(ominous music) - A young woman
in a northern Manitoba small town
decides to walk home alone at night.
And in the morning, a young man makes a terrible discovery.
- The viciousness of it,
I don't think you ever really prepare for that kinda stuff.
- [Narrator] Despite evidence and lots of rumors,
there's a town that's unwilling to talk.
- Because at the end of the day,
it's not just a family who wants justice,
it's the entire community.
- I think it's really important to remember her story
because of the symbol of what she ultimately became.
She could have been any one of us.
(soft suspenseful music)
- The unsolved ones, we have to stand up.
- And approach these cases in a way outside the box.
- Let the world know there's those out there
that did commit a murder
and there are people that are coming after you.
- There's just a lotta good people
trying to do the right thing. (faint police radio chatter)
- Because it's something
that you have to be passionate about.
- Solve this, bring some peace to the family at least.
Just doing my job.
(gavel pounding)
(marker scribbling)
(gentle music)
- [Narrator] The Pas, a large town in northern Manitoba
known as the Gateway to the North,
built initially on a fur trade.
The Cree First Nations people
call it Opasquia or Highwood Narrows.
English settlers would then shorten that name
to simply The Pas.
- By the late-'60s, driven by the pulp and paper industry,
The Pas was quite a boom town.
A good place to get a job,
it's great if you like the outdoors,
it's a good tourist destination.
- [Narrator] But like any other boom town,
there are negatives that come with economic prosperity
and a transient workforce.
- Had a kind of a Wild West feel to it as well.
Substance abuse, violence,
and even prostitution was not uncommon.
- [Narrator] The Pas is also unique
in that bordering the town are two Indigenous reserves
and one Metis settlement.
Tensions and racist attitudes
between the predominantly white town
and its neighbors were not uncommon.
- When I got to The Pas,
I got off the train and went to barracks,
I lived in barracks at the detachment,
one of the chaps at coffee said, "Well, get ready to fight."
And I said, "What do you mean?
He said, "Well, you're the new kid in town.
"They'll wanna see how tough you are."
Saturday at noon, I had my first fight.
That's the kind of town it was, and he was right.
They wanted to see how tough you are, and so they try you.
- [Narrator] While The Pas had its rough edges,
no one would be prepared for what was about to happen
when on a chilly November morning in 1971,
a young man would make a discovery in the woods
20 miles northeast of The Pas.
(uneasy music)
A father and son are off on a fishing expedition
on a cold miserable morning at Clearwater Lake.
The boy is just 14.
The wind coming off the water is damp and biting,
so he goes for a wander, looking for rabbit tracks.
- The young man followed the trail
and found something clearly wrong.
(eerie music)
- [Narrator] The father and son drive to the nearest phone
and call the Royal Canadian Mounted Police
as constables Tom Boyle and Don Knight,
both in their early-20s, are dispatched.
- Had just sat down to watch the TV and got a call.
"There's been a body found."
- And all she was wearing were thick rubber boots.
At the time, they didn't have the availability
of ready-made evidence kits,
so they actually had to stop at the store
and buy paper bags and tape
in order to be able to collect the evidence.
- I don't think you ever really prepare
for that kinda stuff.
I mean, through your training and of course your experience,
you learn there's a routine to go through.
You have to do certain things.
- And I was the exhibit guy;
in other words, gathering all the exhibits
and making notes of the scene and that kind of thing,
- [Don] And things were totally different then.
- This is prior to the use of using DNA for identification.
So, they relied heavily at that time on fingerprints,
shoe prints, blood, and anything else at the crime scene.
- [Narrator] There are many tracks,
suggesting that there was more than one person involved,
at least in bringing the body to this location.
- You can see that she was dragged into the bush,
person on each side of her
where she was dragged to and dropped,
and then there's two sets of tracks going out.
So, that meant two of them were involved, at least.
- They can't do plaster casts even.
The shoe prints or footprints that have been left
are already filling up with snow.
- So, they take photographs instead.
And again, it's the '70s.
Even photographs aren't the same as they are today.
- I was involved in other murder cases,
but this one here is, it was like they were in a frenzy.
I mean, the number of stab wounds on her,
the viciousness of it...
They put the boots to her.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] The autopsy would later be in Winnipeg.
But for now, the victim's body
is taken to a local hospital for identification,
the task made problematic by the fact
that the face had been crushed or stomped in
and had many puncture wounds.
- It was going to be very hard to identify her
and identify what killed her.
- It's kinda hard to talk about, really,
because those kinds of things you don't really forget.
That somebody could actually do that to a human being
is just unbelievable.
- [Narrator] The first clue to the victim's identity
are when the boots are removed,
revealing a tattoo on her leg.
"Cornelius Bighetty, I truly love you, no matter what."
This would combine with a very recent
missing person's report and give the victim a name:
Helen Betty Osborne.
- Where she had been staying,
the lady said she hadn't come home
and put in kind of a missing person's complaint.
And so, all of a sudden
you put two and two together real quick.
The lady said she couldn't do it,
but the husband came down and basically said,
yeah, that was her.
And of course, they identified her clothes too.
- [Narrator] Not far from the body,
the police would also discover the victim's clothes
bundled up and discarded.
- On any murder investigation,
from the moment the crime scene is discovered,
from the moment the officers get there
and have to enter that scene for the first time,
the clock starts ticking for them.
They know that the longer it takes,
the more the evidence becomes degraded.
- Who was she with at the time
and who was the last person that saw her?
That's where you start, you know?
- Statistically, homicides are committed
by people who are known to the victim;
not always, but in the vast majority of cases.
- [Narrator] Now, the police have their first suspect.
They pick up Cornelius Bighetty from the Pukatawagan reserve
and learn that he had been dating Helen Betty Osborne.
Bighetty also had been with her the night of her murder.
- On the night she disappeared,
there'd been some drinking, some alcohol involved.
There was an argument over a girl.
So, essentially, the last time he saw her,
she was walking home alone.
- [Narrator] Bighetty is interrogated for hours,
but remains aloof,
which leads the RCMP to believe he's hiding something,
(eerie music)
so they show him some photos from the murder scene.
- When he sees the photos, Cornelius passes out
and then the police decide to put him in a jail cell
for a few hours.
- [Narrator] The RCMP then turn to a polygraph,
or lie detector test, to get the truth.
- In the 1970s, the polygraph is an instrument
that's used all over the world by police agencies
to try to determine the truthfulness
of somebody's statement.
That measures their body's reaction
while they're put under stress.
Cornelius agrees to take a polygraph test
and the results of that test make it clear to the detectives
that he's not a suspect in this matter.
- [Narrator] But the interrogation
would render a crucial clue.
The night before Betty's body was found
near Clearwater Lake, the investigators now could place her
walking to the home where she was staying in The Pas.
(uneasy music)
- She was a high school student
and she was billeting at a home
that was near the school she was attending.
The RCMP at the time went to her room
and they found one of her school notebooks
and they were able to obtain a fingerprint from it.
And from that fingerprint,
they were able to positively identify
the body of Helen Betty Osborne.
(somber music)
- [Narrator] Helen Betty Osborne
is born a First Nation Cree in 1952
in Norway House, a reserve in northern Manitoba.
- She was the first born of Justine and Joe Osborne,
a fur trapper,
one of eight siblings who all lived in a log cabin.
- [Narrator] By the summer of 1969,
she outgrows the education program
and must either settle for grade-eight education
or leave home to study further.
Betty is known by her friends as bright and funny.
- She had an interest in mathematics
and participated in a program
that helped integrate Indigenous students
with white students in The Pas
at Margaret Barbour Collegiate.
- She went away to The Pas out of the safety and comfort
of her community and her family
so that she can get an education
so she can go back to her community
and better her community.
- In The Pas on the weekends,
she sometimes goes to movies with Cornelius and her friends.
- And in 1971, where the movie theater was segregated
in the community of The Pas at that time, they get spat on,
they get called racial slurs anywhere they go.
I'm sure if they went into a store,
they were followed around and viewed with suspicion.
Those were the attitudes and the prevailing attitudes
of people who lived in the community.
(uneasy music)
- To start with, we were knocking on doors.
And once we found out who she was,
where was she doing that night, and you go from there
and you start talking to everybody that was at the bar
that you knew at least or could find out who was there.
You start talking to people in town, if they heard anything.
All it takes is one person if you get the right one.
- Within Days of Helen Betty Osborne's body being found,
the community starts to realize
that something horrible has happened.
And pretty soon they get an idea who may have been involved.
- One of the very first leads in this case
came from someone from the community,
a cab driver who was driving out near the airport.
He saw something that would be crucial
in identifying who killed Helen Betty Osborne.
(apprehensive music)
(tense music)
- [Narrator] When the mutilated body of a young woman
is found in a secluded wooded area near Clearwater Lake,
northeast of The Pas, Manitoba, an investigation is launched
by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or RCMP.
- You could see that she was dragged into the bush,
person on each side of her.
They just brutalized her is what they did.
It was like they were in a frenzy.
- [Narrator] She's an Indigenous student from Norway House
and soon identified as Helen Betty Osborne.
The crime scene indicates multiple people were involved
and her tattoo leads investigators to a boyfriend.
But after an initial interrogation,
they realize it's not him.
- Police are desperately going to streets, homes, and bars
when a cab driver contacts them
to say he's seen something suspicious.
- He sees a white or a light blue car out on the road
and he sees something thrown from the window.
- Incredibly, he remembers two numbers from the plate:
four, two.
(grim music)
- A dog search of the highway
where the cab driver saw the car
would turn up a screwdriver and part of a woman's brassier.
- Screwdriver stabbed her the face,
which punctured the skull and went into the brain.
I mean, it was just-
It's kinda hard to talk about, really,
because those kinds of things you don't really forget.
That somebody could actually do that to a human being
is just unbelievable.
- It was inhuman what they did to her,
how they violated her body
and the indignity of leaving her the way that they did.
- [Narrator] On November 17th, Helen Betty Osborne
makes front-page news in the local paper.
Parents from northern reserves
take their kids out of school.
Indigenous girls who stay in school
are warned by their parents and landlords
to walk in pairs or not go out at night at all.
- Helen Betty's peers, other First Nation kids,
other Indigenous kids that she was going to school with,
police just went in
and hauled them down to the police station,
put them in cells.
Even at that point in time, the law was fairly clear.
The police did not have power to detain anyone
unless they were charging them with a specific crime
and arresting them accordingly.
"Clearly, what happened here is that someone was murdered
"and we need to clear it up
"and it's probably likely one of these violent Indigenous
"or Aboriginal kids that have come from the reserve."
- This is a very small rural town
and people are starting to talk.
Rumors are starting to spread.
(pensive music)
- Now that there was a better idea
of what the murder weapon was,
there's some clarity or focus coming to the investigation,
but there was still a question of whose vehicle it was.
(pensive music continuing)
- It's not unusual for investigators
to try new techniques to try to get a break in a case.
And on this particular occasion,
they turned to hypnosis, a first for the RCMP,
to try to find some information.
- [Narrator] Under hypnosis,
the cab driver now remembers four of the six characters.
- The license plate and the description of the car
point to a vehicle owned by the Colgan family in The Pas,
but all the information they have at this point is hearsay
and from unsubstantiated sources.
(ominous music)
- [Narrator] Meanwhile, Helen Betty Osborne
is buried on a bitterly cold day.
The family can't afford a tombstone,
so they ask a man on the reserve
to build her a wooden cross instead.
- You really feel for the victim, of course,
and you also feel for the victim's family,
and that's one of the hard parts of the job.
- They're dealing with these attitudes in the community
where there's this hearsay and there's rumors and innuendo
and they're hearing snippets of information,
but you can't make a case out of snippets of information.
You have to go down and do the hard work.
- [Narrator] It's a Friday in May
when Constable Don Knight receives a letter in the mail
that reveals details
about the murder of Helen Betty Osborne.
- This is an anonymous letter,
but the author clearly appears to have
intimate knowledge of the murder.
- [Narrator] The letter indicates a young woman
was in a car outside of a party
with a young man who was intoxicated.
The young man would share all kinds of things
related to Helen Betty Osborne's murder.
The anonymous letter mentions a confession
from local boy Lee Colgan.
- There are all kinds of rumors,
some based on talk from Lee Colgan himself,
who's been chatting a lot around town,
and this brings into focus more suspects.
This includes Colgan's neighbor and friend Jim Houghton
and a young man who's known
as a homeless drug addict, Norm Manger.
- The author of the letter would later be revealed, in fact,
to be a relative of the girl
that sat in the car with Colgan.
She didn't even live in The Pas,
but she was still too afraid to come forward.
- And then I ended up having an informant
who told us that there was a fourth guy
by the name of Johnston who left town shortly thereafter.
I knew his mother.
She was a waitress at the hotel
and we used to see her all the time.
"Do you know where he is?"
She said, "Well, he left town," and she basically put him
right shortly after that incident, right?
So, we knew then,
probably Johnston's definitely involved as well.
- The anonymous letter is huge.
It confirms what investigators already suspected.
Now they have something they can move on.
- [Narrator] Seven months after the murder
of Helen Betty Osborne,
RCMP obtain a warrant to search the Colgan family Chrysler.
- Apparently, Lee Colgan had washed the exterior
of the Colgan family car,
but hadn't bothered to clean the interior.
- There's 114 hairs found in the vehicle,
namely the seat area.
- Literally took the inside apart
and we found some material with a little clip.
And it was obvious it was from a brassier, right?
And we had found the brassier on the highway
not that far from the pump house when they'd thrown it out.
The forensic lab in Regina actually said,
"This clip fits that brassier."
They could match it up, so we knew.
- And also, blood was located and there was a blood match.
- Not a DNA match, more a blood type, like the O-A-B types.
The blood is similar to that of Helen Betty Osborne.
- Four suspects and then a car
clearly connected to Helen Betty Osborne's murder.
- We knew obviously she must have been in there,
but who was there?
- Things have changed so much.
And so, if they were able to collect DNA,
if they were able to use some of the tools
that we have at our disposal now,
this is a case that was solvable at the time.
- With the advancements that we've seen
in forensic evidence analysis,
this case likely would've been solved much quicker.
Now, what police really need is someone to talk.
- [Narrator] Police confront Lee Colgan
about what they found
and he tells them to talk to local lawyer D'Arcy Bancroft.
- All four tell a police the same thing:
"Talk to D'Arcy."
(light music)
- [Narrator] Shortly after the vehicle search,
police pay a visit to the home
of local lawyer D'Arcy Bancroft.
- He was eccentric, had a virtual zoo in his house:
big cats, couple of ocelots, a chameleon.
Very strange.
- At the time, an individual could in fact be charged
with non-capital murder
merely by being at the scene of a homicide.
These four are all in the same boat if someone talks.
- [Narrator] D'Arcy Bancroft was not a typical lawyer
and he was most definitely behind the coordinated silence
in the death of Helen Betty Osborne.
(tense music)
(apprehensive music)
(tense music)
On November 13th, 1971,
the mutilated body of Helen Betty Osborne
is discovered in the woods near Clearwater Lake,
north of The Pas, Manitoba.
- You got the car, you got the body,
found the screwdriver that was used to stab her.
You've got all this stuff.
What evidence do you have that puts them in the car?
Anything that we did have was basically hearsay, right?
And without witnesses to say,
how are we gonna get a conviction?
- Osborne was in the car,
but there's still lots to be known
about what actually happened.
- [Narrator] With the four suspects not talking,
police approach their lawyer, D'Arcy Bancroft,
neither of whom is willing to cooperate.
- The Crown says, "Lay the charges now,
"it's gonna get tossed at preliminary,
"and then you'll never be able to charge them."
He did, he actually said.
He says, "At some point, one of them may talk
"and then you're gonna have your evidence
"to lay the charges and make it stick."
- The RCMP start putting pressure on
and they start following the suspects who are still in town
and they get permission to wiretap their phones.
In the bars, police take an unorthodox approach
to putting that pressure on
and send the suspects screwdrivers as a message.
- Letting the suspects know that they're watching
and that they probably know a lot more
than they actually realize they do.
- [Narrator] Putting pressure on his clients,
D'Arcy Bancroft writes a letter of warning
to the RCMP to back off
and a second vouching for their good character.
- The idea of counsel now sending a letter
to the Crown Attorney's Office and saying,
"You better back off," that simply would not happen now.
And it may have been certainly a different era
and a smaller community.
- The high pressure tactics employed by the RCMP
are getting some attention from above,
which puts a chill on the investigation.
- [Narrator] Time begins to pass.
One of the key investigators, Don Knight,
is transferred outta the region
with the case still lacking enough evidence
to press charges.
- It's very frustrating as an investigator
to see a viable suspect basically walk away
just because you don't have enough evidence,
even though you know you know.
- But if people know anything,
they're not telling police or they're simply afraid.
- [Narrator] The anonymous letter that RCMP received
speaks to the fear that some may have.
Part of that fear may be of the local lawyer,
D'Arcy Bancroft, an intimidating figure
who's connected to the privileged class of The Pas.
- Well, they didn't wanna get involved
because it had something to do
with a person that they didn't value
and really felt was beneath them,
and so it wasn't any of their business.
By getting involved and doing the right thing
perhaps meant for them
that they also would be looked down upon by their neighbors
of getting involved and helping these Indians at the time.
Up to this point,
so many officers had been involved in this case,
but it had just stagnated.
They really had to just focus
on the long-term strategy at this point.
(pensive music)
- [Narrator] The main suspects continue to live their lives.
Lee Colgan marries
and eventually ends up in British Columbia.
The marriage is troubled, as he abuses his spouse
and struggles with alcohol addiction.
After getting divorced,
Colgan loses shared custody of their children
because he threatens to kill his ex-wife.
James Houghton also marries, moves to Alberta,
and becomes a successful salesman
who's known to friends and family
as decent, caring, and generous.
Dwayne Johnston is a stable family man
living in British Columbia
who socializes with a local biker gang
and is rumored to have killed an Indigenous man
back in Manitoba.
Norm Manger is an alcoholic and living in British Columbia.
As pressure builds on the RCMP
well over a decade after the death of Helen Betty Osborne,
Officer Bob Urbanoski is officially assigned to the case.
- A new investigator can be a very good thing.
They bring new perspectives, they bring new insights.
- [Narrator] Over the last 13 years,
about 200 officers had looked over the case,
but Urbanoski is the first one to be full-time.
- Urbanoski spends the first six months in The Pas
asking a lotta questions.
- [Narrator] Urbanoski tries something new
and places an ad in the Opasquian Times
requesting the public's assistance
in Betty's murder investigation.
Amazingly, police get over 150 responses
and Urbanoski makes almost 200 inquiries,
traveling to countless cities and towns
from Vancouver to Toronto.
- He was like a dog with a bone, right?
(laughing) He just kept on it and kept on it and kept on it
and tried all kindsa different things.
And finally, one of them worked.
- 13 years later,
the simple act of taking out an ad in the paper
is the break that Urbanoski needed.
(eerie music)
(tense music)
(apprehensive music)
(tense music)
- [Narrator] When Helen Betty Osborne is brutally murdered,
RCMP hunt for clues and anyone who might know what happened,
but residents of The Pas, Manitoba, are reluctant to talk.
- Evidence points to four young men.
Their involvement seems to be the worst kept secret in town.
- A lotta people don't want to get involved.
Doesn't matter what their profession is,
they don't wanna get involved.
"I don't know, I don't wanna go to court.
"I don't wanna get involved," and that happens,
which makes it hard to investigate sometimes
because you got people that know stuff
that just don't wanna get involved.
- [Narrator] After 13 years, the case gains momentum
as RCMP Officer Bob Urbanoski finds a new way
to engage a town that, for the most part, has been silent.
(pensive music)
- Urbanoski needs one of these four suspects to break.
- Lee Colgan is suffering with alcoholism and violence.
He's definitely the weak link.
- Sometimes people don't know that they have information,
and so that ad, I think, was so important
and it obviously became very important.
- For years, people have been talking about this.
There's been rumors.
The suspects themselves have talked about it.
- Bob Urbanoski really brought
that fresh perspective as well to say, "This isn't right
"and there are pieces here that if we put together
"we can make a case, and there are people who know.
"And now enough time has passed
"that maybe they're thinking about what that means to them
"in terms of keeping this a secret."
- And finally, someone sees the notice in the paper
and decides to talk.
- [Narrator] Andrea Wiwcharuk responds to the Urbanoski ad.
She's 14 when she hears Dwayne Johnston brag at a party.
"I stabbed her.
"I stabbed her."
According to Wiwcharuk,
Johnston added that the murder felt great.
- "And they tore the car apart and we'll never get caught."
- Most importantly, Wiwcharuk is willing to take the stand,
but then something else comes out.
There's a whole other revelation.
- Suddenly, someone else in The Pas
realizes they should speak up.
- This new revelation is that Sheriff Gerald Wilson
of The Pas runs into Colgan at the local Legion.
He buys him alcohol and takes him back to his trailer
in the hopes of eliciting a confession of some sort.
- [Narrator] The sheriff would recall
that Colgan's confession took place in maybe 1977 or '78,
but doesn't come forward until 1986.
- Sheriff, while a peace officer but not a police officer,
whatever rationale he may have had to keep that a secret
I think is complete baloney.
And I would say he had an obligation
to pass that information on to the RCMP.
- All the information that came out,
even though it may be over a decade late,
it couldn't be more significant.
- [Narrator] Officer Urbanoski visits Lee Colgan,
armed with a witness willing to take the stand.
- Urbanoski knows that of all of the four suspects,
Colgan is likely going to be the one who talks.
- And he breaks his silence,
the silence that started the day of the murder
and continued until his father
took him to see D'Arcy Bancroft,
only to find out that Dwayne Johnston
had already been at Bancroft's office.
- At the end of the day, the Crown Attorney was right.
"Wait, someday it might happen," and it did.
- [Narrator] Authorities arrest Lee Colgan
at his parents' house
and charge him with first-degree murder.
- And he breaks the silence, the silence that started
after the murder of Helen Betty Osborne.
What authorities wanna know now is who did what that night?
Who wielded the screwdriver?
Who murdered Helen Betty Osborne?
- [Narrator] Norm Manger, James Houghton,
Lee Colgan, and Dwayne Johnston are out drinking
and cruising the town for sex.
(uneasy music)
- They see Helen Betty Osborne walking,
alone and vulnerable.
They pull her into their car.
- [Narrator] The men use fake names with each other
so Helen won't be able to identify them later.
Norm Manger is in front.
James Houghton drives,
with Colgan, Osborne, and Johnston in the backseat.
- First, they go to Houghton's cabin,
but Betty is screaming and yelling
and there's people around.
(eerie music)
- So they forced her back into the car
and they moved on to a more secluded area.
- I think they intentionally were going to rape her
and I think she just fought them off,
so they decided, "Well, let's just do a number on her,"
and just there was no stopping them.
- There was a lotta alcohol and drugs,
but the initial version places Houghton and Johnston
outside the car with Betty.
Colgan and Manger are inside the car
when the worst of the beating happens.
Manger is extremely drunk.
(eerie music continuing)
- Stabbed her numerous times, put the boots to her.
It was just a vicious, vicious attack,
and dumped her body out there
and just drove away as if nothing happened.
- Of course, they thought they could get away with it
because in the viewpoint that they had,
"This was just an Indian that we picked up
"and nobody's going to care."
- [Narrator] Dwayne Johnston is arrested
at his home in Revelstoke, British Columbia.
Lee Colgan and Dwayne Johnston
are to attend a preliminary hearing.
But minutes prior, Colgan is offered full immunity
if he testifies against Johnston.
- Better off to get some convicted than none
because without Colgan making a deal,
he wasn't gonna testify.
There was two people that dragged her body in
and two people came out.
Manger, if you believe Colgan, is passed out in the car.
- It's essentially a case
of what's the first rat off the ship?
His lawyer was obviously able to have discussions
with the Crown Attorney
in terms of working on a deal for him.
- [Narrator] Colgan gives police enough evidence
to charge Jim Houghton
and he's arrested on a friend's porch in Alberta
and charged with first-degree murder.
16 years after the murder of her daughter,
Justine Osborne finds out about the arrests from the radio.
- You oughta bring some sort of closure to the family,
and that's really hard to do sometimes 'cause families say,
and you can't blame 'em and they get upset,
"What are you guys, you're not doing your job,"
that kind of thing.
And you know what?
It's a hard job to do sometimes.
- They've been suffering for years
and there's still a trial to face.
(tense music)
(apprehensive music)
(tense music)
- [Narrator] James Houghton
and Dwayne Johnston's murder trial begins at 10:30 a.m.
From the 104 jury prospects,
20 Indigenous people are eliminated,
leaving an all-white two-woman and 10-man jury.
Because he agrees to turn evidence against the others,
Lee Colgan cannot be held liable
for the murder of Helen Betty Osborne.
- Norman Manger, although he was inside the car,
wasn't charged.
- When the girl testified that Johnston had said,
"I stabbed her and I stabbed her and I stabbed her,"
no-brainer for the jury.
"Definitely he's one of the killers, right?
"We don't know who the other one is,
"so we're not gonna convict."
They had a reasonable doubt.
- For those four men, no one was really held accountable,
perhaps the one, and it just doesn't sit right at all.
- Not happy with only getting one convicted.
Unfortunately, that's our system
and that's what the jury felt.
- [Narrator] Two days later,
the Manitoba Attorney General commences an investigation
into why The Pas Sheriff Gerald Wilson
did not reveal the confession
that Lee Colgan had made to him in the late-'70s.
- Another inquiry would be launched
by local leaders in The Pas.
And two months later, Sheriff Gerald Wilson would be demoted
for withholding information.
- The sheriff claims that everyone in town
was aware of the information
and the RCMP should have been as well.
That's why he didn't do anything.
(calm music)
- A short time later, Sheriff Gerald Wilson is reinstated
after a arbitration hearing.
- What little credit I can give him
is that he acknowledged that racism,
that this wasn't his neighbor's daughter.
This was some Indigenous girl he didn't know.
And at the time, who cared about them?
Certainly not him.
- [Narrator] The province launches
the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry.
- Helen Betty Osborne's case and what happened
was one of the ways to highlight
just how much injustice there was
for Indigenous people at the time, and it's still ongoing.
- [Narrator] The inquiry finds many problems,
pointing to the failure by authorities in The Pas.
It also finds problematic that all four of the suspects
were early on represented
by a single lawyer, D'Arcy Bancroft.
(calm music continuing)
- She definitely was a symbol for change of this idea
that you cannot just throw away Indigenous women.
You cannot just use them and abuse them,
throw them away and think nothing is going to happen
and that you'll get away with it.
(brooding music)
- [Narrator] Dwayne Johnston becomes eligible for parole
after serving only seven years of his sentence
and begins a day parole program.
- But about 200 protestors walk 800 kilometers
from the north to Winnipeg in April 1996 to protest.
Johnston's parole is revoked.
- [Narrator] Unexpectedly, Dwayne Johnston participates
in a healing circle from jail
with the RCMP and the Osborne family.
- Johnston claims he did not participate in the murder
and identifies James Robert Houghton as the killer.
(uneasy music)
They had made a pact and that they had all taken turns
stabbing Helen's body with the screwdriver
to keep them all bound to silence.
- This conversation between Johnston and the family
is leaked to the media.
Already, lawyers for the other two accused
are arguing they can't get a fair trial
with this taped conversation out there.
- Who knows if Johnston's
extremely belated confession is reliable?
One person certainly knows what happened.
- [Narrator] D'Arcy Bancroft,
initially the lawyer for the four suspects,
was most probably the only person
to hear all firsthand accounts in his office.
- The inquiry has now reached
the end of phase one of its work.
- [Narrator] The Aboriginal Justice Inquiry
also finds problematic and highlights in its conclusions
that all four suspects were early on represented
by a single lawyer, D'Arcy Bancroft.
D'Arcy Bancroft would die only a few years
after the death of Helen Betty Osborne at age 30.
His law partners would then destroy his files.
- He shoulda said, "Look, I can't act for all four of you."
For example, Colgan, who probably told him,
"I didn't do anything.
"I know what they did, but I didn't do anything.
Said, "Well, then, you know what?
"You better get your own lawyer.
"I'll act for you
"and those guys will have to get a different lawyer
"because I can maybe make a deal for you right now."
But he didn't do that.
And so, he just told them all to be quiet.
- The Indigenous community came together
and said, "This needs to stop."
This is a person who was going to bring value
to her community by being a schoolteacher
and teaching the next generation,
and it was just cut short.
For what?
Because these four individuals
decided that she wasn't worth anything,
that they can use her and discard her.
- Can't be forgotten that someone did have the courage
to come forward and speak and testify,
and that person wouldn't have come forward
if she hadn't seen that story in the paper.
- Lucky because, well, that young boy found the body
or at least saw the body early on.
Otherwise, it might have never been solved.
- She's been a symbol for change
in the late-1980s and early-'90s
that we have to stop devaluing our women in this way.
It has to stop.
(somber music)
(tense music)