Helen Betty Osborne was abducted and brutally murdered near The Pas, Manitoba, early in the morning of November 13, 1971. The high school student, originally from the Norway House Indian Reserve, was 19 years old when she was killed.
Several months later Royal Canadian Mounted Police officers concluded that four young men, Dwayne Archie Johnston, James Robert Paul Houghton, Lee Scott Colgan and Norman Bernard Manger, were involved in the death. Yet it was not until December 1987, more than 16 years later, that one of them, Dwayne Johnston, was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of Betty Osborne. James Houghton was acquitted. Lee Colgan, having received immunity from prosecution in return for testifying against Houghton and Johnston, went free. Norman Manger was never charged.
These are the facts, as suggested by the evidence:
While walking along Third Street in The Pas on that cold Saturday morning, Betty Osborne was accosted by four men in a car. Houghton, who was driving, stopped the car and Johnston got out, attempting to convince Osborne to go with them to "party." She told them that she did not wish to accompany them. She then was forced into their car and driven away. In the car, Osborne was assaulted by Colgan and Johnston as Houghton drove. Johnston ripped at her blouse and Colgan grabbed at her breasts. In spite of her screams and attempts to escape, Osborne was taken to a cabin belonging to Houghton’s parents at Clearwater Lake.
At the cabin, she was pulled from the car and beaten by Johnston while the others stood watching and drinking wine they had stolen earlier. Osborne continued to struggle and scream and, because her assailants were afraid they might be heard, she was forced back into the car and driven further from town to a pump house, next to the lake. At least some of her clothing was removed by her assailants in the car. At the pump house she was once more taken from the car by one or more of her assailants and the beating continued. Her clothes, those which had not been removed earlier, were taken from her. Wearing only her winter boots, she was viciously beaten, and stabbed, apparently with a screwdriver, more than 50 times. Her face was smashed beyond recognition. The evidence suggests that two people then dragged her body into the bush. Her clothes were hidden. The four men then left, returned to The Pas and went their separate ways.
Her body was discovered the next morning and the RCMP commenced its investigation. Initial police efforts centred on the possibility that Osborne’s murderer was one of her friends or was known to them. RCMP officers rounded up her friends and questioned them. They were all Aboriginal. Police had no success in identifying the assailants until they received an anonymous letter in May 1972, implicating Colgan, Houghton and Manger.
The letter was written by Catherine Dick who, it was later discovered, had been told of the murder by Lee Colgan shortly after it took place. Police then seized the Colgan family car, which had been used in the abduction. Examination of the vehicle revealed traces of hair and blood as well as a piece of a brassiere strap.
Shortly after the seizure of the car, an informant told police the fourth man in the car that night was Dwayne Johnston. Attempts to question the suspects were frustrated when the men, on the advice of their lawyer, D’Arcy Bancroft, refused to speak with the police. Repeated attempts and a number of ruses were unsuccessful in breaking through their silence. The police found it impossible to gather sufficient evidence to support a charge of murder against any of the four men believed to have been involved in the murder. By the end of 1972, although rumours were circulating in The Pas as to the identity of those involved in the killing, the investigation had stalled.
Between 1973 and 1983 only intermittent checks were made on the case. In July 1983, an extensive review of the file was begun by Const. Robert Urbanoski, of the Thompson RCMP detachment. Many of the original informants were reinterviewed. The suspects were contacted again. In June 1985, the RCMP placed an article in the local newspaper, requesting the assistance of the public in solving the murder. The result was that several people came forward to recount comments about the murder made over the years by Colgan and Johnston. It was the disclosure of those remarks that finally led to charges of murder being laid against the two in October 1986.
Before the beginning of their preliminary hearing in March 1987, Lee Colgan was granted immunity from prosecution in return for his testimony. On the strength of Colgan’s evidence, Houghton was arrested and charged on July 5, 1987. At the preliminary hearing, later that month, both Houghton and Johnston were committed to stand trial. The Attorney General’s department brought the case to trial in December 1987. Sixteen years after the murder, a jury found Johnston guilty of the murder of Betty Osborne. He was sentenced to life imprisonment without eligibility for parole for 10 years. Houghton was acquitted.
Johnston’s appeal of his conviction was dismissed by the Manitoba Court of Appeal on September 14, 1988 and his application for leave to appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada was denied on March 13, 1989. He is now serving his sentence.
Many Manitobans asked why it took 16 years to bring people to trial for this brutal murder. It was suggested that many people in the town of The Pas learned the identity of those responsible, some within a very short time after the murder, but chose to do nothing about it. It was suggested that because Osborne was an Aboriginal person, the townspeople considered the murder unimportant. Allegations of racism, neglect and indifference, on the part of the citizens of the town, the police and of the Attorney General’s department, were made.
The trial and its outcome focussed public attention on the Osborne case and led to widespread calls for a public inquiry. On March 9, 1988, three months after the trial of Houghton and Johnston, J.J. Harper, executive director of the Island Lake Tribal Council, was killed in an encounter with a City of Winnipeg police officer. This precipitated increased demands by Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Manitobans for an inquiry into all aspects of the way Aboriginal people are dealt with by the justice system in Manitoba. On April 13, 1988, by Order-in-Council, the provincial government established the Public Inquiry into the Administration of Justice and Aboriginal People. The order was confirmed subsequently by an act of the Legislature, entitled An Act to Establish and Validate the Public Inquiry into the Administration of Justice and Aboriginal People.