Someone Knows Something - The Next Call with David Ridgen: Episode 1 in the case of Terrie Dauphinais

Episode Date: October 1, 2024

“Firewood”: On April 29, 2002, Terrie Dauphinais was discovered on the main floor of her Calgary home. She’d been strangled. Responding officers find Terrie’s three young children locked in their rooms upstairs. Police have a suspect, but can’t move forward.

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Watch both episodes now on cbc.ca slash Via Rail. Paid content with Via Rail Canada. This is a CBC Podcast. That's what it is. Good morning, David. Hi, Sue. Sorry for all the waiting. Oh, no, not a problem. We have a job to do, bud. This is Sue Martin, a mother from Western Canada whose daughter, Terry Dauphiney, was murdered in Calgary in the spring of 2002.

I've called Sue back a day after I received an anxious, angry message from her, but she wasn't upset with me. Sue's talking about a courtroom drama that recently unfolded in front of her. A suspect finally being tried for the murder of her daughter. But to continue from here, we should really go back to 2015, when I first met Sue, on an island in the Ottawa River, behind the Canadian Parliament buildings. My husband and I can't get out of our head and off of our heart on an island in the Ottawa River, behind the Canadian Parliament buildings.

My husband and I can't get out of our head and off of our heart what we heard in that courtroom. We wished we wouldn't have heard it, but we heard it all. I'm David Ridgen, and welcome to The Next Call, episode one, in the case of Terry Dauphine. It's a cold November day, a bit of snow on the ground. I can see some tents through some sumac and I can smell campfire. Out here helicopters overhead, the Parliament building's in the background. Here we go. Hello. It's early in the morning, and people in the encampment I'm walking towards are just getting moving, carrying firewood and coffees and an assortment of mugs, and someone's filling a generator from a plastic gas can. The camp was strategically set up here

because it has historically been considered a sacred site, but also for maximum media exposure. I'm here to talk to Sue Martin for the first time about her daughter Terry's case. How are you? Good. I didn't expect you till Thursday. You're Sue? Yes, I am.

Nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. You're in the wigwam, my lodgings for the Kokums. So this is basically our lodgings for the winter. Sue is Cree and her daughter Terry was Métis. In 2015, Sue had organized a ceremony here to raise awareness of Terry's case and those of other murdered and missing Indigenous women.

At the time, little seemed to have happened in Terry's case, and I was thinking a new podcast I was developing at the CBC called Someone Knows Something could be of some help. You notice I had a tree fall down through my camp? It just missed me by a split second. When did that happen? Thursday night. Look at that. Well, at least you got some more firewood.

Yeah, but it's not seasonal. So the fire keeps going. It's about our murdered and missing loved ones, our men, our boys, our women and our girls. And this isn't just about my child, this is about all of us. So that's why I'm down here. Sue, in glasses and wrapped in a bright blanket looks tired but intense and determined. She's been here in this campsite for over 200 days already with plans for several weeks more.

What people don't know about me, I've lost twin boys when I was seven months pregnant and I lost Terry's older sister when she was three years old. That hurt. That was a lot of pain. Murder is even worse. Murder is even worse. But I didn't show anger because you're not allowed to show how you feel out in the real world when your child is murdered because then you're, I don't know what they would call it. Somebody brings some wood, throwing a few branches onto a fire next to us. In the distance, I can hear that generator starting up, and Sue gestures me to a stump. Yeah, you can sit beside the fire. I'm one who shakes trees.

You're a tree. I do it in a good way. Terry was murdered on April 29, 2002, in Calgary at the age of 24, leaving three small children behind. Terry was about 5'9", about 115 pounds, hazel eyes, very, very beautiful. She didn't like the way she looked. She always thought she should be dirty blonde like her sister, very beautiful. She didn't like the way she looked. She always thought she should be dirty blonde like her sister Carrie Pearl. And she just like, oh, how come she got the good looks, Mom, and I never got the good looks? And Terry was very self-conscious. Her hair had to be perfect. The poofy hair.

She was very gifted, very talented, had a lot of patience. She had a 99-point average in school. She was a valid Victorian of her class. Full scholarship to go to any university paid in Canada. She could pick up an instrument and she could play it within an hour. You know, like, she was just an image of me.

She never wore tight clothes. She wore baggy clothes, almost like me. And she used to hate it all. God, you're so much like your mom. Now she's smiling at me. I was like my mom. And I know she's watching me. And the picture that I have, she wrote on the back.

One day, people will know my name. People will know who I am. I don't know if she knew that she was going to die. But people know her name. And people know who she is. Sue believes that Terry's case was left on the back burner because her daughter was Métis. We shouldn't have to fear. You shouldn't have to fear and you shouldn't be judged because you got a different skin colour.

Because you know what, we're all connected. We all come from the same creator. We all bleed, we all hurt the same. That's what this is about. Terry, at the age of 24, had been living with her daughter and two sons in a large two-storey house in Calgary's northwest quadrant. The owners had been part of the same church as Terry and had given her a deal on use of the house. She and her children had been living there as she and her husband of about four years

were undergoing a separation. His name is Ken Dauphiney. There was no forced entry to Terry's house. She knew never, ever to answer that door when someone was on that other side or ever answered the door in her pajamas. The girls were raised, no, you get dressed, and you make sure that you're dressed.

Don't come in skimpy clothing. So for Terry to open up that door, you know, even if it was her best friend, she'd go and throw on a pair of jogging pants and a sweat top. I just know my child. But she was exposed. Terry's body was found on the morning of April 29th, around 10.30 a.m., on the floor of the front hall of her house,

wearing a short dressing robe and nothing else. The belt used to tie robes like this around the waist was missing. An Adidas shoe print was found at the scene. She lay leaning against a closed basement door. A window in this basement was found unlocked from the inside, and the screen for the window was found outside the home. Flashing clocks showed there had been a power disruption in the house at some point during the night. Terry was discovered by her stepsister, Heather Martin, who said she had made plans to hang out with Terry on April 29th, but nobody came to the front door when she knocked.

The front and back doors were locked. Heather says she used the back door key she had in her possession to enter the house, thereupon finding Terry on the floor. When police arrived, Heather was crumpled on the driveway crying, with a neighbor trying to console her. Another neighbor called 911. No, the police haven't shared any documentation. Someone told me I'm entitled to all the police reports. I'm not entitled to our autopsy report, petechial hemorrhaging, blood spots that emerge on the skin from ruptured capillaries,

is evident on Terry's neck and face. The coroner ruled cause of death with the following summary. Compression by either parts of a hand or parts of a hand and some form of cloth band. Fresh bruises and scrapes are present on her body, but also some bruising that is older than 24 hours. The origin of these older bruises is unknown. Time of death has not been released, but an assessment of available documents would put Terry's murder sometime between 10.15pm on April 28th, 2002, and about 9am on April 29th. Her grandbabies were locked in the house with her dead body. I knew she was coming home because I'd seen her with the three babies in my dreams.

But she didn't come home. She came home in the remains. Terry's four-and-a-half-year-old daughter and two-year-old son were found physically unharmed locked in their bedrooms upstairs. It's unclear whether it was Ken or Terry or both who installed the locks on the outside of the bedroom doors. The youngest boy, a baby at eight months old, was found strapped into a car seat in Terry's closet with the door closed.

We only had ten minutes to view our daughter before she was cremated. She's already gone. She's already gone. She's already gone. They should have held her body. Terry's mother, Sue, and her stepfather, Tony Martin, had been living, by coincidence, in the Ontario town of Arnprior when Terry was murdered.

My hometown. When they heard the news, they traveled west immediately. But when they arrived, Terry was already at the funeral home, and they didn't get much time to spend with Terry's body. Yeah, I'm going to tell people what my daughter looked like, what her baby looked like on that slab, before she was cremated, how we were treated.

She was strangled, handprints. She was black and blue from head to toe. My daughter didn't have dignity. My daughter was treated like garbage. And that's an image in my head. Police at the time did not believe the murder was random. They posited that Terry knew her killer, and also stating the obvious that only the killer knows the motive. Despite any evidence available, when I met Sue at her encampment in 2015, her frustrations with what she saw as an

imminently solvable case had risen to an unbearable height. I called the Crown Prosecutor and asked what is it going to take to have our daughter's murders solved when there's only one person of interest. It took him two days to get back to me. There's only one suspect, or person of interest, as they say. One person of interest, one suspect. Her husband, Kenneth Dauphiney. Mentioned repeatedly in the media and by Sue herself. I know they have to clear everybody as a suspect.

They said that the Crown prosecutor needed more evidence. It was circumstantial evidence, and they have boxes and boxes and boxes. Sue's suspicions, in part, come from an incident between Terry and Ken from about two months before Terry was found dead. It comes up when I ask Sue about Terry and Ken's marriage. March 8, 2002, Terry called the Calgary Police Department for domestic violence. On the March 8 incident, Terry and husband Ken had argued and it had gotten physical.

It's known that Ken twisted Terry's arm. Terry called the police but they arrived after Ken was gone. Ken wasn't questioned about this incident at the time and moved out that day. They separated shortly afterward. Terry told Sue that children's Services called her about it and Sue says Ken wasn't happy. I'll be trying to contact Ken to discuss all of this directly. No one was removed from the home. Not her, not Ken. 52 days later, Terry would be murdered

and no charges would be laid. I asked Sue for more about Ken. Ken was... Ken's full name is Kenneth Michael Sinclair Person slash Dauphiney or whatever other alias, names he goes by. Ken changed his last name from Person to Dauphiney before marrying Terry. And sometimes Ken uses his middle names Michael and Sinclair. Because my husband and I are childhood survivors of abuse, we've always believed in our hearts.

If you gave a child unconditional love, you could steer that child on the right path. We had a meeting with Joanne Person, Ken's mom. Ken was 15 at that time, almost 16. He had belonged to the Aryan Nations. And then his grandmother, Doris, started calling us day and night because not even his own family wanted him. So my husband and I sat down with the girls and we talked. And it was a family decision. And the girls said, yes. All the girls, yes. Let's do it. So we took them in. So at the age of 16, Sue and her husband took Ken into their home. Despite having heard stories, she says that Ken was aggressive and violent.

A handwritten letter that Sue says she received from Ken's mother, Joanne Person, in March 1991, says that Ken was involved in the Aryan Nations and that Ken feared for his safety after turning evidence over to police about Aryan Nations activities. In the same letter Ken's mother suggests that Sue should be given guardianship of Ken to help him hide from the nations. Since Ken would have been a minor at the time, any records would be expunged or publicly inaccessible, so confirming any allegations here about Ken's record is not possible. I'll be reaching out to Ken's mother to talk about him and the contents of this letter. Sue continues, talking about Ken and her family at the time. We moved up to the Yukon, and he came with us

and didn't want to go to school in Ross River, so we sent him to Whitehorse. Him and Terry kept in touch. Ken stayed with us for about six months in the Yukon, and then he went back. His uncle in Winnipeg took him in, and then he went up to Flin Flon, Manitoba to his other aunts

and finished high school there. And then when we came back from the Yukon, we moved back to Winnipeg, my husband and I and the girls. But Ken had kept in touch with Terry? All the time. And we kept in contact with Ken too. Ken we loved like a son. They were in contact by phone.

But when we moved back to Winnipeg, Ken came back. Sue moved to Ottawa for 10 months to care for her sister who was fighting breast cancer. Terry and Ken and the rest of her family remained in Manitoba. And we promised Terry that we wouldn't move when she was in high school, she could finish her high school, because Terry, she was intelligent. My husband called me just after my sister finished her radiation chemotherapy and said that Ken and Terry were becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. And then we noticed that she had bruises on her arms.

So my husband talked to him about that. Ken, you don't do that, that's wrong. You, and Ken had to move out because they became boyfriend and girlfriend. And how old were they at that point? Terry was 16. Ken would have been? 20.

Anyways, I told him. I talked to him. I said, you know, everybody has their problems. But if you ever touch her, I'm your worst nightmare. Eventually, Ken and Terry got married in 1998 and moved to Calgary where they joined a church, the same church that Terry's loved ones would gather in for her memorial service just a few years later.

If he would have came up in that so-called funeral home in for her memorial service just a few years later. If he would have came up in that so-called funeral home where we had 10 minutes to visit our daughter's body, if he would have came up and said, I didn't do this, we would have believed him. But instead, he turned his back on us. about my new series with Via Rail. Join me as I ride on from Toronto to Ottawa and London aboard Via Rail's new fleet of trains. My journey was a breeze. No traffic jams, just smooth sailing. The seats are super comfy, and with complimentary wifi,

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Ken never spoke to Sue about Terry or her murder in the aftermath, and police have stated that Ken was never cooperative in the investigation, but they did speak to him. Ken Dauphiney was picked up by police just two hours after Terry's body was found on April 29, 2002. Ken was found completing a delivery for the trucking company he worked for and was immediately brought in for questioning. How do you pronounce your last with Ken Dauphiney. Oh, all right. Grandfather on my dad's side was just here. Oh, okay. Ken sitting in a small, bare room wearing a navy, long-sleeved shirt and tight-fitting khaki shorts watch on his left wrist. He has a mustache and male-patterned baldness is setting in.

Opposite in a chair, leaning forward with elbows on his knees, Detective Roy Fitzpatrick. He and another Calgary detective named Robin Greenwood conduct this interview. Fitzpatrick slowly ramps up the pressure. I'd really like to know what happened, because I don't see that. I don't see it as Ken purposely went over there for something to happen. I think this is something that wasn't meant to happen. He didn't mean to hurt her.

I don't even know what happened. All I've been told is I have been arrested for the homicide of my wife. Okay. Period. Yeah. And you were the last person I understand. The interview continues for some time,

and Ken isn't silent. But he doesn't admit to or deny anything regarding Terry's murder. Ken does say that he and Terry sought counseling from a pastor at their church after the arm-twisting incident, but adds that Terry also got physical, grabbing and hitting him. Then Ken walks police through what he says he did and the timing of it the day before, Terry's last day alive. When was the last time you saw your kids? Yesterday. It was about 4.30.

In the afternoon? Four o'clock about, yeah, four o'clock about was when I left. And where were you heading? I was heading home. Since Ken says he and Terry had been separated for seven weeks, home at the time was a condo about a 15-minute drive away that he was staying at owned by a woman named Fran. Fran is described as an

older woman who Ken says he met through their mutual church. She rented Ken a room during his separation from Terry. Ken says he had gone to Terry's to see his kids. What time would you have got to see Terry yesterday? You left at 4 o'clock. I was there at 10 in the morning, 9.30 in the morning. At Terry's on the 28th of April, from about 9.30am to 4pm. But then, Ken says, he returned to Terry's place a second time. And I had to take back some movies or something, but Terry had called because she hadn't had a chance to go get groceries. So I went back at about 9 o'clock last night, and I stayed with the kids in the house while she went and got groceries.

She took about an hour, and when she came back, we talked in the afternoon when I was there, we had put the kids out for a nap and we're talking and, you know, getting close and we had gotten intimate. Terry is confirmed by a closed-circuit surveillance camera to have arrived at the Safeway grocery store at 9.30 p.m. and to have left at 10.02 p.m. The store was about a 10 minute drive to her home. When she arrived back, Ken says they became intimate and that Terry asked him to stay the night. And then I told her that I really should go because it wouldn't, it's going to be confusing

for the kids. So I left about 11.30, I think it was about 11.30 the last day. Ken says the pastor's counseling was going well and volunteers that Terry had given him the key to the front door as a sign that trust was building. I did it. When I did leave that seven weeks ago, she had blocks changed. Oh she did?

Yeah. Because she had a concern for her safety. We kind of talked about that and then I did, she did end up giving me a key because we were speaking about me moving back. And when did you get a key for that? I was... Saturday I think it was. Just a couple, three days ago. Okay. And she gave you a key and you've gone to like on a key chain or a key ring or something like that?

Yeah, I've never used it, but I have, and it was just a token of trust, I guess. Sure is. Fitzpatrick tries a final time to get an admission out of Ken. You're not a bad person. This is something that just happened. And you didn't need it to happen. But if you could turn back the clock,

you would pay any amount and do anything to do that. You know that so that's what happened let's talk about it I don't know what happened we you can do whatever happened but I'm not willing to talk about what happened either I'm not willing to talk about what happened either. I'm going to exercise the right to silence as per the legal counsel that I received. I can't undo what happened, but I'm not willing to talk about it either. And that's it for the first police interview of Ken Dauphiney. In the second interview, Ken is questioned by Calgary police investigator Craig Cuthbert. Cuthbert, possibly angling towards Ken's church

membership, tries to goad Ken into speaking using religious bombast, quoting the Bible several times. Cuthbert says, you'll never know where or when, but the time will come when you will get your comeuppance. I don't doubt that. Another saying is what goes around comes around, or quoting the Bible, an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Cuthbert continues and Ken begins to reply with his right to silence. I've been advised by my legal counsel. But then, according to the transcript I have, Cuthbert seems to interrupt with, oh, fuck off. I don't care what you're going to say. I don't care. I'm not looking for a statement from you, little shithead, mother murderer, you widow maker. I've been down this road so many times. You know what, Ken? Shit is going to happen, and it's going to happen to you.

You never know when, and you never know where. And with that, nothing more, to my knowledge, comes from Ken in the second and final interview. In total, Ken was held for about 37 hours and then released. This is the last time I know of that Ken would willingly assist police in the investigation into Terry's murder. Eight years later, in 2010, police told the media that Ken Dauphine was the last person to see Terry alive. Has anyone tried to talk to Ken?

Oh yeah, oh yeah. He won't answer the door. It's quiet. Everything's shut down. And in his house, the drapes are always closed so no one can see in his house. I've only got to see Terry's children twice, my husband once. And I remember our granddaughter, the first time we saw her,

she looked up at her papa and she said, Aren't you going to take me and my brothers? Don't you love us? During the investigation, Terry's children were looked after for the first few days by Child at Risk Response, a team made up of a police officer and a social worker. Thereafter, they were looked after by Terry's friend Teresa Ross and Teresa's husband Richard. After a five-month fight for custody, the children were allowed to return to their father Ken. They remained with him into their teens and at least their early adult life. Eventually, Ken and Terry's daughter moved back to Western Canada where she remains,

and his two sons accompanied Ken to Manitoba. They have not stayed in touch with Sue or her husband since Terry was murdered. The daughter is protected by an identification ban, and I'm choosing to keep the two sons as anonymous as well. When we lost Terry, we just didn't lose Terry. We lost three more family members. We lost your children. What's the communication been like between you and Ken since then? There's been no communication. He won't even address the issue.

I know if I'm wrong, I'll apologize to him. But I don't believe we're wrong. Terry's belief in the Creator was so strong. But I don't believe we're wrong. Terry's belief in the crater was so strong, she thought if she could pray, she could change him for the better. For a long time I blamed myself for my baby's demise, because as a mom I should have protected her. The fires burned lower and there's more people gathered around now, some listening quietly to the story Sue is telling.

We stare into the embers for a while and Sue shuffles with some more wood. The sacred fire is where I come and pray in the morning and I thank the creator for all my blessings. I pray for the people that are sick or dying. I pray for mental health, our government to open up their eyes and have a heart and stop selling our land because they're hurting Mother Earth and she's rebelling. I thank Mother Earth for the waters, for the food that she supplies. I thank the trees, I thank the four-legged animals, our winged animals.

I thank Grandfather Sun, Father Sky, Grandmother Moon. I thank my ancestors. My time in 2015 with Sue comes to an end, and that brings us closer to the present. Good morning, David. Hi, Sue, how are you? I could be better. Sounded like it last night on your message. Sorry I couldn't talk last night.

This is a worthy story for you guys to take on and stuff. I'm blaming the Crown for the mess up in this case. Once I left the island, I continued to follow Terry's case, but had already begun Someone Knows Something in earnest with season one about Adrian McNaughton, who disappeared on a fishing trip in the Ottawa Valley in 1971. Soon after that production, I focused on the Cheryl Shepard case in Hamilton, though I had my eye on Terry's case for season three. But then on May 21st, 2018, Ken Dauphiney was arrested and charged with second-degree murder. According to The Crown, Ken entered into a not guilty plea. I called Sue, but she didn't want to talk about what was going on for fear of jeopardizing the

investigation. And then sometime in 2020, Sue called me back, and she wanted to talk all about what had been happening. Perhaps I could be of some use here on Terry's case. They failed Terry. The justice system failed Terry. The Crown prosecutors failed Terry. The Crown had stayed the charges against Terry's husband, and the case of Terry Dauphiney would remain open. I think it was a tough one right from the get-go, because basically the only witness that we could get was this four-and half year old girl. The Next Call is hosted, written, and produced by me, David Ridgen.

The series is also produced by Hadil Abdel-Nabi. Sound design by Evan Kelly. Our senior producer is Cecil Fernandez. Emily Connell is our digital producer and our story editor is Chris Oak. The executive producer of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani. To see images from the investigation, find us on Facebook and Instagram at CBC Podcasts.

And if you're looking for more investigations, check out Someone Knows Something. Each season I investigate a different unsolved case, from a five-year-old who goes missing after a family fishing trip, to a mother's decades-long search for justice. Find Someone Knows Something on the CBC Listen app, or wherever you get your podcasts.