Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - September 22, 2020, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A2 A 2 WINNIPEG FREE PRESS, TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 2020 ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM Congratulations to the 2019 Winnipeg Rh Institute Foundation Award recipients Dr. John M. Bowman Memorial Winnipeg Rh Institute Foundation Award: Distinguished Professor Dr. Aniruddha Gole Dr. Terry G. Falconer Memorial Winnipeg Rh Institute Foundation Emerging Researcher Awards: Drs. Jacob Burgess Pingzhao Hu Will Oxford Jonathan Peyton Kellie Thiessen Frederick Zeiler and Guozhen Zhu DR. ANIRUDDHA GOLE [MSc/80, PhD/82], P.Eng. Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Price Faculty of Engineering NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Power Systems Simulation For more information, visit umanitoba.ca/research VOL 149 NO 314 Winnipeg Free Press est 1872 / Winnipeg Tribune est 1890 2020 Winnipeg Free Press, a division of FP Canadian Newspapers Limited Partnership. Published seven days a week at 1355 Mountain Avenue, Winnipeg, Manitoba R2X 3B6, PH: 204-697-7000 Publisher / BOB COX Editor / PAUL SAMYN Associate Editor Enterprise / SCOTT GIBBONS Associate Editor News / STACEY THIDRICKSON Associate Editor Digital News / WENDY SAWATZKY Director Photo and Multimedia / MIKE APORIUS NEWSMEDIA COUNCIL The Winnipeg Free Press is a member of the National Newsmedia Council, which is an in- dependent organization established to determine acceptable journalistic practices and ethical behaviour. If you have concerns about editorial content, please send them to: editorialconcerns@freepress.mb.ca. If you are not satisfied with the response and wish to file a formal complaint, visit the website at www.mediacouncil.ca and fill out the form or call toll-free 1-844-877- 1163 for additional information. 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Call or email before 10 a.m. weekdays or 11 a.m. Saturday City: 204-697-7001 Outside Winnipeg: 1-800-542-8900 press 1 6:30 a.m. - 2 p.m. Monday-Friday.; 7 a.m. - noon Saturday; Closed Sunday TO SUBSCRIBE: 204-697-7001 Out of Winnipeg: 1-800-542-8900 SLAYING ● FROM A1 PALLISTER ● FROM A1 At the time, Landry was a car sales- man in his early 20s with a warrant out for his arrest on fraud charges he said related to passing bad cheques. He says he’d met Pearson about a year earlier, through one of her boyfriends, and was trying to sell her a station wagon. On the night Pearson was killed, Landry says he phoned her at the show home office to ask her if she wanted to see a car that had just come in. He said he offered to drive it over to her. “Her last words to me were, ‘No, that wouldn’t be a good idea right now,’” Landry said. Forty-one years later, long after he thought he’d been cleared as a suspect in Pearson’s death, Landry was ar- rested. The day before police showed up at his door with an arrest warrant, a copy of which he provided to the Free Press, Landry said he went voluntarily, without a lawyer, to talk to Winnipeg investigators. “I went there with the intention of trying to help them. I want this solved. It’s not like I was trying to fight them,” he said. He said he voluntarily gave a DNA sample, but walked out when police asked him to take a polygraph test. He told the Free Press he had misgivings about submitting to the test because of his PTSD and his concerns that it would be administered in a biased way. After being detained more than 14 hours, he agreed to take the lie- detector test. Shortly after it was over, Landry said he was released, though he said police told him the results weren’t in his favour. “After the polygraph they told me I failed and they wanted to know why and how I done it,” Landry said, refer- ring to the homicide. “I believe that there’s no reason for me to fail a polygraph because I did not murder Irene Pearson.” Before they released him, Landry said police told him they would for- ward their information to the Crown’s office for review. Pearson was the adopted daughter of Winnipeg police officer George Gray Smith, who served on the force for 31 years. He died in 1971. A 1993 Free Press investigation reported further police connections to the case, stating Pearson had dated at least two men who ended up join- ing the WPS. One of the officers who responded to the scene the day she was found dead had been a high school boyfriend, and another was a junior homicide detective. In July 1993, a month after the Free Press published several news stories about the case, the newspaper re- ported police were re-investigating the homicide, starting with reviewing a tip the newspaper had obtained. No details about the tip were ever reported, but Pearson’s case has continued to gener- ate public interest. The last time police spoke publicly about it was in 2016, when investi- gators said they were looking for a suspect they described as a white male between 22 and 30 years old with an average build and medium-length brown hair, who may also have had a moustache. Police said they believed one of the last people in the home with Pearson was driving either a red or blue newer model Plymouth Volare or Dodge Aspen. Investigators released a Crime Stoppers re-enactment video and said they wanted to talk to construction workers who built the Kinver Avenue home where she was found dead. Over the years, Landry, who de- scribes himself on social media as “an advocate for people with disabilities and human rights for all people,” said he has spoken to police three or four times about Pearson’s death, including instances where he has approached police to talk about the case and point them to people he thought they should look at. The first time he was questioned was a few days after the murder. He says he called police to let them know he thought he was one of the last to speak to Pearson. He was arrested on outstanding warrants, and he had a bloody knife he claimed to have butch- ered a rabbit with while on a hunting trip. The knife was sent away for test- ing, Landry provided an alibi he said police checked out, and he was never charged. Prior to his arrest this month, the last time he said he talked to police about Pearson was in the early 1990s. “I appreciate the fact that they’re still looking into it. I’m glad that the case is still active. I really hope that they solve it. And after the DNA, after the polygraph — they claim that I failed it or whatever — I hope we can move on. I hope that they... stop focus- ing on me. I can’t blame them. I’m not blaming them for looking at me. I’m not blaming them. What I really have a problem with is how I was treated,” he said, describing the interrogation as “torture.” “When they tortured me, they were feeding me information on how it was done, the extent of her injuries, and told me how I done it. They pounded that into me, and then they hook me up to a machine to see if I’m lying.” He said the interrogation — which included delving into his history of be- ing physically and sexually abused as a child — triggered his PTSD. Landry said he considered suicide after the interrogation, and he said he believes police don’t care if he kills himself. “I really think that they really don’t care. Maybe because if I did kill my- self, then they could pin it on me, right? Then it would be case closed. Then it would hit the front page of every major newspaper in North America, and they would be friggin’ heroes, right?” he said. “What they did to me has led me into a black hole where the light at the end of the tunnel just might be a train.” katie.may@freepress.mb.ca Twitter: @thatkatiemay Ottawa currently pays $42 bil- lion, which is about 22 per cent. The provinces spend $188 billion a year on health care. Pallister has pushed for more health dollars since 2016, when the Liberals chose to maintain a Harper-era cap on rising health expenditures. The premier said Monday he plans to seek unanimous support in the Manitoba legislature from all parties to formally ask for more health fund- ing — a move he’d like other provinces to replicate. Although the current health accord is locked into place until 2022, Pal- lister feels the provinces have lever- age to demand more money, because more of his fellow premiers now lean conservative during a minority Liberal mandate. The Trudeau government won over reluctant provinces in 2016 by cutting side deals with sympathetic Liberal premiers, throwing in funding for men- tal health and home care. “This is not a patchwork solution that we’re after; premiers are unanimous,” Pallister said. “We’re not going to solve this with attention-seeking invest- ments.” He also defended the province’s own spending on health care, after Mani- toba NDP Leader Wab Kinew released a document showing the PCs ordered health authorities to restrict their expenditures to a cap half of Ottawa’s restriction on health-care funds. The document, obtained by a free- dom of information request, shows health authorities were ordered to only spend 3.1 per cent more in the 2018-19 fiscal year than what they’d spent two years prior. The cap Ottawa set is a three per cent rise per year, not 3.1 per cent for two years. Pallister said the province is still spending more on health care, and outcomes such as wait times matter more than budget lines. “Throwing additional money at a problem is a simplistic and silly gauge, frankly, for how you get results,” he said. On Wednesday, the Trudeau govern- ment will outline its new priorities in a throne speech, which is expected to include costly pledges such as a phar- macare or child-care plan. That’s why the premiers are pushing to instead boost transfers for general health expenses and infrastructure. Pallister also asked Trudeau to include the reduction of interprovincial trade barriers among his key policy planks, given a mix of regulations between provinces is still driving up consumer prices. “It’s gotta be in the throne speech. Because Manitoba’s been leading the fight on this, and I just think the time has come for us to just support each other in this country,” Pallister said. The premier said he had a produc- tive chat Monday with Infrastructure Minister Catherine McKenna on issues of transit funding and flood-prevention channel construction. That chat also occurred through a video conference. Premiers were tentatively sched- uled to meet at the end of this week in Quebec City, but the plans are now to proceed virtually. On Monday, Kinew questioned why the premier didn’t just stay home. Though elected officials are exempt from orders to self-isolate when return- ing to Manitoba from other provinces, Kinew said the premier ought to do so anyway. “I think Mr. Pallister should hold himself to the same standard, and model the kind of behaviour that it’s going to take to beat the pandemic,” he said. Pallister argued the serious need for health-care funding merited the flight. — with files from Larry Kusch dylan.robertson@freepress.mb.ca KEN GIGLIOTTI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Irene Pearson’s body was found in the basement of 114 Kinver Ave., then vacant, in November 1979. She had been stabbed and beaten. A_02_Sep-22-20_FP_01.indd A2 2020-09-21 10:16 PM ;