[Ryan McMahon] The Brayden Bushby trial
was a rare chance for the system to get it right.
♪
There was a huge sigh of relief...
when the judge read the guilty verdict.
And for me, it was just a chance to breathe.
It was like the long, long exhale after
months of what felt like holding your breath.
But, I couldn't help but think of...
the other Indigenous families that didn't have this
opportunity in court, that would never see the
killer of their loved ones face a jury.
♪
What happened to all of the teenagers
who've died in Thunder Bay...
most of them suspiciously found dead
in the city's rivers?
What's being done for them?
It's one thing to have heard of it,
but it's another thing, I think, entirely,
to pay attention to it.
For them, there are no suspects like Bushby
to bring to trial.
Police maintain there is no evidence of foul play.
They simply have no answers.
I've never seen such a negligent
death investigation in my entire career.
If these were white kids, after two,
can you imagine the outcry?
And when you really pay attention to this story,
you understand that this story is continuing
to evolve, and it just keeps going.
I don't think it's safe down there.
There's something going on down by the rivers.
And one terrifying theory that keeps swirling
around Thunder Bay...
suggests that this 'something'
is a serial killer.
♪
[Rolling thunder]
[Sirens]
♪
This morning, a source told us that...
the park here, Kam Park, was police taped off.
And, came down to the south side of the park,
asked what was happening.
He didn't say anything.
And Jon received word that the initial police report
describes him as an Indigenous male.
♪
You have what I believe to be cops in a Zodiac,
going up and down the river.
A forensics van. There's a drone watching us.
I should wave to it.
Hello. [Laughing] Is that weird?
They're watching us and we're watching them?
They should get used to it 'cause
we're gonna watch them for a while.
♪
My motivation is to find out why these things
are still happening here, and hold those that are
supposed to be fixing the problem to account.
I take no joy in being here.
But here we are.
Since releasing the podcast series in 2018,
I've been hearing a few theories on what could be
happening in many of these Indigenous deaths.
Three theories that I need to explore.
When you look at the profile of the teenagers
who've died in Thunder Bay,
similarities just jump out at you.
They were all Indigenous,
all between the ages of 14 and 18.
And, they've all died around waterways.
And when you put pins on a map, you have to say,
"What the hell is going on here?"
♪
There have been concerns within northern communities
that there was in fact a serial killer that was in
Thunder Bay that was specifically targeting
vulnerable Indigenous youth.
As crazy as that might sound to some,
we may actually have living proof.
Dozens of locals who have spotted a mysterious truck
prowling the streets and back alleys.
Some swear it's blue.
Others say it's white.
And some who may have actually come face-to-face
with the killer.
We were closing up like we normally do,
around 11:00 p.m.
A young, maybe 30-something Indigenous man
walks straight towards us from across the street.
His clothes were completely soaking wet
when he was talking to us.
He had obviously been assaulted.
There was blood on his face and
a large gash on his forehead.
We were trying to insist on calling the police or
an ambulance, at least,
which he was quite adamant against.
♪
I have heard from many youth in the city of Thunder Bay
that they have had similar experiences.
But, I'm not a cop, and feel way over my head here.
And I can't say what they experienced was a
close call with a serial killer,
but maybe Dave Perry can.
What do you usually drink?
Whiskey, but it's a bit early.
I'm gonna make it easy, have a latte.
He's a former homicide investigator...
And someone familiar with the city of Thunder Bay.
Wow, spectacular.
-It's a good view. -Look at this.
♪
I did almost 28 years as a police officer.
From human trafficking,
I went into the homicide squad.
Then I got a call and asked if I would come down and
take over the sexual assault squad at headquarters.
That's how I wrapped up my career.
One of the things I loved about policing,
and still do today is that,
every adventure's a new challenge.
To me, the best part of any day, for me to
get focused on somebody and to be able to go out and
bring them to justice.
It all seems so improbable,
a serial killer seems so improbable...
until you dig into something like the national inquiry
into missing and murdered Indigenous women.
Like, that's improbable.
I think when we take a look at, you know,
different current serial killers,
out in BC, with Pickton and what he did with the
sex workers there, there is a predatory instinct...
to choose victims who traditionally have been
very neglected by police services,
where those deaths will always be treated as, as...
you know, bad luck.
So, like, in the realm of possibility,
could there have been someone targeting Indigenous people?
If you just talk about the serial killer component...
there hasn't been obvious evi.
And typically, you have that in a serial killer case.
But there are exceptions, like what happened in
Toronto's gay village with the Bruce McArthur case.
[News] For nine days, police sifted through two compost
piles dumped on a ravine behind the house where
McArthur stored his landscaping tools.
[Dave] If you look at the City of Toronto on a map and
how small the gay village is,
that little circle on the map,
and that was all happening in that area,
that just screams of a serial killer.
♪
There are there are no similarities between that
hustling and bustling downtown neighbourhood
in Toronto...
and where Indigenous youth have been found
in the city of Thunder Bay.
But, the direct similarity between the two cases
is that it all happened in concentrated areas.
♪
But interestingly, as in serial killers,
where you're looking at patterns of behaviour,
there were patterns of behaviour up in Thunder Bay
that would draw any investigator's attention to
at least say, "What the hell is going on here?"
♪
So, what do those in power at the Police Service and at
City Hall think of the possibility of a
serial killer loose in Thunder Bay?
I'm not sure it was ever seriously considered.
This is former Mayor Keith Hobbs,
suggesting his own theory.
There's been no evidence of foul play
in all those investigations.
There was alcohol related in every single one.
Again, I think that we have to start teaching the
children that are coming down from northern communities
how to integrate into the city
when they come to the city.
"Integrate into the city."
These words cut through me
when a story breaks across the country,
instantly reminding me of what "integration"
failures looks like. and its
On this Friday night,
a devastating discovery in B.C.
A graveyard full of hundreds of children
at a former residential...
While we were filming in Thunder Bay,
news broke out of B.C. that a mass grave
had been found at a residential school.
We begin tonight with the horrific discovery of a
suspected burial site for children,
some as young as three,
at the former Kamloops Indian
Residential School in British Columbia.
The remains of what's believed to be
215 children were found in unmarked graves.
♪
There are only a few moments in my life where
I feel like time stopped.
♪
This is one of them.
♪
I was numb when I heard the news.
I have Indian residential school survivors
in my family, and in my community.
♪
We had heard stories like this for years.
♪
Just because Canada and the world hadn't learned the
whole truth yet, didn't mean we didn't know it already.
♪
This is what happens when you force Indigenous kids
to integrate into white culture.
♪
You steal kids from their parents.
♪
You force a foreign language, religion,
and culture on them...
And, sometimes...
you kill them along the way.
♪
What if I told you that, in its own way,
it's still happening here in Thunder Bay?
Because here's another thing that connects
most Indigenous teen victims:
they were all forced to leave their homes and
families to come here...
for school.
Children have to go to Thunder Bay if they are
living in northern remote communities because there is
no facilities or schooling for them to be able to pursue
high school within their own First Nation.
And the answer provided to these children
in these communities
is to take them out of their homes,
to put them into boarding homes in Thunder Bay.
It's really hard to see your daughter leave.
The fact that there are students who have to leave
their homes and families to go to high school,
you know, nowhere else in this country
that that happens. And while it is a choice,
you know, it's still so much...
a forced choice, right?
It is completely unimaginable for me to go from living in
a community where you know everybody,
to living in a community where there are traffic lights,
and all kinds of different things that you have only
experienced vicariously on television...
or through stories of people that you know.
For First Nations youth who are coming to a whole
new city and don't know the rules of the city,
the know-how of, how do we get around,
how do we stay safe, who do we talk to,
who do we not talk to-
How do you navigate...
urban populated settings?
When these young people pack their bags and move to the
city for school, they leave everything behind.
Everything.
♪
I'm not from a northern fly-in community,
so I don't know what it's like to move from one to
a relatively big city like Thunder Bay.
But these folks do.
-What's our team name? -'Kick Ass.'
-Can we do that? -Yeah.
As long as your kookum doesn't kick your ass
for swearing on TV.
[Laughing]
♪
-You go ahead, Amelia. -Okay.
-Almost got the 8 ball in! -Pfft!
That was the 8.
She's had her spirit helpers just directing it.
[Laughing] I did.
-You see it? -Eh!
I have to close my one eye.
[Laughing]
I'm bad with perspective.
You should have heard my art teacher.
[Laughing]
Amelia is from here, but Leslie and Lucille know
how hard it is to leave everything behind
to come to Thunder Bay.
No!
It was exciting coming here, and...
But that excitement disappeared.
I started to feel lonely, started drinking and,
you know, doing drugs, and...
eventually, I just got sent home.
When I moved to the, the city from the rez,
everything was so different for me.
I felt lost, I felt lonely for my friends and
family back in my community.
Everything is so different here.
Everything is so fast.
So, is it overwhelming and...?
Yeah, it was overwhelming, yeah...
-That feeling. -Where are you from?
Webequie, is where I, where I came from.
Late Jordan Wabasse,
one of our youth in my community,
got thrown in the river,
and I was very devastated by that news.
He's talking about Jordan Wabasse,
one of the youth that died here.
Lucille, you okay? No.
[Off-screen] ...take a break?
♪
I had a 15-year-old cousin who...
came out here for high school.
And she's from...
she was from Nishganiga.
Then...
um, she went home for a break.
She didn't want to,
she didn't want to come back out here.
Then when she came back here...
She killed herself.
♪
Even my sister, throughout the time she's been out here
for high school, she tried to take her own life.
I guess she was lonely and, going through a lot.
And I just didn't know how to help her.
Having to leave at 12 or 13 is just hard for any kid.
I don't care how mature or how strong you are,
without those supports around you,
when you go to high school, far away from
your family and your community,
you're gonna have a rough time,
you're gonna have a tough time.
And I experienced that firsthand.
How does this tie into our theory #1?
Because their vulnerability and their innocence,
would have made them prime targets for a serial killer.
When we see history, and we see how
residential schools where, again,
these kids were taken out of the family home for
the purpose of pursuing education,
and what ultimately ends up happening is
nothing akin to education.
What ends up happening is ultimate death.
When you are Indigenous in the city of Thunder Bay,
grieving and sadness and trauma
is a part of your reality.
But so, too, is searching and fighting...
and walking the streets looking for loved ones
that have gone missing.
I've lived here my whole life, right, so...
I've searched for these kids.
There's three of them that I can remember searching for.
When you say searching, you mean?
Their bodies.
There was always, like, search parties going on,
and we'd always go look.
Like, why am I searching for kids when I'm a kid, myself?
Why is this happening in this city?
I've been in Sandy Lake
when parents have to...
Are getting ready to go to the airport to get, you know,
children on a plane, to get their
and knowing that they're, you know,
they're going to a place like Thunder Bay where...
too many students have come home in, you know, in coffins.
And the fear, like the fear is so real.
♪
I started thinking about when my kids were in 7th grade,
and thinking about them needing to leave their
safe place just to go to school.
People should be shocked by that.
I don't think people are shocked enough by this,
you know, hundreds of kids having to leave
their communities just to go to school.
I'm not the only one to say this,
but I mean, it's like, you know,
extension of residential school and these
continued policies of our government to...
to, what, assimilate us Indians into mainstream?
At first, I thought the serial killer theory was just
a wild rumour that couldn't possibly be true.
But then I took a moment of pause...
and I thought about the history of this country.
♪
For Indigenous people, everything's a rumour
until it's proven true.
And so, there was a time in this country where...
the atrocities at residential schools were rumours, right?
There was a time when it wasn't believed that
electric chairs were used on kids.
Rumour until proven true.
And right now, the rumour that has existed here in the
city is that someone could be harming these kids.
♪
You're gonna go left where these cars are, Sean.
♪
Let's go back to the case of Jordan Wabasse for a moment.
Because, when it comes to theory #1,
his story certainly seems to fit the mold.
♪
He's down here, his shoe is found, his hat is found,
and then, somebody says there's running...
footprints that lead towards the open ice.
Suggesting that he was being chased and
running for his life.
But the serial killer theory actually falls apart
before Jordan ever got to the river...
at the bus stop where he got off.
So, this is where Jordan got off the bus and...
That's his house, that second white door.
What's that, like, two, 300 meters?
Yeah.
That's sad, eh, when you think he was this close?
And I can't- This is the part I can't get over.
It's right there.
You know, you can, you can see it.
Something interjected right there, right?
Something interjected on what his path was.
And, according to some,
that 'something' was more than one person.
There were witnesses on the bus who saw people waiting
at the bus stop for him when he got off the bus.
So, if the story is that there was more than
one person waiting for Jordan when he got
off the bus that night, that must mean that
we're not actually dealing with a serial killer...
♪
'Cause from what I'm told,
serial killers almost always act alone.
And, Jordan isn't the only one to be attacked by
a group of men.
♪
I just thank God that you're still alive with us.
That's what the aunt of Jayden Matthews says after
her 16-year-old nephew escaped an attempted
abduction recently.
He says the men grabbed his left arm and punched him
three times in the stomach, then, he saw a rock.
Which brings us to a second popular theory,
and this one involves a boy named Stephen Cole.
♪
[Dogs barking]
♪
Stephen Cole was about the same age group,
they anecdotally knew each other,
and he told many people...
that he did it, that he and a friend or two had chased
Jordan and rolled him for a bag of weed.
♪
He told one friend this the next day.
He told his brother, he told his girlfriend.
I mean, continued to tell people for years.
♪
[News] Thunder Bay Police are reporting a major drug bust
last night on the city's north side.
Gangs, and guns, and drugs-
they're a huge part of the crime problem
here in Thunder Bay.
And I think to myself,
could this be what happened to Jordan?
Could this be what happened to the others that
have died in the rivers?
I just don't think we're ever gonna know.
There was no investigation of this lead to
see if it could possibly be true.
The Thunder Bay Police dropped the case
as soon as his body was found,
and the coroner declared it death by cold water drowning.
♪
That doesn't explain how he got into that river.
And that's really the nexus of this whole story.
♪
The role of the police is to figure out and investigate,
why did that person drown?
How did that person get into the water?
And the Thunder Bay Police Service said,
"We don't need to investigate this further.
No harm here. Nothing's happened here."
♪
There is one other theory...
And it's dark.
♪
To understand this theory,
you have to hear the incredible story...
of Darryl Kakekayash.
I have some sage if you want to smudge.
Yeah.
Darryl grew up in Round Lake,
a community 500 kilometres
north of Thunder Bay.
He convinced his mother to let him come to Thunder Bay
for high school and opportunity,
when he was just 15 years old.
Thanks for coming back here. I'll give you this for your,
your journey, if you need more.
Thank you.
♪
The question of how so many Indigenous people
ended up in the rivers...
in unexplained circumstances has haunted me from the time
I first was approached about these cases.
It started to dawn on me, it's a strange pattern-
youth or others, down by the river,
in a vulnerable state, end up dead in the river.
♪
[Clicking]
For Darryl,
the day began like any other school day.
Lunch break was, like, one hour.
So, I took off and bought a tracksuit.
It was white, and it was, like,
black stripes on the side.
You were looking good.
-Yeah, so... -[Laughing]
After school, Darryl jumps on a bus and
heads down to the mall.
He's meeting his cousins there to see a movie.
What movie did you watch?
My cousin wanted to go watch Alvin, Simon and Theodore,
'cause I don't know, what the hell,
that's for kids. I told him,
[Laughing]
They have a few laughs, waste a few hours,
and then it's time to get home before curfew.
After 6:00 or 7:00, the bus schedule kind of changes.
It starts to cut back.
It was already getting like 10:00.
And the boarding home where I was staying,
they told me that 10:30 was the latest I can come home,
so I said, maybe I'll just walk home.
I kept walking down.
But up ahead, before getting to the second bridge,
I seen three guys there.
They were, basically, like white guys.
He was confronted by some white young men,
who sounded like trolls to me, quite frankly.
They were underneath this bridge that crossed the river,
and they came out from under the bridge and
they confronted him.
I knew they were a bit older than me because of
the way they looked and stuff.
When you saw them, what did you...
I was gonna ignore them.
Just mind your own business.
Just walk by and give a little wave and that's it.
But they stopped me.
Darryl was saying, "I'm just, I'm a high school kid,
I just arrived here."
They asked me, like, if I had a cigarette.
I gave them one stick each.
Ah, then...
And after, after that, I...
I looked at my time and I was already getting
close to 10:30. I said, "Anyways, guys,
I got to get going." I said, "I got to get home."
So, I tried getting around them, but they-
they, they kept blocking me in.
The guy on the left threw the first punch.
And then I lost my view where that guy on the centre was.
And frickin' guy, he pulled out, like,
maybe a 2x4 this big,
and he smacked me around the back with it.
And that's how they got me down.
And they basically kind of dragged me towards
down where that, where that water was.
It's October.
It's Thunder Bay, the river is freezing.
Once I hit that water, the coldness just hits you.
And so, I started panicking, started panicking.
I stood up, but the guys grabbed me again,
and then I got thrown back in there the second time.
And so, there I started thinking, like, this is,
this is, this was gonna probably be it.
I was pretty loud in there,
like yelling for help and shit like that.
-Yeah. -[Sniffling]
The water wasn't deep, but he was soaked.
And so, what he tried to do was escape to
the other side of the river.
But the ground under the water,
it was so muddy, like, I lost my shoes.
So, I just kept thinking, you know,
get out, get out, get out.
Finally, Darryl was able to grab on to
the branch of a tree.
And then I pushed up, and then I started
running up the hill as fast as I can.
♪ [Suspenseful] ♪
After he got out, he flagged down a city bus.
♪
An initial police report was made.
But, he quit school, left Thunder Bay,
and avoided talking about what happened for years.
Was your reluctance to...
talk to the police at all tied to, like,
not trusting the police?
Every body that they found at the river,
there was always, "No foul play."
You know what I mean?
It's like, I don't think they're taking it serious.
Listen, I've been around this business my whole life.
They were gonna kill him.
What other purpose would you have for
hitting somebody with a 2x4,
throwing him in a freezing cold river,
and then throwing him in every time
he tried to get out? That was an attempt murder.
♪
Who would do this to a teenager...
who's just walking home alone at night?
This is where it all happened.
This is where they attacked you?
Yeah.
That's the branch I pulled myself with.
This place looks so different.
♪
We've heard about people getting things
thrown at them out of moving cars-
chicken McNuggets, eggs,
garbage... trailer hitches.
We've heard about attempted abductions.
We know these stories, so it's not outside the
realm of possibility that it is a group of people
out there picking on vulnerable
Indigenous people for fun.
That is possible.
You know, there's an old story about what farm boys
do to go have fun on a Saturday night, right?
They go and tip cows and have a good laugh about it, right?
So, what if...
instead of tipping cows...
they roll "drunk Indians" into the river?
♪
Well, you sharing your story, I know it brings
everything up for you again, you know.
For me, when I offer tobacco, like it's...
like a chance for me to pray, but
a chance for me to give thanks, too.
And I think for me giving thanks tonight is to give
thanks to you, and giving thanks that
you're still here, you know.
I kind of thought, like, I should have died.
I should have been done with at the time.
Every day when I wake up, I always say thank you for...
thank you for letting me live another day.
That's what I always say.
♪
[Crying]
[Rubbing hands together]
[Anishinaabe prayer]
There's something going on down by the rivers.
I don't think it's safe down there.
And I think the truth is that some of these cases...
are homicides.
♪
These three theories haunt me.
I really want to know why the cops didn't try to
work harder to solve these deaths.
And I hate to say it, but I'm starting to think
maybe they didn't want to know the truth.
Maybe they just didn't give a shit.
I have a lot of questions- I have a lot of questions
that we may never have answers to because
the whole fucking problem we have in front of us...
is that we know the Thunder Bay Police Service
botched the investigation to begin with.
♪
There's only one way to describe the systemic reality
around Indigenous deaths in Thunder Bay.
I used to think it was just incompetence.
Now I realize, the system operates in Thunder Bay
exactly as it's meant to operate.
There are two kinds of lives in Thunder Bay.
There are worthy lives- non-Indigenous people
who are worth investigating-
and there are Indigenous lives that are not.
I sound like a conspiracy theorist,
but you have to ask yourself a question:
How many times do people need to see the same thing over
and over again before they start asking questions?
I can't comprehend...
what the, these parents go through...
because they lost their kid...
in such a tragic way.
♪
Which brings us back to this,
the fact that it just keeps happening.
Just when you think things can't get any worse in
Thunder Bay, they find a way to get worse.
The scale of this whole thing is overwhelming.
I've talked with people here in the community that figure
there may be dozens, maybe even hundreds more deaths
that we've just never heard of.
And yet, the official story, well,
we're told that all of these deaths
are just tragic accidents.
♪
And for those that have been watching for a long time,
those tragic accidents have been happening for decades.
One person with intimate knowledge of all of this,
is Deputy Grand Chief Anna Betty Achneepineskum.
-Hello! -Hi, Ryan.
What a beautiful spot you choose.
Anna Betty lost her niece in 2016,
and her grandnephew in 2015.
Two more in a long line of suspicious deaths in this
city that she can trace back to the 70s.
I've sat on the riverbank
after a person's body was discovered.
And the young mom had just been told that
her son was identified.
And then there was two other mothers.
One had a...
was pushing a walker.
And she talked about how her son
had been found in the river too.
And he was 15 years old,
had come to Thunder Bay for schooling.
And the deaths were not treated as homicides
or investigated properly.
And it's very, ah...
It's very colour, colour-coded, race-coded.
And, this was in the 70s.
So, I know this has been happening
for a really long time.
♪
Biiskabaaying.
Biiskabaaying, is a word in the Ojibwe language that means,
'To look back in order to look forward'.
And when I look back here in Thunder Bay,
I see indifference and incompetence.
This has gone on for decades,
and people just throw their hands up in the air
and go, "I don't know."
"Who knows?"
♪
As a parent, it's really devastating
when you lose a child.
And your world crashes.
And I have to slowly pick myself up.
And I just don't want other parents to go through that.
It's not good to
take your child back home in a coffin.
Like, I've said it before that...
if these were white kids, after two,
there would have been...
after three, can you imagine the outcry?
For years, those that have lost people in this city
have been pleading desperately for
an official provincial inquest into these deaths,
but with no luck.
You know, I don't know what it is.
Is it because it's an Indigenous "problem"?
Is it because we're in the north, and, you know,
our problems aren't as important as, you know,
Toronto, people may feel?
Or Ottawa? Like...
I don't know.
♪
And then, an announcement.
Finally, a sliver of hope.
Ontario's Chief Coroner announced an inquest today
into the deaths of seven Aboriginal students.
Central to the inquiry will be the challenges faced by
hundreds of kids from remote communities forced to leave
their homes for a high school education.
And none of it would have happened without the
unwavering voice of one grieving mother.
[Ryan] I have the words "Reggie Bushie's mother"
written on this piece of paper.
[Alvin] When governments said, "No,"
she kept at it, and she kept at it.
And when they finally said, "Yes,"
they only wanted to look at one death,
which was Reggie Bushie.
And they also wanted to limit the scope of the inquest,
and Rhoda said, "No, we also need to look at
the other students that died here in Thunder Bay."
We all arrive at the courthouse.
And of course, you have your usual, you know,
the Mayor of Thunder Bay at that time,
Mayor Hobbs, showed up.
You know, people want their photo op on day one.
But almost immediately, that hope is overshadowed.
And we were in one of the smallest courtrooms available
in our brand-new courthouse.
And, they had a total of ten seats.
But the lawyers were taking up some of them.
And there was one strip of four tiny seats
that were connected against the wall,
and that was all that was provided for family,
for community leaders, for friends.
I remember somebody got a chair for Beulah Wabasse,
the grandmother of Jordan Wabasse,
and she had to sit outside.
Somebody opened the doors so that she can see in.
And we were told repeatedly, "There's nothing we can do.
There's nothing we can do."
I can't really describe why this is happening.
But I know one thing, you know.
If these were seven non-Native kids, believe me,
the court system would move heaven and earth to
accommodate the seven families, but...
because these are First Nation families,
they're shoved into a corner in a little room.
That room that they provided said everything
to the families on the first day, right?
"Your children don't matter. You don't matter."
And that was one of the hardest parts that followed,
was watching mothers get on the stand and
have to, basically, beg the jury to believe that
their child was worthy of anyone giving a fuck about.
♪
There was, in my view, a predetermined theory
from the coroner council perspective,
from the Thunder Bay Police Service Board and
Chief's perspective,
from the City of Thunder Bay perspective,
that every youth died due to drinking and
fell in the water.
Drinking, drinking, drinking, drinking.
This became the story, and this is every racist's dream.
"Ah, drunks, you know? Drunks."
It's something that we hear over and over again,
whether it's the police or those in law enforcement and
the justice system: These children sort of
bring it upon themselves to end up dead.
As Indigenous youth, that somehow,
they're responsible for their own demise.
What's really dangerous about that is that the assumptions
that were made about these young people,
is that their actions didn't have to be explained
because of the intoxication.
It doesn't have to make sense that Jordan
got off the bus and went in the wrong direction,
walked down a rocky steep slope,
and then fell into a river, because he was drunk.
Although there wasn't one shred of evidence that
any of these youth ended up in the water...
due to drinking,
but they just solely focused on that.
There are a different set of rules for Indigenous people.
And that's how, right, that's how the
children of Indigenous people were stolen, right?
That's how the 60s Scoop happened.
As the inquest drags on,
the hope dwindles that the mysterious deaths
of these children will ever be solved.
But at the very least,
the police now know they're being watched.
So things have to change, right?
Right?
[Sirens]
The evidence that's available to officers
or investigators are not suspicious.
"No evidence of potential foul play.
Don't worry, everyone, go home."
Like, they were trying to keep me away from seeing him,
like they were trying to hide something.
This is an area where somebody could have easily
saved themselves, even if they were intoxicated.
Well, I would have said you were wrong.
You know, I would have just guessed death by misadventure.
But now, I don't know what else is there.
He knew how to swim.
How come he ended up in the water?
Officers didn't take photos,
did not interview key witnesses.
No crime scene, no forensic truck,
no holding of the scene until an autopsy.
What is it that the Thunder Bay Police knew?
When did they know it and why didn't they tell anybody?
♪