This is a breaking news story. More information will be published later today.
Newly unsealed court documents in the Glen Assoun case reveal that:
The actual killer
Michael McGray
• serial killer Michael McGray was the likely killer of Brenda Way.
The RCMP deleted, destroyed, and lost information that linked McGray to the Way murder
• RCMP Constable David Moore worked in the RCMP’s Violent Crime Linkage Analysis System (ViCLAS) division. ViCLAS is a national database for tracking violent offenders and the offences they commit. Moore was looking for more murders that may have been committed by McGray. Because Moore didn’t fully trust the system, he expanded his search of the database to include “solved” murders — that is, murders for which there was a conviction — and came upon the murder of Brenda Way.
• Moore believed that McGray had killed Way. In 2004, Moore related his suspicions to his superiors at the RCMP — Ken Bradley and Dick Hutchings — but they told Moore “he was wasting his time” as “the matter had been decided by the Supreme Court and it was not worth pursuing.”
• Despite this, Moore continued to investigate the Way murder because he thought it likely that Assoun had been wrongly convicted.
• Moore went to RCMP inspector Andy Lathem, the head of the major crimes section of the RCMP. Moore told Lathem of his suspicion that McGray, not Assoun, killed Way. Lathem asked Moore to put together a timeline of events. Moore was intending to put together the timeline, but on return from a two-week vacation in March 2004, Moore found that he had been transferred out of the ViCLAS section. He was not given a reason for his transfer.
• After he was transferred out of the ViCLAS section, all Moore’s work on the Way murder was erased from the ViCLAS system. Additionally, “hundreds of documents” Moore had kept in boxes, work sheets, and timelines went missing. The missing material includes information about other cases Moore had worked on.
• The deletion of ViCLAS information goes against RCMP policy.
• When federal Justice Department lawyer Mark Green was investigating Assoun’s case in 2014, he learned that RCMP Sergeant Dick Hutchings had ordered the “review” of Moore’s work in 2004. Green found that the review violated RCMP policy, as the review should have been conducted by an independent analyst.
• In his report, Green bolded and underlined the following paragraph:
Why was Constable Moore’s ViCLAS information not disclosed to your [Assoun’s] legal counsel when [Assoun’s lawyer Jerome] Kennedy made his requests [for information about McGray’s possible involvement in the Way murder]? Had Moore’s ViCLAS information already been deleted, destroyed or lost by the time Kennedy made his first request in September, 2004? Is there a correlation between Kennedy’s request for McGray/Brenda Way ViCLAS information and the destruction of Moore’s ViCLAS files? Would this information have made any difference with respect to the decision of the Court of Appeal [which ruled against Assoun’s appeal]?
Assoun passed polygraph tests
Although not admissible in court, the responses Assoun gave to questions during two polygraph tests were judged by two different analysts to be the responses of an innocent man.
This is an ongoing investigative news story.
It is satisfying to see this information revealed due to your dogged (and expensive) pursuit of the truth, Tim. I look forward to following the rest of the story, and hope like hell that Assoun gets some satisfaction and reparation for his treatment at the hand of those who should have been protecting him.
This is interesting. Andy Lathem also plays a major role in Thomas Juby’s “Twice as Far: The True Story of SwissAir Flight 111 Airplane Crash Investigation”.