The wrongly convicted club

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This article was published 27/06/2017 (3239 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Thomas Sophonow sat in my backyard last week, trying to answer a question I had asked him over a burger and fries the day before.

The question came from his latest road trip, which is part of the journey that never ends for the now 64-year-old man who spent nearly four years behind bars for the slaying of 16-year-old Barbara Stoppel on Dec. 23, 1981.

It was a murder he didn’t commit.

It led to his life-long sentence of post-traumatic stress and his anger at the police and the prosecutor whose tunnel vision and, shall we say, deception led to three trials and, ultimately, a public inquiry and settlement of $2.9 million in compensation for the wrongful conviction.

And, finally, it led to the Winnipeg Police Service acknowledging through a re-investigation they had arrested and charged the wrong man.

That’s all well-documented, including in a book titled Stoppel being written by retired Winnipeg cop Andrew Mikolajewski, who, with police partner Bob Legge, was involved in the WPS re-investigation.

Sophonow lives with his wife Rebecca and their children in a 9,000 square-foot historically-designated house in New Westminster, B.C., that was a seemingly never ending renovation project when I visited eight years ago.

It was from there more than two weeks ago that Sophonow started his road trip, taking the ferry to Vancouver Island, where he met with Mikolajewski, and — among others — Jim Driskell, who was arrested in 1990 by Winnipeg police and wrongfully convicted for a murder that would later lead to the charge being quashed and a public inquiry being called. Driskell had been imprisoned for 13 years. He would receive $4 million in compensation.

By the time Sophonow reached Winnipeg early last week, he had also stopped in southern Alberta to visit David Milgaard, another famous name among Canada’s list of the wrongfully convicted.

In Milgaard’s case, it was a conviction for the 1969 slaying of a young Saskatoon woman. He was 17 when he began to serve what would be 23 years in prison. His compensation was $10 million.

Which brought me to that question for Sophonow; what is it about Driskell and Milgaard, beyond the obvious similarities in their history, that connects them, that caused Sophonow to drop in on them on his road trip?

He had already explained that his intention in seeing Legge when he got to Winnipeg was to thank him in person for his work on his case. Not easy for a man who was so mistreated by police.

Anyway, the day before our garden chat — as he waited to meet Legge for lunch — Sophonow had answered my question about his relationship with his two wrongfully convicted pals by saying they didn’t have to be macho with each other. But I got the feeling there was more to it than that.

When he arrived at Driskell’s place in Comox, B.C., he found what he described as a compound. “I think he still lives in a prison,” Sophonow said, “because he’s got eight-foot walls.”

Sophonow said he and Driskell hugged the first time they met. That was after Driskell was released from prison in November 2003, while Manitoba Justice reviewed his case and Sophonow offered to post bail.

Now, 14 years later, Sophonow was at his door.

“As soon as we met,” Sophonow recalled of their reunion, “we hugged like the first time. But longer.”

They spent the first night talking until 2 a.m. And again the next two nights, until 1 a.m.

It was during one of those late-night chats that Driskell told him about his mother, Florence, who’s in her early 90s and had just been in hospital in Winnipeg.

She’s a big Winnipeg Blue Bombers fan so, while he was here, Sophonow wanted to buy a piece of the team’s apparel and have it autographed. The Bombers graciously gave him a cap, signed by head coach Mike O’Shea, which Sophonow delivered.

His kindness to a friend’s mother reminded me of his whereabouts when Stoppel was murdered. His alibi to police was that, while he waited for his car brakes to be fixed at a Pembina Highway Canadian Tire, he bought some 99-cent red mesh Christmas stockings full of candy and delivered them to St. Boniface Hospital, which was near the doughnut shop murder. The police didn’t believe that’s the kind of thing Sophonow would do.

But it was. And it still is.

He’s that way with his pal David Milgaard, too, who will be 65 next month.

Milgaard lives near Calgary, in a trailer “with no hot water,” as Sophonow described it. That’s where Sophonow stopped for a couple of days to visit Milgaard and the two children he has shared custody of, an 11-year-old boy and a nine-year-old girl. Back in 2014, Milgaard told the Calgary Herald bad investments had resulted in him losing most of the money he had received in compensation.

Sophonow made it clear his friend is struggling with his health, his finances and his personal life; he is divorced from his first wife and separated from his second.

While Milgaard still receives monthly payments from an annuity, Sophonow says what his friend needs most now is a vacation and help looking after the kids.

Sometimes, when they text each other, Milgaard will sign off by saying he loves him. Like a soul-mate brother, I gather.

Which brought us back to my question about his friendship with Driskell and Milgaard, his two soul-mate brothers: I wondered if he would be friends with them if they hadn’t had a similar experience that brought them together.

“Yes I would,” he said. “I like them as people.”

Then I asked the same question in a different way: what makes it so special to be with them?

“I care for them.”

gordon.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca