Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - June 26, 2012, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A4 A 4 WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, TUESDAY, JUNE 26, 2012 TOP NEWS winnipegfreepress. com Zellers Pharmacy Northgate Shopping Centre 1415 McPhillips St. will be closing permanently at 5: 00 pm on July 2nd, 2012 Patient and prescription records will be available on July 3rd, 2012 at: Loblaw Pharmacy McPhillips St. & Stardust Ave. 2132 McPhillips St. Winnipeg, MB R2V 3C8 Phone ( 204) 631- 6226 We thank you for your patronage over the years Celebrate your graduate's special day with an ad in our special graduation feature: Saturday, July 7 Deadline - Tuesday, July 3 at 12 noon Purchase a 3 inch announcement, which includes a 2 inch full colour photo and 8 lines of text, for only $ 89 30 Email: wfpclass@ freepress. mb. ca Phone: 697- 7100 Class of 2012 including GST. I T was the summer of 2009, while seated across from him in his office, that I told then- justice minister Dave Chomiak many people believed there was a serial killer at work in Winnipeg; at which point he told me what the chief of the Winnipeg Police Service and the head of the Manitoba RCMP had told him. " I have been convinced by police that the evidence does not point to that," Chomiak said. By the time I left his office though, Chomiak wasn't so convinced. He, like many - including the former Vancouver police officer who saw the hand of a serial killer at work long before Robert Pickton was arrested - wondered how at least one serial killer couldn't be at work in Winnipeg. A city where nearly 50 missing women, children and transgender Winnipeg sex- trade workers had been murdered or gone missing over the previous 26 years. Most of them aboriginal. It took three more years and at least three more murdered young aboriginal women who are said to be connected with the sex- trade industry. But Winnipeg police Chief Keith McCaskill now believes there is a serial killer. On Monday, city police announced they had charged 52- yearold Shawn Cameron Lamb with the slayings of three women. Although, even before that, Tanya Jane Nepinak, Lorna Blacksmith and Carolyn Marie Sinclair had qualified for a memorial garden like no other in Winnipeg. It was to this sacred place - this cedar- sheltered memorial garden on Sutherland Avenue, just off Main Street - that I went Monday afternoon to pay my respects to all the women from that neighbourhood who have died violently. Or simply disappeared. And it was there in the heat of the late afternoon - on the so- called low track - that I met " Jane," as she wants to be called. She's a working " girl" who said she had laid a stone on one of the circular paths where lilies - some blood- red - bloom in memory of the 12 women Jane says she has lost over the 15 years she has survived. But barely survived. Jane recalled the late night a few years earlier when a john stabbed her in the stomach. " I had my guard down," she said as she pulled up her shirt to show me the slashing scar that's testimony to where her guts had fallen out. It's a fact Nathan Rieger later confirmed when we talked. Rieger is part of the pastoral team at Vineyard Church, where Jane crawled to at 5 a. m. that early October night, and was taken in. The church is located in a century- old warehouse at Main and Sutherland, which backs onto the memorial garden. The Vineyard Memorial Garden, as it is formally called. Rieger and some friends started it to remember first 20, and now 24, murdered and missing neighbourhood women. At first, Rieger recalled Monday, it was murdered sex- trade workers who were memorialized; now it's any woman from the area who dies violently. It was living sex- trade workers who inspired Rieger because they kept coming to him and asking if he could drive them to cemeteries where their friends were buried. And it was these same women - women like Jane - who helped build the memorial garden. Stone by stone. Name by name. Tear after tear. It was built in way that also honoured aboriginal tradition, and in a manner that allowed families and friends to have a place close by to grieve. The plaques to each woman still have to be put in place. So I asked Rieger when it would be finished. " Never," he said. I wondered, as I spoke with Jane, if her name would have been there if the Vineyard Church hadn't heard her calling for help and been there for her. The answer seems obvious enough. What doesn't, or didn't, is why police have been so guarded about acknowledging the possibility that a serial killer has been at work in Winnipeg over the years. Late Monday afternoon, I spoke with Dave Chomiak over the phone. He was waiting to board a plane back to Winnipeg at Toronto's Pearson International Airport and he hadn't heard the news that police had arrested a suspected serial killer. " I'm stunned," Chomiak said. " Wow." He was emotional and he had reason to be. It wasn't just that Chomiak chose three years ago to become unconvinced - to listen to himself, and not to what police were telling him. He also chose to pay for more city police and RCMP to work on the murdered and missing files in the belief there just might be a serial killer out there. The task force that resulted may not have been directly responsible for Monday's arrest. Nevertheless, Dave Chomiak has learned something good cops already know. " You never close your mind to anything." Or, if I might add, your gut instincts. gordon. sinclair@ freepress. mb. ca S HAWN Lamb was in the process of writing a revealing tell- all book about his troubled past, claiming he wanted to help steer vulnerable individuals away from making the same mistakes he'd made. But police allege the career criminal began adding a much darker chapter to his life this past year - that of an accused serial killer on the hunt for young Winnipeg women. " It's come true, one of my worst nightmares. I'm old and in jail," Lamb, now 52, told a Winnipeg courtroom during a May 2010 sentencing hearing. Lamb had just pleaded guilty to 15 more crimes, increasing his total to 99 over a 30- year span. The Free Press reviewed a transcript of the proceedings on Monday - the day Winnipeg police announced Lamb had been arrested and charged with three counts of second- degree murder in the deaths of three city women. " The elements- for- life concept is something I've embraced," Lamb said, in explaining the working title of his inspirational book, which he was writing in custody. He even submitted examples of his writing for the judge to look at and said he'd been working closely with native elders and a chaplain behind bars to come up with a blueprint for success that he, and others, would follow. " I am now in control of what I do, because I now know what it is that made me do the things I did do," Lamb said. " I don't want to do it anymore. I don't want to hurt anybody anymore. I want to take responsibility for what I've done, to use my writing skills in a positive way to help myself and others in the future." Lamb was sentenced that day to 19 months in jail, in addition to nearly 14 months of time already served, plus three years of supervised probation. His crimes included mugging a young mother of her purse, threatening to stab another man for his beer, stealing a car and passing numerous bad cheques. He was on a conditional sentence at the time for a similar robbery in which he attacked a young mother for her bank card, flipping over a stroller carrying the victim's baby in the process. Lamb was released from jail sometime in early 2011. He is alleged to have killed the three victims in the months that followed. Lamb told court in 2010 all of his previous crimes had been committed to help feed a drug and alcohol addiction he'd been fighting since the age of nine - when his adoptive parents first started forcing him to play the role of a " bartender" while they entertained other drunken guests in their home. Provincial court Judge Linda Giesbrecht told Lamb she was impressed by his honesty - and hopeful he had finally turned a corner following many previous attempts that ended with him back in jail. " You're clearly an intelligent, well- spoken person. You have a gift in your writing and your speaking. It's really too bad you've wasted so many years of the potential that you had. I really hope you're sincere. You appear to be sincere, you appear to be genuine," said Giesbrecht. " You seem to have very good insight into your past behaviour. If you don't achieve what you hope to achieve when you get out next time, I think you've burned your bridges. Ultimately it is your choice." The judge also expressed sympathy after hearing of Lamb's upbringing, which would be the focus of much of his writing. " I appreciate you had a bad childhood and didn't have the benefits a child should have," said Giesbrecht. Lamb was born as Darryl Dokis on a First Nation near Sarnia, Ont., to a 17- year- old single mother. He told court he was " ripped" away by social services at the age of 2 � and put in foster care for a year before being sent to live with an adoptive white family near Sarnia. His lawyer, Aaron Seib, said it was a terrible decision. " It's clear his upbringing was fraught with physical abuse, mental abuse and sexual abuse. At a very young age he was abusing alcohol, drugs, whatever he can get his hands on. It's something he still struggles with," Seib told court. Specifically, Lamb claimed he first drank alcohol at the age of nine and never looked back. He began running away from home at the age of 12, often spending long periods of time living on the streets of Toronto. He also began experimenting with mushrooms, acid, cocaine and heroin in his early teens and became hooked. Lamb told court there were many times he wanted to end his own life, especially after he began committing crimes to support his habit. He also had stints in psychiatric care in Toronto. " I felt really bad about what I'd done. I wanted to kill myself," he said. Lamb also had several sexual relationships and became the father of three children, none of which he maintained any relationship with, court was told. They include two sons, aged 26 and 20 and a 18- year- old daughter. Lamb said both his adoptive and biological parents were deceased, but he wanted to try to rebuild the non- existent relationship with his children plus other biological family members. He also expressed a desire to begin connecting with his aboriginal heritage. Crown attorney Susan Helenchilde was skeptical about his chance of success. " It remains to be seen how committed he really is. Hopefully he'll get the message this time around," she said. www. mikeoncrime. com IT was odd encounter with a man now accused of killing three Winnipeg women. Michael Gachenga, 19, said he was in bed in his Sutherland Avenue apartment last week when a woman accidentally wandered in, followed by Shawn Lamb. Lamb had moved into a suite in the apartment building at 123 Sutherland Ave. about two months ago, said Gachenga. Lamb, who often had female guests, had some words of wisdom for the young man. " He's like, ' Keep your door locked, because there's crazy people out there,' " recalled Gachenga. The pair left without making any trouble, he said. And the 52- year- old man could sometimes be overheard arguing with his guests, said Gachenga. He said, however, he found the news of Lamb's arrest " super- messed- up," because he thought he was a " pretty cool guy" who played rap. Police had executed a search warrant at the apartment Sunday, Gachenga said, carrying out two black plastic bags. Lamb moved there after he was evicted from another apartment block at the corner of Notre Dame Avenue and Beverley Street. A resident, named Nadine, said Lamb played loud music from his first- floor suite. The caretaker of the block, who did not want his name used, said he called 911 three times after Lamb displayed violent behaviour. Lamb lived at that property from about August or September 2011 to February 2012, he said. " My heart is feeling sorry for the people who died," said the caretaker. The suite, which costs $ 650 a month to rent, was clean and empty of furniture Monday afternoon. The caretaker said police arrived last month to speak with him, and officers searched the apartment for evidence. Steps away from the apartment is the vacant Simcoe Street home where the body of Lorna Blacksmith was discovered in the backyard last week. The location where the body of Carolyn Sinclair was found in a Dumpster near Notre Dame and Toronto Street in March is about two blocks away. gabrielle. giroday@ freepress. mb. ca GORDON SINCLAIR JR. Memorial a tribute to lost women ' I don't want to do it anymore. I don't want to hurt anybody anymore. I want to take responsibility for what I've done, to use my writing skills in a positive way to help myself and others in the future' - the accused, Shawn Cameron Lamb, at a previous court sentencing Court records shed light on criminal Accused was writing about his hard life to guide others By Mike McIntyre Neighbour's brush with suspect a chilling one in retrospect By Gabrielle Giroday COLE BREILAND / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Micheal Gachenga previously thought murder suspect Shawn Lamb was a ' pretty cool guy.' A_ 04_ Jun- 26- 12_ FP_ 01. indd A4 6/ 25/ 12 10: 49: 58 PM ;