The hauntings of October: Three Thompson unsolved murders: Kerrie Ann Brown, Bernie Carlson and Christopher Ponask

Kerrie Ann Brown, Bernie Carlson and Christopher Ponask as people were as different as could be; different ages, backgrounds and life experiences. But in fate they shared three commonalities: they all lived in Thompson, Manitoba, they were all killed in October and all three of their murders have remained long unsolved.

The most written about case over the years has been the savage Oct. 16, 1986 slaying of 15-year-old Kerrie Ann Brown, Thompson’s oldest unsolved murder case, which many almost 28 years later still believe is surrounded be a conspiracy of silence.

There is every reason to believe someone knows who killed Kerrie Ann Brown. Former R.D. Parker Collegiate educator John Donovan, who retired March 17 from an encore career as Northern regional director of the Addictions Foundation of Manitoba here in Thompson, perhaps summed it up best on Sept. 28, 2011 when he wrote: “I remember how Kerrie’s death shook our school and the community … obviously someone or more know what happened … the conspiracy of silence must end.”

The only suspect ever charged to date in connection with the case still lives in Thompson. His family moved here in 1968. He was 22 when he was charged in 1986 days after the crime with first-degree murder in connection with Brown’s murder in a case that was largely circumstantial. The three lead investigating local RCMP officers in 1986 were constables Pat Cahill, Maggie Gregory and polygraph and forensic examiner John Tost. The Crown attorney was Dale Perezowski.

The accused was freed four months later after being discharged by provincial court Judge Charles Newcombe without being committed to trial after a three-day preliminary hearing ended Feb. 20, 1987. Newcombe ruled there wasn’t admissible evidence upon which a reasonable jury properly instructed could return a verdict of guilty, which is the legal test in Canadian law for committal to trial. Then NDP Manitoba attorney general Roland Penner did not exercise his discretion to issue a rare preferred indictment, which would have sent the case directly to trial.

Brown was slain sometime after attending a party at a residence on Trout Avenue in Westwood on Thursday night Oct. 16, 1986.  Most of those in attendance at the Trout Avenue party were from ages 14 to 17. The party was held on a Thursday night because there was no school the next day for Kerrie and the others at R.D. Parker Collegiate. She had previously attended Juniper and Eastwood elementary schools. Her mom and dad, Ann and Jim Brown, had moved to Thompson like many so Jim could work in the mine at Inco, while Ann worked at Thompson General Hospital as a medical transcriptionist. Ann Brown died some years ago. Kerrie’s brother, Trevor, lives in Winnipeg, and has been active in keeping up the fight for justice for his sister, as is her aunt, Tammy Fenner, and her husband, Kevin, from Maberly, in eastern Ontario, near Ottawa.

Kerrie was to walk home from the Trout Avenue residence that night with a girlfriend but before leaving the friend went back into the party for a few minutes. Kerrie stepped outside apparently to wait. When the friend returned, Kerrie was gone. Several witnesses reported Kerrie was seen getting into a van between 10:30 p.m. and 11 p.m. Others believe she took a taxi to Brandon Crescent. Or she may have walked somewhere from the party.

Two days after the party, two women from the riding stable discovered her nude body in a wooded area close to the hydro line between the horse stable and the golf course access roads. Her body was found on Saturday, Oct. 18, 1986, around 2 p.m. Brown had been sexually assaulted and severely beaten, bludgeoned repeatedly about the face and head causing massive injuries. A large, bloodstained stick was found at the scene.

A vehicle got stuck in the mud there and a blue and red air mattress and a black rubber floor mat were used to try and gain traction and extricate the vehicle, RCMP said publicly in 1996. Two eyewitnesses had spotted a white van and an older model mid-60s green sedan-type car at the scene just hours after Brown, who had been wearing a Pittsburgh Penguins hockey jacket earlier in the evening, disappeared from the party. Crime scene DNA samples gathered in 1986 came from at least two different men RCMP said in 1996, adding they have always believed more than person was involved in the killing.

In 2012, the RCMP  began conducting a full review of Kerrie Ann Brown’s murder investigation. They rehired a retired homicide investigator, Sgt. Bert Clarke, who retired in 2009 as the commander-in-charge of the RCMP’s homicide unit in Manitoba, to assist in the review of the investigation, along with a second rehired former homicide investigator.

The two retired homicide investigators did not work on the Brown murder originally, although they were aware of it, but were brought into assist the historical case unit, which is the official RCMP name for Manitoba’s cold case squad, by bringing their expertise to the complex case by taking a fresh look at it.  It’s a daunting task given there more than 2,000 subjects recorded and documented in the file.

Active duty investigators also continue to work on the Brown case. All of the forensic evidence is being reviewed for DNA submission or re-submission and people continue to be polygraph examined in the case. New DNA samples searching for matches have been taken, most voluntarily, some pursuant to court orders, from more than 100 people across Canada in the decades since the crime.
Administrative personnel were assigned to the case to “digitize” the investigation for present and future purposes.

The Brown cold case is the largest unsolved homicide investigation (nearly three dozen banker boxes of investigative file material) that the RCMP have in Manitoba.

The most recent October unsolved murder here occurred six years ago yesterday on Oct. 2, 2008, when Thompson RCMP were dispatched to a report of a deceased male, found near the Thompson Shell station, in the Southwood area of Thompson. A city-owned concrete public footpath connects the 200-block of Juniper Drive to the back of Southwood Shopping Plaza on Thompson Drive South.  The victim was 19-year-old Christopher Clyde Ponask, who would have been 20 in three days.  At time of his killing, Ponask, and his girlfriend, Randi Duke, were expecting their first child. Earlier this year, Manitoba Crime Stoppers issued a notice saying that the Thompson RCMP detachment, RCMP major crimes unit, and Crime Stoppers were still looking for help to “solve this crime” and “seeking the public’s assistance” into what they described as an “ongoing investigation.”

Ponask was born in Thompson on Oct. 5, 1988. He attended Juniper Elementary School. In 2003 he relocated to Edmonton to live with his mother, Elaine, attending Kennadale High School, and and later moved back to Thompson. His dad was the late  Clyde Trottier and one of his grandparents is Julyda Lagimodiere, minister of justice and vice-president of the Manitoba Metis Federation here, who is seeking a city council seat in the Oct. 22 municipal election.

Meanwhile, Oct. 26  marks the seventh anniversary of the 2007 still unsolved murder of 61-year-old Bernie Carlson, a retired Inco miner and avid gun collector and amateur gunsmith, in an early morning break-and-enter into his 140 Yale Ave. home in Eastwood. Carlson, also know affectionately as “Boom-boom” and “Bowanna,” was shot just inside his front door while investigating an intruder after being awakened by a dog barking just before 1 a.m.

Sean Grunewald, then an investigator with Thompson RCMP’s major crime unit, called the taped emergency call from Bernie’s wife, Elva, hiding in the bedroom from the intruder, the most chilling taped emergency call for help he’s ever listened to. He also has described the case as “baffling.”

Baffling and marked by some bad luck, in many ways from the beginning. Take for instance the ground search for the killers in the woods and trails behind the Carlson home. The police had the worst turn of luck imaginable. The first major snowfall of the season started within 12 hours of the murder, wiping out any scent tracking dogs might have picked up.

Grunewald says if the grass had only stayed dry and greener for a few more days – or even if the snow had come a few days earlier – they may well have had more luck tracking then they did with the season’s first fresh snowfall covering up recent scents just as police dogs were ready to work the trails and woods behind the Carlson residence.

The home invasion, the murder of Carlson and the arrival of siren-blaring, lights-flashing RCMP and paramedics from Thompson Fire and Emergency Services would all happen in a matter of minutes. But in those few minutes, the killers had disappeared, either by foot or in a vehicle.

On Feb. 6, 2012, Manitoba Crime Stoppers released a 1:01 YouTube video re-enactment of the Carlson crime. As of Oct. 3, 2014 at the time of writing, that video had received 742 views. You can watch it here at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A1vb5ufNE8

Carlson and his wife, Elva, were asleep in their bedroom at the back of the bungalow when they were awoken by the sound of the dog barking and their front door being forced open. Bernie Carlson got up to check out what was going on. Moments later he’d be laying dead on the floor from a gunshot wound or wounds. Police won’t say how many times he was shot or the type of firearm used, but say they believe the perpetrators were already armed when they broke into the house and they do not believe Carlson was shot by one of his own weapons as they all appear to have been properly locked and stored in the basement and have been accounted for. The intruders took nothing else either during their brief time inside the house.

Carlson’s gun collection was made up exclusively of long guns – rifles and shotguns, no handguns. While police won’t say exactly how many guns Carlson, an avid hunter, had stored in the house, they described the collection as fairly typical for what might be found in many a hunting enthusiast’s home in Thompson. There was nothing in Carlson’s gun collection that made it particularly remarkable in terms of type of weapons or firepower, police said.

While Bernie Carlson confronted the intruders, Elva made an emergency telephone call that was routed through to the RCMP Operational Communication Centre Telecommunications in Winnipeg. Grunewald, who has listened over and over to the tape, much like a 911-type call highlighted sometimes on reality-based crime television shows, described it as the most harrowing emergency call he has heard as a police officer. The operator who took the call had alerted Thompson RCMP within about 40 seconds of the extreme emergency, resulting in officers being dispatched to the Eastwood neighbourhood with lights and sirens in their highest level life-and-death emergency response mode.

The first officer was on the scene at Yale Avenue within 2:30 to three minutes of the call being made.

The suspects had already fled, maybe on foot and possibly along one of the trails through woods behind the house, but that has never been determined with certainty, police say.

It’s even possible the assailants left the scene of the crime in a vehicle. RCMP set up roadblocks south of the city on Highway 6 and north and west of Thompson on Highway 391. Within the next few hours every RCMP officer on duty in Thompson that early morning, along with some called in, would make their way at some point over to the Carlson residence.

Carlson was born June 19, 1946 at Berens River. According to his obituary, “Bernie, as he was known, or to some Boom-boom and Bowanna, spent most of his younger years in Matheson Island. He attended Cranberry Portage residential school until 1965.”

He met Elva Little and they were married in November 1967 in Wabowden. He was murdered 23 days before what would have been their 40th wedding anniversary.

Carlson worked for Inco for 32 years before retiring in 1998 his obituary recalled. “As an avid hunter he would spend all his summers at Setting Lake campground waiting for the upcoming hunting season. A dedicated family man, who loved his wife, children and grandchildren with every ounce of his being, Bernie truly enjoyed teaching them to fish, hunt, sing and have an appreciation for life. Well known and respected in the North, he called Thompson the city where he worked and lived but Setting Lake and Wabowden his home and life.”

Anyone who has information on any of these unsolved murders can contact Thompson RCMP detachment at (204) 677-6909, or, if you wish to remain anonymous, Manitoba Crime Stoppers at Crime Stoppers, which can be reached toll-free at (800) 222-8477 (TIPS) or to submit a secure tip online go to http://www.manitobacrimestoppers.com and text “TIPMAN” plus your message to CRIMES (274637).

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