knowledge? Perhaps it was done after both men left the case. Tost says he transferred out of Thompson in July 1988, two years after Carrie was murdered. Marnie says she was never interviewed by police about what she heard or the tape. She never gave a statement. So how was anything done without an official police interview of Marnie, the witness to the call and what was said and how it was said?

The tape, according to Marnie, hadn't budged from its place for at least three weeks and then she never saw it again. RCMP Media Relations, bonjour. Hi, is this Tara? It is. Hi, David. Hi. I've got Jana here with menipeg for a follow-up interview about all of this, but before I get into Marnie and the call she received, I have two preliminary questions which are, unsurprisingly, vanquished with typical police generality. I'm not exactly sure what information I'd be able to verify. Was there a black hair found with Carrie's remains?

Has RCMP looked at that hair? I can tell you in regards to any tests that are able to be done have been completed. And then, why is the RCMP blocking re-release of the autopsy report to the Brown family? It's an ongoing, unsolved homicide investigation. Then, the main reason for my call. So I spoke to Marnie Schaefer, who was a civilian police phone operator at the time of Carrie's disappearance,

and she told me about a phone call that she'd received early in the morning of the Friday the 17th, so after Kerrywood had disappeared from the party from a very distraught man who said that he had just killed somebody and wanted to know an RCMP member's name from Norway House so that he could talk to him and Marnie took this call it was recorded she told she says John Toast about it one of the investigators she also says she's almost certain she told Dennis Heald, the other investigator on the case. I've had one corroborative person in Jean-Marc Villeneuve, who was a RCMP officer at the time,

who said that he overheard John Toast and Dennis Heald about this phone call. Both Dennis Heald and John Toast deny that they've heard about this phone call. Both say they didn't look into it, and both say that they never investigated it. So when I interviewed you, you said that you'd heard about this phone call, Jenna, and that you said it would have been followed up on. So you've heard about it, but the people investigating it hadn't? I think part of what you have to keep in mind here is the magnitude of this investigation and how much work had been done and probably the amount, the little amount of sleep and stress and a lot of stress that these guys would have been under at the time.

I can tell you that that information has been followed up on and was followed up on around the time that they were doing that investigation. So would they, would it have been them specifically that would have followed up on it? No, but it would have been one of the investigators that they had involved in the investigation that would have followed up. So their recollection of that specific phone call may have to do with the passage of time and that people's memories change over the pass of time and the information they're able to recall. It just wasn't there for them. I understand, but a call of that magnitude where someone has said that they've killed somebody, you would think that on the day it was received, it's exactly when Carrie Brown went missing, you'd think that someone would notice.

Also, Marnie has said she was never interviewed by police about the call, so how could it have been followed up if she was never interviewed by police? Well, they would have had recordings and stuff like that at the time of the calls. Marnie's indicated... We wouldn't necessarily interview an RCP dispatch call taker during the course of our investigation if we have a recording of it. Marnie has indicated that nobody listened to the tape based on the position that she left it.

And she said that she had called the officer, the member in Norway House, immediately after she received the call and tried to play the call for them over the phone, but the sound quality wasn't very good. And that member never called back, so I'm not sure where that lands. And if Dennis Heald and John Toast were leading the investigation, they would have known about ordering somebody to go look into this call, wouldn't they? Again, I can't speak to what they did

at that specific time and their recollection from that period of time. I can tell you that information has been followed up on and is documented in the file. Okay, so that leads me to the next question. Marnie says that she read the file about three to four weeks after the investigation began, and that there was no mention of the call in the file. And then she said that over the number of years, three, four, five years later, she called a member who was in charge of the file. He said

it wasn't mentioned in the file. And she said she called again 10 years later, and it wasn't mentioned in the file. And then I heard from Marnie that she has had a conversation with you, Jana, where you said it was followed up on. We're telling you it's in the file and it's been followed up on. So is there an additional file that Dennis Heald and John Toast weren't aware of? I can't speak to, again, I'm going to say I can't speak to their recollection from the time. There may be a reason why they don't recall that, but I am telling you that it was followed up on. Okay, when was it followed up on? I don't have the date right in front of me, but it was followed up on. It's pretty important to know when the date would have been.

It's not something that I would share with you anyhow. Do you think that it's odd that the two lead investigators didn't know about the call and didn't know anything about the people investigating the call in Norway House? Like I said, everybody has different recollections of what happens on an investigation. I don't know how it was presented to them. There's a bunch of different variables that could be taken into consideration in a situation like that as to why they do not recall the phone call. I'm not exactly sure. I can't speak to them. I understand. I know it's hard to answer for other people in this situation. So when you called Marnie, Marnie says that you told her it wasn't, it was in a separate file that you said it wasn't you, Jana said to Marnie that it was in a separate file. That you said it was in, you, Janice, said to Marnie that it was in a separate file.

That's inaccurate. That's not what I said. You didn't say that to Marnie? No, I did not. I said it was in the file. Oh, okay. That's contrary to what she's reporting to me then. John Toast left in July 1988 from Thompson. I'm not sure when Dennis left. So that to me tells me that nothing was done

on that particular aspect of the case until at least two years later. Something mustn't have been looked into. And again, I don't understand how it could be looked into without interviewing Marnie or listening to the tape. Are you aware, was a copy of the call ever made or a recording? Do you still have the recording of the call? Okay, I think we're going to have to cut it off there. We've spoken to you about the call, said it's been followed up on, it's in the file. There's nothing else we can speak to about it. In the interest of assisting the Brown case, a copy of the call, should it exist, and a chance to play the voice for the public would be paramount.

Okay, it would be nice to know the dates that it was followed up. That would be nice to know. We wouldn't provide that in any type of homicide investigation, so we're not going to provide that here. Talking to Constable Amaro and Media Officer Tara Seal, not as many actual answers as I had hoped. The time period that the call may have been looked into from my reckoning, taking into account Marnie's recollections, is at least three or four weeks after Carrie was murdered and well after Patrick Sumner would have been arrested. And none of the information from Amaro is that convincing to me about why Heald and Toast wouldn't know about the call or how a call like this might have been looked into. Also, I asked Detective Bob Urbanovsky if he recalled reading about the phone call in the file in his review of the case in the 1990s.

The evening Carrie disappears, the Thursday night, and then early that Friday morning, a call came in to the RCMP, and on the other end of the line was a male who said I've just killed somebody and I'm upset and I don't know what to do and are you recording this and then they hung up do you remember hearing anything about that call no there may have been you know it's not something that I recall at the time and your review of the file though it's not something that I recall. In your review of the file, though, it's not something that... No, it's not something that I recall. Okay. And there's more.

After we spoke, I thought, I'm the one that's saying that I received this call. I feel like I should start talking to somebody who I told about this call. I ended up contacting Dennis Heald. After I spoke to Marnie by phone phone and she agreed to go on the record, she wanted to verify a few things herself. I told her that John Toast didn't remember the phone call, so she decided to reach out to Dennis Heald to see if he might remember. I found him through Facebook and even though you're not friends with someone, I guess you can still send a message.

He called you? He called me. Okay. Which was strange because I sent it with my cell number, and when he called me, he called on my house number. So you never gave him your house number? I never gave him my house number. I was kind of taken back a bit.

He said, hello, is Marnie there? And I said, yes, this is. He said, it's Dennis Heald. So I said, hey, Dennis, how are you? I mean, we had a pretty good working relationship years ago. I hadn't seen him for a long time. Well, I haven't seen him since Thompson. So I said, you know, hi, Dennis, how are you? How's everything going? And then he said to me, well, good. He said, who are you? And I was just, I thought, okay, this is the joking Dennis. I said, are you, are you kidding? No. I said, Dennis, I said, it's marnie so i said okay um well i used to work with you explain the whole story um the story of how you worked as a telecom worked at yeah so i thought well then this is just gonna have to be a very in my mind quick conversation i hope you're doing

well but i started to talk to him and I said, I had to give some reason as to why I was reaching out to him. I said, do you remember these other names? And he said, yes. And I said, well, I said, I'm just calling you. I said, because somebody has reached out to me from the media to discuss the Carrie Brown murder. And I said, that's why I'm calling you. He said, yeah. And then he started talking. At first, I really wasn't going to say anything about this, but it's important to have everything sort of out there. I don't know how Dennis's mind is affected by the disease that he has. I'm not a medical professional, so I don't know how Dennis's mind is affected by the disease that he has.

I'm not a medical professional, so I don't know. But I will let you know. When he started talking about Norway House, I let him go with whatever he wanted to say. I wasn't going to ask him, interject any questions. So prior to this, though, you hadn't said anything about the case other than there's a media person who wants to talk about Cary Brown. Yes. You hadn't said, I got a phone call.

The guy, I think, was from Norway House. No. You didn't say anything about a phone call to him. No. So I let him talk. And he started talking about the Cary Brown murder. And he said that he feels that it's going to be difficult to solve this case because it's gone through so many hands. As years go on and time goes on, it does get more difficult.

People forget. So I, you know, agreed with him. And I said, but there's still a chance. And he said, yeah, he said, I'd like to see it solved. So I thought, that's really good. He then, all of a sudden, said that the ball was dropped with the Norway House call. And I said, Dennis, what do you mean, the Norway House call? Because, see, to me, I'm thinking, he doesn't remember who I am. I'm the one that took that Norway House call, right?

And you hadn't mentioned it until this. No, no. And I said, what do you mean? The ball was dropped with the Norway House call. And he said, well, you know, the guy who called from Norway House. I said, oh, okay. I didn't go into asking him anything. I didn't say,

Dennis, you know, I was the one that took the call. I didn't say anything at all about it. And there was one other thing that he said when he was discussing this case. He said he was the one that was the person that was responsible for transporting the blood samples. And he feels that he may have done something wrong in that transfer. And he used the word contaminated I again didn't go and ask him what makes you feel you contaminated the specimens whether that was in the process of putting them in the container what it was I don't know because I was still feeling and still do if I had to repeat that call I don't think I would I don't think I would ask him because I don't know how his mind is working this conversation that Marnie had with Dennis Heald took place before I spoke to him in fact

it was part of the reason I phoned Heald in the first place. If he was well enough to seek out and contact Marnie, then maybe he'd be well enough to answer some of my questions. According to Marnie, Heald told her that perhaps they'd dropped the ball on the Norway house call, and when I asked him about the existence of a phone call, he told me that he wasn't aware of it during the investigation. I wasn't ready to press Heald on the explosive and alleged contamination question without talking more to Marnie about it,

and as it turns out, calling Heald back may be a problem. Hello? Hi, is this David? Yeah, it's David. Hi, Tara. After my conversation with Heald, I received a phone call from RCMP Communications saying that there was some concern about my contacting him over the phone. Yeah, so there was just, it wasn't appreciated on the end of either John or Dennis that that went down that way, so I said that I would mention that to you

because Dennis is quite ill. So that's that. Dennis was well enough to call Marnie and seemed well enough to speak with me, but it doesn't sound like he wants to talk to media anymore. Back on the follow-up call with the RCMP, I put some of what Marnie says she heard from Heald to Constable Amaro. In talking to Dennis Heald, Marnie told me that he actually said he dropped the ball on the Norway house call, and he also said he was afraid he might have contaminated blood samples in the case.

Is that something that, and I know that Dennis has suffered and is suffering from Parkinson's and may have some effects on his memory because of that. Is that something that you're aware of? It's nothing I'm familiar with. Okay. I had asked Marnie if she had ever heard anything about the three men that Villeneuve said had been pulled over by an officer named Donnie Fisher in a van with an air mattress in it the weekend before Carrie was killed.

I had made brief contact with one of the two brothers who Trevor had spoken to over Facebook and scheduled a phone call with him, but whenever I called there was no answer and the line soon was disconnected. And then he stopped communicating altogether. Marnie hadn't heard of them, but she did know Donnie Fisher and decided on her own volition to try to get in touch with him. So you then called Donnie, right, or contacted him. And what happened when you contacted him? Well, I contacted him, asked him how he was doing.

Phone or Facebook? It was Facebook. Okay. Yeah. Asked him how he was doing phone or facebook it was facebook okay yeah asked him how he was doing he seemed happy in the exclamation marks and everything to wow it's marty i asked him i said look i said i'd like to talk with you can you phone me gave him my cell number he said in a few days he would call me and i never got a call so and I never called him back

or anything I tried contacting Donnie I left messages on his phone and I'm certain it was the right phone number and I've left probably four messages and they're each becoming more detailed and I sent a Facebook message to him have not received any responses and the last time I tried his number a few days ago,

the number had gone defunct. So I can't reach him. So how to move forward from here? I sort of felt at the beginning, when the whole case started, that John had his mind set on one person. That's not something that's uncommon in police investigations. It can happen to anyone. I think that does more for people in the general public to say, okay, you know what? Everyone makes mistakes. This was how many years ago the RCMP, in my mind, should be saying, yes, we had tunnel vision. This is what happened,

but we are working on it and we're looking for anything that we can to be honest and open, transparent, all the things that a family who's lost a loved one wants to hear. And that's why I'm saying what I'm saying. So I left on good terms with the RCMP, and I would never do anything to hurt anyone, and I never would with Dennis And I never would with Dennis. I never would with John. Even if John called me and said that, I don't remember, Marnie.

Okay, John, you don't remember. It's maddening, that voice. You just want to hear the voice. So one would think that if we had that voice, we could just simply broadcast it. This is a person of interest, at least. This information's never really been taken in by the people that need to hear it. So it's exciting to me in some ways. And troubling as well from an investigative standpoint, looking at the original investigation. It's frustrating.

And I don't know what the answer is. I don't know what out of all this mess can end up finding out what the truth is behind it. It's easy to blame the police, right? So then they start to focus on blaming the police, and then it's like, but what about the solution, right? Like, what about finding the way forward? Because they need to be motivated too, the police. They need to be motivated that they have to try to do something. Just with the fact of getting this out for listeners to hear,

maybe that's what it needs, is just stirring up some things and that let's keep our fingers crossed and knock on wood. Well, the family thanks you for coming forward. I don't believe that police adequately looked into the phone call, but without more information, it's impossible to say for sure. If somebody dropped the ball, let's be transparent about that. I believe the recording has been erased, but if it wasn't, let's have the police turn it over and hear it. Perhaps by

broadcasting the voice of the caller, we could help identify the people who killed Cary Brown. Whether it was looked into or not, whether the tape still exists or not, I believe Marnie. Much of what Marnie has told me points towards a recurring theme of the original investigation into Carrie Brown's murder. What seems to be a single-minded focus on one suspect, Patrick Sumner. None of what Marnie has told me actually excludes Sumner as one of the possible multiple persons involved in the killing of Kerry Brown. Did the focus on Patrick Sumner distract investigators from other evidence and suspects, or does Sumner actually know something about what happened that night? The only way to know for sure is to hear from the man himself.

You have been listening to Episode 9, Marnie. 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 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 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'll jettison everything we can She says springtime's coming Wait till you see it poking through With them shoots of beauty It's the end of animal view weather

It's time to end this siege together Thompson girl I'm doing this. Seats together. Thompson Girl. Thompson Girl. Thompson Girl. Someone Knows Something is a CBC podcast. Another show we think you might like is Bomb On Board from CBC Podcast's investigative series, Uncover. Ian Henneman-Singh and Joanna Wagstaff shed new light on one of Canada's largest unsolved mass murders,

the story of Flight CP-21, which exploded above the BC interior in 1965, killing all 52 people on board. Subscribe wherever you get Someone Knows Something, or visit cbc.ca slash podcasts.