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SKS S5 E4 "GRAVEYARD ROAD

[Music: Theme]

TB: Female mosquitoes are attracted to the colour blue.

TB: Apparently. I always knew they were attracted to dark colours but .... well, black isn't a colour. It's a shade. I'm going to try to call in a raven or two if I can. If they’re around.

DR: It's a crisp Thompson morning, and I'm with Trevor outside his place.

TB: One will come in and let me know that it .... then it'll land up there on that hydro tower.

TB: Or on the roof of the house over there. Or up on this tree over here. They'll come in and ... sometimes they'll sneak in. But they're out of shouting distance it would seem right now.

TB: Going on in the background noise.

TB: Y’well, we'll keep our eyes peeled. They might come in.

[Sound: Car noises]

DR: Okay. So we're just walking along here into the courthouse.

TB: Sure. Yeah, I'm just kind of following then —I see this step here.

TB: One.

TB: Two.

TB: Thanks. Oh, there you are.

DR: Employee entrance only. Use front entrance.

TB: We gotta go to the front?

TB: Foiled is right. Ooh, doors.

[Sound: A door opening]

DR: Finally, we get inside. And more steps.

TB: Sharp left at the bottom.

THOMPSON COURTHOUSE EMPLOYEE: Hi there.

THOMPSON COURTHOUSE EMPLOYEE: Not bad, you?

THOMPSON COURTHOUSE EMPLOYEE: Okay.

THOMPSON COURTHOUSE EMPLOYEE: It was a long time ago, right?

THOMPSON COURTHOUSE EMPLOYEE Okay.

DR: And we were interested in getting the documents if there's any way to find them.

DR: It would be the preliminary trial for Patrick Sumner.

TB: Thanks so much.

TB: Bye. Sorry, Dave.

TB: Until I get out of here, yeah my eyes are...

[Sound: A door swings open]

TB: We got a door? Angles are all messed up.

TB: Is it locked? There used to be a side entrance...

TB: Are you hungry at all, Dave?

TB: No I’m ok...I don’t think about food when I am talking about Kerrie generally.

TB: He lives here. He's still here. My dad sees him at The Hub. The restaurant my dad goes to have a beer at once in a while downtown. Sumner goes in there still.

TB: No. I wish. You know what? my dad asked me you actually think Sumner's going to talk to him? And I said I hope so. My dad says I don't. I don't think he's going to. My dad still believes he knows something. And the cops will tell you he knows something. But they can't connect him to that crime scene. That's what we know and they know because they charged him. They arrested him. They were convinced it was him. And the fact that my dad has talked to guys that have back room card games, cops involved, ok...here in Thompson. That talked about if they had a million dollars, David, they would pay someone a million bucks to kill this fucker because they're convinced he had some… which doesn't make sense to me. Like if you're a cop and you have a million dollars, why are you going to pay someone to kill a person that you may not actually know is guilty of something? They're that convinced that he's involved.

DR: Tell me about your meetings with Patrick Sumner?

DR: Sumner?

DR: Where's Kerrie Ann buried?

TB: She's not. She's cremated. She's in an urn out on the West Coast right now, and she's been passed around family. [laugh] People take turns with her ashes and my mom's ashes. Kerry is in a beautiful white marble urn ...for her ashes.

TB: Ashes for Kerrie? That's a good question. Maybe after we get some answers. Yeah. I would think.

MANITOBA ARCHIVIST: I've done some searching both with the Thompson staff as well as in the Winnipeg and I see no indication that a transcript was ever created because normally what happens it would have been court reporters.

MANITOBA ARCHIVIST: And there's no indication that a transcript was ever ordered in this particular case. So there is no transcript. And then the records like the code of shorthand or anything else associated with this file have since been destroyed because it is as old as this.

TB: Thank you.

MANITOBA ARCHIVIST: Bye.

TB: I need to look at the fuckers that did this. I need to look them in the eyes and know that they're .. they're not going to walk free anymore because they have no business walking free. They haven’t for the last 30 years. I'm assuming they've walked free all this time and ...as far as I'm concerned, they're cancers that need to be excised from humanity. Just put them in a fucking jail cell and throw away the key.

CME RECEPTIONIST: Okay, let me just put the last name. How do you spell the last name?

TB: Where do I fax a letter to?

DR: We sit in graveyard, sullen and frustrated. We’re both anxious to find some kind of tangible evidence.

DR: Let’s go...uh...take a break here.

[Sound: DR starts up the car]

DR: Here in Northern Saskatchewan looking for Sean Simmans.

[Sound: A GPS issues commands]

DR: Just approaching Sean Simmans’s place here in the small northern Saskatchewan town.

[Sound: A car door opens and closes. There is a dog barking in the distance]

SEAN SIMMANS: Hey!

SS: Good. How are you?

DR: Sean leads me past his dog named Dunna, into his kitchen. He’s mid-40s in brown work overalls, short brown hair and trimmed beard.

SS: So yeah. I just started grade eleven. That works. Because this was October, I think. So ... to go back to the night of. I had just got my driver's license, and my parents I believe they went to Selkirk because my father was looking at transferring to there with Manitoba Hydro. And he’d left me the family truck. I think they took the work truck, and left me the red Ford truck. Which was amazing. It was supposed to be my time to shine and prove what a responsible young man I was. And I just drove the balls off of it. [LAUGH] I remember… oh my gawd I'm ... I'm .... I put hundreds of miles on that truck in like one or two days. You know driving down forest roads. Just driving everywhere because I have the truck. And it was...a school and work night. I can't be 100 per cent sure in that. You know this is where things become weird. We were out, me and three buddies were out playing ...four buddies...We're out playing vehicle tag. And I had the red truck, and I don't remember what the other car was. But I think it was this kid Rene's car. And he had a car, and then Tom Henderson had his truck, and Curtis Beaver was riding with Tom Henderson, and Larry Leepart was riding with me. And we had a football, and now you basically drove all the hell around Thompson. Graveyard, train station, just every back road trying to find each other hit the other vehicle with the football. I hadn't actually heard of the game before this night that we played it, but fine. It was great. And we went for coffee two or three times over the night. We went to the radio station and took them a Black Sabbath album we wanted them to play. Lots of trips up to the cemetery. A couple trips down the horse stable road. We’d go for coffee again. And then somewhere around midnight me and Larry did a loop of the graveyard — the cemetery. Just did all these things. And it was one of those nights where time seems to just stretch on forever. And then at some point, and I'm not going to say the time because I don't really know the time anymore. But it was late. I’m going to say it was midnight-ish. Let's just use that as a pinpoint.

SS: Yeah. He was a .... like a scrawny little guy with .... with a mustache and straggly hair. Anyway, he speeds around us, takes off on the bridge and does, I don't know, eighty miles an hour into town and disappears. Burning rubber. The van behind us we're expecting similar shenanigans. The van just slows down, slows down, slows down. Drops out of sight. And I would say looking in the rearview mirror, looking at my mirrors, it drops out of sight and disappears pretty much in the vicinity of McCreedy park. Which would be a quarter of a mile behind us.

SS: No. I never. It was just the diminishing headlights. It was .... he wasn't driving at the same speed as everyone else. And then he never did come along. You know what I mean?

SS: In my present memory, no. But I mean that's one of those really muddy areas. If they show me, you know a statement where I said that that's probably true. But in my present memory, I mean it's gone. It's just been edited out. I just remember the diminishing headlights of the van, and then not being there anymore. And that's that story, you know? We just these fucking idiots blah blah blah. We went for coffee again. I know I got breathalyzed once or twice that night. I think I still have a little breathalyzer things ‘cause it was my first breathalyzer test, and I passed because we were just smoking cigarettes. So that's all for that night.

SS: And I was...after school, I was working at Hillcrest car wash. You know, this is where times and dates get fuzzy. I don't know that it was the next day or the day after that that I'm talking to Craig Jordan at the radio station. He called me, or maybe I called him for some unrelated reason, but I think maybe he called me. And he was saying that he was...concerned or he was about to do a ... a bulletin about Kerrie Brown being missing. And, you know, oh that's creepy. That's weird, and that's creepy. But there was nothing more to that. She was just missing. But that night, I was at Santa Maria Pizza after work. That's a place. You know, it was a 24-hour joint. It's a place where a lot of the kids went for coffee after hours. And I was there. And I don't know ... can't remember who I was with. And Ian Brown came in, and he might have been with somebody. I mean that table seems full in my memory. And he repeated that his sister's missing...So he had me drive him all around Thompson...he was knocking on doors, we were driving down roads, we were driving down the ...[snaps fingers]...I can't even remember what we used to call that. But it was behind Riverside Drive. We just drove down roads and knocked on doors, and he went to houses.

DR: To clarify, Kerrie was not found at the horse stables, rather, on a hydro line offshoot of the same road that passes by the horse stables. So, as the raven flies, almost a kilometre away from the stables.

SS: The gas pumps that Hillcrest car wash. That's where I work. So a car pulls up, and I recognized the car. That's the idiot that passed us on the shoulder of the road. And so then the news starts to break that Kerrie Brown's been found...and they think the murder occurred this night, which was the night she went missing. And then I started thinking 'wait a minute, we saw guys leaving the horse stables on that night. And technically earlier in the evening, we'd been at the horse stables.' So we saw guys leaving the horse stables. I just called the cops because I'm like this might be something. So I called the police...they had me stop by the station on my way home from work. We talked about what I'd seen the night in question. The night of the vehicular football game. People leavin’ the stables. And then I said 'Well Larry Leepart was with me.' And so they interviewed Larry Leepart, I believe. Now one thing that would come to pass was that I got the colour of the vehicle wrong. So in my initial interview, I called the vehicle an old boat kind of greenish [in colour]….It turned out to be an old boat kind of brownish in colour.

DR: This discrepancy in colour, from green to brownish — actually what some I’ve interviewed call a goldish colour — makes me wonder about other similar cars that may have been in the area. Something to look into.

DR: Wrote a warrant for it.

SS: No, no. He just got gas. Most people just came for fuel. And it should be noted here that the family, the Sumner family, lived at the dump. Like they managed and maintained it. But, you know, it all gets so much weirder because once the name was out there, and once he was taken in, and especially once the arrest was made, the people in that family, the Sumner family, started tailgating the red truck. Our red truck all the time. Like my mother could not go to the grocery store without having the Sumner father following her. And he'd follow her around town. And ...

SS: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Because I can't remember his name myself, but....

SS: Yeah. Following her. And sometimes it would be Patrick. So it’d be Patrick's father driving his truck following my mother driving the truck. Because like I said, the red truck that I was driving was actually the family truck. I got to use it to go to work and school sometimes. But you know it was also for groceries and mom's errands. And she would be followed by either the father or Patrick Sumner himself. And the woman that I was living with later on — because I mean there's a whole, you know, cycle of things that happened after this. But then when I'm living with the woman, and she's driving the red truck sometimes the same things happening to her. She being followed around. And this went on for like two years or more.

SS: Uhhh, some of it was before the prelim started.

SS: The father.

SS: I don't think so. But I know that in the later years, we're talking 10 years later when I'm mining, he'd come into the same restaurant where everybody had coffee. And there was one time where I was sitting with some people, you know, that he happened to know perhaps and it's a longer table. And he set out the other end, and I got up and left.

SS: What do you take in your coffee? Do you want anything in your coffee?

DR: Here, we pause for a coffee break. I resume by switching back to Sean’s story for more detail.

SS: Yeah.

SS: There was a pause. I don't know how long a pause it was. I can't tell you. There was a pause. I turned my lights on. They turned their lights on. And if we look back in time — we had like some time device — and it turned out that they turned their lights on and I turned my lights on. You know, I can't say that's not the way it didn't play out.

SS: Yeah. My lights were off. Their lights were off.

DR: And then it came to be that both lights were on?

DR: At some point before the turn happened. So they turn ... or you turn first.

SS: I'm left going into town, and they turn right going into town behind me.

SS: Right. No. Lights. The car is right behind me.

SS: And the second set of lights behind the car. We knew what the vehicle looked like because we'd seen them when we put our lights on at the road.

SS: Can I describe it in detail. It's like a shitty old rusty old muscle car-y kind of thing. You know, there was, you know, it turns out I mean it was a pukey brown, and there was, you know, some primer spots, some rust spots. I mean beyond that describe the car to you. I don't know.

SS: But I didn't know Sumner owned a car before this. I didn't know Sumner.

SS: Okay. So on that night I would have called it, and this would be from the bridge moment later on. From the bridge moment later on it was like a ..... like a greenish colour. But we're talking about you know orange street lamps on the bridge. We're talking ... so I said I called it like a greenish colour. When the car pulled up to the pump, you know, when I identify it later. That's the car. That's the guy. It was brownish, but it still had that greenish, you know, hue to it.

SS: Yeah.

SS: I don't know.

SS: You know. We didn't discuss things like that. I mean there's a .... there's an interesting side note anecdote I can tell. [laugh] At some point before the preliminary... when they’re building, you know, whatever their case it's going to be. At some point, Larry and I are flown to Winnipeg for deep hypnosis by the RCMP. So the police came to my house as I assume they did to Larry's house. They said to my mother 'you know we want to take Sean to Winnipeg. We're going to hypnotize him.' Botta bing botta boom. Can you sign here? And it was a big moment for me. It was exciting. My mom gave me $200 to buy leather jacket in Winnipeg. I'm like right on. We flew on ..... we flew down on Twin Otter, got to ride with a corpse. We stopped at a .... it was Cross Lake. And they body bag this guy, and they sat him up, and seat belted him in the seat behind me. It was great. You know to a teenage kid it's the greatest thing! [LAUGH]

SS: And then we went to this hypnosis thing where you know they put you in this deep state of relaxation.

SS: I don't know. It's a little more elaborate than the shit you see on TV. So it's like 'Hi, Sean. How are you? We're going to achieve a deep state of whatever.' I don't really remember it all that well. I thought it was horseshit. Even as a 17-year-old, I thought hypnosis was horseshit. And it's only in recent years that I realized that Larry was probably right, and the hypnosis thing was probably just a story, you know. We just went and did that because they really did want to see it with these two kids would talk about when they're in the room. If these two kids were killers, they'd talked about the crime they did. If these two kids were making shit up, they talk about the shit they were making up. You know, it makes a lot of sense. I think it was a good move. And I hope all that shit's on record somewhere because I'd like to know what we were talking in that room.

SS: Oh, you know, nothing that I recall. I'm not saying it didn't happen, but nothing that stands out. I recall things like 'boy, do you remember that ... remember when the guy passed us on the shoulder? That was crazy, right. Fuck yeah! That was crazy.' And I can't remember if Larry was more of a car guy and was able to give them information. I have no idea what information or how Larry's information plays out versus mine. I do think ... I do think that if the two things are here and this is my information, and this is Larry's information, I think you should go with mine. That's what I think. Larry was usually pretty high.

SS: I wasn't.

SS: He's always been smoking. I mean .. [LAUGH] Yeah. No. I've ... I've always had a problem with marijuana. Like any time I did smoke marijuana, say we're at a party, it just made me nauseous and sick. Still does to this day.

SS: No I don't know.

DR: Nine out of ten is a very certain number. If Sean was as confident then as he is now, I can only think that police must’ve been fairly confident in their witnesses, even with Leepart being high as Simmans suggests.

DR: Tell me about the prelim? Tell me what happened and tell me about how the RCMP dealt with you?

SS: I know that the the defence attorney was getting lippy with me like they do on TV, and I do recall a point where I asserted myself and said 'No. I just said what I said.' Whatever it was. I don't recall the line. I just know that I don't like this guy. He's always the little bastard. [LAUGH] And I know that I identified Patrick Sumner in court. Which is what you do. He's sitting right there.

SS: I don't think so.

SS: I mean, I don't think that. You know, 17-year-olds are pretty fucking stupid really. You know. So back when I was 17, I probably thought I was smart. Of course, I was not smart. But .... I don't think so. I think he was pretty vague about things he needed to be vague about. So he was not, you know, feeding me stuff.

SS: No.

SS: Because I mean as a 17-year-old, and maybe even now, I mean I'd be trying to get that information. But no, no. [LAUGH] I would try to get info. I like getting info even to this day.

SS: I felt like the house shattered. It felt like a murderer... had gotten away with something and everything all the emotions and energy that people invested in this was for nothing. Cause that's what it felt like. And it felt like the bottom falling out. Yeah, it just felt like absolute failure on every level. Failure of the justice system, failure of the police, failure even of myself. Like I had just ... if I just noticed one more thing... Like I can't recall what make and model the van was. You know, I knew it was white. And I have thought, and I say nine out of 10 ... nine out of 10 certainty that Patrick Sumner was involved. I don't think we can say he did it because we're pretty sure there were more than one people there...nine out of 10. Me talking in my opinion. But I mean that one of 10, you know, I've laid awake at nights and wondered if, you know, this stupid 17-year-old steered everything wrong. You know. I don't think so, but it's a possibility, and it has kept me up at night. But then I think, well they're the police. They're supposed to have their eggs in many baskets. They're not supposed to put all their eggs in one basket. Because a girl was murdered. You know. Viciously.

SS: Yeah. 1999. I want to say 1999. Could have been '98. 1999 they were trying to reopen the case and the police came to my door and asked for blood and DNA samples, and I gave them. And that's the last I've heard. That was the first and last I've heard of from them at all.

DR: Simmans said this in the prelim, right?

DR: I haven’t yet been able to connect with Larry Leepart.

DR: Ok. Let’s see if we’re in the right place here.

DR: Hello, Mrs. Simmans.

DR: Nice to see you. I've got Trevor with me here. Trevor Brown.

TB: Thank you.

TB: You sure?

TB: Okay.

DR: I had a great conversation with your son Sean...And that went really well. What I'm interested in finding out from you, apart from what you want to tell me, is .... you went to the prelim.

DR: The Sumner prelim.

DR: Did you go every day?

DR: Great. I'm interested in hearing from you what you heard, what you remember, what stands out from the Sumner prelim. And also, what you can remember about Larry Leepart's testimony?

MS: That's right.

MS: He watched two vehicles pull out onto the highway behind him. But then one of them turned off towards McCreedy Park.

MS: No. I don't have any recollection. Sorry.

MS: No.

MS: The next morning, Tuesday morning, it was Sean. And it was against Wolson.

MS: And he ... he actually tried to say 'this car is not the one that really was there.' You know. And he had pictures of Patrick Sumner's car in a ... in this photo album.

DR: Sumner's lawyer had pictures of. the car?

MS: Oh yeah. And so then he would [snap fingers] he ... he said 'well, is this the car?' And eventually, Sean literally stood up and said "I already told you.’ Everybody in the courtroom clapped because Wolson had been hammering at these kids. They weren't adults. They were young kids. And it was terrible. And they told me at that time that Sean was their star witness. That everything was being placed on Sean. And I just thought this is terrible to put on one teenager’s shoulders. I said why did you get involved.' And he said 'because it's the right thing to do.' I said 'But you're going to be tied up with this now for months.' And he said 'but mom, that's ... you have to.' Then Sunday, the police went out to see Patrick Sumner. I don't know whether they arrested him that day or what? But they took him into custody, talked to him, and everything.

MS: Saturday they found her. Sean then saw that car. Then Sean went to the RCMP. K?

MS: On the same Saturday. I'm trying to remember, but I think that's when the cops eventually checked, "okay, that car belongs to Patrick Sumner.' Sunday, I think they went out to see him, and they confiscated his car. Maybe they didn't. But at some point, that car got totally got cleaned up by the... you know, they went over it. Kerrie, this also came out in the hearing, she was taking a medication that would cause her to lose hair. Faster than we would normally. And so they found hairs in his car that matched up. I'm trying to think of how many points. Was it 16 out of 20 points or whatever? Because back then the DNA was different. Which that was considered a very very good match.

MS: Very close.

MS: Yes.

MS: That's right.

DR: Who did?

DR: There's no way to verify if or when Patrick Sumner or anyone else followed Sean Simmans home.

DR: Would he have been driving the truck? The red truck?

DR: Okay.

DR: The same truck that he had the other time.

(crosstalk)

DR: But who was following you?

DR: And you're sure it was him?

DR: Not his father?

DR: Oh! Well, that's a big difference. between him and

(crosstalk) ...

DR: A Sumner.

DR: [laughing] You got to be sure because Patrick was arrested on the Thursday, right?

(crosstalk)

DR: Okay.

DR: Did you ever call the RCMP and tell them that you believe someone in the Sumner family was following you?

DR: Why no?

DR: I don't think until the prelim Sumner would have been told that Simmans...that your son...Sean was the witness.

DR: I don't think Sumner would have found out ....

(crosstalk)

DR: So you think Sumner may have recognized from...

(crosstalk)

DR: From that night?

DR: The radio station closes at one.

DR: You think that's the timing. That's good. I need to know that.

MS: The police checked that out and that song played at a particular time. At that particular time.

MS: We all knew he was guilty. And I .. I don't even know whether I should say [pause] this. We were down in the cafeteria, and Judge Charles Newcombe was there...He had already made the ruling. This was more or less like within half an hour of the whole thing. We were down for coffee...And he and I were talking and .... and I said 'how can you let him go?' And he said 'we all know he's guilty, but we just don't have enough for the.... jury to unanimously say he’s guilty at this moment.' And he said 'this way at least it can. go back to trial.'

[crosstalk]

DR: The judge at the prelim said Patrick Sumner was guilty?

DR: He's passed away?

DR: Trevor and I finish up with Merilyn and say our goodbyes. According to Sean and his mother, Sumner appears at or near the gas station where Sean works on a few occasions at times after Kerrie disappears. And that leads Sean to identify Patrick as the person he saw coming out of the stable road the night Kerrie disappeared. Sean is nine out of 10 it was Sumner. But who else might have had a car like the one Sumner owned. And what did Sumner own? And what about the van that pulled out after the car, according to Sean, and drifted back in his mirror until its lights, disappeared from view.

ATW: You have been listening to Episode 4: Graveyard Road. Want a place to discuss episodes with others and discover exclusive content? Join our new Facebook group and follow us on Twitter: @SKSCBC. Someone Knows Something is hosted, written and produced by David Ridgen.

The series is mixed by Cesil Fernandes and produced by Chris Oke, Steph Kampf, Amil Delic, Eunice Kim and executive producer Arif Noorani. Original music by David Federman. Our theme song is “Thompson Girl” by The Tragically Hip.

TRANSCRIPT: Someone Knows Something - Season 5, EP 4

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