Uncover - S7 "Dead Wrong" E7: No Malicious Intent

Episode Date: June 18, 2020

Glen’s last hope — a federal lawyer opens a new investigation that leads to a hearing at the Supreme Court of Nova Scotia. Tim works to get sealed court documents released to the public. The result is a bombshell. For transcripts of this series, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/uncover/uncover-season-7-dead-wrong-transcripts-listen-1.5612940

My name is Ian Urbina. I've reported on some pretty mind-blowing stories, but nothing like what happens at sea. If they got within 800 meters, that is when we would fire warning shots. Murder, slavery, human trafficking, and staggering environmental crimes. Men have told me that they've been beaten

with stingray tails, with chains. If you really want to understand crime, start where the law of the land ends, the outlaw Ocean. Available now on CBC Listen and everywhere you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello. Hi, may I speak with Karen Broydel?

This is she. Hello? Hi, may I speak with Karen Broydel? This is she. Retired RCMP member Karen Broydel worked in the same office as Dave Moore. Both were ViClass analysts. ViClass is a computer database used to track violent offenders across the country. Retired RCMP constable Dave Moore was investigating serial killer Michael McRae

when Moore discovered links between McRae and the murder of Brenda Way. I'm sure you're familiar with his involvement in this glenosing wrongful conviction. Yes. We discussed all of our files together. Do you recall when Dave went on vacation to... I do, and he had a number of,

I'll call them flowcharts, on the walls of the office that he was in. And when he came back, everything was gone. I know for a fact the materials were taken from the Bedford office when Dave was on vacation. And you're talking about the work... Dave's working papers, yes.

And the flowcharts and the boxes. Yeah, that was all in his office in Bedford. Yeah. And that was gone when he returned from vacation. I remember distinctly the day he came back to work, we all walked in and he was livid. And understandably so, because he had worked on this file quite intensely for a period of time.

Were you aware that his bike class entries had been deleted? Yes, after the fact, I definitely was aware of it. Now, I've talked to other people who've worked on Viclass across the country. And the question that keeps coming up is you don't just press a button and it deletes stuff. First of all, people have to have authority. And then you have to go through line by line to delete. Does that make sense to you? It does.

And unless you have the rights to delete, which in our office it would have been at the supervisory level or our NCO, beyond that, no one at my level and Dave's level would have had that ability to do so. Dave said that there were something like 700 or 900 entries into the by-class system and that each one of those would have had to have been deleted independently. Yes and it is an individual item by item type thing. Yeah so. Excuse me for interrupting but you're working on a national database so you can't just arbitrarily go in and delete things just for the sake of doing so. So does it sound right to you that it would take days and days to do that? It would take a considerable amount of time, that's for sure. Frankly, had I known what was going to happen,

I would have made every effort to stop it because Dave was on to something when it came to Glen Assoon being accused of this. And to me, he nailed it way back in 2001. And this happened not during office hours because I would have been there and a number of other of my contemporaries would have been at work at the same time.

Nobody knew the goings of his work. He just kind of vanished into thin air. I'm Tim Busque, and this is Uncover. Dead. Wrong. Episode 7.

No Malicious Intent. The first time I ever heard about Glen Assoon was back in 2014, when I got a tip about something called an extraordinary parole hearing happening down at the courts. It's a special bail hearing for a prisoner who would not otherwise be eligible for parole, and it happens very rarely. This one was only the sixth to happen in Canadian history. So there was this man, Glen Assoon, who had been in prison for almost 17 years and there was a report before the courts. And based on whatever was in that report,

a Nova Scotia Supreme Court judge granted Glenn bail. But that report, which contained critical information on a miscarriage of justice, was sealed by the court. In 2019, me and my little startup news site, the Halifax Examiner, along with the CBC and the Canadian press, hired a lawyer and petitioned the courts to get the document unsealed. It cost us something north of $50,000. And then, we waited. So how did this potentially explosive report come about? Sean McDonald, Glenn's lawyer from Innocence Canada, conducted his own

investigation including finding links to serial killer Michael McRae. He then turned all his findings over to the Criminal Conviction Review Group, or CCRG. The CCRG is a branch of the Federal Department of Justice, and the last hope for those who have exhausted all their appeals. They take on Glenn's case and assign lawyer Mark Green. They take on Glenn's case and assign lawyer Mark Green. My name is Mark Green. I work with Justice Canada. My job is to assess applications by individuals who believe they've been wrongfully convicted of a criminal offense. One such individual by the name of Glenn Assoon has applied to the Ministry of Justice for a review of his conviction for murdering Brenda Waite and so I'm here today to meet with you with respect to this matter. Mark Green is talking to a prisoner who at one time was in a segregation

unit with Michael McRae. I'm not going to use his name because to talk about another prisoner could put him in danger. I want to talk to you now just generally about your recollection of coming into contact with Michael McRae. Do you remember when it was originally that you were placed inside the congregation at Renus with him? It was off and on. He was there like over a three or four year period.

And do you remember, I'm just going from the affidavit, some reference to him telling you that he killed a girl by slicing her throat while another girl watched? McRae confessed to six murders, but stopped confessing unless certain conditions were met by police. He had an accomplice in a number of other murders and said they would need to be protected from prosecution. protected from prosecution. That deal was never made and McRae stopped talking to police, but he continued bragging to his fellow prisoners. He said that, well, it's easy to get away with murder. He made reference to a... he said he cut this girl's throat. He said the cops were so stupid, he said he lived within 200 yards of where this place was and they were so stupid that they never got her because there was no evidence

linking them to it. And was that the same, again going from your affidavit, that you talked about killing a prostitute in Dartmouth? So tell me what you recall about, I don't know if he said anything about being a prostitute, or you just told me about that. Yeah, well, that's what he said. They're perfect victims. The prisoner also tells Mark Green that McGray wears socks and sandals all year round. When Glenn questioned Roberta at trial, she testified that the man who assaulted her wore sandals, even though it was the middle of winter.

Mark Green interviews another prisoner, who I also won't name here, who spent months in a cell next to McRae. McRae would pass him notes, what prisoners call kites. Okay, I want to focus on and think back to your time at Renus. I'd like you to talk to me about the setup, physical setup in segregation where you were located where mcgrady was located well for starters i lived downstairs before mike showed up in that place third they're whack those crackheads are spun out so i asked i said let's do noise downstairs i'm going to court for a murder trial and i it's having a hard time sleeping can you move me to a quieter area in the sites and they moved me upstairs into C2.

The cell beside me, C3, was empty. I don't know. I was up there for a month. Mike McGrace showed up right beside me. They say I play the best music in this joint. They say if anybody plays music that's good, you do. So I had some Black Sabbath going. And Mike McGrae liked that he liked

Psycho Man and that was his favorite song Psycho Man he requested it probably a couple times a day okay so let's talk about then Brenda Way and again do you recall specifically this was done mostly through Kites then from what you told me earlier that it was mostly notes in this case that he was telling you about, Brenda White? And would you be writing kites back to him? No, I didn't write him any kites back. Okay. I know he stabbed all of his victims.

He emphasized that he stabbed all of his victims to death. Did he mention anything about where the murder happened? Do you recall anything about that? He left her. He stabbed her and left her in an alleyway. He killed a girl, a prostitute by the name of Brenda. Brenda Wayne. The interviews you just heard are part of Mark Green's special report. And no one would have ever known about those prisoner testimonies

or other explosive information because it almost didn't make it to the light of day. Assun couldn't talk about his case because of a sweeping publication ban and sealing order that kept information the minister used out of the public eye. The CBC, the Halifax Examiner, and the Canadian press joined forces to argue for the release of that information. Lawyer David Coles made that argument today. The courtroom was full of lawyers representing the Halifax Police, the RCMP, the Nova Scotia Crown, and the CCRG. Each had slightly different concerns, and all opposed fully releasing the information.

But we won. The report was a re-examination of the original evidence and new evidence pointing to collusion by the witnesses, recanting of previous testimony, and lies about deals made. As I was reviewing the document, someone who was very familiar with its contents gave me a tip. Check page 64. I went to that page, and the section headline read, Interview with RCMP Constable David Moore. Mark Green discovered Dave Moore and the RCMP destruction of evidence. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news.

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. As a police officer, Dave Moore couldn't talk publicly about his investigation into the Brenda Way murder and Michael McRae, or that he thought an innocent man was sitting in prison, and that the RCMP destroyed evidence that could help prove it. We don't know how Mark Green found out about Dave Moore,

but once he reached out to interview him, Dave Moore was finally legally able to tell all he knew. Green documents Dave Moore's story and then interviews members of the RCMP. Mark Green speaks to RCMP inspector Larry Wilson, head of major crime in Nova Scotia. Okay, so as I was saying, I became involved when Constable Moore made the allegations about his supervisor erasing his analytical findings on the ViCLA system and that he destroyed

physical evidence supporting his analysis about possible suspects in the Glen Assoon matter. So, of course course I found that quite alarming. Under no circumstances should any worksheet have ever been deleted. It just shouldn't have happened. And is that is that RCMP policy? Yeah, I mean you're not going to see it written anywhere but everybody knows that they shouldn't delete files. As a matter of fact I'll cut right to the chase and say that from an electronic perspective, we were not successful in recovering any of the data. Inspector Wilson discusses who can delete those files. He says those at the very top in Ottawa can,

but other than that, it would have to be people in the Bedford biclass office. What I learned was that the only people who can change any records in a given biclass center are the people who are employed in that biclass center. So I interviewed everybody that worked in that office at that time. The modifications were probably done at the request of Sergeant Hutchings. Actually, I shouldn't back that up. They weren't done at the request of Sergeant Hutchings. What Sergeant Hutchings requested was that these individuals review those cases. According to Wilson, Hutchings only ordered a review of Dave

Moore's work in the database. Wilson suggests this was done for quality control purposes, but Wilson says those he interviewed seemed to have a hard time remembering exactly why they conducted the review. One of the challenges that I found was that there was big memory problems with people who were interviewing, of course, 10 years ago. But Sergeant Hutchings says he doesn't even remember doing the review. So it was difficult getting him to describe why it was he ordered the review. But there's no doubt that the review was conducted

at the request of Sergeant Hutchings. And one of the things I can say though is after speaking to the analysts of the day is that even though they will say that he directed the review, they will also say that at no time did he direct anybody to delete anything. However, a lot of work was deleted. And when Mark Green interviewed the analysts prior to speaking to Wilson, some said they were concerned about making deletions and expressed that concern to Hutchings. Here's how Wilson explained it to Mark Green. to Hutchings. Here's how Wilson explained it to Mark Green. It looks to me, after conducting my review, that there was a member of the unit who was overenthusiastic in his review, a little bit overzealous, and instead of doing what he thought,

just leaving it alone and doing the right thing, he hit the delete button. leaving it alone and doing the right thing, he hit the delete button. This one overzealous analyst would have had to hit that button hundreds and hundreds of times. Wilson says he likely knows who it is, but because the analysts in question did not admit to doing this, the RCMP did not share that name with the Department of Justice. Mark Green steers his questions away from the database deletions to the disappearance of Dave Moore's notes, paperwork, and physical evidence. What Constable Moore told me was missing was physical evidence officer notes corrections Canada psych reports letters to and from McGray inter analyst communication flowchart timeline

graphs I remember that Dave kept copious notes and everything but nobody could tell us even the administrative staff who typically would be responsible for moving stuff around none of them could tell us where those files went. Sergeant Hutchings said that he doesn't remember. Well, it's a short story to tell you, essentially, that we couldn't locate them, no matter what we did. Can I just point out something that you provided to me? Yeah. Involved discussions with a number of individuals.

Yeah. One of them being Ken Bradley. discussions with a number of individuals. Yeah. One of them being Ken Bradley. Mark Green had interviewed Bradley prior to interviewing Wilson. In that interview, Bradley had told Green that Dave Moore's files had been shredded.

Wilson wants to clarify that term. Just to clarify something you said there about Sergeant Bradley. When we talked to him about it, pressed him on what he meant by files being shredded, as you said. He said something along the lines, he perhaps used the wrong terminology there with respect to files being shredded. Okay. So you're saying that he is now retracting the statement that information was shredded? Yeah.

Well, he's just saying that that language was probably not appropriate. It was stronger than what he had... So can you tell me what would be a more accurate depiction? Well, I think he was just suggesting that... He was talking about the electronic files, not the working files. Okay. Shredded seems an odd term to use to describe computer files being deleted. It's important to understand here who Sergeant Ken Bradley is. who Sergeant Ken Bradley is.

Sergeant Ken Bradley was from the Halifax Police. He worked with the RCMP in the Vi-Class unit. Bradley had actually worked on the original Brenda Way investigation. Bradley was a forensic identification specialist. He was the cop Constable Dave McDonald sent to identify and photograph the infamous knife that was found a year after the murder. Bradley even testified at Glenn's trial. Moore's investigation posed a conflict of interest for Halifax police. The police, after all, had played a major role in the conviction of an innocent man, including not investigating other suspects.

If the suspicion is that somebody took his four bankers' boxes and ran them through a shredder, I would think that somebody in the office would have seen that and would have made note of that. And I think the people that I interviewed were fairly forthcoming. And nobody suggested that was the case? No. Okay. So you're correcting what Bradley had said,

but there would be nothing stopping somebody from coming in during obscure hours and doing that sort of thing or just removing the documents altogether. Correct? It is possible. And so if we are to believe that a number of the computer files were intentionally deleted. I don't think it's a huge stretch to think somebody would possibly go to that extent. I don't think it's a huge leap. Can you tell me the reason for Moore's transfer, move, whatever,

from Vi-Class to wherever he was transferred to upon his return from the holidays. Sergeant Hutchings says it had to do with his inability to get along with others in the office. Karen Broydel worked in the Vi Class office for the entire time Dave Moore was there. Her recollection is of an office environment where everyone got along and that Dave Moore was a very good colleague. I asked Karen Broidell about Wilson's review. I just want to read you the relevant paragraph and see what you think about it. It says, the administrative review was extensive and found

that by-class worksheets had been deleted in 2004 when employees of the by-class unit were asked to review a number of analysis completed from 2001-2003 for quality control purposes. The deletions were contrary to policy and should not have happened. They were not, however, with malicious intent. Why would you be deleting for quality control purposes? That's a really, really peculiar statement. Well, it implies that the deletions were accidental, but it doesn't actually say that. That doesn't add up in my opinion. That doesn't add up in my opinion.

When you're building a database, you're doing your quality control prior to doing your final entry on the system. So the objective is to get as large and as diverse a database as possible in order to do your queries. Karen Broydel describes Moore as the hardest worker in the office. She also describes their supervisor, Sergeant Dick Hutchings. Dick Hutchings basically had an issue with Dave and myself and other people in the office because, to me, from my perspective, to be an effective analyst, you have to think outside of the box. To me, from my perspective, to be an effective analyst, you have to think outside of the box. And if you don't do that, you're not going to capture the demographic and the material that you need in order to have a successful analysis. This would irritate Dick to no end.

He would become very agitated with all of us if you questioned him on anything. And he was just very annoyed with the process. Now, I didn't see Dick do anything firsthand and I know nothing of the goings of Dave's material and I'm not sure why this happened other than it would be a control of basically putting Dave back in the box where Dick wanted him to be. And Dave is the type of person, he's got the tenacity of a bulldog, and once he gets a hold of something, he doesn't let go until he has a successful conclusion.

And it's like a soon file. He was going to work day and night until he got the information required and someone was unjustly imprisoned. That shouldn't be. So he has a lot of passion when it comes to that sort of thing, but he also

is not the least bit shy of confronting management and confronting the bureaucracy and pointing out if they've made a mistake that it's wrong and he can substantiate why the management doesn't always take too kindly to that what do you think about all this as a retired member of the rMP. I wasn't impressed while I was there with what happened. And to me, it's almost a level of corruption within our office. Assoon was wrongfully convicted nearly 20 years ago

for the murder of his former girlfriend, Brenda Way. The documents point to this man, serial killer Michael Wayne McRae, as another suspect. The information about another possible suspect wasn't disclosed to Assoon's lawyers. An RCMP officer says he brought the information to his superiors and was told he was wasting his time. He told CBC News he was later transferred out of his unit. His digital files deleted. The hard copies have disappeared. That would be one prominent feature of this case that would point to shocking malfeasance.

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. 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. That's Sean McDonald, Glenn's lawyer. That's Sean McDonald, Glenn's lawyer. The statement by the RCMP in response to that becoming public was something along the lines of, well, no ill intents here. My response to that will be to just to talk about the evidence. You have a locked door. Members, stuff is inside that locked door inside Dave Moore's office they're

filing cabinets with more locks on them that only Dave Moore has keys to here's what had to happen for hundreds of pages of police notes hundreds of paid hard copy documents in the files gigabytes of digital data to be deleted altered or destroyed just bear with me you have to be able to, number one, get inside the RCMP station in Bedford. Number two, have access to the ViClass unit in the RCMP station in Bedford. Number three, somehow get through the locked door

in the ViClass squad where Dave Moore's office was. You have to be able to break the locks on the filing cabinet in Dave Moore's office. Then you take the documents out of the filing cabinet. What do you do with them? How do they disappear? There's no record of how they got from a broken lock into the filing cabinet, into some, I assume, something to carry them.

Where did they take them? Who took them? There's videos inside a police station. Only certain people had access to override the digital information on a high-end Vi class member's database. Who did that? Who had access to it? And what did they do? Why do we have no record of what it looked like

before it was deleted, altered, or otherwise destroyed? On Dave Moore's walls, he had charts of his investigation, walls filled with detailed RCMP charts of evidence. So how do you get in the building, into the squad, into the office, into the filing clubs, into the computer, all over the walls? That's the evidence, right? So it's really up to the people that are listening to this to draw their own conclusions. Here's Glenn's other lawyer, Phil Campbell. 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. It is facially untenable. And it wasn't just that evidence had been destroyed. It's the suspicious timing of the destruction. It's the suspicious timing of the destruction. In Mark Green's report, he points directly to a correlation between the timing of destruction of evidence and Jerome Kennedy's request for information, or what is called in legal terms, disclosure. Jerome Kennedy, Glenn's lawyer for his appeal back in 2004, asked for information on Michael McGray.

Jerome Kennedy, Glenn's lawyer for his appeal back in 2004, asked for information on Michael In 2004, two things happened in parallel. One is that the police in Halifax, a combined behavioral profiling task force, RCMP and Halifax Regional Officers, acquired and then destroyed the evidence implicating McRae intending to exonerate Glenn Assoon. That's happening. And it is a calculated, documented destruction of evidence, protested at the time and clearly against policy. At the same time, Jerome Kennedy is casting around for grounds of appeal for Glenn Assoon, who is claiming, as always, that he's innocent.

Kennedy and his investigator had discovered that McRae lived near the murder scene and moved out only a day or two after Brenda was murdered. They also looked into other suspects and requested information and even specifically Vi-class information. even specifically, Vi Class information. So, as it unfolds, those two paths lead directly to Ottawa and to the head of Vi Class across the country, Inspector Leo O'Brien. In his report, Mark Green documents that there was a meeting held between the Nova Scotia Crown, Halifax Police,

and the National Head of VI Class, Inspector Leo O'Brien. And the mission of the three of them is to decide how to deal with the disclosure problem. is to decide how to deal with the disclosure problem. That meeting takes place, and then days later, Inspector O'Brien starts to get a series of emails from Dave Moore personally. And Dave Moore says what he has found. He sketches out the essence of his analysis of Glenn Assoon's likely innocence, including information about Michael McRae,

specifically requested by Jerome Kennedy. And he relates the steps he has taken to try to get local, that is, Halifax officers, to disclose it, to tell the Crown or to tell Jerome Kennedy or to tell the investigator, here's what I got, do something about it. And so by early February of 2005, you have, within the knowledge of Inspector O'Brien, the disclosure request, which requires, as a matter of law, as any police officer knows, relevant information to be given to the Crown in order to be given to the defense and ultimately the court. And you've got documented and in his possession on his computer, emails to which he responds saying that an officer under his command

has discovered a large amount of highly exculpatory evidence about Glenn Assoon. The very thing, in other words, that Jerome Kennedy is looking for. There is only one proper conclusion to that story. Inspector O'Brien knows the truth, is under an obligation to disclose the truth, and does nothing. And Glen Assoon stays in jail another nine years. Kennedy's request for information about McRae was stonewalled by Halifax Police and RCMP. He was told he was fishing.

Kennedy said, RCMP and Halifax Police have not responded to my questions about whether there have been any further investigations or disciplinary actions related to either the destruction of evidence or the failure to disclose evidence. When Glenn is granted bail in 2014, the cruelty of the Nova Scotia justice system still doesn't stop for him. Even though there is a report that says there is a likely miscarriage of justice, there is a likely miscarriage of justice, Nova Scotia Crown Prosecutor Marion Fortune Stone requests harsh bail conditions on Glenn. They include severe restrictions on his movements,

constant reporting to two different police agencies, including if he comes into contact at all with a woman, and for his 24-hour-a-day surveillance, including if he comes into contact at all with a woman. And for his 24-hour-a-day surveillance, Glenn has to pay for his own ankle monitor. There is still a long process ahead for Glenn. He could get a retrial, or be exonerated, or even sent back to prison at any time. All the while, Glenn is experiencing some of his most difficult years. He starts his house arrest out west in British Columbia.

Well, first of all, to walk through the impact that it had on Glenn, I mean, first of all, you've got a layer of stress that existed and started when Brenda died. I mean, he loved her. That broke his heart. Then you have him being wrongly convicted of her murder, put in a federal penitentiary, tortured, beaten, attacked. So you've got that layer of stress that he lived with. He surrendered when the internet really wasn't a big deal. He surrendered before text messages. I mean, everything was new in a new world. He was living out west in BC, sort of isolated with nobody around him.

And he constant feared that they were going to drag him back into the bowels of a federal penitentiary. So he was never free. His anxiety levels sort of developed as I saw them over time. He could never relax. And then there was a point where I spoke to him. It was a window of about a couple weeks probably that I noticed him degrading.

His mental health had degraded to the point where he was almost like a child on the phone with me. He was in his apartment. The windows were taped shut. He didn't want anybody looking in his little basement apartment. And Glenn naturally is an intelligent, charismatic, kind guy, but he was the opposite. He was almost in a fetal position in a dark apartment basement apartment with no lights on and i remember the day i thank god i got him on the phone and he he was just listening to me i'm not a psychologist but it's clear to me that he had had a breakdown and so i just calmly said gun listen do me a favor and he would say everything i one one word response to everything I said, yeah, yeah, like a child. And it broke my heart, right?

And I said, will you do me a favor? Get in your car, start your car right now, and drive to the emergency room of the hospital. And he'd say, yeah, okay. And I said, do me a favor, park your car, and go to the emergency room and say, I'm having a breakdown. Coming up on the final episode of Dead Wrong. So at the end of it, there is two people that I want to look in the face. One's Dave McDonald for ruining my life, ruining my father's life, ruining my family's life. And the other person is, is Mike McRae.

Before she was supposed to actually report for work for her very first day as a police officer, they wrote her a letter saying, we rescind our offer. You haven't been candid with us about your offer to let your dad live with you and they destroyed her dreams. What price do you put on a man's life? Because in my opinion, there's not enough money to compensate for the injustice that I suffered. Dead Wrong is written and produced by Janice Evans, Nancy Hunter, and me, Tim Bousquet.

Sound design by Evan Kelly. Shamham Buyan provided transcripts. Our digital producer is Emily Connell. Special thanks to Sarah Melton. Chris Oak is our 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. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.