Crime Seen (23 page)

Ken left my office that afternoon with my commitment that I would do whatever he and his team wanted me to do.

Over two years a variety of investigative strategies were used to slowly draw Manion out of his quiet and comfortable lifestyle. He was living common-law with a woman in London, Ontario, and again working at a car dealership. It was uncovered in one of the earlier re-investigations that he’d molested his two young nieces in the 1980s. He was convicted and received a two-year jail sentence. His two grown children, along with other family members and close acquaintances, were all interviewed again. Yvan and Doug told them that the investigation was finally coming to an end and that an arrest would be made in the near future. It wasn’t a concern if what they said leaked back to Manion—it would be good to have him feel anxious and nervous about what was in store for him.

OPP criminal profilers Jim Van Allen, Ed Chafe and Karen Arney, along with forensic psychiatrist Peter Collins, participated in a number of round-table sessions and provided investigative suggestions in consideration of Manion’s personality and anticipated psychological state. The ultimate goal was to have him in a state of mind conducive to confessing to Kathy’s abduction. It was eventually decided that rather than do anything undercover it would be better for me to have a confrontation with Manion that was openly tied to the investigation. Gene Larocque was retired from Kirkland Lake OPP and part of the team that looked at the case in 1991. He was easily convinced to come back to work and be my partner in the confrontation. It was expected that Manion would immediately recognize Gene and likely assume I was his wife. We set it up that Gene and I would run into Manion in a Kingston-area casino where we knew he was meeting friends. It would be almost to the day of the thirty-eighth anniversary of Kathy’s disappearance.

Gene and I met for the first time when we drove together from Orillia to Kingston. We scripted out some lines on our way and ran them by Ken who was waiting for us at our hotel when we arrived. He was good with the script and told us he’d also decided to have a plainclothes male and female officer, both whom I knew, sit near Manion in the restaurant to be our cover team.

A few hours later we got word that Manion was in the restaurant and our cover officers were in place. Back in my days as a UC I’d worked on all sorts of targets, from street hoods to outlaw biker gangs and there’d been some nerve-racking experiences. This one was a cake walk in comparison, but this time things were turned around because all of the investigative and surveillance team members standing by worked for me.

Gene and I went into the casino and found our way to the restaurant. Manion was ensconced in a corner booth table and our cover officers were sitting all in place. Gene and I sat at a table facing Manion and could see he was deep in conversation with his friends. He hadn’t taken any notice of Gene or me coming in. I suggested to Gene we just go ahead over to him right away.

I followed Gene to his table. Gene was making it look like he wanted me to go sit back down. He kept telling me to stay back but I continued to follow him over to the table saying in a loud voice, “I’d like to say something to him.”

Gene stopped in front of the table with me trying to get around him and get closer to Manion. When Manion looked up you could tell he recognized Gene right away.

Gene said, “I am surprised to see you here. Do you realize its thirty-eight years since Kathy Wilson disappeared … almost to the day.”

He glared at Gene and said, “I don’t remember.”

Gene said, “I told you it wouldn’t go away. The OPP will not let this go.”

I leaned in over Gene’s shoulder, crying and yelling at Manion. “You know what? You know what you should do? You should let that family put that little girl to rest.”

Gene turned me around and was pushing me back away from the table. I then yelled over my shoulder, “You know what? The only justice would be if you would’ve died in that accident the next day.”

Manion stood up and started looking around and yelling, “Security! Security!”

Gene and I hustled back to our table, grabbed our coats and left. The whole thing lasted all of about twenty seconds. Gene was laughing when we came out of the casino, complimenting me on my rant. They may not have been Academy Award–winning performances, but we both agreed it went according to plan and it felt good. A clear message was sent to Manion that even thirty-eight years later the OPP was still on the case.

When it came time to arrest Manion, Ken selected Josée to assist Yvan. I wasn’t surprised. For the last several years she had worked tirelessly behind the scenes. Many of the investigative meetings were in southern Ontario and Josée would often leave home at three o’clock in the morning and drive more than nine hours to a meeting in southern Ontario that would start in the afternoon. On January 6, 2009, Yvan and Josée went to the car dealership where Manion worked and arrested him for abducting Kathy. They took him straight to the London OPP detachment.

Polygraph examiner Jim Smyth had been brought in from headquarters to interview Manion and was standing by. After getting Terri-Lynne McClintic’s confession in the Tori Stafford case, Jim was considered one of the top police interviewers in the country. Over the next several hours, Ken and the team watched on closed-circuit TV as Jim tried to work his charms on Manion—but they didn’t work so well this time. After several hours Manion wasn’t denying any of Jim’s accusations, but he wasn’t admitting to anything either. It was the bottom of the ninth and Manion was shutting down. The opening pitcher had done what he could, but he needed a relief closer. Doug Bradley, watching from the monitoring room next door, volunteered to step onto the mound.

Manion recognized Doug as soon as he came into the interview room and seemed almost relieved to see him. Doug used a lower-key approach than Jim, slowly warming up to Manion with talk of their shared roots in Kirkland Lake. They reminisced about their time together as young men working at the car dealership and about the former co-workers and friends they once had in common.

After the pleasantries were over, Doug told Manion he’d been watching Jim and him talk for the last several hours and reiterated the evidence they had against him. Doug told him, “This is never going to go away,” but Manion continued to deny any involvement.

Then Doug told Manion of his visits to his kids and encouraged him to do the right thing for them if not himself. Doug told him how his family was aware of what was happening right then. His son, who also lived in London, had called the detachment for information, having received word of his father’s arrest. He told Manion his family was waiting, as was the Wilson family, to hear the outcome of their conversation. Doug played on Manion’s ego and accentuated the control that Manion had over his own future. Doug told him, “It takes a big man to step up to the plate on this. You are the only one to give the family a proper burial. Give them back their daughter. Put the Wilsons at peace. Do the right thing.”

Manion had been staring at the floor and suddenly looked up at Doug and said, “I want to speak with my son. This will be resolved after I talk to my son. And I want to talk to you after.” After a couple of seconds he added, “I am relating to you. However you guys do it, you do it well.”

As Doug got up to leave the room, Manion stood up and reached for Doug’s hand and shook it. He said, “Make your phone call to Aline Wilson. I will make full disclosure.”

Josée had been in the monitoring room all evening. “The whole team was in this small room, shoulder to shoulder, with me doing my best to type the conversation between the two of them as it was occurring. You could feel the energy in the room and the anticipation. Everyone was discussing different strategies to try next. Then when he said, ‘I want to speak with my son,’ the room went totally quiet.”

Manion’s son came to the detachment, and after a short conversation with him, Manion gave Doug all the details of what happened, including that he had been molesting Kathy since she was eleven. He said he was angry and mad at the world the day it happened. He was on Harvey Kirkland Road, driving back and forth, looking for Kathy. After he picked her up, he was driving back to Kirkland Lake and saw her sisters on the road. He admitted trying to push Kathy’s head down below the pickup truck’s dash so they wouldn’t see her. When Kathy found out she wasn’t getting just a ride home from him as he’d offered, she got upset and kept asking him to take her home. He instead took her to a secluded area on the other side of town near Dorothy Lake. He parked the truck and tried to assault her. She fought him off, saying she wanted to go home and was going to tell her mother and father. She bolted from the truck and he chased after her. When he caught her, he strangled her. He retrieved the groceries that Kathy had with her in the pickup truck and left them beside her body. He covered her with tree branches and drove away. He told Doug he would go back to Kirkland Lake and show him where he left her body. He ended his statement with, “She did everything right and I did everything wrong.”

After the confession, when Doug again got up to leave the room, Manion reached for his hand and shook it. “I feel good about this,” he said. “Thanks for being who you are, not that your buddy didn’t set you up good. I will praise you guys. You guys do a good job with respect and kindness. It was time to take ownership. Thanks, Bud.”

Before they called it a night, Jim Smyth returned to the interview room to ask Manion what the key was to his confession.

Like anyone, Jim was interested in getting feedback on his craft. Manion said, “You got through to me. I kept trying to close you out, but you made me take stock of myself. You weren’t ever going to go away.”

I later congratulated Doug about keeping his cool during Manion’s confession. He said, “That interview was just the way I have been doing business for my entire police career. The last thing that I wanted to show was disgust or revulsion. I knew we were close and I didn’t want to lose him. The wrong word, expression or gesture could have just shut him right down. The impact the investigation was having on his family was definitely the tipping point. These re-investigations were rearing their heads every ten years or so. We’d go back to his kids each time and tell them. His kids were good kids, and they just wanted this thing to come to an end. I meant what I said to him that it would take a big man to cross that bridge. He could have taken it [the truth] to the grave with him.”

In the early hours of January 7, thirty-nine years after Katherine May Wilson went missing, the only suspect in her disappearance was formally charged with her abduction and murder. Project Tribute, equipped with all of the necessary investigative tools and resources, was able to solve the case.

Yvan and Doug arranged to fly Manion up to Kirkland Lake the next morning but the weather didn’t cooperate, with a snowstorm delaying their departure until late in the day. They arrived in Kirkland Lake in the evening and had lost daylight and any opportunity to search that day.

The next morning, with the temperature at -23 degrees Celsius, Manion was escorted through town, retracing the route he took after he abducted Kathy. He and the officers travelled twelve kilometres north of Kirkland Lake into the area of Dorothy Lake where they then had to transfer to snowmobiles because of the snowfall. Given his emotional reaction to returning to the area for the first time since he’d murdered Kathy, and the area’s consistency with his earlier descriptions, they were confident Manion was telling the truth that this was where he had killed Kathy. They recorded the GPS coordinates. They would have to wait until the spring thaw to search for Kathy’s remains. It was unlikely that anything would be found, but they needed to at least try.

Ken met with the Wilsons at the detachment later that day when they got back to Kirkland Lake. Ken said, “I can remember Aline getting up and she was crying. She is a woman who has been through a lot in her life. She had been very averse to the police, as had the two sisters, and rightfully so. Every bit of animosity toward the police was completely justified. She got up and thanked us, hugged all of us and said through tears, ‘Thank you. Now I can die in peace knowing what happened to my daughter.’ ”

Manion’s lawyer advised the court that his client wished to plead guilty to the 1970 charge of non-capital murder. A March 11, 2009, court date was set at the courthouse in Haileybury. Manion entered his guilty plea, and an agreed-upon statement regarding the crime was read. He was given the maximum sentence of life imprisonment. Kathy’s family was then given the opportunity to read a victim-impact statement. Pee Wee and Karen went to the front of the court and stood in the witness box together. Pee Wee told an emotionally powerful and compelling story of the far-reaching effects Kathy’s abduction and murder had on her family. The room remained silent when they stepped out of the box to return to their seats. As they walked past Manion he said, “Sorry.” Karen turned and looked straight at him and said, “Fuck you,” and continued on. Those were the only words anyone in the Wilson family ever spoke to him after Kathy went missing. One officer later told me, “That was the most eloquent ‘fuck you’ I have ever heard in my career. The judge heard it, everybody heard it, and nobody said a word. Everybody sat back and thought, ‘If there was a time that you are ever entitled to say that, that was it.’ ”

After court Manion was taken to the Monteith Jail several hours away. Two days later, at about 5:00 a.m. on Friday the thirteenth, Manion was found dead, hanging on his cell door in Cellblock C. A mandatory coroner’s inquest was held and the five-person jury determined his death was a suicide.

In the spring Ken kept calling up to the detachment to check on the snow and finally got word in early May that it was gone. Ken submitted one last funding request for Project Tribute to bring in archeologists and grid-search the wooded area. Nobody batted an eye about signing off on the request. This was all about doing the right thing by the Wilson family.

Two mobile command posts were set up and equipment moved in. Experts and student volunteers from Wilfrid Laurier University and the University of Toronto were joined by a bone specialist with Ontario’s Office of the Fire Marshal. They searched from May 23 to June 12. Some days there were more than forty people on site. Aline, Karen and Pee Wee were there with the searchers just about every day, bringing with them the traditional offerings of Canadians’ gratitude: Tim Hortons coffees and Timbits. Unfortunately, the search came up with nothing of Kathy’s remains.