Girl’s slaying haunts family 30 years later

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This article was published 03/09/2016 (3315 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Diminutive, blond and blue-eyed, Kerrie Ann Brown was known for standing up to bullies, and she was just starting grade 10 at R.D. Parker Collegiate in Thompson when she disappeared.

Her body, bludgeoned and sexually assaulted, was recovered two days later on the outskirts of the city. She had just turned 15.

The 30th anniversary of her slaying is Oct. 16 and her family has renewed efforts to find witnesses.

“It’s unsolved. That’s why we’re still talking about it to this,” said Brown’s brother, Trevor, who still lives in Thompson. “We want people talking. We totally believe, somebody, at least one person or more knows something.”

“There’s somebody out there who knows who did this,” Brown said.

The family has also set up a Facebook page under the name Justice for Kerrie Ann Brown.

There was only one suspect in the case 30 years ago. He was a local man who found himself the focus of intense police scrutiny and briefly faced charges in the death before DNA conclusively cleared him.

Witnesses placed that suspect driving a car out of a road that led to horse stables, the only possible location with people coming and going in the area of the crime scene at that time of year.

Witnesses, however, reported two vehicles, the car and a van. The van was never tracked down and no other suspects surfaced, to the family’s distress.

“I’ve been critical about the RCMP and how they handled the investigation back in the day,” Brown admitted.

These days the family has a good working relationship with the RCMP investigator on the case. It may be a cold-case file but it remains open, Brown said. It’s possible they’ll catch a break if people are thinking — and talking — about the slaying, he said.

Something similar happened with Helen Betty Osborne in The Pas. The Cree high school student was kidnapped and brutally murdered in 1971 and it was only in 1987, 16 years later, a witness stepped forward. That resulted in charges against three local non-indigenous men. One was convicted, another acquitted, a third received immunity and a fourth was never charged.

The events immediately before and after his sister’s disappearance are burned into Brown’s memory and he recounted them this week in hopes it will strike a chord with someone, somewhere.

“She was at a house party with friends (that) Thursday. She was to spend the night at her best friend’s a block and a half away from the party. Kerri had just broken up with a boyfriend, and he showed up at the party with a new girlfriend.”

“My sister was uncomfortable and she told her best friend she wanted to leave… my sister went up the stairs and waited for her best friend, and she got impatient and left without her,” Brown recounted.

He suspects his sister left the party with another girl and they got into a car to go somewhere with one or two guys. It’s the only scenario that fits with the evidence and what he remembers about his sister, who was too savvy to take off with strangers.

“We don’t know what happened after that,” he said.

Family reported Brown’s disappearance to police, plastered posters around the northern city and fielded phone calls about sightings from strangers and friends over the next couple of days.

Police found Brown’s body Saturday.

Brown’s parents and her brothers would learn that two horseback riders from nearby stables had found the body deep in the woods off an access road to a hydro transmission corridor. The location is about two kilometres north of Thompson, off provincial highway 391.

“There was a golf course out there. There are horse stables out there, but it’s isolated and nobody’s out there in late October. It was a miserable night, cold, and sleet and snowing,” Brown recalled.

Reports to news outlets initially said nothing about the fact the victim had been sexually assaulted; that came out in coverage a year later.

One more memory stands out for the victim’s brother. One he said keeps hope alive his sister’s killer will someday be found.

“We got a phone call two months after the murder, and we had an unlisted phone number, which back then meant unless you were family or a friend, you didn’t know it. It was Christmastime and the phone rings and a voice asks who I am. I said ‘Trevor.’ And a female voice says, ‘Hey Trevor, did you happen to get the number of the truck that hit Kerrie? I’ll never forget those words. I still wonder who said that.”

“We never found out who it was. Now either it was a cruel joke or they knew something,” Brown said.

The family is prepared for whatever they may learn, even if it means finding out the killer or killers are dead.

“It’s been devastating to our family not to know who did this,” Brown said.

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca