MURDERED: Helen Betty Osborne

The discovery of 19-year-old Helen Betty Osborne’s body should have outraged the residents of The Pas, Manitoba. Yet, the truth of what happened to her, and who killed her, would remain an open secret for years. But, like all secrets, what happened that night eventually came to light – and upended over a decade of sinister silence.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:04Ashley Flowers?

  When you're out in nature, you learn to trust your instincts. You pay attention to the trail, your surroundings, and you stay alert to protect yourself from harm. But what if the biggest threat isn't the environment at all? On Park Predators, host Delia Diambra explores true crime cases that happen in national parks and remote wildernesses, the places we usually think of as safe and peaceful. Each episode reveals what happened and how much more there is beneath the surface. Listen to Park Predators now, wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, crime junkies. I'm your host, Ashley Flowers.

• 1:38Speaker 00

  And I'm Brett.

• 1:39Ashley Flowers?

  And the story I have for you today is about how a young woman's senseless and violent murder shone a light in all the darkest parts of one small northern Manitoba community. And it put a whole town on trial. It's a story that is just as important to hear today as it was over 50 years ago when it happened. And it feels all too familiar, even in 2025. This is the story of Helen Betty Osborne.

• 2:39Ashley Flowers?

  It's a cold gray morning in November 1971, and a 14-year-old named Kenneth is fishing with his father on Clearwater Lake in northern Manitoba. And of course, by fishing, when you're a kid, I mean, he's like, sitting there. And sitting there, he's not moving, he's not talking, and it's for hours. He's like, just hoping they might get a fish. So you can imagine, Kenneth gets kinda antsy. So he tells his dad that he's just gonna go for a walk, see if he can find any rabbit tracks in the snow, or something like that. Now, it's about 11:30 in the morning, and Kenneth is next to this pump house on his way back down to the lake, when according to coverage in the Winnipeg Sun, some strange tracks in the snow catch his eye.

• 3:21Ashley Flowers?

  And he's a curious kid, so he follows the tracks into the thick bush. The snow is crunching beneath him, and that's when he comes upon the body of a woman. She's naked, with only boots on her feet, and she's all bloody and badly beaten. So Kenneth immediately runs back to get his dad, and the two of them jump in the car. They drive to the closest place, which is, I think, this airport, to call police. But as luck would have it, there's actually an RCMP officer, which we know, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. He's on site when they get there. According to Lisa Priest's 1989 book, Conspiracy of Silence, this officer doesn't have experience necessarily as a criminal investigator.

• 4:03Ashley Flowers?

  He's actually the pilot who's in charge of, like, the RCMP's air division or whatever.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  Okay, so he's just like, at the airport, because that's where he is.

• 4:10Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, but he still heads down towards the lake with them. Like, he'll take a first, like, look at all of this. And he's also keeping in mind, like, I need to be careful not to do anything that would disturb a potential crime scene.

• 4:19Speaker 02

  Preserve things.

• 4:20Ashley Flowers?

  Right. And when he gets there, it, like, very clearly is a crime scene, so he has to call in backup. Now, it takes some time to get investigators all the way out to where they are, but by 1:45 in the afternoon, they have a team on site who is processing everything, gathering evidence. The victim looks to be in her late teens. She's small with kind of short, shaggy, dark hair that's kind of matted in clumps. Her skin is swollen and purple and she is covered, I mean, chest, head, neck, face, in dozens of these tiny stab wounds. So it is clear that she suffered a vicious and brutal attack, one that went on long after she stopped fighting.

• 5:01Ashley Flowers?

  And this might get kind of graphic, so content advisory, but investigators describe kind of this halo of blood that was around her head, almost like someone had stomped on her face and like made it so it like the blood was like going out of the tiny stab wounds that were made. I mean, it was that bad. The word that came up so many times over and over again in Lisa's book was the word frenzy, like this was a frenzied attack. It looked like whoever did this was angry and frantic, vicious even. And what's interesting is they did take time to hide her clothing because several items of hers were hidden under some rocks down closer by the lake.

• 5:44Ashley Flowers?

  And the person who stabbed and stomped her and the person who's hiding her clothing might not be the same person because there are two sets of footprints, one on each side of the victim's body. And there's even drag marks showing that they pulled her by her arm. So it's not like it was her footprints and someone else's. This is someone else there, a third person. Now, she didn't look like she'd been out there very long, less than a day, which is a lucky break because unlike in the warmer months when folks spend time at the cabins surrounding the lake, this area is pretty much deserted in November. Like if not for Kenneth getting antsy, if not for his dad making them wait it out in silence, if not for the fish that day refusing to bite, she may not have been found until

• 6:29Ashley Flowers?

  the next spring, if at all.

• 6:30Speaker 02

  Which is probably what the killers were counting on.

• 6:33Ashley Flowers?

  Maybe, and if so, that means that the killers knew the area. But the question is, did they know the victim? Well, in order to find that out, they need to know who she is, which is a difficult task, given the injuries to her face and her head. Over the next several hours, police will end up bringing in a total of 31 people to try and identify their Jane Doe. But no one can of these 31 people, like friends and family of potentially missing people. Now, in this time, when they're bringing in person after person, there is a missing persons report that comes in from The Paw. The Paw is the nearest town about 25, 30 minutes away from this lake where they found the Jane Doe.

• 7:15Ashley Flowers?

  Now, this missing persons report is for a 19-year-old named Helen Betty Osborne, who goes by Betty, according to the woman who files the report, and that woman is Patricia Benson. She is who Betty was living with, and I'll touch on that in just a moment, like the dynamic there. Now, according to what Patricia tells police, Betty hadn't come home after being out the night of November 12.

• 7:35Speaker 02

  And when was the Jane Doe found?

• 7:37Ashley Flowers?

  She is found on the 13th, so this is like really soon. Patricia's husband, William, is one of the 31 people, actually, who they brought in to potentially identify the Jane Doe. But even when they bring him in, he can't. I mean, that's how, that's how bad this is. But they're so bad, he also can't say that it's not her either. So they end up sending an officer to the Benson's house to lift fingerprints from Betty's school books to compare to the victim, and that is when she's finally identified. Now, when her full autopsy is completed, everyone is truly shocked to learn what this young woman endured. I mean, it was almost unspeakably brutal. She had been stabbed a total of 56 times.

• 8:21Ashley Flowers?

  11 of those were in the heart, and the rest were to her face and the back of her head. And according to Bill McDonald reporting for the Winnipeg Sun, he said that these stab wounds, I told you, they were kind of like small. They were like a little strained, but he reported that they were most likely from a screwdriver. Now, one injury to the lower back of her head stands out from the others because it is over two inches deep. And the weapon went through her skull and over an inch and a half into her brain. This is how severe this is. Her skull, her cheekbones, the roof of her mouth, all broken. Her lungs were damaged. A kidney was torn. She has bruises all over her body, which may have been caused by someone beating her with their

• 9:05Ashley Flowers?

  hands or their feet or some kind of blunt weapon. And her injuries are so severe that it's impossible to tell exactly which one of these led to her death and when during the attack she might have died. But this is without a doubt, a homicide. So the next day, the investigators go back out to the area where she was found with a police dog. And about three quarters of a mile from the crime scene, they find gloves. They find a couple pieces of a white cotton bra. They find a paper bag. All of this stuff is covered in blood. And about a half mile from the airport in a ditch, they find a flathead screwdriver, also covered in blood.

• 9:49Ashley Flowers?

  So this they're thinking has got to be their murder weapon. Or at least one of them. Because it turns out that another screwdriver had also been found by a civilian. I guess this airport employee, he'd been like driving in the area on the afternoon of the 13th. And he'd found like a whole different screwdriver on the road, which he had just like tossed in his trunk, thought nothing of it until he heard about the murder. So he brought that one to police. He feels like, you know, this could be really promising lead. There's actually a name engraved on the screwdriver, Hanson or Ranson, something like that.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  And I assume that one wasn't covered in blood?

• 10:24Ashley Flowers?

  I don't think so, or I, I would hope that he didn't just like-

• 10:27Speaker 02

  That would be like a red flag situation.

• 10:29Ashley Flowers?

  I would hope he didn't just like throw it in his car and be like, oh, now that I know about a murder, this screwdriver with blood. But I don't know that for sure. But either way, covered in blood, not covered in blood. They obviously like see the potential in this and they collect this as evidence. Is this a second murder weapon? We don't know. Now, another lead that comes to police is in the form of this taxi driver named Philip, who tells police that he was driving along that same highway where the screwdriver was found sometime after 4:00 a.m. the morning of the 13th, after he had just dropped off two customers. And he said as he's driving, he ends up behind a car that was like all over the road, just like zigzagging around. He said the driver was very obviously drunk,

• 11:11Ashley Flowers?

  like the car almost went into a ditch at one point. And he says the vehicle was a white or a light blue car. And, oh, by the way, this doesn't happen in most cases, he got a peek at the license plate, which included the numbers four and two.

• 11:27Speaker 02

  How close does that get them to someone? Like, how much does it narrow it down?

• 11:31Ashley Flowers?

  It helps. So they go from like, you know, every car, every light colored car, to a list of 5,000 cars. 5,000 plus people with a white or light blue car, and the numbers two and four somewhere, yeah, in the license plate. But while one option is to go down the list one by one, and maybe you'll get there in a few years, like, you know, hopefully it's the first one, but you know, you never know. The other option is to do some investigative work and use this list more as like a cross-reference, right? Which that's the route they decide to go in. And they start by retracing Betty's steps on the night of her murder.

• 12:10Ashley Flowers?

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• 12:54Ashley Flowers?

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• 13:30Ashley Flowers?

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• 14:43Ashley Flowers?

  Now, quick backstory. Betty is indigenous and she wasn't living with her family at the time. She was living with the Bensons. I told you, I'd mentioned Patricia Benson. She was living with them while she went to high school because she was born on a reserve where the schooling only went up to eighth grade. So she was taking part in this government-sponsored program where indigenous students could board with a local family to finish high school. Which I can't even imagine like that has to be so hard.

• 15:10Speaker 02

  Like disruptive.

• 15:11Ashley Flowers?

  You're already in this very like awkward time of your life. But Betty was super ambitious. She wanted to eventually go to college to be a teacher or a nurse or a lawyer. Like she had big dreams and she was working really hard to achieve them. So her last night at the Benson's home, the 12th, she ate dinner with the family at around six. Then she went out to visit a friend at the hospital. While she was there, she ran into an old friend of hers, this guy named George. And then the two of them decided to just grab a few beers together, head to the Benson's to kind of just catch up. Reminder, we're in 1971 Canada, my US friends, like beers at 19? A okay.

• 15:46Speaker 02

  Right.

• 15:47Ashley Flowers?

  But by 10, 10:30, Mrs. Benson said, like, listen, it's time to wrap it up. But Betty and George weren't ready to call it a night. So they head downtown where they meet up with a few more friends. Now, around 11, the crew was walking past a hotel and Betty saw her boyfriend with some other friends of his in the lobby of this hotel. Her boyfriend's name is Cornelius Biggity and author Lisa Priest actually interviewed him when she was writing her book. And she described him as kind of, like, you wouldn't guess it with this name, but like this Casanova Playboy type. As evidenced by the fact that it wasn't just friends he was with that night. Cornelius was actually with another girl that night and Betty wasn't happy about it.

• 16:31Ashley Flowers?

  The two of them had gotten into a big fight over this and it ended in Betty and her friends leaving. After that, they went back to the Benson's. They had a couple more drinks in a shed out back because again, Mrs. Benson's like too late.

• 16:45Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 16:45Ashley Flowers?

  And then around midnight, the other friends left and Betty and George went back downtown again. But by 12:30, George was over it. It's cold, it was dark, it wasn't exactly a great time of night to be walking around in the paw, especially if you're indigenous and both Betty and George are. So George went home, but Betty didn't want to.

• 17:04Speaker 02

  So Betty's alone at this point?

• 17:06Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, she was. And police can put her outside the hotel again at around 12:45. She's just like walking by. Then we know she's seen at a Legion dance at around two in the morning. And they actually find a witness who saw her walking down the street after she left the dance. This was around like 2:15. Then after 2:15, she's like off the grid.

• 17:26Speaker 02

  I have to imagine that Playboy boyfriend is one of the first people they look into.

• 17:31Ashley Flowers?

  Initially, he's like the main suspect.

• 17:33Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 17:33Ashley Flowers?

  They bring him into the police station, they question him, and they don't go easy. I mean, at one point, they even show him a picture of Betty's body. Like, that's actually how he finds out that his girlfriend is dead, like, he hadn't known yet when they did that. But ultimately, they end up ruling him out after he passes a polygraph, which we see all the time in the 70s. So they quickly move on, and by the end of November, they have talked to everyone in Betty's circle. All the cottage owners around Clearwater Lake where she was found. I mean, half the town, pretty much, has been talked to, and they still haven't got a clue who she was with after 2:15, or how she ended up all the way out at the lake. Because, by the way, someone would have had to have driven her out there.

• 18:18Ashley Flowers?

  Like, she might have been able to walk from the Bensons to downtown and back. Like, that was super easy.

• 18:23Speaker 02

  But this is so far off the beaten path.

• 18:25Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah.

• 18:25Speaker 02

  You would need a car.

• 18:26Ashley Flowers?

  It's like a 30-minute drive, so like, it's not like she's making this walk.

• 18:31Speaker 02

  It's not even walkable, really.

• 18:33Ashley Flowers?

  Maybe, but certainly not in the dead of winter, right?

• 18:36Speaker 02

  At night.

• 18:36Ashley Flowers?

  Right. So with the good old gumshoeing, not getting them very far, they decide, okay, listen, we tried working it this way. We should maybe go back to our list of over 5,000 cars. Maybe we actually just need to go down that one by one, because we don't have anyone to, like, cross-reference, or everyone we are cross-referencing is getting ruled out.

• 18:55Speaker 02

  Right.

• 18:55Ashley Flowers?

  But still, they can't start at 5,000. They gotta find a way to narrow it down a little bit. So what they decide to do, another fun 70s thing, they decide to bring Philip, the taxi driver, back in, and this time, put him under hypnosis to see if maybe he can remember a few more of the license plate letters.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Okay.

• 19:13Ashley Flowers?

  And this time, he gives them four numbers, this time in sequence, 5-342, which narrows that list of 5,000-plus possible cars down to just 28. And even better, only one of them is registered to an owner in the park. The owner is a guy by the name of Bud Colgan. And seeing his name is completely puzzling to police, because they know Bud.

• 19:44Speaker 02

  Like good know him or bad know him?

• 19:46Ashley Flowers?

  Bud's a good guy. Bud's got a wife and kids. He's like definitely not your murder a teenager kind of guy.

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Might be time to rethink everything you know about Bud.

• 19:56Ashley Flowers?

  But they, no, they say no. They're like, no, what a weird thing that he just ended up on our list. Like, I actually don't believe that they questioned Bud at all. Now, part of the reason might be because I know that his car had been stopped sometime around the time of the murder as a, like, part of a routine traffic stop. And at the time, it wasn't Bud driving, it was his son Lee who was driving. And when I say around the time of Betty's murder, I can't find an exact date. So I don't know if this was like a routine traffic stop. Like, I don't think they were setting up roadblocks or anything like that. I don't even know if we're talking days or weeks, or how they even like made the connection that someone saw his car. But basically, they were like, oh, we saw his car around

• 20:38Ashley Flowers?

  that time, too. And there was like nothing fishy in the car. So can't be like, I know it doesn't make sense, but like, it doesn't make sense. Like, they, I think they use that as part of the reason to like write him off. Or write off the car.

• 20:49Speaker 02

  Okay, so just to be clear, Bud has a son who is around like Betty's age, driving the car.

• 20:58Ashley Flowers?

  I know, I know.

• 21:00Speaker 02

  I feel like, and like you can't pin down the time.

• 21:02Ashley Flowers?

  Especially like, like, now, like, knowing he has a son. Again, they're like, oh, Bud's a good guy. Okay, well, what about Bud's son?

• 21:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 21:09Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, exactly. Exactly.

• 21:10Speaker 02

  Follow-up questions, at the very least.

• 21:12Ashley Flowers?

  Podcasters have them. These police did not. Like, still, they are very much like, nothing to see here, folks. And just like that, this lead, their only lead at this point, just fades away.

• 21:24Speaker 02

  And by doing that, they're basically just discounting taxi driver Phillip's sighting. Like, this whole list, everything that they're counting on, their main lead right now.

• 21:32Ashley Flowers?

  Well, yeah, yeah. They're like, oh, this one that actually makes sense. We have one registered in this area where it happened, like.

• 21:37Speaker 02

  Oh, well.

• 21:38Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah. Either they're discounting a sighting, or they're like, oh, him seeing the car means nothing. Maybe, maybe the car wasn't.

• 21:45Speaker 02

  Discounting the sighting.

• 21:47Ashley Flowers?

  Well, I mean, they could, they could think that the sighting happens. Do you know what I'm saying? Can I make some sense?

• 21:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, but there are one person that it could be.

• 21:56Ashley Flowers?

  Dude, so I, we'll get there.

• 22:00Ashley Flowers?

  So after this, Betty's case goes cold. No one comes forward with new information. And since we're in 1971, we are a far cry away from DNA.

• 22:10Speaker 02

  Was there anything that they could collect to potentially use later?

• 22:13Ashley Flowers?

  I mean, I know that they took blood samples. They took photos of the footprints, some nearby tire tracks, like closer to her body. I know they took her clothes. Spoiler alert, though, like, none of it ends up being useful later on. It's not, I mean, there might be forensic evidence on it, but it's not what we're gonna end up relying on.

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Cool.

• 22:28Ashley Flowers?

  Now, her cooling case doesn't go entirely cold because the following year in May, police get an anonymous letter postmarked in Marquette, Michigan, April 28th, 1972. Now, I found the letter in the report of the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry of Manitoba. What a mouthful.

• 22:48Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 22:48Ashley Flowers?

  But it's, it's like one of the most important letters we get in this case. So, Britt, I'm gonna have you read it.

• 22:52Speaker 02

  Okay. It says, "Sirs, the following information was related to persons in the fall of 1971 concerning the murdering of a young lady later found on a beach near the Pas, Manitoba. The story was related by Lee Colgan being in a state of intoxication and near tears that he had been driving his car accompanied by Jim Houghton and Norman Manger. There were two or three mentioned, but their names are forgotten. They had forced the girl into this car where it was then driven to the murder site, the girl being raped by all. She had threatened police action. She was then murdered using a screwdriver, punch, or similar instrument.

• 23:35Speaker 02

  Gordy Buck had seemingly witnessed the car returning from the beach in the early AM, and Lee Colgan lives in constant fear of information possible being forwarded to the local authorities. It is hoped that investigation by the officers can produce results. The informants do not wish to identify as reprisals were threatened by Lee Colgan against the friends and families concerned. These men are all of the local area of the Pas, Manitoba."

• 24:03Ashley Flowers?

  So I feel like all roads are leading back to Lee, right?

• 24:08Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 24:09Ashley Flowers?

  It might be worth, I don't know, talking to the kids since they have not yet? But not so fast. First, they, they don't just put it away, but they try and do some digging to validate what is in this letter. They confirm that the three guys named in the letter, so Lee, Jim, and Norm, who were 18, 23, and 25 when Betty was murdered, all three are known to hang around together. They're also able to place all three of these guys at the Legion Dance on November 12th.

• 24:37Speaker 02

  Where Betty was.

• 24:38Ashley Flowers?

  Betty was, that's one of the last places she was seen.

• 24:40Speaker 02

  Did she know them?

• 24:42Ashley Flowers?

  So, no, not like, well, the only one in the group who might have known her, or at least known of her, was Lee, because he'd been in one class with Betty at high school. Sometimes he'd play volleyball and basketball with her boyfriend Cornelius, and she would be like, you know, watching her boyfriend play or whatever, but like, they for sure weren't friends, just in this area might have like, known each other's names, right?

• 25:05Speaker 02

  Cross paths, yeah.

• 25:06Ashley Flowers?

  Anyway, police tracked down Lee and Norm first. They both live in the Paw, and they both flat out deny having anything to do with Betty's murder. Surprise, surprise. Jim is a little harder to track down. The justice inquiry report says RCMP speak with his parents in an attempt to locate him, because I guess Jim has since moved away from the Paw, but it doesn't say if they actually ever questioned him, it's really strange. And I mean, like, it's hard to like, go full speed at somebody, especially after they leave, because the only thing they have right now is circumstantial, like, evidence.

• 25:41Speaker 02

  It's just a letter.

• 25:42Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, witness statements, yeah. So detectives go back to that thread that they never pulled on, the Colgans' car. And when they actually do go look at it, like, meaningfully look at it, guess what they find, freaking right there? Bloodstains, and hair that looks like Betty's. Oh, and a bra strap, the same kind, or it looks like it belongs to the same bra as the one that they found in pieces at the crime scene.

• 26:11Speaker 02

  And this is what, like, six months later?

• 26:13Ashley Flowers?

  Seven.

• 26:14Speaker 02

  Ah. And was this car still being like driven around like the family had to have known?

• 26:15Ashley Flowers?

  I know.

• 26:21Ashley Flowers?

  I'm assuming it's still being driven and we're not talking. So here's the thing, we're not talking like huge bloodstains or chunks of hair. It's more like a few strands. I think maybe a couple of small bloodstains when they're really trying to process this car. I think one, if I remember correctly, the bloodstain was like on a strap underneath the backseat. So it's not something that I think they would have liked. They're like, oh, look at all this evidence just like laying around. I think it kind of went hidden unless you were really looking for it. And even though it's not a lot, it is still not a good look. But when they go back to Lee Colgan with this evidence and they're like, hey, how do you explain this? He's basically like, so what? Like you found a bra strap and some blood? That doesn't prove anything.

• 27:05Speaker 02

  But what does it prove, Lee? Like where'd the blood come from?

• 27:10Ashley Flowers?

  He doesn't say, no, he doesn't say. He denies any involvement. And unfortunately, even with what they have and this like anonymous letter, like it's not enough to actually do anything with. But I mean, you gotta think, if the letter writer is correct, it wasn't just Lee. Norm and Jim are in the car that night, too. And apparently there's someone else that they should be looking for. And on June 23rd, another anonymous tipster comes forward with another name. Remember being a kid around the holidays and anytime you would ask for something, mom would always say, wait until the holidays. Well, with Mint Mobile's holiday deal, there's no waiting. Right now, this second, all of their plans are $15 a month.

• 27:53Ashley Flowers?

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• 28:36Ashley Flowers?

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• 28:53Speaker 02

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• 29:54Speaker 03

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• 30:00Ashley Flowers?

  This new tipster gives police the name Dwayne Johnston. This is a local from the PA who was 18 when Betty was killed. Now, this name, Dwayne, was not mentioned in the letter. And he doesn't really chum around with these other guys either. But police do know who he is, mostly because he is associated with this group known as the PA bikers, who tend to get themselves in trouble with police, like, barely often.

• 30:26Speaker 02

  And what does he have to say?

• 30:28Ashley Flowers?

  Dwayne refused to cooperate. Like, he has a lawyer, and the same lawyer also ends up getting hired by Lee Jim and Norm.

• 30:35Speaker 02

  Oh, cool.

• 30:36Ashley Flowers?

  Now, all of them refused to talk, but... I mean, the town's talking, though. Rumors are flying left and right. Stories of Lee getting drunk and telling whoever he's with that he was there that night. He knows what happened to Betty. But again, like, we just have rumors, and rumors don't get you arrest warrants.

• 30:55Speaker 02

  True, but what does bloodstains in your car get you?

• 31:00Ashley Flowers?

  Not a whole lot in 1971. So it stays this way for 10 years. It's not until the summer of 1983, when a new investigator, Robert Urbanowski, cracks open Betty's case again. And in 1983, there's a little, not a lot, but a little more they can do with forensic evidence. So he tracks down all the evidence and resubmits it for testing. He interviews every officer who worked on the file over the last 12 years. He talks to police informants. He locates all four suspects, who are by now kind of just scattered around Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba. And it turns out, when he's going around talking to these people and people around

• 31:42Ashley Flowers?

  them, they're still just out there talking about the murder of Betty Osborne. So Urbanowski knows this case is solvable, so he asks to investigate it full-time. And RCMP is like, "Listen, knock yourself out." So there are a few things he does to get the ball rolling again. Though this is a little further down the line in 1985. Now, one of the things he does is this whole wiretapping operation, that to make a long story short, doesn't result in much of anything he can actually use. So in the summer of 1985, he puts an article in the local paper, asking for the public's help solving Betty's case. He says, "He believes she was lured into a car, taken to the lake where she was killed."

• 32:27Ashley Flowers?

  And he even, in this, like, post, addresses the fear of retaliation that has kind of permeated a lot of the rumors surrounding these four guys. But he assures the public, "Listen, any tipster who comes forward, you will remain anonymous." And this works, like the floodgates open with tips. And the first person to come forward is a woman named Andrea, who, according to Bill McDonald's reporting for the Winnipeg Sun, tells detectives that she heard Dwayne Johnston brag about the murder at a party one night back in 1972, back when she was 14. She says that at one point during this party, Dwayne stood up, he made stabbing motions with his hand and admitted to stabbing her over and over. And but he was laughing about it,

• 33:11Ashley Flowers?

  and later said that it felt great to kill someone. There's a second woman that comes forward and says that she too heard that Dwayne had killed Betty. But one of his friends threatened to kill her if she ever told anyone. Then, the third witness that comes forward is a local sheriff named Gerald. And Gerald tells Urbanowski that he'd been drinking at the Legion one night with his buddy Lee when the bartender brought over a vodka and orange juice and set it in front of Lee. And he's like, this is courtesy of the RCMP.

• 33:46Speaker 02

  That drink is called a screwdriver.

• 33:48Ashley Flowers?

  That's a screwdriver. Apparently, the local cops used to do this to Lee like all the time for years. Because like, they always felt like he was...

• 33:57Speaker 02

  The person?

• 33:57Ashley Flowers?

  Not only the person, but in the group of people who are the persons, like he was potentially the weak link or like in their chain of silence, he was the one that maybe they could break. Like if they could wear him down enough, maybe he would talk one day. So Gerald's sitting down with him. He gets this screwdriver. After the drink arrives, Lee gets really upset and he just starts telling Gerald. Again, not like he's not doing this all around. People have been hearing these rumors for so long.

• 34:21Speaker 02

  Right.

• 34:22Ashley Flowers?

  He starts telling Gerald about how he was there, how police won't leave him alone ever since. And at that point Gerald like hustled Lee out of the bar into his camper where they had another drink. He's like kind of like, I don't think, trying to open the floodgates even more. And he gets him to just start talking. Lee tells him the whole story of Betty's murder.

• 34:43Speaker 02

  I'm sorry, when is this happening?

• 34:45Ashley Flowers?

  This was the drinks and stuff like at the Legion. This is happening in like 1977 or 78?

• 34:52Speaker 02

  And Lee's telling all of this to a sheriff?

• 34:55Ashley Flowers?

  A sheriff, not like the sheriff in charge of the investigation, but...

• 34:58Speaker 02

  But still a law enforcement officer.

• 35:02Speaker 02

  Why are we talking about it so many years later then?

• 35:05Ashley Flowers?

  I don't know. I imagine he feels like he's getting the same, right? Like, this isn't the first time he's opened up. I imagine he feels like he's getting the same story that all these people around town have been getting. Surely, police must know about it. Like, we see that all the time.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Like, surely someone reported this and looked into it. It's not important for me to come forward with that.

• 35:23Ashley Flowers?

  Right, right. But now that they're like, again, this request for information opens up. This guy calls in, be like, just to make sure you know that this happened.

• 35:31Speaker 02

  And they're like, no.

• 35:32Ashley Flowers?

  And they're like, yeah.

• 35:33Speaker 02

  We didn't know.

• 35:34Ashley Flowers?

  This is, this is helpful. So after Urbanowski submits everything he's learned to the Attorney General's Department, and despite not having much new in the way of physical evidence, charges are approved. I don't know what changed, because again, they don't have more now. Like, I don't know if the sources seem more credible. I don't know if the number of stories they have or people coming forward is just...

• 35:57Speaker 02

  But the witness statements are enough.

• 35:58Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah. So Lee is arrested in October of 1986, followed by Dwayne Johnston's arrest a few weeks later.

• 36:06Speaker 02

  And what about the other two guys?

• 36:08Ashley Flowers?

  So they're not arrested. Um, there are a couple of reasons for that. First of all, the people who come forward with information, none of them had anything to say about Norm and Jim. Like, all the stories were about Lee and Dwayne. And I don't know, they might be thinking that Lee, I mean, again, Lee's the one that seems like the weak link to them. They might be thinking that if they can get a confession out of him, then they can, if there was other people involved...

• 36:30Speaker 02

  Other things will fall into place.

• 36:32Ashley Flowers?

  Exactly. But initially, Lee and Dwayne hold out. They refuse to tell investigators what happened that night, which is a far cry from how Lee, in particular, has been acting for the last 15 years. Again, I think they thought they were going to put pressure on him.

• 36:46Speaker 02

  And fold right away.

• 36:47Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, they're going to get the whole story. But he clammed up, refusing to implicate himself or his friends, until right before his preliminary hearing in 1987. That's when he says... I'll give you everything and I'll give you what you need to arrest Jim Houghton. But in exchange, I want full immunity.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Full immunity.

• 37:09Ashley Flowers?

  Full immunity. And as painful as it is, without Lee's testimony, frankly, even with his testimony, the Crown Prosecutor knows that the defense is gonna run a freight train through the holes in their case. There is no slam dunk physical evidence. Like, we are just starting to, like, think about maybe someday using DNA.

• 37:31Speaker 02

  The idea of DNA, right.

• 37:32Ashley Flowers?

  It would be another year before DNA shows up in the Canadian courtroom. So it literally is not a thing at this point. So what might be physical evidence today was just circumstantial back in the 80s. You have four possible suspects, each of whom could have been the one to kill Betty. Like, they need Lee's testimony if they're going to secure a conviction, any convictions, even if it means he walks away. So with his immunity secured, Lee spills his guts. He says that on Friday night, November 12th, 1971, he borrowed his father's car and he, Norm Manger and Jim Houghton, went into town to drink and just, like, cruise around. They went to the Legion, then just drove around some, and then they met up with Dwayne Johnston.

• 38:17Ashley Flowers?

  As the Friday night crowd was starting to thin out, they decided that they wanted to find an Indigenous girl to party with, as in have sex with. And they were gonna do this whether this woman that they found consented or not, which just shows you what their intentions, I think, were from the beginning. According to Sheri Noreen's reporting for the Thompson Citizen, this whole driving around looking for a girl to party with, again, this is like an Indigenous girl specifically, this was common practice around this time. And the girl they found on that night was Betty. But Betty had no interest in even talking to these guys, let alone sleeping with any of them. But, like I said, they're not going to take a simple no for an answer. So they pulled over the car.

• 39:02Ashley Flowers?

  Dwayne got out to try, at first, to convince her to come with them. But when that didn't work, he forced her into the backseat and the car took off. At this point in the night, Lee says that Jim was behind the wheel with Norm in the front passenger seat, and Betty was in the backseat between Lee and Dwayne. They decided to go to Jim's family cottage near Clearwater Lake. The guys are all still drinking at this point, and they were trying to get Betty to drink more too, but she was refusing. She was telling them that she didn't want to. She was begging them to let her go. And that's when things turned violent. Dwayne began ripping off Betty's shirt and bra and started to sexually assault her. Now, Lee says he wasn't just like sitting back there watching. He was engaged in it too.

• 39:47Ashley Flowers?

  He was groping her at this point. But Betty was not going down without a fight. She was clawing at them, to the point where Lee says that he thought she was gonna like gouge Dwayne's eyes out or something. So, instead of stopping, he held her arms down so Dwayne could continue assaulting her. Now, when they got to the cottage, they all got out of the car, and Lee says that he, Jim, and Norm all stood around drinking while Dwayne kept going, kept assaulting Betty.

• 40:19Speaker 02

  And literally the others are just standing around watching it happen?

• 40:24Ashley Flowers?

  Well, at first, that's how he positions it. Like, I mean, again, we know he like holds her down in the car, but he basically, like, at first, he says, yeah, like, it's all Dwayne. We're just kind of sitting there. We're not stopping it. But in the Aboriginal Justice Inquiry's final report, he does end up admitting that he took part in the beating at this point of the night as well. Now, he says they weren't at the cottage for very long because Betty wouldn't stop screaming, and they started to worry that someone was gonna hear her. So they put her back in the car and they drive even farther out of town where they knew it would be deserted. Again, we knew they knew the area.

• 40:59Speaker 02

  Out to the lake.

• 41:00Ashley Flowers?

  Mm-hmm. Lee says that when they got there, Duane took Betty out of the car, but that the other three stayed inside and just kept drinking. He says every so often, they would hear banging against the side or the back of the car. He was pretty sure that that was the sound of Betty being beaten even further. But again, none of them did anything to stop it. None of them did anything to help her. And Lee tells them that after five or 10 minutes, the banging stopped. And at some point after that, Jim got out of the car. Betty was still alive at that point, like Lee could see her when the interior light went on. More time passed and then Duane came back to the car,

• 41:43Ashley Flowers?

  reached under the seat for a screwdriver, and then he left again. Lee said that he and Norm waited a little bit longer, but like it felt endless. So he climbed up into the driver's seat and turned the car around. And at that point, he says, he yelled out the window for the guys to just hurry up. No one answers at first, so he's like, okay, we're gonna leave without you. And then someone said back, just a minute. And not long after, Jim and Duane were back in the car. And then one of them, he doesn't remember which one, said simply, she's dead. Now, Lee says that he remembers the screwdriver being wiped off and thrown out the window while they were driving back into town. And he says they all parted ways once they got back to the Paw.

• 42:26Ashley Flowers?

  But before he and Jim split for the night, they made this pact to keep whatever happened quiet between them. And it's a pact that they later brought both Duane and Norm into as well. Now, the problem with this is that even with Lee's story, detectives still don't know who actually wielded the weapon that killed Betty Osborne. Now, they think the likeliest candidate was probably Duane for a couple of reasons. First, he's already associated with the bikers in the Paw, which like they're not technically a motorcycle gang in the organized sense, but they're also not like polite, upstanding, law-abiding citizens either. Second, he is also well-known in town for his racist views and his treatment of indigenous.

• 43:11Ashley Flowers?

  People, men and women alike. And more importantly, he had been the guy overheard at a party that time talking about what it felt like to kill someone.

• 43:20Speaker 02

  So if Dwayne is the one holding the weapon, Jim just was out there with him watching it happen? He helped Dwayne drag Betty?

• 43:30Ashley Flowers?

  That's the implication. Either way, it's enough to get an arrest warrant for Jim, which they do in March of 1987. Then later that year in November, Dwayne and Jim stand trial for the first degree murder of Helen Betty Osborne. And this is just over 16 years after her murder actually took place.

• 43:50Speaker 02

  Whatever happened with Norm? What happened with him?

• 43:53Ashley Flowers?

  He never gets charged. And listen, he said he was there, but he was super drunk. It was awful. He said he didn't have anything to do with it. And part of Lee's whole story was that Norm was so disturbed by what was going on that he like curled up into a ball underneath the dash, just like crying and whimpering. So, I mean, it still puts him there. Like, it still puts you not helping, not stopping, not talking. But I guess they didn't feel like they had enough to actually take him to trial. So this trial against Dwayne and Jim, the only trial they're gonna have to hold anyone accountable, this gets underway in November of 1987.

• 44:30Ashley Flowers?

  Truly, in front of a jury of the killer's peers, all white, made up primarily of working class men.

• 44:41Ashley Flowers?

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• 45:26Ashley Flowers?

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• 45:54Speaker 02

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• 46:38Speaker 02

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• 47:01Ashley Flowers?

  The Crown argues that Dwayne and Jim, along with Lee and Norm, saw Betty walking down the streets in the Paw, forced her into their car, drove her out to the lake where she was beaten and sexually assaulted. And at the end of the night, they basically realized they'd gone too far, and so they killed her to avoid any kind of accountability. At trial, Lee Colgan was, of course, the star witness, along with Norm and several people from the Paw who'd been told about the murder over the years.

• 47:29Speaker 02

  I don't know, like, maybe that freaking sheriff?

• 47:31Ashley Flowers?

  Yes, so the sheriff is one of the witnesses who testifies at this trial about knowing, at least in broad strokes, the details of the crime and who committed it. And he becomes kind of a lightning rod, actually. So according to Heidi Graham's reporting for the Winnipeg Sun, after he testifies, there are calls for a full public inquiry, not just about this sheriff and his role in keeping this secret, but about the whole

• 47:56Speaker 02

  The system.

• 47:57Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah, thing and why it took so long for police to charge someone. So this sheriff ends up getting investigated by the Attorney General, and within a couple of months, he's transferred to another job. Apparently, they wanted to fire him, but they weren't confident would hold up with the employees' union. So anyways, he's one of the witnesses who takes the stand over the course of this seven-day trial. Each person telling the same story about the same crime committed by the same men, information that they had known for well over a decade without telling police.

• 48:29Speaker 02

  I mean, they have physical evidence too, right? Like, they have the murder weapon, or two of them?

• 48:33Ashley Flowers?

  It is later, and, I mean, they do, but actually, the trial is far more about testimony than it is about physical evidence. Like, I know they definitely bring forward all that stuff, the screwdriver, the blood, the hair, the backseat of Lee's car, but the physical evidence is very much, like, in the whole of this, like, second to the testimony.

• 48:50Speaker 02

  Which makes sense because they weren't able to test any of that, to, like, definitively, without a doubt, say, this was Betty's blood, this was Betty's hair.

• 48:58Ashley Flowers?

  Which is part of why I think that it played like second fiddle. All in all, the jury deliberates for a grand total of, I think this is the lowest I've ever seen, 30 minutes.

• 49:07Speaker 02

  Oh.

• 49:08Ashley Flowers?

  And the verdict, or should I say verdicts? This is a little surprising. Jim is acquitted, and Dwayne is found guilty of second-degree murder.

• 49:16Speaker 02

  Okay, so just to do some math, there were four people known to have been involved in this crime.

• 49:23Ashley Flowers?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:24Speaker 02

  Like, fully there while it happened, four people. There were three arrests.

• 49:28Ashley Flowers?

  Mm-hmm.

• 49:29Speaker 02

  There were then two people on trial, and out of those two people, we got

• 49:35Ashley Flowers?

  One conviction.

• 49:36Speaker 02

  One conviction.

• 49:37Ashley Flowers?

  Yes. It's not great math.

• 49:39Speaker 02

  How? How is this what happened?

• 49:42Ashley Flowers?

  It has a lot to do with who they are. Like, when you look at the makeup of this, like, Dwayne, the one guy who they get a conviction on, he has always known to be this racist lowlife, like, right up until his arrest. I mean, there were intimate partner violence rumors about Dwayne, too, rumors that were denied by the women he'd been with. But it's not unthinkable. I think when you're there looking at the people in front of them, It's not unthinkable that this guy might do something like what was done to Betty. But here's the thing, like Jim, by the time that this trial comes around, again, this is like 16 years later.

• 50:20Speaker 02

  It's the by the time that's frustrating.

• 50:22Ashley Flowers?

  Exactly. He's, he's got a wife. He's got a good job. The kids, the white picket fence, the whole deal. I mean, Jim is literally like coaching his kid's hockey team and barbecuing with neighbors on the weekend. I think people just like, they're like, but he's a good guy. He's a nice guy.

• 50:39Speaker 02

  But what I can't get past is there were four people there that night. It, it, to me, doesn't really matter.

• 50:47Ashley Flowers?

  If you're a nice guy now?

• 50:49Speaker 02

  That you're a nice guy now, or if you were the one holding the weapon or not, like.

• 50:53Ashley Flowers?

  It's also frustrating that like, he's a nice guy is the reason it took so long to get here in the first place, right? Like when they're like, oh, it's only this one guy's car, but he's a nice guy.

• 51:01Speaker 02

  Right.

• 51:01Ashley Flowers?

  He's a nice guy is everything that's wrong with this case.

• 51:03Speaker 02

  And again, like, I'm sorry, do nice guys sit by while a woman is being murdered?

• 51:09Ashley Flowers?

  Right.

• 51:10Speaker 02

  Like, that's not a nice guy. That's not a nice guy.

• 51:13Ashley Flowers?

  And not only like the thing you did, but even keeping it secret all those years, like what you did to Betty's family too. Like you, you chose every day to put yourself above them.

• 51:24Speaker 02

  While also like bragging about it on the down low. Like almost making a mockery of the lack of justice.

• 51:32Ashley Flowers?

  Yeah. And speaking of that, a mockery of justice. Dwayne was sentenced to life in prison for Betty's murder, which feels good.

• 51:41Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 51:42Ashley Flowers?

  But he only serves 10 years and he was released in 1997.

• 51:48Speaker 02

  So the only conviction we got.

• 51:51Ashley Flowers?

  You got 10 years.

• 51:52Speaker 02

  Yielded a sentence of 10 years.

• 51:54Ashley Flowers?

  Yes. Now, what I will say is that I don't think the only cell is a prison. Like it gives me a little bit of solace that even when the system fails, sometimes there is something in the universe, even if it's a person's own conscience that tries to set things right. Like with Lee, for example, I don't think it's a coincidence that despite having every opportunity in life and the unwavering support of his family, even though by all accounts, he didn't deserve it, Lee went fully off the rails after the murder. He kind of just spiraled into drug and alcohol use. He couldn't hold a job. He has all these run ins with police, domestic violence. And I mean, it gets so bad that after he was arrested, they had to hold him in a

• 52:39Ashley Flowers?

  secure hospital room so he didn't die detoxing in a cell. So like those 16 years, he, I mean, and more, he had freed. I don't think they were happy years. He's since died and the others have kind of just faded into obscurity. I know I had the team try and find out what they were doing now, but like couldn't really. But I like, I understand keeping a low profile because their names will forever be tied to this prolific case. A case that should not have taken over a decade to solve. And I think everyone knows it's their fault that it did. Right. In April 1988, the government of Manitoba established the public inquiry into the administration

• 53:20Ashley Flowers?

  of justice and Aboriginal people to look at the circumstances surrounding the investigation into Betty's murder. And the final report says it better than I ever could. So Brett, I'm gonna have you read it.

• 53:30Speaker 02

  It is clear that Betty Osborne would not have been killed if she had not been Aboriginal. The four men who took her to her death from the streets of the paw that night had gone looking for an Aboriginal girl with whom to party. They found Betty Osborne. When she refused to party, she was driven out of town and murdered. Those who abducted her showed a total lack of regard for her person or her rights as an individual. Those who stood by while the physical assault took place, while sexual advances were made, and while she was being beaten to death, showed their own racism, sexism, and indifference. Those who knew the story and remained silent must share their guilt.

• 54:12Ashley Flowers?

  Amen.

• 54:13Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 54:14Ashley Flowers?

  Starting in 2021, a memorial fund was established in Helen Betty Osborne's name through the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba. The goal of the scholarship is to provide financial support to full-time, post-secondary Indigenous students living in Manitoba. But even more than that, these students are recognized for their dedication and commitment to dismantling, quote, "the barriers of racism, sexism, violence, and indifference in society, including those impacted by the missing and murdered Indigenous people genocide and/or survivors of gender-based violence," end quote. Thanks to all of you who listen and who are in the fan club, AudioChuck was able to make

• 54:57Ashley Flowers?

  a donation to the memorial fund in Betty's name.

• 55:14Ashley Flowers?

  You can find all the source material for this episode on our website, crimejunkiepodcast.com.

• 55:20Speaker 02

  And be sure to follow us on Instagram at @crimejunkiepodcast.

• 55:23Ashley Flowers?

  We'll be back next week with a brand new episode.

• 56:01Ashley Flowers?

  Crime Junkie is an AudioChuck production. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?

• 56:10Speaker 00

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• 56:55Speaker 00

  and enjoy smoother weight management when following a healthy lifestyle. So again, if you said yes to any one, here's what to do right now. Head to bioma.health/GLP1 and use code PODCAST for 15% off your first order. That's bioma.health/GLP1 code PODCAST.

• 57:14Speaker 04

  When the nights grow longer, the shadows start to stir. And that can only mean one thing. Full Body Chills is back. This season, step inside original tales where every doorway leads somewhere darker, every stranger carries a secret, and nothing is ever quite what it seems. Each story takes you somewhere new, but be careful. You never know what might follow you home. So gather round, listen close, and stream Full Body Chills wherever you get your podcasts.