I've preserved it here, in case this official National Defence biography (above) of Col. Russell Williams vanishes from its current location on the net, now that he has been charged with two-counts of first-degree murder. The stunning news that the commander of the Canadian Air Force base in Trenton, just west of Belleville, Ontario, has been charged with the slayings of two women, was revealed today at a news conference (video). He's also charged with home invasion-sex attacks on two other women.
Police have acknowledged that they're looking at Williams' past, with an eye to other unsolved crimes. His biography (above) is a roadmap to that investigation. In 2003, Williams began taking a graduate degree at Royal Military College in Kingston. Two months later, RMC cadet Joe Grozelle vanished from the campus. He was found dead 22 days later when his body was found in a nearby river. Investigators have never been able to conclusively determine how he died.
Some strange goings-on in the last few days of the preliminary hearing being held in Kingston for three people accused of killing four family members who were found dead in a submerged car. Here's my full story from today's Whig-Standard. Though the piece may seem deliberately cryptic, I'm handcuffed by the publication bans in place.
A preliminary inquiry is typically a secretive justice system process. Sweeping publication bans bar the reporting of most of what is said in the courtroom during such a hearing, but the courtroom remains open to spectators. Any citizen can show up and listen in. The preliminary inquiry for three Montrealers accused of murdering four family members took on a super-secret atmosphere yesterday as some evidence in Farsi, a Middle Eastern language, was not translated into English for courtroom spectators, including reporters. The mechanics of this strange situation cannot be explained because of the publication bans in place. They are designed to prevent evidence from being widely disseminated in the community, where it could theoretically poison citizens who might later serve on a jury. During the preliminary hearing, a judge determines if there is enough evidence to order the accused to stand trial. For several hours Friday and on Thursday, spectators and some court staff did not know what was being said in the Kingston Mills case. Two translators, sitting in a sound-dampening booth inside the courtroom, said nothing as evidence in Farsi was presented. The translators take turns interpreting most of the testimony into and out of Farsi. Their translations are fed to everyone in the courtroom through a network of wireless receiver boxes and headsets. Until Thursday, they had translated all of the Farsi evidence into English. Mohammad Shafia, 56, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, and their 19-year-old son Hamed are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder. Only Hamed Shafia speaks fluent English. Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a car discovered June 30 last year submerged in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife. Yesterday the lawyers finished presenting evidence that is part of a hearing within the hearing. Justice Stephen Hunter is being asked to rule on whether a key piece of evidence is admissible. On Tuesday, when court resumes, the lawyers will make submissions to Hunter before he makes what could be a critical decision. After the matter is decided, the preliminary hearing will continue in earnest. So far, four witnesses have appeared, all police officers who have been involved in a case that crosses continents and cultural barriers. The divide was evident yesterday. The judge adjourned the proceedings at 12:30 p.m. for lunch, at a time when he normally would have continued hearing evidence. The two court-appointed translators had asked Hunter to give them an hour off at that time so that they could get to the Kingston mosque, located on Sydenham Road, for Friday prayers. The men, practising Muslims, needed to participate in a group prayer session. They also pray to Allah five times a day, but are able on other days to pray in the court building on Wellington Street. When the two men took oaths to tell the truth at the beginning of the hearing, they placed their hands on the Quran, an Islamic holy text. Though the courtroom was packed with spectators when the hearing began this week, by yesterday, only two or three spectators sat in the public benches. Around noon, a young man in jeans raised some eyebrows when he strode quickly into the room and took a spot on the first-row spectator bench and began waving enthusiastically to Hamed Shafia, who grinned in acknowledgment from the prisoner box, where he is shackled and seated next to a court security officer. When court concluded for the day, the spectator waved again. Hamed Shafia lifted his right hand slowly and waved twice. The spectator described himself as a cousin of the accused, but he would not give his name. The mother, father and son were arrested on July 22 last year, roughly three weeks after the four females were found dead. They remain behind bars at the Quinte Detention Centre in Napanee. They are brought in a van, under tight security, to the Kingston courthouse each day.
For a journalist, there's nothing more painful than hearing a good story – or a great story – that you can't write. Imagine how it feels when this happens every day, for days on end. I'm trapped now in this kind of journalistic purgatory, as I watch evidence, some of it dramatic and startling, unfolding at the preliminary hearing for three Montrealers – a mother, father and their 19-year-old son – who are accused of murdering four family members. A sweeping publication ban bars reporting of the evidence presented at the hearing. I've already heard and seen a wealth of new information, among the reams of material collected by investigators, but I can't tell you about any of it.
Of course, it could be worse. Canada's Criminal Code has broad provisions that enable a judge to conduct essentially a secret preliminary hearing, if he/she thinks that's a good idea, by ordering everyone out of the courtroom except the prosecutor, accused and his or her lawyer. A publication ban is imposed if the accused asks for it, and may be imposed if the prosecution asks for it. Journalists and a number of organizations are continuing to battle the courts and government over the use of publication bans, most notably in bail hearings. So far, the bans remain in widespread use, bolstered by the byzantine notion that citizens who could end up on juries will be poisoned by hearing the evidence reported before a trial. In an age where electronic communication knows no boundaries and spreads at nearly incomprehensible speed, it seems a sadly arcane and unenforcable notion. But it's the system we have, and we have to life with for now. Given this, here's my story that appears in today's Whig-Standard about Day 3 of the preliminary hearing, yesterday:
A battle over the admissibility of one significant piece of evidence continued yesterday (wed) at a hearing in the Kingston Mills murder case. The evidence will likely be the subject of several more days of debate. The evidence and the submissions concerning it cannot be reported because of sweeping publication ban imposed by the judge. Yesterday marked the third day of a preliminary hearing, a proceeding to determine if there is enough evidence to send the three accused to trial. The judge need only conclude that there is some evidence to order a trial. Publication bans are typically sought by the accused at this stage to prevent potential jurors from hearing the evidence that will be presented at a trial. Mohammad Shafia, 56, his wife Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, and their 19-year-old son Hamed are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder. Police allege that the trio hatched a plan to kill four family members. Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead inside a car discovered June 30 last year submerged in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife. The two men have conceded that there is enough evidence to send them to trial, but they did not waive their right to participate in the preliminary hearing. Yahya has not made the same concession. Lawyers for the two accused men were not in court yesterday. A problem with translation that forced an abrupt end to the hearing Tuesday was resolved. The hearing is being simultaneously translated between English and Farsi by two translators closeted in a small booth erected inside Courtroom Number 1 at the provincial courthouse on Wellington Street. Kingston Police have made a show of force at the hearing. At times, there have been seven officers in the courtroom, including four tactical officers armed with Tasers and handguns. The accused sit in a row inside the prisoner’s box, separated by two court security officers. The accused are prohibited by court order from communicating with each other. They wear headsets connected to wireless receivers that allow them to hear all of the English testimony translated into Farsi. Headsets and receivers also are available to members of the public who attend. The 10-member Shafia family came to Canada from Afghanistan roughly three years ago. The mother, father and son were arrested on July 22 last year. They have been held in custody since that time.
Some of the evidence revealed yesterday at the resumption of a hearing in the canal mass murder case proved emotionally jarring for one of the three accused killers. My full account of the hearing, published today in the Kingston-Whig-Standard, also appears after the jump. By Rob Tripp The Whig-Standard
A Montreal woman accused of murdering three of her daughters cried big, racking sobs yesterday as prosecutors began revealing some of the evidence against her. Tooba Mohammad Yahya, 40, her husband Mohammad Shafia, 56, and the couple’s 19-year-old son Hamed are each charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder. Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead in a car that was discovered early on the morning of June 30, submerged in about three metres of water near a lock in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Shafia’s first wife. The three accused have been behind bars since their arrest three weeks after the bodies were discovered. Yesterday marked the beginning of a marathon, key phase of the court proceeding. A preliminary hearing that ran one day before Christmas resumed and is scheduled to continue for four weeks. At a preliminary hearing, prosecutors present some of their evidence in a bid to convince a judge that he should send the accused to trial. In this case, Shafia and his son already have conceded that there is enough evidence to commit them to trial. It means prosecutors don’t have to convince the judge to order a trial for those two. But Yahya has not conceded. A sweeping publication ban prohibits reporting of evidence heard at the hearing. Yesterday Crown lawyers Gerard Laarhuis and Laurie Lacelle introduced two books of evidence, each about four inches thick. Two witnesses were called, both police officers, and twice Yahya began to cry, loud enough that her sobs were audible from behind the glass of the prisoner’s box, where she was shackled at the legs, seated in a row, separated from her husband by a police officer, who, in turn, was separated from his son by another officer. At least once, Mohammad Shafia appeared overcome by emotion. He wiped at his face with a tissue and buried his face in his hands and also appeared to be crying. In the afternoon, Yahya’s crying stretched out for roughly 15 minutes, as she sobbed and dabbed at her face with tissue. The evidence that provoked the outburst cannot be reported. When a recess was called, she refused to leave the prisoner’s box, as is customary during breaks in the proceedings. Only her husband and son were escorted out of the courtroom. She remained in the corner of the box, sobbing quietly, partly concealed from the courtroom by a large garden-shed sized structure that houses two translators. The entire proceeding is being simultaneously translated into Farsi. Yahya and her husband speak Farsi. Two translators sit inside the booth, connected to everyone in the courtroom through a network of wireless headsets. The plans went briefly awry when the hearing began. The translator thought his job was only to translate testimony involving witnesses, so he did not begin translating any of the opening remarks. “You have to translate everything, sir,” Justice Stephen Hunter said. The hearing also began with only one of two translators in place, apparently because the second man got lost. He arrived almost an hour late. Despite the initial hiccups, and occasional admonition from the judge to the lawyers to slow down to allow the translators to keep pace, the translation worked effectively for most of the day. “I thought it went very smoothly,” defence lawyer Clyde Smith said, in an interview outside the courtroom, after the lunch break. “I was pleasantly surprised by how smoothly it went.” Smith represents the son. But the day ended abruptly just after 4 p.m. when one of the two translators interrupted the proceedings to tell the judge that he was having difficulty translating a dialect of Farsi. Hunter asked the lawyers if they had a possible solution. When no ideas emerged, he adjourned the hearing and asked to meet the lawyers behind closed doors. A hearing within a hearing also began yesterday, as the judge is being asked to consider the admissibility of some evidence. Debate about the matter is expected to stretch into next week. There was one other problem during the morning. After court had sat for roughly an hour and a half, Laarhuis pointed out to the judge that a woman who may be a witness was sitting in the public benches, despite an order the excludes all witnesses from watching the proceedings. The woman was quickly hustled out of the courtroom. A group of about half a dozen people who appear to be supporters or friends and family of the accused sat through the day’s proceedings. In the morning, when Mohammad Shafia was first brought into court, he offered a slight smile and a wave to a woman among the group. She nodded in acknowledgment. The hearing is set to resume today.
from left, Mohammad Shafia, 56, wife Tooba, 40, son Hamed, 19, at the Kingston, Ontario courthouse on July 23, 2009 (photos by Ian MacAlpine and Michael Lea/The Whig-Standard)
Birthdays behind bars. Tooba Mohammad Yahya turned 40 on December 12. Her son Hamed can now legally purchase alcohol in Canada, though it's possible he may never get the chance. He turned 19 on New Year's Eve. It's unlikely either Shafia family member did much celebrating. They are languishing behind bars at the Quinte Detention Centre, an overcrowded provincial holding centre just west of Kingston, as they wait for their day in court. Tooba, Hamed and father Mohammad Shafia are each accused of killing four other family members in a diabolical plot police say was carried out in June last year in Kingston, Ontario. That day in court looms. The case against them moves into a critical stage tomorrow with the commencement in earnest of a preliminary inquiry.
Monday, February 2, 2010 By Rob Tripp The Whig-Standard
Defence lawyers representing three Montrealers accused of killing four family members who were found dead in a submerged car haven’t yet seen all of the evidence against the accused despite the looming start of a critical court hearing.
A month-long preliminary hearing begins in earnest tomorrow (tues) in Kingston for Mohammad Shafia, 56, his wife Tooba, 40, and their 19-year-old son Hamed. Each is charged with four counts of first-degree murder and four counts of conspiracy to commit murder.
“There’s still some disclosure missing, some important disclosure,” defence lawyer David Crowe told the Whig-Standard. “The police are making best efforts and no one’s faulting the police or Crowns.”
Crowe would not say what evidence is missing. In Canada, prosecutors are required to provide an accused person with all relevant evidence that has been collected, in advance.
Crowe represents Tooba Mohammad Yahya, the only one of the three accused who has not conceded that there is enough evidence to send her to trial in the deaths of her children. Hamed Shafia and Mohammad Shafia conceded, on the first day of the preliminary hearing, held before Christmas, that there is enough evidence to order them to trial.
Three teenage Shafia sisters, Zainab, 19, Sahar, 17, and Geeti, 13, along with Rona Amir Mohammad, 50, were found dead in a car that was discovered early on the morning of June 30 last year, resting on its wheels in about three metres of water near a lock in the Rideau Canal at Kingston Mills. Rona Mohammad was Mohammad Shafia’s first wife.
The mother and father claimed, in interviews soon after the victims were found, that the four must have died in a freak driving accident that happened as the family was passing through Kingston on the way home to Montreal. Siblings of Rona Mohammad allege that the four were victims of an honour crime, orchestrated by the father.
Police have never revealed the cause of death of the victims.
Preliminary hearings are held to allow a judge to decide if there is enough evidence to order an accused to trial. Despite the concessions by two accused, all three will be in Courtroom Number 1 at the provincial courthouse on Wellington Street tomorrow.
“Just because we conceded committal doesn’t mean that we’re waiving the prelim,” said Clyde Smith, the lawyer who represents Hamed Shafia. “That’s two different things.
“We’ve said to the Crown and to the judge, ‘Look, we’re not going to argue about whether or not there has to be a trial on this, we agree that the matter has to go to trial. In the meantime, we want to hear some of this other evidence just to get a sense of what it’s all about.’ ”
Smith said he has “zeroed in on some evidence that we need to understand a little better and that’s what we’re going to be doing for most of the month.”
Kingston lawyer Peter Kemp represents the accused father, who also has conceded there is enough evidence to send him to trial.
Much of what will transpire in the courtroom for the next four weeks will be done under a cloak of secrecy. Sweeping publication bans bar the media from reporting most evidence heard at preliminary inquiries.
The Shafia preliminary was originally expected to last 10 to 11 weeks.
“We’ve cut it down quite a bit,” said Crowe, predicting that most of the evidence will be complete by the end of February.
Everyone involved in the case is uncertain how the process will be slowed by one major obstacle.
The proceedings will require simultaneous translation between English, Farsi and, at times, French. The accused mother and father speak Farsi.
“The real difficulty is that we just don’t know how long the evidence is going to take to go in because of the translation equipment … but none of us has ever been involved in anything of quite this type before,” Smith said. He said roughly a dozen witnesses are expected to appear.
Conducting the hearing in Kingston required significant planning, including temporarily shifting all provincial court matters scheduled for Courtroom Number 1 to the county courthouse for February.
For the month, only the Shafia preliminary will take place in Courtroom Number 1.
A large, garden-shed sized booth with windows has been installed in the Wellington Street courtroom, near the prisoner box, to accommodate two translators. A large audio control board sits at the rear of the room and two pole-mounted transmitters are located in corners of the courtroom. Everyone in the room will have access to a wireless receiver box and headphones with a volume and channel control. One channel provides the live audio of the testimony. The simultaneous translation of the testimony can be heard on the other channel.
The Ministry of the Attorney General says there will be 30 headsets available daily to media and spectators, on a first-come, first-served basis.
“There’ll be people testifying in Farsi but there’ll also be people testifying in French and everything has to be translated into English and then, of course, everything that’s said in English or French has to be translated for the benefit of the accused so the potential for confusion is large, it seems to me,” Smith said.
Smith notes that judging the credibility of witnesses is about much more than just hearing their testimony.
“If you think about somebody watching a video statement, for example, and having it translated at the same time that they’re watching it, and trying to understand the nuances of what’s being said by the person on the videotape when, at the same time, you’re listening to a different voice, that’s not their voice, telling you what’s being said and presumably there’s a lag of some dimension,” he said. “It can’t be instantaneous so that the words of the person on the tape, once translated, may not match their demeanor and their facial expressions and their body languages and so on which, of course, is an important part of communication, so it’s a big challenge.”
Translation can be a factor in later debate about issues under appeal.
In September, the Supreme Court of Canada rejected a Nunavut man’s appeal of his conviction for first-degree murder, but the high court judges wrestled with the question of whether the transcript of the proceedings accurately reflected the context of what was said.
The trial of Salomonie Goo Jaw was conducted in Inuktitut and English, with simultaneous translation.
Jaw argued that the judge gave misleading instruction to the jury. The top court scrutinized the passage in the transcript showing the judge’s comments.
“The confusion surrounding this passage might be explained in part by the potential for transcription difficulties at trial,” Justice Louis LeBel wrote, for the 7-2 majority, noting that even individual sentences were at times broken down to facilitate translation.
“The transcription process is already reductionist in nature,” LeBel wrote. “The regular inflections in one’s voice, one’s emphasis on certain words and the natural flow of an idea or thought are not always captured by a written record.
“In the case of a trial conducted in two languages, the natural breaks between topics may not be as clear as usual, given the constant interruptions required for translation.”
Smith said he’s concerned about how translation will affect the Kingston case.
“I think its fair to say that everybody involved is worried about that issue,” he said.
Judicial officials already are looking ahead to a trial, which could begin in Kingston in early 2011, Smith said.
There have been discussions about trying to set aside court time for a trial and for hearings on pre-trial motions.
No one has been able to predict how long the trial might last, he said.
“This process we’re about to go through will help us a lot I think in understanding how much evidence is involved and what will be needed for the trial but more importantly, how much we’re slowed down by the translation and I don’t think anybody can tell that at this point,” he said.
Smith noted that murder cases in Kingston typically take about two years to get to trial.
“What I think everybody is trying to do is sort of keep the thing under control,” he said.
Smith said he does not believe that there will be any additional security in place for the preliminary inquiry.
“I think any concerns that there may have been about security were based largely on the fact that these people are from Afghanistan with all the [baggage] that that word carries but I think everybody has come to realize that this is just a family,” he said. “This isn’t the Taliban or a biker gang or international drug cartel or any of that kind of stuff; they’re not terrorists.”
The Shafia family moved to Canada roughly three years ago, settling in Montreal.
Kingston Police said the 10-member family, seven children and three adults, travelling in two cars, was returning home last summer from a vacation in the Niagara area when they stopped overnight in Kingston.
Their car, a black Nissan Sentra, was found submerged near the Kingston Mills locks early on the morning of June 30 by a Parks Canada worker. The four dead females were inside.
The mother, father and one son were arrested roughly three weeks later.
In prison, Richard Rupert (above) would have been known to many as Inmate No. 589239A. This confidential number marks Rupert as a man who's been in trouble with the law in the past. It is his Fingerprint System (FPS) number, uncovered by Cancrime. Today, Rupert is known as the suspected swindler who has criss-crossed the country bilking trusting seniors out of thousands of dollars. Police are hoping a major media blitz will smoke out the elusive fraudster who operates off the grid. Police say he doesn't have a credit card, driver's licence or car and travels only by train and bus. He's a suspect in at least 20 recent crimes, though police believe there are many more victims who have not come forward.
Rupert has been in federal prison at least twice, Cancrime discovered. His last sentence expired in 2005, so the Correctional Service of Canada won't talk about him. I'm still digging up other records on Rupert. Stay tuned.
The FPS number is a unique identifier assigned to everyone in Canada who is fingerprinted. If you're dispatched to penitentiary after a conviction, it becomes a de facto inmate number.
I can tell you that Rupert began his first federal bit, a three-year stretch, in 1988.
I was remiss in not posting sooner that the motley crew above, all federal convicts who escaped in 2009 from the same federal prison in Kingston, are now all back behind bars. The last remaining fugitive from Frontenac Institution, Kenneth McBain (centre), was caught January 27 in Toronto by the Repeat Offender Parole Enforcement Unit (ROPE), a cross-province team of officers – Ontario's version of the famed U.S. Marshals. The ROPE squad hunts federal parole violators and escapees.
McBain bolted Frontenac, a minimum-security pen that has no armed guards or fences, on July 6 last year. Kevin Rice (left) fled the prison November 26 but was caught a few days later. Murderer Andrew Wood (right), bolted June 13 and was caught five days later. He was camping out in the bush north of Kingston, where he'd been set up with gear and food by his girlfriend, Erin Danto, a psychologist at Frontenac. The pair were nabbed swiftly thanks to some clever police work including an elaborate surveillance operation in which a team of officers tailed Danto the night she headed to Wood's campsite to deliver supplies. Danto essentially ruined her life with that convict romance. She resigned her job before the Correctional Service of Canada could fire her, she ended up in jail and likely will lose her accreditation as a psychologist. (Here's the whole story of the Danto-Wood affair and her conviction.)
Frontenac has a chronic escape problem, in part because of its location, which was explained in this post about Wood's escape.
Imprisoned axe murderer Francis Patrick Clancy, who bashed in the head of a young born-again Christian man who had befriended him in Ottawa, has been paroled, Cancrime learned.
The 62-year-old Clancy, who is serving a life sentence in a British Columbia prison, was granted release to a halfway house (day parole), despite his repeated infractions, escapes and what the parole board calls his "parasitical life of crime" dating to 1969.
On March 5, 1983, Clancy and an accomplice, James Nelson Wall, were robbing the home of Iain Irvine, a 29-year-old Ottawa man who did volunteer work with ex-inmates. Irvine had befriended Clancy. Irvine arrived at the house unexpectedly and surprised the burglars. Wall held Irvine down on the floor. Clancy fetched an axe and began bashing Irvine's head. At the trial of the murderous pair, witnesses said Irvine might have been conscious for 15 minutes and alive for up to two hours. The killers stuffed him into a trunk and began hauling it outside. When Irvine tried to escape the box, Wall strangled him with a cord, twice. The killers drove 60 kilometres out of Ottawa and dumped the body in a field. Wall eventually led police to the body. He got life in prison with no chance of parole for 10 years. Clancy got life, with no parole for 15 years.
But he's been out of prison many times on passes since his conviction 25 years ago and, at one time, he was classified as minimum security and moved to a low-security prison with no fences and no armed guards. He escaped twice.
Now he's getting another shot at partial freedom. He'll have to live at a halfway house. He's been ordered not to drink alcohol, to avoid consorting with criminals and he has to take any psychological counselling that's ordered.
Here's the National Parole Board record of the hearing held this month at which he was granted parole:
Clancy was the ringleader in the 1983 robbery that left Irvine dead. When Clancy's accomplice in Irvine's murder, James Nelson Wall, was fingered as a suspect in a 1997 Kingston murder, I wrote this story, revisiting the Irvine killing (Wall was convicted in 2002 of first-degree murder in the slaying of his girlfriend, Jutta Weber. He was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 25 years):
Kingston Whig-Standard Saturday, March 21, 1998
By Rob Tripp
"Don't do this, Jesus loves you, Jesus loves you." Those were the last words of 29-year-old Iain Irvine, as he lay face down on the floor of a bedroom in his parents' home, moments before his skull was crushed by half a dozen blows from the blunt end of an axe. It was March 5, 1983. Irvine had surprised two burglars who were robbing his parents' Nepean home. The thieves hid in the closet of a bedroom. When Irvine came into the room, they sprang out and pushed him to the floor before he could see his assailants. James Nelson Wall, then 27, held Irvine's head down, and turned his own head away so Irvine couldn't see him. Wall's lawyer would later tell a murder trial that Wall believed his accomplice, 35-year-old Francis Patrick Clancy, was going to get rope and a blindfold. Clancy returned with an axe and began smashing Irvine's head. The trial heard that Irvine could have been conscious for 15 minutes after the attack and alive for up to two hours. Clancy and Wall put Irvine, who was still alive, into a steamer trunk and hauled it downstairs. There, they bound and gagged Irvine. Then, Wall tried to strangle Irvine "to put him out of his misery," according to one of the police officers who investigated the murder and testified in court. Wall and Clancy ransacked the house, then took Irvine's body out of the trunk, wrapped it in a quilt and put it into the trunk of Irvine's car. Clancy drove to an area about 60 kilometres east of Ottawa and dumped the body in a field. After they pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, Wall and Clancy listened in court to Molly and Alex Irvine recount the trauma of having their only child murdered in the family home. "We can still see where Iain's blood has soaked into the floor boards," Molly Irvine told the court. "We can never forget where he died." Irvine said her son knew Clancy and Wall from a prison fellowship program where he had befriended them. "Iain was very religious and believed strongly in helping others," Irvine said. Her son had even brought Clancy to the family home. On one of those trips, Clancy spotted a stack of savings bonds, and plotted the robbery. Iain Irvine trusted Clancy because he claimed he was a born-again Christian who had given up his life of crime. "As you know, Clancy's response was to betray Iain's trust and, with the help of his evil friend Wall, to murder him in a most foul way," Molly Irvine said. Clancy was sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 15 years. Wall got life with no chance of parole for 10 years. Wall was granted full parole in 1993, and has lived in Kingston since. He refuses to say he is a killer. "In 1983 somebody died and I was there," Wall says in an interview. "I didn't kill anybody then and I didn't kill anybody now ... " Wall says he was a troubled man in 1983 with a long record of property offences. "I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person or group of people," he says.
My colleague Arthur Milnes, wrote this story, after interviewing Irvine's mother and after Wall's conviction in 2002:
Kingston Whig-Standard Monday, February 11, 2002
By Arthur Milnes
There are no pictures of grandchildren on 76-year-old Molly Irvine's walls. In the twilight of her life, she's completely alone in her suburban Ottawa home. Alex Irvine, her husband and best friend, died at the age of 80 a year ago. Her only sibling is an ocean away in Great Britain. There is a terrible pain associated with the family home she has refused to leave. "People have said to me, 'How can you live in the house?' but it doesn't go away just because you move away," she said. "I have good friends ... you have to learn to live with it. Otherwise, life is impossible." Jim Wall is responsible for her pain. "I would think him capable of anything," says Irvine. Nearly two decades ago, in her house, Wall and another man, Francis Patrick Clancy, killed Irvine's only child, her 29-year-old son Iain. Irvine talks of leaving her beautiful home, perhaps finding something smaller. She'd have to first pack her late husband's beloved books and other family treasures. That's in the future. Today, she has agreed to talk about the past - a past that still sears her soul with sadness. Irvine looks carefully at the identification and business card she's been offered before letting a visitor inside. She is friendly and welcoming but her sadness is palpable. Her son was murdered almost 20 years ago, on March 5, 1983. Clancy battered Iain Irvine's skull with an axe, then Wall strangled him with an electrical cord. When Iain arrived at his parents' home early that morning, he unwittingly interrupted Wall and Clancy, who were robbing the house. When Irvine walked into his upstairs room, the burglars sprang from the closet and pushed him to the floor before he could see either of them. Wall's lawyer - his client remained silent - would later tell a judge that Wall believed his accomplice was going to get a rope and blindfold. Wall was left alone with Iain, who did not struggle but begged for his life. "Don't do this, Jesus loves you, Jesus loves you," Iain Irvine said as he lay pinned to the floor, with Wall's knees pressed down on his arms. Clancy returned with an axe and began smashing Irvine's head with the blunt end. Wall and Clancy did not realize the beating had not killed him. Iain Irvine could have been conscious for 15 minutes after the attack and alive for up to two hours, experts concluded. The intruders put Irvine in a steamer trunk and hauled it downstairs. Irvine lifted the lid and tried to escape. Wall ripped an electrical cord from a nearby timer and strangled the victim and then closed the lid. Again Irvine, clinging to life, opened the trunk lid. Wall strangled him again with the cord, an act he would later claim was a mercy killing, designed to put Irvine "out of his misery." After rushing home from Florida, Molly Irvine and her husband last saw their son in the morgue at Ottawa General Hospital. Without speaking, Molly Irvine places her hand across her throat to describe how the ligature marks from where Wall strangled her son could be seen clearly on his body at the morgue. She can still see them today. In one of the first victim impact statements ever heard in a Canadian court, Irvine tried to put the family's pain into words before Wall and Clancy were sentenced. "We can still see where Iain's blood has soaked into the floor boards," she said, on Oct. 21, 1983, in an Ottawa courtroom. "We can never forget where he died." She said her son was a religious man who believed strongly in helping others. Iain, a library technician in an Ottawa hospital, put his beliefs into practice and worked with prisoners in a fellowship program. He later allowed Clancy to move into his apartment. Today, Molly Irvine says she was suspicious of Clancy when her son brought him to her house. A mother's instincts proved to be correct. While visiting the Irvine family home, Clancy spotted some savings bonds and began to formulate his robbery plot. "I didn't know he'd been a prisoner," she told The Whig-Standard. "He said he was a born-again Christian. Hah." She leaves the living room for a moment and returns with two pictures of Clancy she's kept all these years. He is at the church, washing dishes. The pictures have been pinned up and in one, Clancy's eyes are poked out. "As you know, Clancy's response was to betray Iain's trust and, with the help of his evil friend Wall, to murder him in a most foul way," her victim impact statement continued. After pleading guilty to second-degree murder in Iain's death, Wall received a life sentence with no eligibility for parole for 10 years. Clancy, the ringleader, also received a life sentence with no eligibility for parole for 15 years. He remains in prison in B.C. Mrs. Irvine is still serving a sentence of her own. She will never be free of the pain her son's murder brought. She said she and Alex did the best they could after her son's death. The couple rarely spoke of Iain's murder but it haunted them, especially on anniversaries and other special days. "For the first year, we were like zombies," she said. Irvine shakes her head when told that the woman Wall killed in 1997, Jutta Weber, was dismembered and taken in her own car to a swamp north of Kingston, where her body parts were scattered like household trash. Wall and Clancy bundled her son's bloody body, wrapped in a quilt, into the back of Iain's car, and drove to an isolated area 60 kilometres from Ottawa. They had removed the body from the steamer trunk after discovering it would not fit in Irvine's car. They discarded the body in a remote woodlot off a rural road. In 2000, Donald Gazley, a friend of Wall who was the Crown's star witness in the Kingston case, led police to Weber's remains, along a remote stretch of Jones Falls Road. Gazley took investigators to the spot after cutting a deal for lenient treatment as an accessory in Weber's murder. In 1983, Wall was subject to a long police interrogation. He agreed finally to take police to Iain's remains. "It all sounds familiar, doesn't it," Molly Irvine said. Without Wall's help, Ottawa police couldn't prove a murder had taken place - despite the blood they found in the Irvine home and in Iain's car - until they had a body. In 1993, Wall was granted full parole and decided to live in Kingston. After Weber's disappearance, Wall agreed to an interview with The Whig-Standard - the only time he has ever spoken publicly about the case. "In 1983 somebody died and I was there," Wall said. "I didn't kill anybody then and I didn't kill anybody now ... I was in the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong person or group of people." Molly Irvine glares when she hears Wall's comments. "You'd have to judge that for yourself," she said. "I should say the parole board has something to answer for."
In granting Clancy release, the parole board concluded that the risk in releasing him is "manageable" and "not undue."
Pity the poor superintendent - he knows not what he does. At least, that's how it looks to me. A senior officer in the Ontario Provincial Police, Supt. Gary Couture, an officer of sufficient rank that you'd expect him to know better than to wade into dangerous territory with a wonky claim, has stepped in a pile full.
Couture claims full, unqualified, humility-challenged credit for a drop in the number of property crimes recorded across a big chunk of Canada's most populous province last year. Here's the news release issued today by the eastern regional headquarters of the Ontario Provincial Police, with quotes from Couture bringing up the rear:
FROM: Eastern Region Headquarters RELEASE: IMMEDIATELY DE: PUBLICATION LE: January 25, 2010
Property Crime Down in 2009 in Eastern Ontario
(Smiths Falls) – The Ontario Provincial Police in Eastern Ontario are pleased to advised that reported property related crimes in OPP patrolled areas was reduced in 2009 over 2008.
Comparing 2009 to 2008, Eastern Region OPP detachments had a decrease of 18%. There were 9,412 reported incidents in 2009 compared to 11,300 in 2008.
As we look forward into 2010, the OPP will continue to strive to reduce property crime.
“Hard work and dedication have contributed to the safety of our communities, to saving lives and to reducing victimization,” said Chief Superintendent Gary Couture. “Property crimes have been identified, targeted and effectively addressed, resulting in an 18% reduction. Our vigilance and continued enforcement in relation to unwanted criminal activity has proven incredibly effective.”
Couture claims that the OPP staged a crackdown on property crimes. He says they were "targeted and effectively addressed." He pays homage to the hard work of officers, claiming that their vigilance and enforcement "has proven incredibly effective."
Yikes.
First off, the statistics here represent only crimes reported to police, a notoriously low figure – It's estimated that roughly two thirds of all crimes are never reported to police. Many property crimes go unreported. The last victimization survey reported by Statistics Canada in 2005 showed "a decline in reporting of property-related offences, such as breaking and entering, theft of motor vehicles or parts, and personal property thefts." Nearly half of all break-ins are never reported.
So the annual tally of property crimes counted by police is highly subject to the whim of fickle citizens who don't like to call in these crimes. If the rate of reporting rises by just a few per cent in a year, it can have a substantial effect on the numbers. That's a bigger problem with small numbers, and in this case, we're talking about a change of just a few thousand crimes.
Property crimes also are notoriously influenced, StatsCan experts say, by the relative difficulty in reporting the crimes. If police departments make it easier for citizens to file reports, they'll report more often. The police jurisdictions involved here are primarily rural detachments that operate with a handful of staff and an office that often isn't accessible to citizens. That could keep the numbers down. For reference, it's worth noting that the City of Kingston annually has about 4,000 property crimes, compared to the 9,400 the OPP report here for a vast swath of territory that stretches from Trenton to Ottawa.
Here's another big problem for Couture. He claims keen cop work is behind the decline. What if the number of property crimes reported to the OPP rises dramatically next year – keeping in mind that we know roughly half of those crime aren't being reported now? Would he claim next year, let's say hypothetically, that the department dropped its vigilance and its enforcement? If that were the case, he'd likely face a public outcry over that failing. Or might he simply claim that the jump was unexplained? Or might he confess that during that year, his coppers weren't up to snuff and so more property crimes were committed?
Really, there's a simple answer here. The drop in the number of property crimes isn't substantial and it doesn't tell us anything about the level of criminal activity, since we don't really know what that is to begin with – given the failure of many victims to call the police in the first place. Couture shouldn't be taking such unabashed credit, unless he's prepared to take the blame when the numbers flip.
A small but "not insignificant" number of teachers in Ontario prey on students for sex. That was the conclusion of retired Ontario Court of Appeal judge Sydney Robins, who produced a nearly 600-page report into the abuse of students by teachers a decade ago. His findings seem forgotten in the breathless rushto reportthat a female Toronto elementary school teacher, Mary Gowans (inset), has been charged with sexually assaulting a former student.
If Gowans is guilty, she'll join a long list of female teachers caught having sex with students or seeking sex from vulnerable pupils, like Leanne Carla Hanselman, who had sex with a 17-year-old female student and sometimes had threesomes with the student and her boyfriend. Elizabeth Ann Jeffrey confessed her sexual relationship with a 17-year-old drama student she was tutoring, promising the mother of the student she'd stop it. She didn't. Erinne Renata Acciaroli, who was a high school teacher charged with helping troubled students, tried to coerce a former student into having sex. She kissed him, then sent notes, gifts, and emails when he rebuffed her. Jennifer Elizabeth Allan was a private school teacher who went after a 16-year-old male student. She served him booze, kissed and cuddled. She was caught when emails were discovered. Tiffany Dawn Angus struck up a sexual relationship with a 16-year-old male student soon after she began her probationary high school teaching job. She bought and drank booze with the boy, kissed and hugged in the school library and had intercourse at his home. Caught by school officials, she refused to end the relationship. Supply teacher Heidi Franziska Coleman had sex with a 13-year-old male student. Annie Mary Markson told a 14-year-old male student she pursued that "the thought of you kissing/talking/breathing with another female except with me drives me crazy."
There have been significant changes to oversight, investigation, and discipline for teachers since 1997, when an independent professional college was established. It made the discipline process mostly public. Once-secret deals that allowed teachers to shuffle between schools and school districts are a thing of the past. Discipline meted out to teachers caught exploiting or abusing students is now conducted in court-like hearings that are open to the public, with the results published in a college magazine and online.
The Robins report brought much needed attention to a mostly hidden and dramatically underreported issue. But the report didn't make the problem go away. Talk frankly with female students at any high school and ask them about the "creepshow teachers," the ones they all know to avoid.
If you're looking for more research and advocacy around the issue, you'll have a hard time finding it in Canada. This is a good starting point, a longstanding American organization dedicated to exposing and stopping teacher-student sexual abuse and exploitation.
Here's my assessment of the Robins report, published a decade ago:
The Kingston Whig-Standard Saturday, April 8, 2000
By Rob Tripp
Governments, school boards and other agencies must do more to protect students from sexual predators in the ranks of Ontario's 144,000 teachers, says a retired Ontario judge. "While the vast majority of educators are highly dedicated and caring individuals who seek to ensure a safe learning environment, there is a small, but not insignificant number of 'bad apples' who engage in sexual misconduct with their students," concludes Mr. Justice Sydney Robins, in a mammoth report on sexual misconduct by Ontario teachers. Robins' 568-page report, nine months in the making, was released yesterday at Queen's Park by Attorney General Jim Flaherty, who said he was "deeply disturbed" by the findings. "His conclusion is, there's a significant incidence of this conduct [by teachers] and there are problems of underreporting and the cases we do see are the tip of the iceberg," Flaherty said at a news conference. Robins was commissioned last May to study and make recommendations to prevent abuse and exploitation of students. Robins' findings echo the conclusions of a three-month probe of sexual misconduct in Ontario schools conducted by The Whig-Standard in 1997. The newspaper found that school boards and school staff were poorly equipped to stop sexual abuse or respond to allegations against teachers, engaging in many cases in a conspiracy of silence designed to protect the reputations of teachers and institutions. The case of a Sault Ste. Marie teacher, Kenneth DeLuca, whose abuse of students was concealed for roughly 20 years, was a key factor in the government decision last year to study the problem. Robins made 101 recommendations aimed at making it easier to expose, prosecute and kick out of the profession teachers who sexually abuse their students. The report calls for changes to the Criminal Code and a host of provincial laws, including the act that guides the operations of the Ontario College of Teachers. The changes would also close loopholes that allow teachers accused of misconduct to resign and move on to teach in other areas. Flaherty said the province is moving swiftly on some recommendations, including: -mandatory criminal background checks for anyone teaching or working in Ontario schools; -urging prosecutors to make better use of a Criminal Code provision that could keep teachers convicted of sex offences away from children; -changes to make courts less intimidating to child witnesses. Flaherty said he has also written to his federal counterpart, Justice Minister Anne McLellan, asking her to implement changes to the Criminal Code. Queen's law professor Nick Bala, an expert on issues of child abuse and the law, was consulted by Robins during the preparation of the report. "I think there's a lot of really important, positive, constructive things here to better recognize and deal with the sets of issues," Bala said, after reading an executive summary of the report. Nearly half of the Robins recommendations, 45, are aimed at changes to federal and provincial laws. "Our evidentiary laws, our procedural laws have often made it very difficult to prove abuse and we need to continue to review and monitor those laws," he said. Bala said a key to the success of the proposals is government commitment to provide resources, such as support for abuse victims and ongoing training for new teachers, child protection workers, police and prosecutors. "Merely changing the law, while certainly important, is not going to solve the problems in our justice system unless we have training, which means resources," he said. Bala said he is concerned that the report does not address the lack of training for teachers, as students in faculties of education or during later years, in issues of student sexuality. "Teachers have to have an understanding of adolescent sexuality," he said, noting that there have been cases of high school teachers who defended themselves against sexual misconduct allegations by claiming that the student initiated the contact or wanted a sexual relationship. The Robins report also suggests broadening the definition of sexual misconduct used by the Ontario College of Teachers to "offensive conduct of a sexual nature which may affect the personal integrity or security of any student or the school environment." The Ontario Teachers' Federation, the umbrella group for the province's teacher unions, pledged to help protect students. "On behalf of the federation, we will be contacting the Ontario College of Teachers and other educational stakeholders to get started on the work of pursuing these recommendations," said Barbara Sargent, president of the federation, in a release.
In the dead of winter, when you're three sheets to the wind, tired and far from home, a police station can look like an inviting crash pad, particularly if you're a man of limited means. That might be the explanation for the bizarre behaviour of a paroled federal prisoner who showed up at the HQ of the constabulary in the Friendly City, as Belleville, in eastern Ontario, is known. Police noted, dryly, that:
at approx 4 a.m. an extremely intoxicated male attended the front desk of the police station advising that he was breaching his parole conditions and proceed (sic) to list all of the conditions being breached
While it clearly wasn't a hot crime story, someone at the Belleville PD with a wry sense of humour thought to put the story out in a release (read it after the jump). The tale of the polite and oh-so-helpful parole violator was tacked on to the bottom of this routine release, issued January 18, that included the usual mundane stuff about fender benders and drunk drivers:
A Belleville officer told me that the ex-con was violating three conditions, though she couldn't say what they were. He was not on conditional release living in Belleville, and his parole officer was located in Ottawa, so it's a reasonable inference that he may have been on a roadtrip that went awry. The officer surmised that it may have been a simple case of needing a warm place to sleep it off. Unfortunately, it could also mean a trip back to a pen.
The case is notable for one other reason. It's a demonstration of the strange interplay of Corrections and law enforcement. Even though the ex-con showed up and confessed to police that he was breaching his parole conditions, police couldn't arrest him. They don't have that legal power. The coppers have to call Corrections and wait for penitentiary authorities to issue a warrant suspending the offender's release (a warrant of apprehension and suspension) and ordering him into custody. Corrections has 30 days after that to decide whether to recommend that his release be revoked, though the final decision comes from the National Parole Board. The entire process after suspension is thoroughly explained at this site.
Cop killer Laurie Bell gets another shot at freedom
Imprisoned cop killer Laurie Ann Bell (inset), who was caught consorting with a male prison guard the last time she was free on early release from prison, is getting another shot at freedom. This time, not surprisingly, she's being ordered to report all "intimate relationships and friendships" to her parole supervisor, with whom she has to make contact at least four times a month. An internal parole document (available after the jump) sets out all the conditions, including the requirement that she stay at a halfway house.
Winnipeg Free Press reporter Mike McIntyre broke the story last year of Bell's liaison with a Corrections Canada employee and he's still on top of developments in the case. Bell is getting out on statutory release. It's automatic early freedom given to most convicts so they can serve the final third of their sentences in the community under supervision. In this case, parole authorities imposed a host of special conditions after conducting a paper review of Bell's case. Here's the internal document produced last month outlining the conditions and the overview of Bell's case:
Car-chase convict escapee a violent domestic abuser
A federal convict who escaped from minimum-security Beaver Creek penitentiary, near Gravenhurst, Ontario, and then led police in the Toronto area on a wild chase, is a savage domestic abuser who appears to aspire to kill women, Cancrime research shows. Robert John Saunders, 57, was recaptured today after a 200-kilometre chase that ended in a crash.
Saunders was sent to prison for 15 years the last time he was in court. He was living in British Columbia in 2000 when he attacked an ex-girlfriend, Delisa Lee, at the front door of her Qualicum Beach home with a machete. At the time, Saunders was facing domestic abuse charges for a previous attack on her. Saunders was at Lee's front door between 2:30 a.m. and 3 a.m., shouting fire. The building was ablaze because Saunders torched it with lighter fluid. When she appeared, he slashed her three times, choked her unconscious and left her to die in the fire. She was rescued by firefighters and survived. Saunders tried to commit suicide when he was caught by police. He jumped from a fifth-floor apartment. At his trial, Saunders tried to lie his way out of the conviction, or what the judge described as his attempt to "conjure a fabricated narration of events." He also characterized Saunders explanations – he testified in his own defence – as "absurd," "ridiculous" and "replete with falsehoods." (Read the entire judge's decision for yourself.) Saunders was damned, in part, by a will he had written out before the attack. In it, Saunders described Lee as "spiteful" and wrote that: "She needs the fix." The judge concluded that signaled his intention to kill her.
In 1986 in Lindsay, Ontario, Saunders was sentenced to four years in prison for a violent attack on another ex-partner. He was convicted of arson, break-and-enter, assault and disguising himself with intent to commit an offence. Saunders also was in a relatively elite club of violent criminals. He was declared a long-term offender after his conviction in 2000. It meant he'd be under supervision for a decade after his release from prison. The long-term offender label is meant for persistently violent bad guys who need close monitoring. It's one step away from the dangerous offender designation, Canada's toughest sentence, which can mean a lifetime behind bars.
Beaver Creek is a minimum-security prison with no fences or armed guards. Like all of the minimum-security pens, it operates on a virtual honour system. Convicts can simply walk away any time they choose. Saunders decided to drive away. Corrections Canada offers the same pre-formatted answer every time a violent con skips from minimum security. The service notes inmates are only placed at minimum security if they are considered to have a low likelihood of escape and a low threat to public safety should they bolt. In a study, Corrections researchers noted that "the inmates confined to them are not considered a serious risk for potential escape."
There will be an internal investigation, of course, but don't expect to find out much from it. Under the image-conscious Conservative government in Ottawa, these reports are heavily censored before they're released publicly.
Mark Bedford might be the most non-threatening sex predator I've met in more than 20 years of writing about bad guys. That' s the scary part. At 24, he doesn't look like he shaves. He has a smooth, baby-face. He's slight and hunches his shoulders like a self-conscious teenager. He speaks softly, often averting his eyes from a listener, and often mumbles. He's reasonably attractive. There's nothing exceptional or remarkable about his physical appearance. He just looks average. He certainly doesn't look like the kind of guy who would blackmail a 12-year-old girl into simulating sex with her family dog, in front of a webcam, while he recorded the act and masturbated to it while planted in front of his computer. But that's the kind of thing that put Bedford in prison. Seasoned police investigators in Ontario believe he is one of the most prolific online sex predators they've come across so far.
Bedford had a parole hearing December 4, 2008, at medium-security Warkworth Institution, near Campbellford, Ontario. I was there. It was Bedford's first appearance before the board since his conviction in 2008 for 10 crimes, including commit/incite bestiality, luring a child under age 14 by computer, several child pornography offences, two charges of extortion and criminal harassment – though authorities believe he committed many more crimes and may have preyed on hundreds of victims. He was ordered held behind bars until his sentence expires, because he's considered a high risk to commit another sex crime involving a child if he's granted conditional, early release. This is a fairly rare move by Corrections and parole authorities, called detention. Just 248 federal convicts were detained last year, while nearly 8,000 walked out of prison gates before their sentences expired. There's good reason to be worried about Bedford, a shy, milquetoast character who does not seem to have come to terms with his deviance. He underwent sex offender testing in prison, and tried to trick the testers. He admitted this during his parole hearing. He never said "sorry" to his victims during the two-hour grilling by parole board members and he seemed painfully reserved when it came to answering direct questions about sex. He made it clear that he doesn't like the labels he's earned, like pedophile and predator. All of which leads to the inescapable conclusion that even if Bedford is offered the treatment he needs to help curb his deviant desires, it might do no good.
Here's the full written record of the parole hearing:
The Kingston Whig-Standard Saturday, December 4, 2009
By Rob Tripp A baby-faced Internet sex predator who may have victimized hundreds of young girls from a computer in his parents' Kingston home is too dangerous to set free early from prison, the National Parole Board says. After a revealing two-hour hearing yesterday at Warkworth Institution, a panel of three board members ordered Mark Gary Bedford, 24, be kept behind bars until his sentence expires in March 2011. The board did not explain its decision, though members discussed the findings of experts who have assessed and treated Bedford and concluded he is a pedophile who is a high risk to reoffend, even after treatment. Experts aren't certain if he prefers girls who are pre-or post-pubescent. His victims were aged nine to 15. "I have a big problem that needs addressing," acknowledged Bedford, who spoke in short sentences, often providing 'yes' or 'no' answers unless pressed. When he was caught, Bedford told a probation officer that his victims were liars and that the police were incompetents looking for a scapegoat. He showed no remorse. At yesterday's hearing he claimed that he now knows his actions caused serious harm to the victims and that he has "deviant" sexual interests, though he never used the word 'sorry.' He admitted calling his victims liars. "At the time, yes," he said. "I didn't like the image that they were portraying of me." Parole board member Michael Crowley asked if he knew then that they were not lying. "Yes, part of me still believed they were lying," Bedford said. "Part of me was still in denial." Bedford's mother and father, who watched the hearing intently from the back of the cinder block room at the medium-security prison, left swiftly after the decision. His mother hugged him and patted his back. They refused to comment. As he had done for most of the hearing, Bedford displayed little emotion, save for a moment when he described being dumped by a high school girlfriend. He grew red-faced and appeared choked up. The parole board noted that experts who have dealt with Bedford describe him as appearing flat emotionally. The proceeding marked the first time his comments about his crimes and his explanations could be captured publicly, because he pleaded guilty and avoided a trial. Crowley zeroed in on the findings of experts who reported that Bedford showed little understanding of his crimes and that he minimized harm to his victims, even in the case of a 12-year-old girl he blackmailed into simulating sex with a family dog in front of a camera. Bedford pleaded guilty to inciting a child to commit bestiality. "You minimized it," Crowley offered. "That was at the beginning of the (treatment) program because I didn't like that charge," Bedford explained. "It was gross." "You didn't like the charge?" Crowley retorted, incredulously. "It's what you did." Crowley noted that after Bedford's arrest, he expressed anger that Canadian authorities considered his predation of girls in England. "I was still upset at my charges," Bedford said. "You were upset at your charges?" Crowley asked. "You were angry that you were caught." No, Bedford insisted, "that I put my family through this." Crowley noted that the high profile case propelled his family into an unwelcome media spotlight. Bedford explained that his online deviance began at age 16, when he started looking at photographs. He sometimes received pictures from older, experienced online pornographers. At age 19, he sought to force young girls to perform sex acts in front of webcams, typically by hacking into their online accounts and masquerading as friends. He would convince them to undress, then use the photos he captured to blackmail the girls into performing more explicit acts. Bedford said he did it, "for control" and "for my own excitement." He could not clearly explain why he moved on from pictures to victims. "That was more real at the time, live," he said. "You could talk to them." He grudgingly acknowledged, as Crowley grilled him, that he masturbated each time a girl performed for him, though he mumbled through parts of his answers, in apparent embarrassment. He claimed he never masturbates in prison, then admitted he does it once a month. He was asked why just once a month. "I feel guilty to do it," he answered. "It brings up memories of being arrested sometimes." So you feel guilty you got caught, not because you hurt people? Crowley asked. "It's the victims," Bedford answered. "You sure?" "Yes." "Or are you saying that because you think it's the right answer?" Crowley wondered. "No, because it's true." Bedford was asked if there were more than 63 victims who are named in files. "Ahhh, possibly," he answered. "I'm not sure though, I can't recall every one of them." Bedford tried to trick sex offender experts who assessed him several times, including testers who used a device attached to his penis to measure his response to deviant scenarios. "I tried to manipulate all of them," Bedford admitted. Crowley noted that Bedford scored high on tests that suggest he always seeks to cast himself in the best light possible. Bedford didn't aggressively seek treatment when he was imprisoned and was twice warned he might be kicked out of a treatment program. "I didn't think I needed it," Bedford said. "I didn't think I was that damaged." He confessed he saw himself as "sick." Bedford has explained to counsellors that he spent seven to nine hours a day on the computer, the bulk of that time playing online war games. At the hearing, he did not agree with the characterization that he was a loner, or nerd with few friends. The former St. Lawrence College student claimed he has friends on his protective custody prison cellblock, "good guys" who look out for him, because he is a slight, young man. His placement in the prison, and changes to Corrections Canada's programming policies, have created a conundrum. Experts at the regional treatment centre inside Kingston Penitentiary, where Bedford underwent high-intensity sex-offender treatment, recommend he take a medium-intensity sex-offender treatment program at Warkworth. Corrections says Bedford can't take the program. "The board and CSC have a conflict about this," Crowley said. Bedford's prison parole officer, Michelle Aylward, said she doesn't know how Bedford can access the treatment. At the beginning of the hearing, Aylward said it's her opinion that Bedford will behave if he gets early release. "I think he'll abide by conditions ... what he'll do beyond his warrant expiry can be concerning," she said. Bedford was charged with a sexual assault but the charge was withdrawn. He told the parole board it was consensual sex at his parents' home with a 16-year-old girl, when he was 19. The girl was likely "confused" about his age, he said. "She started it," he said. "She exposed her breast." They began to fool around. "We kissed, I, ah, masturbated her, got her off," he said. "Afterward nothing else happened." The girl went to police and Bedford was charged. He claimed that she reported the incident because he had hijacked her online account after she would not leave him alone. Kingston lawyer Michael Mandelcorn, who acted as an assistant for Bedford, told board members that Bedford has family support and he appears to have shown more maturity since he was imprisoned. Mandelcorn said it wasn't in Bedford's best interest to admit trying to manipulate sex offender tests. "It's not good but the good part about that is that he admits it," he said. Crowley expressed concern about how Bedford can be supervised in the community, given the ubiquity of the Internet, to ensure he isn't online, hunting victims again. Bedford was asked if he had any final words at the conclusion of the hearing, before the board considered its decision. "No," he said. "I'm good."
Bedford's sentence expires in March 2011. That's when Corrections Canada will have to set him free.
Ontario government pulls plug on jailhouse net surfing
The Ontario government has quietly pulled the plug on access to the Internet by thousands of workers at the province's 31 correctional facilities. My story in the Whig-Standard appears in full after the jump.
The Correctional Service Ministry imposed the sweeping cyber blackout several weeks ago. The policy change wasn't announced but an official confirmed it after an inquiry from the Whig-Standard Wednesday.
"In light of several incidents of improper use, the ministry reviewed the business necessity of access to the Internet at work for staff," said Stuart McGetrick, speaking for the ministry. "The review concluded that Internet access was not integral to the performance of the daily duties of many staff and so a new policy was put into place ... which removed access to the Internet from those staff who just didn't need it for daily business."
McGetrick refused to provide details about the incidents of "improper use." "They're subject to internal (human resource) matters and I'm not going to comment on those publicly." He would not say if disciplinary proceedings were launched.
The Whig-Standard learned that employees have been caught accessing pornography, managing private sales on the online auction site eBay and monitoring social networking profiles on sites such as Facebook. McGetrick said the ban covers Internet use at all 31 facilities, ranging from small detention centres to super jails such as the Central East facility in Lindsay that can hold more than 1,000 inmates. Roughly 5,500 jail guards are affected by the Internet ban.
Officials from the Ontario Public Service Employees Union, which represents correctional staff, could not be reached for comment.
Three years ago, the Ontario government banned access to Facebook on government computers, but it's believed that staff found workarounds that provided for access to the social networking site and to other banned websites, including the video-sharing site YouTube.
McGetrick said staff still have access to an internal ministry network for such things as personnel functions. McGetrick said there has not been any pushback from staff, objecting to the ban.
"No, not that I'm aware of," he said. "In fact, the new policy was developed jointly with the union."
Want to stay safe from violent crime in Canada? Statistics Canada has published a veritable guide to how to do it, with the release today of a new study.
The first bit of advice about avoiding being a victim of violence is simple. Just be yourself. You don't really have to do anything, because the numbers are pretty clear.
Ninety-five per cent of Canadians were not a victim of violent crime in the one-year study period (2003). That's right, all violent crime befell just five per cent (that's right, 5%) of the population. It means, of course, that statistically speaking, your chance of being a victim of violent crime is very low.
Don't take my word for it. Have a read through the study, which I've posted here as an e-doc, or you can visit the Statistics Canada site. Of course, it isn't really a guide to staying safe, it's a study of repeat victimization, based on the 2004 General Social Survey.
The study also paints a portrait of those who are most often victimized, meaning you can use that data to keep yourself out of harm's way, at least statistically speaking. To stay safe, get married. Single folks are victims more often. Don't go out at night, at least not often and don't drink alcohol. If there's some way to do it, get older. Roughly 99% of folks 55 and older suffered absolutely no violent crime in the one-year study period. And retire, if you can. More than 99% of retired Canadians suffered zero violent crimes.
The other notable finding in this study is the revelation that most violent crime hits a very small group of people repeatedly. Three out of every five violent crimes was experienced by less than 2% of the population.
Keep in mind that the violent crimes described in this study don't jive with official crime statistics, which represent only crimes reported to police. This study uses self-report victimization information, generally considered a more reliable indicator of the true level of criminal activity.
The number of murders in Toronto hit a 7-year low in 2009. The final tally was 62 killings, 11% lower than the 70 murders recorded in 2008 and a whopping 26% lower than the 84 homicides recorded in 2007, the most murderous year in the decade. The last time there were this few murders in Toronto was 2002. The head of the Toronto Police homicide unit credits tough domestic violence policies (full story from the Post after the jump).
The National Post published this story Dec. 11:
By Megan O'Toole, Peter Kuitenbrouwer with files from Matthew Coutts
Toronto's homicide rate is the lowest in nearly a decade, and police say "iron-clad" domestic violence policies are to credit.
As of last night, there were 59 homicides this year, compared to 70 in 2008 and 84 the year previous. Only two of the 59 cases have been domestic, compared to seven last year, and 10 in 2007.
Staff Inspector Kathryn Martin, the force's homicide chief, gives much of the credit to measures put in place by Toronto police to combat domestic violence. While shooting deaths have been on the rise in recent years, she says, domestic killings have dropped.
"We've had iron-clad policies in place for many years now," Staff Insp. Martin said, noting a supervisor is required to attend the scene of a domestic incident and put a report in. In the case of a criminal offence, police will make an arrest, she said.
"Typically what happens is, one person's leaving. We never ever leave that couple alone again," Staff Insp. Martin said. "So somebody's leaving, and 99 times out of 100 it's under arrest, and they get show-caused. They don't get released."
The term "show caused" refers to a process in which a person taken into custody is found initially ineligible for release. They are kept in prison pending a show cause hearing, during which a judge determines whether they can be released, and if so under what conditions. The judge can also have the accused remanded into custody pending another court appearance.
The separation period between victim and offender can help defuse the situation, police say.
Staff Insp. Martin says the Toronto force has "a big, broad definition of what a domestic is. So all those murders that used to happen because there was a lack of intervention, aren't happening. By getting bail conditions on [an offender], so that in two weeks, when the fight would have escalated, he's not allowed there."
Sergeant Deborah Vittie, the force's domestic violence co-ordinator, says an increasing emphasis on public awareness and community education has helped curb domestic killings. Efforts have specifically targeted immigrant communities, where there may be linguistic or cultural barriers to reporting crimes, she said.
The two domestic killings this year both occurred in April. In one case, a Scarborough man was accused in the stabbing death of his wife, Pamela Apoko; the couple's son allegedly witnessed the fatal act. That same month, a woman's former boyfriend was charged in the slaying of her new lover.
"We're hoping in the future a lot of these tragedies can be prevented," Sgt. Vittie said.
Shelters have continued to admit a steady stream of women and children needing help this year, said Lesley Ackrill, executive manager of Interval House, which provides services for victims of domestic violence. But the decrease in the number of domestic killings is a good sign, Ms. Ackrill noted.
"I think that the work we're doing is paying off, but at the same time, I don't want people to think that because it's gone down, the problem has been solved," Ms. Ackrill said. "That's far from true. We still have a lot of work to do."
Despite the progress on the domestic side, shootings in Toronto have been going the opposite way, Staff Insp. Martin said – "up, up, up." Of the 59 homicides this year, 36 have been shootings.
"I think that's just a statement about our culture," she said. "I remember when I was a young police officer, somebody on the platoon would seize a gun; everybody in the platoon would come in to look at it, because that was a big deal. And now, we seize guns all the time now.
The final murder count came in higher than I estimated in this post in November, but it's still substantially lower than the so-called 'Year of the Gun' in Toronto, 2005, when there were 80 murders, including the slaying of Jane Creba (above), a 15-year-old girl caught in a deadly crossfire. Homicides were a political flashpoint that year, sparking public outrage. Of course, we now know that 2005 wasn't the deadliest year of the decade. In 2009, the majority of killings, 58%, were again committed with a firearm (Toronto Police stats). Toronto recorded its first homicide of 2010 this weekend.
This isn't a recap of the biggest crimes of the year. It's an inventory of posts on Cancrime that broke news, in some cases, or provided a degree of interpretation, background or context that wasn't widely available elsewhere. These posts were very popular with readers and, in some cases, they still stand today as the only source of information or documents on a Canadian crime topic. (Most documents here can be downloaded free as PDFs.) The list (after the jump) appears in reverse rank.
This was the first post of the year. It was a warning and a prediction borne out by events. Canada is running out of police officers as departments across the country grapple with a recruiting crisis and a wave of retirements.
When a new law came into force in late January in Ontario that bans drivers from lighting up with children in their cars, it was a big story, covered by all the major media. Only Cancrime provided readers with the internal document that was distributed to police departments by top provincial officials explaining the nuts and bolts of the rule changes.
Cancrime keeps tabs on bad guys, some of whom fall off the radar of most media once the sensational trials are over. This exclusive provided the first update on jailed serial sex predator Selva Kumar Subbiah, who sought parole but was turned down. The post includes his internal parole documents.
Murder shouldn't be forgotten. There may be something to learn from history and from studying the deeds of heinous criminals. I thought this post did a respectable job cataloguing the horrible slayings more than three decades ago of two police officers.
There's a vast array of resources online about the death of Lynne Harper in 1959 and the wrongful conviction of Stephen Truscott. It is a seminal moment in Canadian criminal history that passed the half century mark in 2009. This post includes the once-secret federal cabinet documents that reveal Ottawa's reaction to the news that a 14-year-old boy had been condemned to death.
Remarkably, no one had made the internal parole records of notorious serial child sex killer Clifford Olson public, until this post in March. It also revealed that Olson could seek parole at any time, since he declined a hearing to which he was entitled in 2008, two years after his only parole hearing, held in 2006.
Sometimes a picture really is worth a thousand words, or perhaps many, many more. That was my thinking when I produced this video post, four days after a submerged car was pulled out of canal in Kingston, Ont., with the bodies of four dead females inside. I hoped that a simple bit of video would help to explain the complicated geography of a mind-boggling mystery. Weeks later, three family members were charged in what police say was a diabolical mass murder plot. That story is still unfolding, and the subject of ongoing coverage.
What do crime statistics really tell us? This post offers a novel interpretation of some old numbers to produce a figure I haven't seen elsewhere. It's a valuable piece of context for any debate about the effectiveness of police in Canada. It's also a sobering reminder of the carnage wrought by killers.
The plight of victims of crime and scarred family members isn't well chronicled. Everyone who writes about crime and criminals is guilty of this oversight, me included. In part, it's a problem of access. Many victims and families just can't talk about what they've been through and many who can talk, can't clearly articulate the ordeal. But some can. In those cases, we should let them talk. That's why I took a different approach to this post, after interviewing John Allore, a former Quebec resident whose sister was murdered more than three decades ago. Rather than tell his story primarily with words, I used Allore's interview as the voicetrack for a video-slideshow that documents his sister's death and the ongoing fallout.
Fifteen days after eight-year-old Victoria (Tori) Stafford disappeared in Woodstock, Ont. in April, something very strange and puzzling happened in the small southwestern Ontario town gripped by the mystery. The child's mother reported going on a bizarre, late-night limousine ride to Toronto to meet a shadowy figure. Five days later, I wrote this post, offering an explanation for the event that most media refused to report or had failed to consider (though many major media outlets later repeated what I wrote here). This was one of many posts about what became one of the biggest murder stories of the year. Tori's remains were found 102 days after she was abducted.
Encounter with evil: A Clifford Olson survivor's tale
What is it like to live for nearly three decades with the knowledge that you were nearly murdered by a serial sex killer? It is harrowing, at least according to this blogger.
I knew something wasn’t right. I can still feel it now when I remember looking at his face as he opened that door. It was all wrong. He was all wrong. But then his eyes were on me and somehow I couldn’t move.
The full post appears after the jump.
The writer was eight, she says, when psychopathic serial sex killer Clifford Olson caught up to her 28 years ago on a lonely road in the British Columbia interior. I can't vouch for the authenticity of this writer's claim, but the dates fit Olson's timeline. The writing is crisp and evocative. She is correct that Olson picked up his last known victim, though she doesn't name her, 17-year-old Louise Marie Chartrand, and killed her on July 30, 1981. That same day, the RCMP finally set up a task force to handle the case of missing children in the area. Here's the blogger's tale of her haunting encounter with the Beast of British Columbia.
I find myself working on a highly disturbing poem these last two days. One granted by the muse to some degree (I haven’t had to fight for it), but it leaves me wondering why exactly this? I think it might be quite good, though I worry it’s melodramatic. The subject matter makes me ill. But I keep going back to it anyways. A scab I’m picking off the past. At least I’m not bleeding much over it, just a little scarred.
It makes me think of all the things I don’t write here. All the things we don’t share because they are too scary or preposterous or because I’m afraid of being accused of over-dramatizing my life. Or because I’m afraid of scaring the people who love me – or whatever the reason is.
But I might as well since I’m dwelling here a little bit right now – share the basis of the poem (since the poem itself is nowhere near sharing):
In 1981, at the age of eight years old, I met Clifford Olson on a lonely dirt road in the interior of BC. It was about four weeks before his arrest, during the month of July when he was roaming the province in a bit of a killing frenzy. But I was only eight and didn’t know the man who pulled up alongside me as I pedaled my bike down the road past my grandfather’s house. His car slowed and I stopped my bike. Up there people paused to talk to us on the road all the time. I was related to most of the people who lived in the community, but I didn’t recognize this one. I thought perhaps he was lost, anticipated he would ask me how to get back to the highway and I would tell him. I was alone on the road and he didn’t say anything to me as he started to open his door carefully as if he didn’t want to startle. And I knew then. I knew something wasn’t right. I can still feel it now when I remember looking at his face as he opened that door. It was all wrong. He was all wrong. But then his eyes were on me and somehow I couldn’t move. Literally. One leg on the ground, the other over the seat of my bike and I couldn’t make myself go even though I knew I should. It must have been less than a minute. Thirty seconds even – I can still play out the heat, the dust, his eyes, the brown sedan in my head as though it were hours.
And then my mother and brother came around the corner on their bikes. Just behind me. I had been racing ahead. Forgot about them until I heard them behind me, turned my head. And the man slammed his door and kicked dust up as he took off down the road, past my mother who rode up and asked. “Who was that?” And I felt ashamed that I had stopped for a stranger and told her I didn’t know and he hadn’t said anything but I was afraid and she could see that. Two days later she came to me with the Salmon Arm Observer, a police drawing of Olson on the 2nd page under the heading “Have you seen this man?” because he was in the area, had been seen nearby. Was it him? she asked. And it was. It was him. She wondered whether we should call the RCMP and I said no. Maybe it wasn’t him after all. Because I thought if we called the police I would get in trouble. That his presence on the road was somehow my fault. And I think my mother must have been spooked because she didn’t want to acknowledge it either. It was better to let the matter drop. It never came up again.
His last known victim was killed July 30th, 1981 and when he was arrested in August of 1981 he had two young women in the car with him. Saved. Like me. I often wonder about those women and whether they still carry the end of their life around with them. Are they disturbed by how close they got to someone so dangerous? Have they managed to forget it? Because I have to admit that I haven’t, and though mostly I don’t think about it – when I do, I’m terrified.
Because of that, because I was imprinted strongly by Olson’s case and the later news stories of the Green River killer who seemed to be right in my backyard – I have retained strong visual memories of these boogeymen and their victims who turned up in wooded ravines, at creeksides, on jogging paths. I come across a news story and I’m reminded of their school photographs, braces and feathered hair, and I’m standing on the side of the road all over again. Twenty seconds away from it. And the adult me is just fucking angry about that scared little girl. A momentary encounter and I’m still fucked up over it from time to time almost thirty years later.
I’m not here to cry about it though. It’s just what’s been in my creative consciousness these past few days and I wonder about my reluctance to write about it. Until now, my inability to write about it (I’ve tried). Because I’m somehow still ashamed or guilty that I didn’t run when I could, that my fear got in the way of reaction. Eight years old. I suppose that’s how it happens.
Olson is serving 11 life sentences in a super-secure federal prison in Quebec. He pleaded guilty to the murders in 1982. Judge Harry McKay had the last word.
I don't have the words to describe the enormity of your crimes and the heartbreak and anguish you have caused to so many people. No punishment a civilized country could give you could come close to being adequate. I would normally not presume to express my views to the National Parole Board, which has a separate function, but in this case, I feel compelled to express my views. It is my considered opinion that you should never be granted parole for the remainder of your days. It would be foolhardy to have you at large.
At the only parole hearing he has had since then, in 2006, Olson was described as the "quintessential psychopath" who shows the "ultimate moral alienation" and whose risk of committing more violent murders appears not to have abated one iota since he was imprisoned.
Statistics Canada's new weighted system for tracking the rate at which Canadian police solve crimes crowns the regional police service in Codiac, New Brunswick, an RCMP detachment, as tops in the country. Codiac police solved 46% of crimes in 2008, according to the latest Police Resources in Canada report (released December 14, 2009). Top crime solvers in Ontario are Durham Regional Police, serving the Oshawa-Whitby area, with a clearance rate of 45.5%. Some other highlights from the new policing report:
• there are now more than 67,000 uniformed police officers in Canada • growth in police strength in 2008 was the third largest annual increase in 30 years • Canadians spend more than $11 billion annually on police • Saskatchewan has the most police officers per capita, while P.E.I. and Alberta have the least • the weighted clearance system (see previous post for an explanation of this change), appears to have boosted the solve rate for some police departments • the new, weighted clearance rate nationally is 37.6%, meaning roughly six of every 10 crimes is unsolved
Keep in mind that police can mark a crime as cleared, or solved, even without laying a charge. If they have enough evidence to lay a charge, but don't or can't for some reason – if the perpetrator is dead, for example – they can still mark that crime solved. Most crimes also remain listed as solved if an accused is later acquitted.
Cancrime is Rob Tripp's blog about Canadian crime and justice and a repository of documents – parole records, investigation reports, confidential memos. I'm a pack-rat investigative reporter with 20 years experience writing about crime and justice and an urge to share. Cancrime's breeding ground is Kingston, Ontario, Canada's prison capital, home to seven federal penitentiaries and The Kingston Whig-Standard, Canada's oldest daily newspaper, where I'm the crime writer.
A small but "not insignificant" number of teachers in Ontario prey on students for sex. That was the conclusion of retired Ontario Court of Appeal judge Sydney Robins, who produced a nearly 
Imprisoned cop killer Laurie Ann Bell (inset), who was caught consorting with a male prison guard the last time she was free on early release from prison, is getting another shot at freedom. This time, not surprisingly, she's being ordered to report all "intimate relationships and friendships" to her parole supervisor, with whom she has to make contact at least four times a month. An internal parole document (available after the jump) sets out all the conditions, including the requirement that she stay at a halfway house.
