Uncover - S7 "Dead Wrong" E6: The Trail of a Killer

Episode Date: June 19, 2020

An RCMP profiler and analyst is put on a killer’s case. He starts to make links that lead to a shocking discovery. Can this be helpful to Glen? For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover/uncover-season-7-dead-wrong-transcripts-listen-1.5612940

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This is a CBC Podcast. This episode contains graphic descriptions of violence. Listener discretion is advised. On March 1st, 1998, in Moncton, New Brunswick, a man named Glenn Bennett calls police and tells them he has witnessed a terrible crime. Within hours, Michael McRae is arrested. The next day, the CBC reports on McRae's appearance at court.

There was intense security surrounding the appearance this morning of 32-year-old Michael McRae. He's been charged with two counts of first-degree murder. The first is in connection with 48-year-old Joan Hicks. A neighbour who identified her body says her throat had been cut and there were several slashes across her upper body. McRae is also charged with murdering the woman's 11-year-old daughter, Nina. No details about the cause of her death have been released. Both bodies have been sent to Halifax for autopsies. Police say the bodies were discovered early Sunday morning in their

basement apartment near the Moncton Hospital in the city's north end. The scene was so gruesome that a psychological team will be assembled to counsel the officers involved. Awaiting trial, Michael McRae is placed in prison in Renews, New Brunswick. While there, he starts talking to a fellow prisoner named Emery LeBlanc, telling LeBlanc that Joan and Nina Hicks were just his latest two victims. He has killed many others before them. LeBlanc is so disturbed by the revelation that he calls a cop he knows. Within weeks, McRae is sitting with police, telling them he is a serial killer.

In 2000, CBC reporter Joanne Roberts received received a call from McGray from the prison. Tell me about these other murders. Why are you talking about them now? Well, there's a few reasons. All the cops that I've talked to and everything, they're saying that, you know, wanted to help us clear up these cases so the families will know what happened and all that. I'm not going to bullshit you and say that that's the reason, because it's not. That's not really a concern to me, I know how it sounds, but it's not.

Mostly because I want to get some help and I want to make a deal. There's some other murders that I'm going to confess to, but there's three conditions that I want to have met first, right? We will return to McRae's conditions a bit later. Robert's interview continues. There's been a lot of talk about how many other murders there are, Mr. McRae. How many are there? Counting the ones that I've been charged with, there's about 16.

A couple of them, I'm not sure if they lived or died at the time. They might have lived, but I think there's about 16 altogether. Where did they happen? All over the country. A couple in the States. What do you say to someone who says that this might not be true? You're just somebody who wants to be the number one. Well, I'm willing to confess, meet my agreements, and I'll confess to all the murders. I confessed to five or six already, and all you've got to do is meet my conditions, and you'll find out. Can you tell us about one of them that might give us some idea of the kind of details you do have?

Okay. Well, there's a couple down in Nova Scotia. There's one from Weymouth. Her name is Gail Tucker. I picked her up outside of a bus station. Actually, she was hitchhiking. And there was another guy with me.

We were both from Yarmouth, a small town in Nova Scotia. And we just took her in a truck. We took her out of the truck. We offered her something to drink. She wanted something to drink, so we stopped the truck. And when we stopped the truck, I just started stabbing her. I left her on the side of the road, this road called, I think it's called Concession Road. Her name was Gail Tucker. Gail Tucker was a 17-year-old girl from the north end of Dartmouth who was killed in 1985 in the woods near Church Point, a

small town on the French shore of Nova Scotia. Her murder has gone unsolved for 15 years, and Michael McRae has just given interviewer Joanne Roberts information that only the police and the murderer would know. How come you've never been caught, do you think? I think because I was pretty damn smart. I always made sure that they were strangers. I always, I'd go from city to city. I'd pop into a city and I'd live there for a couple months.

And I'd go out and I'd do a prostitute or a homosexual or a homeless person or something like that. Somebody who was not connected to me. I always used to study a lot about forensic scientists. or a homeless person or something like that, somebody who was not connected to me. I always used to study a lot about forensic scientists. One of my biggest hobbies was studying other serial killers and stuff like that. I have for years. I don't think it was luck or nothing like that.

I think it's because I was always very, very careful when I did them. I always knew what I was doing. I always planned them well ahead. Are we safer now that you're in jail? Oh, definitely. I'm planned them well ahead. Are we safer now that you're in jail? Oh, definitely. I'm Tim Busque, and this is Uncover Dead Wrong. Episode 6, The Trail of a Killer. Roberta, a sex worker whose true identity I've been protecting, had identified Glenn Assoon at his trial as the man who had horribly attacked her.

In 2010, she saw a picture of serial killer Michael McRae. She broke down sobbing and said it was he, McRae, who had attacked her. But when Joanne Roberts interviewed McRae in the year 2000, no one knew the full extent of his criminal history. Joanne Roberts was working at CBC as the host of Information Morning in Moncton. Today, she's the interim leader of the Green Party of Canada, and she lives in Halifax. I caught up with her to ask her about her interview with Michael McRae. I was sitting at my desk, and the reporter says, Michael Wayne McRae has agreed to our interview request.

And you dialed the phone, or he called you? He called us. I ran down to the studio thinking, what do I say? What do I ask? You know, talking to you right now, I can see myself sitting in that studio, like you with the headphones on. You know, hello, Mr. McRae? I mean, that's how it starts. And for about 20 minutes, we have this discussion about why he had murdered the woman he had

murdered. You know, he says he wants to tell me about other murders he has done. And he wants to admit that, you know, he has, I think it was 16 in the interview he said he had killed. And I challenge him and say, well, how do I know that you don't want to just have a reputation as the person who's killed the most people in Canada, you know, some kind of a weird, bizarre reputation? And he said, well, maybe I should describe for you one of the murders that I committed that I've not been found guilty of. You know, you kind of catch your breath and

think, do I want to hear this? I said, okay. And he does. He describes a murder. And he said, you can check that with the Halifax police. And I said, well, of course we will. That was the Tucker case, was it? Yeah. And he confirmed it, or the police confirmed it. I'm wondering, is your recollection that it should have raised enough issues with the police that they should have been full on? Well, you know, I often wondered why I didn't hear

a number of cases were being closed. I wondered, though, with the details they had and the fact he was talking, that they weren't able to use the information he had to close more cases and that we didn't hear about it. Michael Wayne McRae was born in 1965 in Collingwood, Ontario, but as a child moved to Argyle, a small town near Yarmouth at the southern tip of Nova Scotia. When he was 15, Michael was placed in the Shelburne School for Boys. It was called a school, but today we would call it a youth correctional facility. Today we would call it a youth correctional facility. Pretty much everyone in Nova Scotia knows about the Shelburne School for Boys. It has a long and documented history of physical and sexual abuse.

Thousands of former students have filed claims against the school. There have been several provincial reviews and hundreds of lawsuits. Pierre Green was at Shelburne in 1980, alongside Michael McGray. Pierre has filed a lawsuit against the province, and his allegations have not been tested in court. Pierre lives around the corner from me in Dartmouth. My first day, I got beat up by a counselor.

This guy grabbed me by the back of my shirt and whatever I was wearing and my pants and threw me like a bowling ball down into the dorm and I whacked my head off the radiator. I remember I had a bump on my head. He said, you're going to learn the hard way or the easy way. It's been 40 years, but Pierre still remembers the abuse he says he suffered and witnessed, like it was yesterday. And here I am, two years or whatever of my life, just get assaulted left, right, and center. And not a thing I can do about it. Nothing. You know, like defenseless little kid. I asked Pierre about his memories of Michael McRae at Shelburne.

What I remember about him most, he would never back down. If they beat him, he would laugh at them. He would say, is that all you got? You know, or that does nothing to me. Or whatever, like, you know, and then they'd do more. That does nothing to me. Or whatever, like, you know, and then they'd do more. Michael McRae would go on to kill a lot of people.

So many people that he says he can't keep track of them all. Here's what we know from McRae's court records. He is 20 years old when he kills Gail Tucker near Church Point. He told CBC reporter Joanne Roberts that was his first murder, but he also told her he was 17 or 18 when he first started killing. So who knows, maybe there were previous murders. At 22 in St. John, New Brunswick, during a robbery, McRae stabs his accomplice to death. He isn't charged with the murder, but he gets five years for robbery. In 1991, McRae is in prison in Quebec and gets a pass for the three-day Easter weekend. On Saturday night, March 30th, he goes to The Campus, a strip bar in Montreal's gay village,

and allows himself to be picked up by 59-year-old Robert Asselet. McRae goes to Asselet's apartment, and the two drink while watching TV. McRae goes to the kitchen, grabs a knife. He returns to Asselet's room, smashes a lamp over his head, and then stabs him and repeatedly slashes his throat,

killing him. The next night, Magret returns to the campus and is picked up by 45-year-old Gaetan Etieh. The two go to Etieh's apartment and watch a hockey game on TV. Etieh makes a pass at McRae. McRae turns him down and Etieh falls asleep on the couch. For several hours, McRae sits in an armchair and watches Etieh sleep. McRae eventually smashes a beer bottle over Etieh's head, then stabs him to death. He returns to prison with no one the wiser for what he has done. In 1993, McRae is released from jail.

He meets a girl, Tammy, on Spring Garden Road in Halifax, and for the next four or five years, the couple wander the country together. In 1997, Michael McRae, now living in Moncton, kills 48-year-old Joan Hicks by stabbing her and slashing her throat. He also kills Joan's 11-year-old daughter, Nina. McRae is arrested for the killings of Joan and Nina Hicks. After his arrest, McRae confessed and pleaded guilty to the six murders I just listed. But McRae said he killed many more people. You'll recall he told interviewer Joanne Roberts

he killed up to 16 people. At another time, he told an investigator that he was so stoned for years at a time that he couldn't really be sure of how many people he killed. But McRae told police he wasn't going to confess to any more murders until they agreed to his conditions. Here are the conditions, in his own words, in January 2000. There's some other murders that I'm going to confess to,

but there's three conditions that I want to have met first, right? What are those conditions? Well, one, there's two other people that were involved with me and I want to make sure that they're not going to be charged. That's guaranteed has to be met. There's one person that was involved with me with one murder and there's another one that was involved with me for maybe six or seven that I'm not having to be charged with yet.

Two is that, and this is a main one for me, or it's a pretty big one, is that I want to get some kind of treatment. I know that I'm going to be in prison for the rest of my life, and rightly so, I agree with that. But I want to get some treatment, and I don't know what will help. But I know that the killing hasn't stopped. I'm almost ready to do another one right now. And third, I don't want to be charged with the rest of the murders. I don't want to spend the next five years bouncing from province to province. And I figure that, you know, they can make deals with people like Clifford Olson and Carla Homolka and people like that. Well, if they want to know about these other murders, then they can make a deal with me. well, if they want to know about these other murders, then they can make a deal with me.

But police will make no deals with McRae. Instead, various police investigators interview McRae, but get nowhere. They get no new information about any other murders. McRae stops talking. In 2002, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police assigns the Michael McRae case to a special unit of the RCMP called VICLAS, the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System. It is now up to the VICLAS unit to find out who else Michael McRae killed through the years. Who were Michael McRae's 16 victims? So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is.

I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. By 2019, I had been researching the Glenn Assoon story for five years. Going through court records, finding people who knew Brenda and Glenn, talking with lawyers, piecing together Glenn's 20-year journey through the courts and in prison. I knew there were several possible suspects who were around the Dartmouth stroll at the

time of Brenda's murder. Which, if any of these suspects, killed Brenda, I couldn't say. Then one morning, as I always do, I get up at 6 a.m., start the coffee, and fire up my laptop. There is a Facebook message waiting for me from a former RCMP officer named Dave Moore. He wants to talk about Glen Assoon. Follow his story, Dave tells me. Our Facebook messages start awkwardly, each of us holding back information from the other. But we talk every day, sometimes for hours at a time,

typing over each other. He provides me with new information about Glenn's case and makes some startling claims. So in January, producer Janice Evans and I fly to Tampa, Florida and drive to Sarasota to meet Dave Moore in person. Happy Holidays and we'll talk to you again. Welcome to Stony Brook. Please have the name. We're in a gated community. Uh... But of...

Apparently modest houses. Despite the gate. Palm trees. We're in Florida. houses despite the gate palm trees Florida one-story small bungalow let's see say hello dave moore hey tim busquets how are you welcome come on in here how are you is this a shoes off yep boys don't be annoying hello hello i'm tim sandra nice. Sandra, nice to meet you. Nice to meet you. We have a couple of PTSD animals here, two brothers, Hoodie and Blackie. They call them emotional support animals.

We deal with the PTSD as a result of all this nonsense that I've been going through. And anyway, we live here in a very modest home. And as you can see, good friends, good people. And that's it. Dave Moore is a giant man, built like a refrigerator. He's maybe 6'2 and 350 pounds. He's got catcher mid-hands. I wouldn't want to be on his wrong side.

But he's a joy to be with. We have a couple of glasses of wine, play with the dogs, get to know each other. The next day, we get to work. Dave spends almost two entire days relating his story. I'm from Ottawa, Ontario, the capital. Grew up in a large family, seven kids. My father worked for Atomic Energy of Canada, and my mom was a systems analyst for Revenue Canada. And I went on to business school, and that's where I learned software development, software design. The early stuff was a 32-bit encryption software that I was working on for national security. And then the RCMP came along and said,

we need people like you. You're at the top of the curve. They hand-selected a group of people to move the organization forward. They realized it was stuck in the 50s, and they were bringing in innovation. So that was the sales pitch I was given. Dave went to basic training in Regina,

then, in 1986, was assigned to a detachment near Summerside on Prince Edward Island. They were screaming at the time, the quote was intelligence-based organization. That means you're hiring intelligent people to do the job. But then when you get in the field, they squash you like a bug. I ran into difficulty right from the beginning. There's an old expression that follows the RCMP.

There's the right way of doing things, the wrong way of doing things. Then there's the RCMP way of doing things. What happened to Dave Moore on PEI is a long and complex story. The short version, as he tells it, is this. Dave butts heads with his superiors and is transferred to Nova Scotia. He gets bounced around from one detachment to another, and then, in 2000, he's assigned to the Vi-Class unit in Halifax. Halifax. Fight class was created as a result of the Paul Bernardo case. Paul Bernardo was a serial rapist and then a serial murderer whose crimes spanned across Ontario in the 1980s and 1990s. He was assisted in three murders by his

girlfriend who then became his wife, Carla Homolka. A review by the Ontario government found that the arrests were delayed and the attacks had continued basically because of police turf wars. Details of the investigations were not being shared between different police agencies. As a result, the RCMP created a computer database called the Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System, VICLAS for short. Here's how VICLAS works. Whenever a violent crime, a rape or murder, happens, the investigating police agency notes all the known details of the crime, the scene of the crime, the method of attack, the kind of weapon, the victim's age, race, hair color, and characteristics of the suspect or person accused, if they're known. The idea is that if a crime occurs in one part of the country, the evidence from that crime

can be matched to the evidence from other similar crimes in other parts of the country. The RCMP trains VICLAS analysts to interpret the data. These investigators are part psychological profilers, part computer experts. That was Dave Moore's job, and he was the ViClass officer who was assigned to the Michael McGray file. It was Dave's job to find McGray's other victims. I flowcharted every missing and murdered person across North America, Every single person.

Then once I geographically put them on a time scale and a geographic scale, I then looked for potential murderers because it was a needle in the haystack with Michael McRae. He doesn't conform to any of the criteria that Vyclass is based on on. Vyclas is based on the narrowing down of circumstances with regard to pattern behavior. This guy's an exception to the rule. His victimology is all over the place. He kills little girls and he kills women and he kills grannies and he kills men and he kills gays.

So there's no, you can't put a thumb on him. He's all over the map. Geographically, because he is a traveler and a vagabond, if you want to call him that, or a drifter, you have to look right across North America. So that's a wide spectrum. And so by plotting the information across a flow chart, it showed a 15-year period in which I could place him incarcerated at the beginning and incarcerated at the end, and everything in between was wide open. So then you go, okay, I was having a lot of difficulty, but one of the main consistencies in his murders was that he killed them right where they stood.

was that he killed them right where they stood. There was no attempt to camouflage anything. And in that decision to look at that, you also stretch yourself from a behavioral point of view as this person is cunning and he's very smart. This guy is not a dummy. A dummy is going to get caught. This guy knows well enough to kill somebody and hide it, but not take away the body. But there was also

other patterns of behavior. He didn't stick around after he committed murders. He would always leave with 24, 48 hours, 72 hours. He was gone. You have to put him at the murder. This was very difficult for me because he's a traveler across the country over a 15-year period with probably 700 murders across North America. So the volume of information was overwhelming. So I looked to say, okay, how can I narrow this down? So the only thing I could come up with was if this guy's on welfare, he's got to pick up a welfare check and he's got to physically be where the welfare check is. So therefore, in order to pick up the welfare check, he's got to present ID. He can't present false ID. It's got to be in his name through the government auspices of the welfare. So I was

able to determine at any given point in time when he received the check that he was in a given town. I couldn't say four hours later that he was there and I couldn't say four hours before, but I could tell you that at noon when he cashed it at the paycheck place that he presented the same ID that he did at the government offices, and then I put them on the chart. By studying McRae's movements and the victimology, Dave Moore is convinced that he has discovered several of McRae's other victims. One is a man killed in a cafe bathroom in Vancouver. And Dave tells me he thinks one of

the 13 murders in the Spokane, Washington area attributed to serial killer Robert Lee Yates was actually committed by McRae. Dave also tells me that he thinks McRae killed a third man in Montreal during that weekend in 1991. Dave keeps studying McRae and even starts corresponding with him in prison. McRae sends Dave quotes from the Bible, and Dave responds with other Bible quotes in hope of getting inside McRae's head. Dave even buys the same Bible McRae has, so the verses are the same. And then Dave expands his research by doing one more thing. I thought it's possible somebody is wrongfully convicted for a murder that he committed. Any community

wants to clean up this crime that's terrorizing the neighbourhood, so there's a potential for the wrong person being in jail because of political pressures put on the police department to solve this crime quickly, and in doing so is the human error. So I've said no, I want to also input all the solved murders across North America. So you're looking for somebody who's using a knife, someone who's doing a very violent attack. Dave includes in his search those at high risk of being victims of violence, including sex workers. So what happened was I put that into Vi-Class, and Brenda Way's murder came out.

So along with all the murders across North America, Dave Moore discovers a possible murder committed by Michael McRae in his own backyard. The problem is, he says the RCMP's Halifax Division told him he isn't supposed to be looking into solved cases. And this case has been solved. Glenn Assoon has now been in jail for five years. But Dave is determined. Glenn Assoon has now been in jail for five years. But Dave is determined.

He sets to work reinvestigating the Brenda Way murder. The offender behavior in the case of Brenda Way was so explosive, so frenzied an attack. Normally there's organized and disorganized murders. Typically somebody who does a murder for the first time is disorganized. They don't know what they're doing. It happened and then they panic. How am I going to cover this up? They don't know they stepped in the blood. They don't know, you know, they have the knife in their hand with fingerprints on it. When you get a seasoned murderer, he covers all the bases. So in other words, he didn't step in the blood trail. He's not leaving a shoe print. He's of the mind that he's going to take this person out. It's

going to be clean. And even if there was blood splatter on his clothes, you're not going to know it. He's not going to dispose of those clothing on the site of the murder. So what my visual was on the Brendaway murder, that it was a frenzied attack, a gruesome frenzied attack. And it's not the first time whoever did this has murdered somebody. Clearly to me, that was somebody who's done multiple murders. I believe that the left shoe and the panties were taken by the killer in this case. But the shoe, you certainly wear a shoe.

You're not gonna walk around with one shoe on, that's illogical, unless you're being chased out of somewhere or something happens. So from that perspective, it told me it was an organized killer, not a disorganized killer. The main thing with Michael McRae, he killed and dropped them where they were. Now, other police officers have gone to hundreds of thousand dollars worth of expense with Mr. McRae, who never got it right with this guy. To me, they were untrained and they should have known better and they should have relied on people that actually knew him. Even if they had taken the time to read his psychiatric reports, which are extensive, voluminous reports, you'd get

a real good idea what this guy's like. He's not interested in being deceptive and hiding bodies and digging a grave and shoveling and he drops them where he sees them. You piss me off, you're dead. It's that simple. And there'll be no historical reports to the police department that he's been harassing me, that he's attempted to hurt me, or he's previously assaulted me. That's not going to happen with Michael McRae. There's going to be none of that. It's just going to be, boom, I've decided this urge has come across me. You piss me off, you're dead. Totally different mentality. Dave Moore talks with Gilles Blin, his fellow Vi-Class worker in New Brunswick, about the Brenda Way murder.

Well, Michael McRae, if I recall here, it wasn't an overnight query. It wasn't an overnight investigation. You know, Dave was always meticulous and did great work. With respect to Brenda Way, she came up as a victim of a potential crime that McRae could have committed based on the science of ViGlass. And Dave had asked me to check this, if it made sense. And I did. I recall checking the the boxes he did, the cells, and I found it was very credible, very well done, and extremely likely that McRae could have committed that murder. I said, you know what, you're bang on. It's actually bang on. Dave uses the ViClass system

to come up with Michael McRae as the potential murderer of Brenda Way. But that isn't enough. A computer database isn't evidence. So Dave investigates further. So the way it worked was, even though the RCMP had given me the task to solve these murders, it would seem that I had to do it on my own time.

I was not getting, there was one unit vehicle, the boss kept it the whole time, the staff never got use of it. And so they're saying, do this work, but we're going to, you know, so I'm going in my private car in a cesspool of criminals to conduct interviews, and I don't like to drive my personal vehicle because they might track it. And I was dumbfounded that, okay, well, are you doing this for amusement? Are you not expecting me to find results out of this? So whatever, I'm entitled to my lunch. I go get the car, go into Dartmouth, do one interview per lunch hour, notebook on each one.

Dave works on reinvestigating the Brenda Way murder and connecting it back to Michael McRae. He has several hundred entries in the ViClass computer system. He has notebooks full of interviews with witnesses, which he keeps in a locked cabinet in his office. He has a four-foot by three-foot flow chart tracking McRae's movements on his office wall. The chart has an onion skin overlay, which shows when and where McRae cashed his welfare checks. Meanwhile, he is continuing to write letters to McGray, exchanging Bible verses with him. He writes to McGray five times. McGray writes back three times.

Dave is convinced that Glenn Assoon did not kill Brenda Way, and that Michael McRae did. Dave says that Glenn Assume is an innocent man sitting in prison for a crime he did not commit. He brings his theories to his boss. So I brought it to the attention of my direct supervisor, who is Ken Bradley of the Halifax Regional Police, and he went ballistic on me. Who do you think you are? And he's my direct supervisor, who is Ken Bradley of the Halifax Regional Police, and he went ballistic on me. Who do you think you are? And he's my direct supervisor. He is checking my work on a weekly basis to make sure that everything is done according to what they propose it to be.

And he's also been my supervisor right from the beginning. So he knows my work. Anyway, getting back to the Vi class relative to Brenda Way, I found immediately a pushback. If it's good enough for the Supreme Court of Canada, it's fucking good enough for me. From a police personnel perspective, there's nothing wrong with that. He's an emotional guy.

I get that. But things don't add up for me. So I'm just going to continue. I understand your position, Ken, but I think differently than you. There are two things you need to know here. First, Halifax is the only municipality in the country that has what's known as a blended police force. The Halifax Regional Police Department patrols in the urban area, while the RCMP works in the suburban and rural areas. But the Major Crime Investigation Unit has both Halifax PD

and RCMP members in it, and so does the Vi-Class Unit. So Dave Moore was an RCMP officer, but his boss, Ken Bradley, worked for the Halifax police. Here's the second thing you need to know. Back in 1996, after Brenda Way was killed, Ken Bradley worked on the investigation into her murder. And now, nine years later, he's Dave Moore's boss when Dave is telling him the wrong man was convicted. Did you know at that time that he was involved in the original investigation of the Brenda Way murder? Yeah, he told me that. He told me right from the onset. I believe he was the ident processing officer. The question is, did it cloud his judgment going forward in being able to do his job effectively in the Viaclass unit? And I went to Chief Frank Beasley and said, I have a problem. I'm being intimidated by this guy.

Now, let me stop you right there. You went to Frank Beasley, the chief of the Halifax police. When was that? So the order of pecking was I went to Dick Hutchings, who's the unit commander. And he also was of negative predisposition on this. Then I waited for him to go on holidays. And I went to Andy Latham, who's in charge of the major crime section in Halifax. And what I basically was looking for with Andy, I had explained to him what was going on. I explained the inter-office politics and what I was really wanting him to do. He was just upstairs. I wanted him to move me upstairs or at the very least change who I was reporting to. So when you say move you upstairs,

you wanted to be moved out of iClass and into major crimes? Correct. you upstairs, you wanted to be moved out of Vi Class and into major crimes? Correct. Let's recap. As Dave Moore tells it, in 2004, he takes his suspicions that Glenn Assoon is innocent of the murder of Brenda Way to his boss in Vi Class, Ken Bradley, who was involved in the original murder investigation that led to Glen Assoon's conviction. Bradley tells Moore to forget it. Glen Assoon is guilty. Next, Dave Moore goes to Dick Hutchings, who is the commander of the Halifax Phi Class unit. Hutchings also tells Moore to drop the matter. unit. Hutchins also tells Moore to drop the matter. Dave then talks to the chief of police in Halifax, Frank Beasley, to tell Beasley that one of his cops, Ken Bradley, has a conflict of interest.

Beasley tells him he can't do anything about it. I was getting too much friction from those people in lieu of the fact that they tasked me to do this investigation and basically were obstructing my investigation. Next, Dave Moore goes to Andy Latham, who's in charge of major crime for the RCMP in Halifax, and asks for a transfer so he can investigate the Brenda Way murder. Latham says, look, you're stepping on Halifax police toes, and there's a lot of inter-department politics going on. Latham wants to help. Latham says, bring me some hard evidence, and if you can do that, I'll get you transferred to major crime so you can keep investigating the Brenda Way murder. That conversation with Andy Latham happens on a Friday in March of 2004. The next day, Dave goes on vacation for two weeks.

When I came back from my holidays, my transfer notice was on the front doorstep of my house. It was underneath the mat. It was wet, damp from somebody had left it there. And I didn't know what was going on. I was to report immediately at 9 o'clock in the morning, 9.30, whatever it was. In the meantime, I went into the Vi class unit. And so the first thing that happened was my pass didn't work. I couldn't get in the door. And I couldn't get in my office.

And I'm going, okay. The only thing that was there at the secretary's desk was a box with some personal belongings. I was kicked out of the unit. With no advance notice, Dave Moore comes back from vacation and finds that he's been transferred out of Vi Class. He's being moved to the RCMP's gambling division. He makes another discovery.

Everything is missing from his office. Years worth of research, interview notes, his flowchart tracking McRae's movements. All of it, gone. They had stripped out all of my war room flowcharts, this big chart with the 15-year period on it. The overlay, onion skin overlay was missing. the 15-year period on it. The overlay, onion skin overlay was missing. I had noted that the lock was busted off of the file cabinet that I kept all of the written documents in. So I was livid. I was absolutely livid. The bottom file cabinet drawer had 10 notebooks. I used a smaller version of a notebook for every person I interviewed. Every person had an individual

notebook. On top of that, there were psychiatric reports on McRae. I had other suspects that I also had psychiatric reports on. I had a copy of the Moncton file, the entire file, not just what was on the system, but all the Hicks information. There was a lot to that file that I didn't understand. I needed to have a closer look. All of that was gone. All of the corroborating documents that I had obtained from correctional services, psychiatric reports, from his school, Michael's school. So all of that was missing. That's not all. Dave Moore gets another VyClass analyst to look on the computer system. That is, to look at the hundreds of files Dave had put on the system about Michael McGray. A co-worker, Karen Broidell, was there. I went over to her office and I said, go in, let me see what's in there. So she was already on the system. She had already

gained access with all her passwords and whatever. And I went to look at my files and they'd all been deleted. I was just told by the secretary, you've got to be at Inspector Tanner's office by 9.30. He's not in the same building. Inspector Tanner is Dan Tanner with the Criminal

Investigative Bureau of the RCMP in Halifax. I said to him, I don't give a shit what you do with me. I really don't care. But there's an innocent man in prison. What are you going to do about that? And I said, Glenn Assoon is an innocent person. You know it. I know it. And the documents stolen from my office prove it. Now, are you going to do anything about it? And his response was, tsk, tsk, tsk. And if you know that man, that expression is known across Canada.

He says that. Tsk, tsk, tsk, no one gives a shit about Glenissoon. Coming up on Dead Wrong. I can tell you right now, I knew everything about this case. You think for a freaking second if I knew the RCMP destroyed evidence, that I would be shouting from the rooftops. I had no idea. Zero. But today, the RCMP says there was no malicious intent. If anything has been done it has not been intentional or it was a mistake.

But there has been no intention for the RCMP in any way to try and do a cover-up. Claims on behalf of the RCMP that any evidence destruction was innocent or done in good faith or not for the purpose of obstructing justice rings hollow. Rings hollow understates it. Dead Wrong is written and produced by Janice Evans, Nancy Hunter, and me, Tim Bousquet.

Sound design by Evan Kelly. Shamham Booyyan provided transcripts. Our digital producer is Emily Connell. Special thanks to Sarah Melton. Chris Oak is our story editor. The senior producer of CBC Podcasts is Tanya Springer. And our executive producer is Arif Noorani. For discussion, posts, pictures from the case, and more, find us on Facebook and Twitter at UncoverCBC. We're also on Instagram at CBC Podcasts.