|
Most
recent > > > | Previous Neil
Stonechild: The
inquiry | Inquiry
website: Transcripts can be downloaded in daily pdf files
| Frozen Ghosts |
Darrell Night | Use index to
Saskatoon police stories at right to find the coverage from 5
years ago. Be prepared to settle in for an evening if you want
to read it all . . . See also Mayor
Maddin | Leanne
Bellegarde Daniels | Our
August 2003 protests | Sermonette: November
12, 2004:
Saskatchewan Justice in chaos: The Stonechild report suggests
it is | Larry
Lockwood
| Chief
Sabo
| Deputy
Chief Dan Wiks lied to the media | Police response to release of
report
Larry Hartwig
and Brad Senger
Hartwig, Senger appeal
dismissals
Betty Ann Adam, The
StarPhoenix, May 03, 2005
Two former Saskatoon city police
officers hope to convince a disciplinary hearing officer they
had nothing to do with Neil Stonechild the night he went missing
15 years ago.
Larry Hartwig and Brad Senger
were fired from the Saskatoon Police Service last November after
a commission of inquiry found they had the aboriginal teenager
in their cruiser the night he was last seen alive.
The pair are appealing their
dismissal at joint hearings under provisions of the Saskatchewan
Police Act. The hearings will begin Wednesday.
Hearing officer Dirk Silversides
will hear some new evidence beyond that which came out at the
2003-2004 commission of inquiry into Stonechild's 1990 freezing
death, Senger's lawyer, Jay Watson, said.
There also may be new witnesses,
Watson said.
"We certainly hope at
the end of this process there will be no doubt that these officers
had nothing to do with this matter," he said.
"He's looking forward
to his chance to be vindicated," Watson said of his client.
Hartwig is also confident the
procedure will clear his name, his lawyer, Chris Boychuk said.
The lawyer for the police service,
Mitch Holash, said he expects the evidence to uphold Chief Russ
Sabo's decision to fire the pair.
"We expect that there
will be established on the balance of probabilities that these
individuals, Mr. Hartwig and Mr. Senger, had custody of Mr. Stonechild
on Nov. 24 and 25, 1990. That gives rise to many breaches of
police duties," Holash said.
Lawyers for the two sides met
before Silversides on Monday, just long enough to adjourn the
matter until Wednesday, when the first of at least a dozen witnesses
will take the stand.
The first witnesses will be
Pat Pickard, the owner of a community group home where Stonechild
was serving a youth sentence at the time of his death, and Stonechild's
friend, Jason Roy.
Roy is a key witness, having
said that he saw Stonechild in the back seat of a police car
that stopped Roy the cold November night he and Stonechild got
drunk and caused a disturbance at an apartment building.
Stonechild's frozen body was
found five days later in the north industrial area of Saskatoon,
bearing marks commissioner David Wright found were probably made
by handcuffs.
Stonechild's death and the
subsequent incomplete police investigation were the subject of
the six-month-long inquiry that culminated with Wright's October
2004 report.
The chief of police decided
soon after that Hartwig's and Senger's failure to disclose their
contact with Stonechild the night he was last seen made them
unsuitable for duty.
Much of the evidence to be
heard during the appeal came out at the Stonechild inquiry. Lawyers
for the two sides have agreed to submit as evidence about 100
pages of uncontested documents, such as police computer records,
weather data and some medical information.
The hearings are expected to
run through the month.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Former constables to
fight dismissals
Betty Ann Adam, The
StarPhoenix, January 12, 2005
Former constables Larry Hartwig
and Brad Senger will fight their dismissals from the Saskatoon
Police Service during 15 days of joint appeal hearings in May.
"It would be very dangerous
to run them separately because you could wind up with separate
results. The facts are the same for both officers . . . the decision
would have to be same for both," said Jay Watson, Senger's
lawyer.
Police Chief Russ Sabo fired
the pair in November after Justice David Wright concluded they
had Neil Stonechild in their cruiser in the city's west side
the night the Saulteaux youth was last seen alive. Stonechild's
body was found five days later, on Nov. 29, 1990, in the north
industrial area, bearing marks that were probably made by handcuffs,
Wright found.
Stonechild's death and the
subsequent, incomplete police investigation were the subject
of the six-month-long inquiry that culminated with Wright's October
report. Sabo found that Hartwig's and Senger's failure to disclose
their contact with Stonechild the night he was last seen made
them unsuitable for duty.
Regina lawyer Dirk Silversides
will preside at the hearings, which begin May 2. Hartwig's and
Senger's lawyers will be allowed to question each other's client,
but will not be allowed to cross-examine them.
"We may question them
as if they were our own witness," Watson said. Much of the
evidence to be heard during the appeal was made public at the
Stonechild inquiry, and some of it is likely to be presented
as statements of facts agreed upon by all parties, said Prince
Albert lawyer Mitchell Holash, who represents Sabo.
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2005
Police
union stance widening rift:
Joseph
Rod Nickel, The StarPhoenix,
November 13, 2004
Fourteen years after the death
of Neil Stonechild, a public inquiry and the dismissal of two
officers, the process of laying blame isn't over yet.
Veteran constables Brad Senger
and Larry Hartwig are preparing to appeal their firings Friday
by Chief Russell Sabo before a hearing officer -- a move that
will keep the divisive case alive awhile longer.
Federation of Saskatchewan
Indian Nations vice-chief Lawrence Joseph said divisions between
police and Natives aren't new.
What's new is that aboriginal
people finally have the ear of authorities, he said.
"It will be no more divisive
than other things that have plagued the justice system in general,"
Joseph said of the appeal process. "We've had many, many
reports regarding the First Nations people who were found frozen
to death. If that's not divisive, I don't know how much worse
this (appeal) is going to make it."
About a dozen supporters of
constables Larry Hartwig and Brad Senger marched in front of
the police station Friday, toting signs calling for Sabo to base
his decision on evidence, not assumptions.
"What we need are cool
heads to prevail," said retired officer Larry Lockwood.
"We need to really sit down and digest the report. I've
been doing this for two weeks and I have more questions than
answers."
Lockwood believes the constable's
claim that they didn't take Stonechild into custody the night
he died.
"(Hartwig and Senger)
were just two cops doing their duty. Unfortunately, it could
have been me or anybody."
Joseph challenged the protesters
to thoroughly read the report, which finds that Stonechild was
in the officers' cruiser the night he died.
"It's unfortunate to see.
. . . They shouldn't be out there just blindly supporting something
that has plagued the Saskatoon Police Service."
Joseph called a suggestion
of disbanding the police service "an interesting thought,"
but one that might not be necessary considering Sabo's firing
of the constables.
The actions of the city police
association, on the other hand, are widening divisions with aboriginals,
Joseph said.
"The police union, as
led by the present leadership, is very, very destructive and
they continue to take the spotlight away from those of us who
want to repair relationships with the Saskatoon Police Service
and police services right across the country."
The association backs the two
constables, maintaining that they didn't have time to find and
arrest Stonechild the night he died.
Darren Winegarden, the lawyer
for key inquiry witness Jason Roy, said his client wants the
constables to face criminal charges.
In the meantime, Roy is pleased
with their firings, he said.
"It's very satisfying
for him."
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2004
Saskatoon
officers fired in controversial death of native teen in 1990
Tim Cook, Canadian Press,
November 12, 2004
SASKATOON (CP) - Two
Saskatoon police officers at the centre of a controversy over
the freezing death of an aboriginal teenager 14 years ago were
fired Friday.
Constables Larry Hartwig and
Bradley Senger had been on suspension with pay after an inquiry
found that they had Neil Stonechild in their custody in the hours
before his 1990 death.
Their fate has been a polarizing
issue in Saskatoon since the inquiry report was released late
last month.
Police Chief Russell Sabo said
he doesn't believe the officers abandoned Stonechild in the deserted
area where his body was found, but he based his decision on a
careful review of the evidence he was allowed by the Police Act.
"Constables Hartwig and
Senger are being dismissed for failing to diligently and promptly
report or disclose or offer material evidence or information
to appropriate officials that in November 1990, Neil Stonechild
was in their custody, as was their duty to do so,'' Sabo told
an afternoon news conference.
The Stonechild affair sparked
outrage in the aboriginal community and has come to symbolize
their strained relations with the police.
© Canadian Press
Two officers
in Stonechild case lose jobs
Sask. CBC Nov 12 2004
SASKATOON - Saskatoon Police
Chief Russell Sabo has dismissed two officers linked to the case
of Neil Stonechild.
Constables Bradley Senger and
Larry Hartwig were suspended two weeks ago, after the final report
on the Stonechild Inquiry was released.
They were dismissed on Friday,
immediately before the chief's announcement.
"Constables Hartwig and
Singer are being dismissed for failing to diligently and promptly
report or disclose or offer material evidence to appropriate
authorities that in November 1990 Neil Stonechild was in their
custody as was their duty to do so," Chief Sabo said.
In the inquiry report, Justice
David Wright concluded that Senger and Hartwig had Stonechild
in their custody the last night he was seen alive.
The aboriginal teen froze to
death in November, 1990. His body was discovered in a field on
the outskirts of Saskatoon.
The two officers repeatedly
denied any connection to Stonechild's death.
Chief Sabo said he had heard
legal representation from the two officers within the last two
days. He also consulted with lawyers on his options.
He emphasized that he made
the decision to dismiss them based on evidence on which he is
legally permitted to rely.
"Constables Hartwig and
Senger are each unsuitable for police service by reason of their
conduct," he said. Each officer has 30 days to request a
hearing into the decision.
After their initial suspension
two weeks, the police union threatened a mutiny in support of
the two officers.
More than 200 members of the
Saskatoon Police Association voted unanimously to support two
constables.
Union president Stan Goertzen
said the two officers have not been convicted of anything in
a court of law, yet they are being portrayed as guilty.
But there has been pressure
from First Nations and other community groups to discipline Senger
and Hartwig for their role in Stonechild's death.
Wright concluded there was
evidence Stonechild was in police custody the night he was last
seen alive and that marks on his body were likely caused by handcuffs.
Stonechild's friend, Jason
Roy, testified he saw Stonechild in the back of a police cruiser
the night he disappeared. Roy said Stonechild was terrified,
bleeding and pleading for his life.
Both Hartwig and Senger maintained
in their testimony that they never saw the teenager that night.
Wright also found that police
had done an inadequate job in their original investigation of
Stonechild's death.
The case was largely forgotten
by many for a decade, until two aboriginal men were found frozen
to death in a field on the outskirts of Saskatoon within one
week in 2000. A third man survived and told a tale of being driven
to the field by Saskatoon police officers and being left to find
his way back to the city.
Wright also found that police
had done an inadequate job in their original investigation of
Stonechild's death.
The case was largely forgotten
by many for a decade, until two aboriginal men were found frozen
to death in a field on the outskirts of Saskatoon within one
week in 2000. A third man survived and told a tale of being driven
to the field by Saskatoon police officers and being left to find
his way back to the city.
Saskatoon
fires police officers in Stonechild case
CBC Fri, 12 Nov 2004
SASKATOON - Saskatoon's police
force has fired two constables linked by an inquiry to the freezing
death of an aboriginal teenager in 1990.
Constables Bradley Senger and
Larry Hartwig were suspended two weeks ago, after the final report
from an inquiry into Neil Stonechild's death was released.
They were dismissed on Friday,
immediately before Saskatoon police Chief Russ Sabo announced
the move.
"Constables Hartwig and
Senger are being dismissed for failing to diligently and promptly
report or disclose or offer material evidence to appropriate
authorities that in November 1990 Neil Stonechild was in their
custody as was their duty to do so," Sabo said at a news
conference announcing their dismissal Friday afternoon.
In the inquiry report, Justice
David Wright concluded that Senger and Hartwig had Stonechild,
17, in their custody the last night he was seen alive.
The aboriginal teen froze to
death in November 1990, in a field on the outskirts of Saskatoon.
The two officers repeatedly
denied any connection to Stonechild's death.
Officers have
30 days to appeal
Chief Sabo said he had heard
legal representation from them within the last two days and consulted
with lawyers on his options.
"Constables Hartwig and
Senger are each unsuitable for police service by reason of their
conduct," he said.
Each officer has 30 days to
request a hearing into the decision.
After their initial suspension,
the police union threatened a mutiny in support of the two officers.
More than 200 members of the Saskatoon Police Association voted
unanimously to support the two constables.
Union president Stan Goertzen
said the officers have not been convicted of anything in a court
of law, yet they are being portrayed as guilty.
But there has been pressure
from First Nations and other community groups to discipline Senger
and Hartwig for their role in Stonechild's death.
Inquiry finds
marks likely caused by handcuffs
The inquiry concluded there
was evidence Stonechild was in police custody the night he was
last seen alive and that marks on his body were likely caused
by handcuffs.
Stonechild's friend, Jason
Roy, testified he saw Stonechild in the back of a police cruiser
the night he disappeared. Roy said Stonechild was terrified,
bleeding and pleading for his life.
Both Hartwig and Senger maintained
in their testimony that they never saw the teenager that night.
The judge also found that police
had done an inadequate job in their original investigation of
Stonechild's death.
The case was largely forgotten
by many for a decade, until two aboriginal men were found frozen
to death in a field on the outskirts of Saskatoon within one
week in 2000. A third man survived and told a tale of being driven
to the field by Saskatoon police officers and being left to find
his way back to the city.
Written by CBC News Online
staff
Copyright ©2004 Canadian Broadcasting Corporation - All
Rights Reserved
Warm
welcome back for officers
Dozens of officers line hallways to greet Hartwig, Senger
Rod Nickel, The StarPhoenix,
November 04, 2004
The return of constables Larry
Hartwig and Brad Senger to the Saskatoon police station Wednesday
was met by more than 100 back-slapping officers lining the hallways
to Chief Russell Sabo's boardroom in a show of support.
The constables met with Sabo
in the aftermath of the release of the Stonechild inquiry report
on Oct. 26.
The officers themselves, not
the Saskatoon City Police Association, organized the demonstration,
which was quiet and orderly, said association president Const.
Stan Goertzen.
As the constables walked past,
other officers offered words of encouragement, like "I believe
in you," Goertzen said.
"There was a great show
of support by officers and some other community members and I'm
hopeful (Sabo) takes it into consideration," said lawyer
Jay Watson, who represents Senger.
Justice David Wright found
that Hartwig and Senger took Neil Stonechild into custody around
midnight on Nov. 24, 1990. Stonechild's body was later found
in a field bearing marks that Wright found were likely caused
by handcuffs.
Outside the station Wednesday,
two dozen chilled civilian demonstrators, all Caucasian but one,
offered their own show of support for the constables.
"We don't believe they
had anything to do with jeopardizing Stonechild's life,"
said former police chaplain Rick Lane, who organized the protest
with retired officer Larry Lockwood. "I think they arrived
and (Stonechild) was gone on arrival. Period."
The constables are "stressed
to the max," said Lane, who has spoken with both since they
were suspended. "It's hard to not only face disciplinary
action at work for something that you never did. It's even harder
to watch your family go through that."
Hartwig's children have been
harassed at school and both constables' spouses hear "negative
comments" in public from people who know who they are, Lane
said.
"Ever since I heard about
it, it just doesn't seem right," said Rick Godbout, who
booked a few hours off work to march with a sign reading, "Hartwig
and Senger, scapegoats for Sask. Justice."
"I just don't see (Hartwig)
doing what he's accused of," said Elvin Walter, who attends
church with the officer. "I thought it was unfair."
Many of the demonstrators say
Wright appears to have shaped the inquiry's evidence to suit
his interpretation.
After spotting the demonstration
while passing by on her bicycle, Michelle Michael came back later
to begin a one-woman march of her own. With a paper heart affixed
to her chest, signifying her own "broken heart" for
Stonechild's family, Michael said she believes Wright's findings.
"I accept it because of
all the other incidents, all the injustice that happens in Saskatoon,"
said Michael, an aboriginal single mom. "These people didn't
suffer for nothing."
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2004
Memory lapses no
defence for police officers
Les MacPherson, The StarPhoenix,
October 28, 2004
It was their improbable memory
lapses, among other things, that implicated two Saskatoon police
officers in the death of Neil Stonechild.
The aboriginal teenager died
of exposure on a bitterly cold night in November 1990. A judicial
inquiry into the case found that he was in the custody of constables
Larry Hartwig and Brad Senger shortly before his death. Both
officers are now suspended and are awaiting a disciplinary hearing.
Both have consistently denied that they even saw Stonechild on
the night in question.
Justice David Wright, who headed
the inquiry, simply did not believe them. Rather, he found that
the two officers lied to cover up their involvement with Stonechild.
What helped convince Wright of the officers' dishonesty was their
feigned forgetfulness.
That the two were looking for
Stonechild that night is established by police dispatch records.
Stonechild was drunk and creating a disturbance in a west-side
apartment building. Then-partners Senger and Hartwig were dispatched
to the scene in a squad car. They insist Stonechild was gone
by the time they arrived and that they never found him. They
further claimed to have no recollection of looking for Stonechild
that night.
Wright found this manifestly
unbelievable. A routine call, they might have forgotten, he conceded,
but this was not routine. The youth's frozen body was discovered
just four days after the call. That Hartwig and Senger were looking
for him the night he died would have been critically important
evidence in a suspicious death. The two officers could have helped
reconstruct Stonechild's final hours. But both men insist they
did not make the connection.
Wright didn't buy it. How could
they have forgotten they were looking for someone who soon thereafter
turned up dead?
It's not as if Neil Stonechild
was just another name to the officers. Hartwig knew him from
previous dealings. Hartwig conceded, too, that he'd have known
about Stonechild's body being discovered. It would have been
common knowledge among police. He later learned that at least
one other officer was concerned about the shoddy investigation
into Stonechild's death. Even so, he did not disclose that he'd
been searching for Stonechild around the very time of his disappearance.
Hartwig's forgetfulness does
not square with evidence of an otherwise excellent memory. He
testified to taking pride in his memory. He was able to recall
the specific words he'd used in an interview with RCMP three
years earlier. It was only when he came to the Stonechild case
that his memory seemed to fail him.
Another officer who'd dealt
with Stonechild months earlier on an unrelated matter remembered
all about it, Wright observed.
"If Cst. Hartwig had nothing
to hide I would have expected no less of him."
Senger's simultaneous memory
lapses were no less suspect. Like Hartwig, he made no apparent
effort to assist officers investigating the Stonechild death.
When almost anyone else would have announced, "Hey, that
kid who died is the same one we were looking for the other night,"
Senger said nothing.
Why would he keep quiet? Why
would he not share this vital information with investigating
officers? Wright could only conclude that Senger was concealing
his involvement with Stonechild.
Senger's credibility was further
undermined by his admitted falsification of evidence in another,
unrelated case. At the time, he was operating the breathalyser
in a drunk driving case. He admitted to recording a false reading
on one of two tests administered to a suspect who was later charged.
Senger told the inquiry that he didn't know if the suspect was
convicted. Had he been called to testify in court, he said he
would have asked that the false record be withdrawn. Even so,
Wright characterized this as a serious breach of duty that "casts
a large shadow" on Senger's integrity.
Wright found that Hartwig and
Senger had enough time to dump Stonechild on the edge of town.
The officers had 27 minutes between the Stonechild dispatch and
their next call. That's more than enough to drive from the west
side to the city's northern outskirts and back.
Then there was the eyewitness,
Jason Roy, who saw his friend Neil taken away, handcuffed and
bleeding, in the back of a police car. Roy's evidence was flawed,
but not fatally so. Wright found him to be not only credible,
but commendable. For 14 years, in fear of his safety, he tried
to find justice for his friend.
Finally, there is the question
of motive. Lawyers for Hartwig and Senger insisted their clients
had no reason to dump Stonechild at the edge of town. Rather,
they'd have taken him to jail. This defence was scuttled by evidence
that other city police officers have dumped prisoners at a remote
location. From all indications, it was done as a convenient way
of dealing with troublemakers.
Now it's police officers who
find themselves in trouble.
les.macpherson@TheSP.com
© The StarPhoenix (Saskatoon) 2004
Case (NOT) closed
Candis McLean, Western Standard,
December 20, 2004
- Q. What time approx. did you
last see Neil Stonechild alive on November 24, 1990?
A. Could be about 11:30 p.m.
Q. What condition was Neil in when you last saw him?
A. Pretty drunk. Well totally out of it.
Q. Is there anything else you wish to tell me?
A. No, that's all I can think of.
Q. Is this a true statement?
A. Yes.
--Statement of Jason Roy to Saskatoon Police Service Sergeant
Keith Jarvis, Nov. 30, 1990.
The day after 17-year-old Neil
Stonechild was found frozen, dead in an industrial park in the
north end of Saskatoon, Jason Roy was weeks away from his seventeenth
birthday. In his young life, Roy had accumulated a lengthy record
of arrests for drug and alcohol use and had been in and out of
state custody for years. Roy was arrested again, this November,
for public drunkenness. But, as the last person known to have
seen Stonechild alive, he would prove to be a vital witness in
the 14-month, $2-million inquiry into the young man's death.
In the report from the inquiry,
Report of the Commission of Inquiry into Matters Relating to
the Death of Neil Stonechild, issued October 26, Justice David
Wright would say of Roy: "I had ample opportunity to observe
him during his testimony. He struck me as sincere and thoughtful
and as still deeply affected by the death of his friend and what
followed. While Roy's testimony contained errors and contradictions,
this does not prevent me from finding credible his testimony
relating to what he observed on the evening of November 24th
and the morning of November 25th, 1990." Wright cited an
Ontario Court of Appeal ruling, upheld by the Supreme Court,
that even when a witness offers "prior inconsistent statements,"
it is up to the judge to "accept all, some, or none"
of the testimony.
But Roy's testimony at the
Stonechild inquiry differed so dramatically from the account
that he gave police the day after his friend was discovered dead,
it has caused many to ask why Justice Wright considered any of
it to be legitimate. Why would the judge trust Roy's version
of events over two officers that retired police chaplain Rick
Lane calls "two of the cleanest people in lifestyle and
attitudes I've ever had the privilege of working with"?
Roy was the only one to tell
the inquiry he witnessed contact between police and Stonechild
that night. Saskatoon Police Services (SPS) constables Larry
Hartwig and Bradley Senger claimed that, while they had been
dispatched to find Neil Stonechild that night, as he had been
reported to be causing a disturbance at the Snowberry Downs apartment
complex, they never did manage to find him. But the judge went
with Roy's version, refusing to believe the cops' account. The
evidence, wrote Wright, indicated: "a) that Neil Stonechild
was last seen in their custody at approximately 11:56 p.m. on
November 24, 1990; b) that he died of cold exposure in a remote
industrial area in the early hours of November 25, 1990; and
c) that there were injuries and marks on his body that were consistent
with handcuffs."
On Nov. 12, 2004, as a result
of the findings, the suspicion and accusations that had dogged
Hartwig and Senger for years culminated in their firing, by Saskatoon
Police Chief Russell Sabo. The force veterans, with more than
30 years of service between them, were "unsuitable for police
service by reason of their conduct," Sabo told reporters
in announcing his decision, citing their failure to "diligently
and promptly report" information or evidence to officials
about Stonechild being in their custody.
But fellow police officers
are crying foul. So are many Saskatchewan residents who quietly
echo the opinion of retired Saskatoon constable Larry Lockwood,
who demonstrated in front of the police station after the release
of the report, with signs reading: "No justice for Hartwig
and Senger," "Judicial McCarthyism at its worst"
and "Appeasement is only temporary." In confidence,
Saskatoon cops admit that, in addition to the empathy they have
for their colleagues, they have become fearful that they, too,
could just as easily be brought down by the testimony of someone
like Roy, someone with a lengthy criminal record, a history of
substance abuse and a testimony full of contradictions and fabrications.
One native man, who spends his time on the streets and knew Stonechild,
but asked not to be identified, says it's easy to blame police
for things because "they can't fight back." Hartwig
says that, far from finding the truth, the inquiry made him and
his partner into targets. "We expected to be vindicated
through the provincial inquiry," says Hartwig. "However,
not all of the evidence was disclosed."
"We went and hung around
circle park mall till around 6:30 & niel said lets go to
my moms and get some money from his mom so went over there and
niels mom wasn't home so I sold my goves [gloves] to [Stonechild's
brother] Marcelle and he went & bought us a 40 ounce of Silent
Sam [vodka]. we [went] over to juli's and drank the hole bottle
straight just me & Neil. we were just sitting around talking
about whatever and he said lets go find Lucille [an old girlfriend],
so we started on our way to Snowberry Downs [apartment complex].
I don't remember how we got to seven-11. we stopped there and
tried buying something but I don't remember if they sold me anything;
we started walking over there and stopped on the boulevard and
we were arguing but I don't [know]what about. and we got to one
apartment, looked for Lucille's sister but it wasn't there so
we checked other apartments for the last name Neetz. but we couldn't
find it any where so we got to the last apartment and we were
about to check it then I must have stopped him and we stood there
and argued for what I don't [know] and he turned around and said
f----in Jay and I looked around and blacked out and woke up at
juli binnings."
--Jason Roy's Nov. 30, 1990, handwritten statement to police,
detailing the events of the night he last saw Neil Stonechild
alive.
The day after Stonechild's
body was found, Roy gave that handwritten statement to police
concerning what had happened the evening he last saw his young
friend alive. In it, he said he had argued with Stonechild at
the Snowberry Downs apartment complex, while the two of them,
both drunk, were trying to locate a friend. Then, he said, the
two went their separate ways. Apartment residents had called
police to report two drunken men hitting buzzers at random and
creating a disturbance. The two officers that were dispatched
were Hartwig and Senger. The computer log of the two officers'
activity that night establishes that they went to Snowberry Downs
and, once there, entered three names into the police database:
Neil Stonechild, Tracy Lee Horse and Bruce Genaille.
The two officers insist that
while they called up Stonechild's sheet on their in-vehicle computer
terminal after receiving the call in order to get a physical
description, they were ultimately unable to locate him. They
ran into a man who told them he was Horse and another man, Genaille.
They stopped to question both, believing they might be the young
man they were looking for. Roy told the inquiry that he was the
one pretending to be Horse, fearful of giving his real name to
police, given the fact that there was a warrant out for his arrest
for breaching a condition of his release from custody. But in
his statement to police the next day, he mentioned neither that
confrontation, nor having seen his friend in the back of a squad
car, bleeding and fearful.
If it hadn't been for one officer,
Constable Ernie Louttit, who had taken a personal interest in
the Stonechild case, and had taken the file home and, ultimately,
forgotten about it, Roy's initial statement to police--and the
vast contradictions between it and his testimony years later--would
never have been known.
SPS Sergeant Keith Jarvis had
been questioning Roy as part of his own investigation into the
mysterious death of the handsome and popular Cree teen. By all
accounts--including the Police Associa-tion's--that investigation
was inadequate. The provincial coroner, who also had the ability
to call an inquest, chose not to. Because there was no evidence
of foul play, the police file was destroyed sometime, years later,
in one of the police force's regular purges of old files.
Over the next 10 years, five
native men turned up dead, frozen, in remote parts of the city.
In 2000, when Darryl Night, a Cree Indian, came forward claiming
that he had been dropped off near the city limits by two police
constables, Dan Hatchen and Ken Munson, public outrage over accusations
that cops might be abandoning natives in the cold, led the province
to order the RCMP to investigate the spate of freezing deaths.
But that effort was unable to solve the mystery behind Stonechild's
death. It wasn't until the RCMP investigation in 2000 that records
show that Roy started telling authorities about a police car.
Q. It [your statement to Saskatoon
police] goes on to say, "We stopped there [at 7-Eleven]
and tried buying something." Now, did that happen or not?
A. No.
Q. Any reason why you made that up?
A. We had no money.
Q. Yeah, but why would you lie to the police about that?
A. I don't know.
--Jason Roy's testimony, under cross-examination by Saskatoon
City Police Association lawyer Drew Plaxton at the Stonechild
Inquiry.
In February 2003, then Saskatchewan
minister of justice Eric Cline established a judicial commission,
headed by Wright, to inquire into Stonechild's death and the
investigations carried out by the SPS and RCMP. The inquiry was
thorough, with more than 60 witnesses called in total. But, the
most critical testimony, perhaps, was that of Roy.
Even now, Roy's stories are
rife with inconsistencies. As Aaron Fox, Hartwig's lawyer, argued
in his final submission, a friend of the two boys, Cheryl Antoine,
who had been at Julie Binning's residence when Roy returned there
in the early morning hours of Nov. 25, 1990, testified that Roy
said he "thought" he may have seen Neil in the back
of a police car, but did not mention any injuries. To Antoine's
knowledge, when Stonechild's mother, Stella Bignell, contacted
Roy after her son's disappearance, Roy didn't tell her that he
had seen Stonechild in the back of a police car, nor did Antoine.
Binning recalls Roy saying,
upon his return to her home without Stonechild, simply that "he
had lost Neil. He had--he just lost Neil on the way back."
When they asked him how, she recalls Roy saying, "He might
have been picked up by the police." They all stayed up a
few more hours playing cards, she says, but Roy seemed not at
all upset. He also admitted to Binning that night that he was
really drunk and wasn't sure about what happened. After his friend's
body was found, he told the inquiry that he never told the family
about the police car out of respect for their grieving, and when
he called police to report that he had been with Stonechild the
night of his death, he again failed to mention anything about
it.
Genaille, who was, according
to computer logs, stopped by Hartwig and Senger after they were
dispatched to find Stonechild, told the inquiry that he remembered
the two officers asking him if he was Stonechild (in fact, he
happens to be his cousin). They asked Genaille about a disturbance
at a 7-Eleven store, not Snowberry Downs, he says. He waited
five to 10 minutes while the cops ran his name through the computer,
and he saw no one was in the back seat.
At the inquiry, however, Roy
said he was certain he saw Stonechild in the back seat and that
he had been "freaking out." He told RCMP investigators
before that, that he had been "scared s--tless" by
the sight. As Fox argued, "The statements attributed to
Roy, his demeanour and conduct are all inconsistent with his
having seen Neil in the back of a police car, bleeding and screaming
for his life."
So how is it that, rather than
deteriorating over the course of more than a decade, the recollection
of a man who has been in substance-abuse treatment several times
during that period has actually improved over time? He had help.
A year after the investigation
by the Saskatoon police, Roy was put under hypnosis to help him
recall what had happened the night he last saw Stonechild. Therapist
Brenda Valiaho conducted a "visualization exercise"
with Roy, and it was in that session, for the first time, that
Roy remembered seeing Stonechild in the back of the police car.
Memory experts Dr. John Yuille and Dr. Jim Arnold testified at
the inquiry, however, that these kinds of recovered memories
are frequently unreliable, as people's recollections are altered
by beliefs, assumptions and outside pressures. That can eventually
lead to a belief in a certain set of facts that, although honestly
held, is not accurate. In other words, after the hypnosis, the
subject himself may be convinced that something happened even
when it did not. (Psychological studies show it isn't hard to
implant false memories. In 2002, when two snipers were shooting
people around the Washington, D.C., area, dozens of witnesses
recalled seeing a white van. The snipers, it later turned out,
were driving a dark sedan. Psychologists say the false memories
were inadvertently planted by police during witness questioning.)
Q. "I looked around and
blacked out, and woke up at Julie Binning's." That's what
you told the police, right?
A. Yes.
Q. And there's nothing-you didn't see Neil anywhere in that statement.
You last saw him at Snowberry Downs looking for his old girlfriend;
right?
A. Yes.
Q. You told the police you passed out and woke up the next morning
at Binnings'; right?
A. At this--at this--on this statement, yes, that's what I said.
Q. Okay, now, is that accurate or not?
A. No.
Q. Why did you lie to the police about that?
A. I was scared.
--Jason Roy, under cross-examination by Saskatoon City Police
Association lawyer Drew Plaxton at the Stonechild Inquiry.
When RCMP officers asked Roy
why he had not reported the police car following the death of
his friend, he claimed he had told SPS about it, though his written
statement indicates that to be untrue. Then, at the inquiry,
Roy changed his story again, claiming he had been afraid to implicate
police because, at the time of the death, he too had been on
the run from a community home. Upon being questioned by Fox,
Roy could not name the facility he was allegedly missing from,
and there is no record of Roy being in any community home in
the fall of 1990.
After Roy began recounting
the story of the police car, he provided several friends a detailed
description of the driver of the police car, describing him as
well over six feet tall, with a moustache, curly hair and pop-bottle
glasses. Commission counsel confirmed Roy's description of the
officers with him in advance of the inquiry. Hartwig or Senger
are both about five feet eight inches, have never worn moustaches,
and neither wear glasses nor contacts. Once his testimony at
the inquiry began, Roy changed his story and said he could not
recall a physical description of the driver of the police car.
How credible was Roy's testimony,
given the pattern of inconsistencies, errors and lies? Wright
concludes that the cause of so much deceit can only have been
caused by one thing: a hesitation to point the finger at the
police force. "When called upon to provide a written statement
of the events, [Roy] stopped short of implicating the Saskatoon
Police Service," wrote Wright in the report on the inquiry.
"His statement that he 'blacked out' was a convenient excuse
not to reduce to writing the most important events of that night.
Whether his decision was prompted by fear or an unwillingness
to be involved any further with the police, matters not."
The possibility that Roy's wildly varied accounts may have been
because he was unsure of what he saw that night, or had imagined
things, or lied, did not seem, to Wright, to be a possibility.
"What is central to this whole question . . . is the plain
proposition that [Roy] told the investigating [RCMP] officer
the whole story," the judge wrote, adding that it was a
proposition "supported by other evidence."
As I reviewed the evidence
in this Inquiry, I was reminded, again and again, of the chasm
that separates aboriginal and non-aboriginal people in this city
and province. Our two communities do not know each other and
do not seem to want to.
--Final Comments of Justice David Wright, report on the Stonechild
Inquiry.
If one police officer was the
exception to the cultural gap between aboriginals and non-aboriginals,
says Melvin McGhee, an aboriginal social worker, it was Larry
Hartwig. "Larry's firing was a great loss to the aboriginal
community; he was an ally," he says. McGhee has dedicated
his career to helping rehabilitate troubled youth, reintegrating
them into society. Once, when McGhee himself was charged after
assaulting a non-aboriginal, he says he was fearful his career
was over. But Hartwig, he says, "saw beyond the fact that
I'm a 280-pound aboriginal ex-wrestler and got to the facts.
He was nothing but respectful, with a great knowledge of the
First Nations' culture."
For most of his 17 years on
the force, Hartwig worked the west side of Saskatoon, with its
large native population, and every year worked on an anonymous
charity bringing food to the poor. "It's good for a cop
who so often sees the tragic side of life to have a little kid
pull on your pant leg and say, 'Mister, are you an angel?'"
says Hartwig.
On the night of November 24,
Hartwig and Senger, who used to be a psychiatric nurse, were
paired together for the first time. Off the record, many cops
say that if they were going to do anything unorthodox--let alone
commit murder--they would ensure they had a partner they were
certain they could trust, not one they had been with for just
a few hours.
McGhee says that if anything
is to blame for rising tensions between police and natives, it's
the unfair portrayals of Hartwig and Senger perpetuated by the
Saskatoon media and reaffirmed by the inquiry. "I believe
with all my heart that Larry and Brad have been hung out to dry,"
he says. "They were scapegoats for this tragedy. The justice
system should stand beside them and find the facts; instead they
are breaking down the bridges between the aboriginal and police
communities that were starting to build."
Pat Pickard describes herself
as the "last straight--as opposed to street--person to talk
to Neil" the night he went missing. Pickard ran a group
home, from which Stonechild was missing. He called her on Nov.
24, 1990, just before he went out drinking with friends, to assure
her he would be back the next day to turn himself in. She tried
to convince him to come back immediately, but he refused. Pickard
says she believes Roy's testimony about the squad car. But, she
adds, although she was frustrated by the testimony of many police
officers at the inquiry, many of whom said they could not remember
much about that night 14 years ago and had lost their notes,
she does not think that there is enough evidence to support the
claim that Hartwig and Senger were involved in Stonechild's death.
"There was no concrete evidence that they dumped him--no
DNA, no one except Jason [Roy] saying he was in the car, and
he couldn't even identify the cops," she says. The officers'
car was never checked for blood, but coroners found no evidence
of any blood on Stonechild's clothing. "One side of my brain
says we're finally doing something about the rotten apples on
the police force, but the other side says that if it had been
two native people [accused of this] instead of police, there
would be a big outcry for proof," says Pickard. "I'd
like to say, 'Hurray, they're guilty, do something with them,'
[but] we need to be very sure that we bring the right people
to justice."
After the horrific discovery
of Stonechild, an acquaintance of his paid a visit to his mother,
Stella Bignell. Rumours had been swirling around the native community
that the man responsible for her son's death was that man, Gary
Pratt. Pratt had come to assure Bignell that the rumours weren't
true and that he had nothing to do with her son freezing to death.
But even today, word on the street is that a feud between Stonechild
and the Pratt family had been simmering since September 1990,
two months before Stonechild's disappearance.
Stonechild had been at a party,
at which Pratt got into a terrible melee with several others.
At the time, Pratt was at large from recognizance related to
a charge of assault on his mother. The party's host, Eddie Rushton,
had, according to Pratt, shot at him, and he fled.
Q. And can you tell us what
took place, then, when you returned?
A. When we returned we had went through the back door and at
the back door there was an axe and Randy Lafond had grabbed the
axe and as we went in the back door Eddie--deceased Eddie Rushton
and Pat Caisse were coming up from the root cellar where the
guns were and Randy chopped-well, hit Eddie in the head with
the axe and knocked him into the basement again and they went
down there and, I don't know, it was just total chaos and mayhem
and--
Q. Was Neil still at the house at that time?
A. Yes, he was.
--Gary Pratt, under cross-examination by Saskatoon City Police
Association lawyer Drew Plaxton at the Stonechild Inquiry
After Pratt and his gang returned
and had beaten up Rushton, Pratt's brother, Errol, threatened
aloud anyone who would consider reporting the incident to police.
Gary Pratt testified that he heard his brother shout something
along the lines of: "You don't see anything here or you
don't know anything, or you don't tell anything to anyone or
you're dead."
In the fall of 1990, Stonechild
and another man at the party, Pat Caisse, were in fact compelled
to attend court to testify against Gary Pratt. In the end, their
testimony was not needed: after several other witnesses refused
to testify, the Crown stayed the charges.
Justice Wright notes in his
report on the inquiry that there were no witnesses to put Pratt
and Stonechild together on the night of Nov. 24, 1990, and there
was no evidence that Stonechild was beaten up. But a friend of
Stonechild's older brother Marcel, told the Western Standard
that the "street word" at the time was that either
Pratt or associates of his had taken Stonechild out to the industrial
area. Instead of beating him, they left him in the middle of
nowhere, in -28øC weather, where he died. "The people
on the street, they know, they see everything," says the
source, a 34-year-old native man who asked not to be identified.
"Even today, if you go on the street, you'll find half the
guys say Gary Pratt did it, but nobody wants to rat to the police.
It's like an oath."
After the body was found, continues
the source, "the whole Pratt family disappeared; they used
to be big mall rats." Several of Saskatoon's large native
families, says the source, were convinced of Pratt's involvement
and were planning to "go after" the Pratt family, he
says. But Bignell stopped them, fearing a "big family war."
Retired SPS officer Lockwood
reports that a few months after the brawl at the party, Eddie
Rushton died under suspicious circumstances, of an allegedly
"self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head," after friends
say they had been playing Russian Roulette with him. Errol Pratt
was murdered with a baseball bat by a member of one of the family.
But the violence between Saskatoon's big native families goes
a long way back. Several members of the larger clans had clashed
in the mid-eighties in a battle for control of Saskatoon's prostitution
racket, says Lockwood, what police call the "hooker wars"
of 1985. Things got very violent, says Lockwood, and members
of the Stonechilds and the Pratts were alleged to have been involved.
"Two factions got into a turf war over prostitution territories,"
says Lockwood. "There was a big shootout at Baldwin Hotel,
windows shot out of houses, and we had to detonate two bombs
in the city planted next to houses associated with members of
different prostitution rings." Lockwood says that, in his
opinion as a street officer of 27 years, "if Stonechild's
death was a murder-and I'm not convinced it was--I would look
for connections going back to the family feuding of the hooker
wars."
Louttit testified at the inquiry
that a few days after Stonechild's body was found, his brother,
Jason, told him that Neil had been killed by brothers Gary and
Danny Pratt, "that he'd been picked up at a party when he
was very drunk in the north end, somewhere up by the 7-Eleven,
and that he'd been beaten up and then--and dumped off,"
Louttit recounted. Reading from his notes made at the time, the
officer told the inquiry, "Neil was with an unknown female,
or unidentified female, first name starts with 'F,' she witnessed
Neil get in the [Pratt's] car, very loaded." Asked if he
had received any information in 1990 or 1991 that Stonechild
had been in a city police car on the night that he disappeared,
Louttit replied that if he had, he would have pursued the matter
to get to the bottom of it. "I have no problem arresting
a police officer that's taken part in a crime," he told
the inquiry.
For her part, Bignell denies
the allegation that she stopped a "war between families,"
and says that Pratt and her son were friends who "had their
differences," but they had been resolved. And while her
lawyer, Donald Worme, told reporters that Bignell was pleased
that police chief Sabo had fired Hartwig and Senger, Bignell
says that's actually not how she feels. Bignell says that she
is not happy with the outcome of the inquiry at all. She refuses
to make the leap from Roy's fragmented recollection of seeing
her son in a police car, to assuming that Hartwig and Senger
must be responsible for his death. "I wanted the inquiry
to find out who took my son out there," she says. "And
yet after all this time, we still do not know. Justice was not
served."
TAKING FORENSICS 'OUT OF THE
REALM OF SCIENCE' AND MAKING IT 'CHILD'S PLAY'
Gary Robertson, the photogrammetrist,
was hired to measure marks that were apparent in the post-mortem
photographs of Stonechild's body and, later, to compare these
measurements to the measurements of handcuffs used by the Saskatoon
Police Service in 1990. As a result of the investigation, the
RCMP identified two suspects: Cst. Lawrence Hartwig and Cst.
Brad Senger.
-- Justice David Wright, Final report of the Commission of Inquiry
Into Matters Relating to the Death of Neil Stonechild
After reviewing the evidence
before him, Justice David Wright admits that only constables
Larry Hartwig and Bradley Senger know what was in their minds
on the night of Nov. 24, 1990. But, to him, the evidence established
that three things had likely happened: that Neil Stonechild was
last seen in the two officers' custody, close to midnight on
November 24; that he died of cold exposure; and that the marks
on his body looked like he had been restrained, and hit, with
handcuffs.
Wright had only the erratic
testimony of Jason Roy to indicate that Stonechild had been in
the custody of the cops. And on close review, forensic experts
say that the evidence suggesting that Stonechild had been hurt
by handcuffs is just as unreliable.
A widely publicized post-mortem
photo of Stonechild, featuring two lines across the bridge of
his nose, certainly seems to suggest the 17-year-old native may
have been whacked in the face by a pair of police-issue Peerless
cuffs. The photo was presented to the inquiry with a pair of
handcuffs digitally superimposed over Stonechild's face to help
illustrate the consistency of the marks with the structure of
the cuffs.
"The old Chinese proverb,
'a photo is worth 1,000 words,' or whatever it is, is actually
false," the man behind that photo, RCMP expert and Calgary
photogrammetrist Gary Robertson, told the inquiry during his
testimony. "If you don't have any known dimensions in a
photograph . . . I always say it's worth a million lies."
(Photogrammetry is the science of taking measurements from photographs
to make maps of landmasses).
Sage wisdom, says Dr. Emma
Lew, deputy chief medical examiner and director of forensic pathology
services in Miami-Dade county, Fla. And Robertson's own photo
is a case in point. "In my career, I don't know any of my
colleagues who have used a photogrammetric analyst to evaluate
lesions on bodies," says Lew. She received her medical training
at the University of Saskatchewan and studied four years of pathology
and one year subspecialty training in a forensic pathology fellowship
program. Lew, who estimates she has analyzed more than 5,000
human bodies in her career, believes that Robertson's handcuff
theory was an irresponsible leap. "I'm speculating that
Robertson said, 'Oh these two patterns look like handcuffs--they're
parallel, linear, and look about the same distance--therefore
they must have been made from handcuffs.'"
Robertson admitted, upon cross-examination
by Police Association lawyer Drew Plaxton, that he had not properly
indicated the correct scale of the cuffs to the marks on Stonechild's
nose, even though the scale of photo of the cuffs imposed over
Stonechild's face would fundamentally impact how accurately the
two rails of the handcuffs would match the marks on the nose.
At the same time, Robertson also confessed in the Oct. 20, 2003,
questioning that he had lied on his resum, and he had not actually
completed a course in photogrammetry, but rather had a diploma
as a mapmaker's technician and that he had lied about completing
any engineering courses at university. Robertson said he had
never actually analyzed human skin before--only pigs. His work
until the Stonechild case had been limited to measuring distances
between things like cars and buildings. Plaxton also asked Robertson
if he had used photo manipulation to delete part of the handcuff
so it would match the injury more closely. Robertson admitted
that he had digitally cut away part of the handcuff to achieve
the photographic result.
Lew's analysis of the marks
on Stonechild's hands led to her conclusion that they were definitely
not made by handcuffs either, but by the cuffs of his jacket
pulled over his hands to keep them warm (Stonechild was found
with his sleeves pulled over his hands). The weight of his body
on his hands underneath him impressed the fabric into his skin,
much as sleeping imprints pyjama fabric. Dr. Valerie Rao, the
chief medical examiner for the city of Columbia, Missouri, agrees
that the wrist marks were not handcuffs. "I've been a forensic
pathologist for 25 years. I have done many, many cases with handcuff
imprints, I have analyzed living and deceased people who have
handcuff marks, and Stonechild didn't have anything that resembled
a handcuff."
Simplistic assumptions about
what an injury on a body looks like, says Lew, ignore facts about
what happens to corpses in the hours and days after death. "There
would be grave miscarriages of justice all over the place if
laypeople were able to pronounce that certain wounds were made
in a certain way, simply because they look like it, without consideration
of post-mortem artifacts, including drying of the tissues,"
Lew says. Such uninformed speculation has taken the "process
out of the realm of science and simplified it into child's play."
she says.
In July 2000, Jason Roy told
the CBC that he witnessed Stonechild "in the back of the
police car with his face cut open, bleeding." But Lew says
that the cuts on Stonechild's nose were probably fairly superficial
at the time of the injury, but had stretched and blackened as
the young man's body froze and thawed and the tissue dried. Examining
high-resolution enhanced photos of Stonechild's body, pathologists
deduced that the marks were likely the result of walking through
high bush in a nearby ravine or collapsing onto the densely packed
ice and frozen twigs and weeds. The lack of blood on Stonechild's
clothing also suggests that the wounds were minor.
But, Lew acknowledges, relying
on medical science alone may not have been of much use to the
inquiry. "I understand that there are other factors and
other agendas involved here," she says.
--Candis McLean
|
Truth can never be
told so as to be understood, and not be believ'd. William Blake, The Proverbs of Hell
