Speaker 1: On November twelfth, Brenda Way's body was discovered behind a
Speaker 1: dumpster in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Her throat had been split,
Speaker 1: with a solid alibi. The initial investigation cleared her ex
Speaker 1: boyfriend Glenna Soon of the murder, but nearly a year later,
Speaker 1: a new investigator was assigned to this cold case, who
Speaker 1: used the ramblings of a crack addic seeking leniency in
Speaker 1: order to bring Glenn back into suspicion. The investigation continued
Speaker 1: down an increasingly ridiculous path, involving psychics and even more
Speaker 1: crack addicts. While there was evidence pointing toward a bearded
Speaker 1: serial killer the entire time, police both disregarded and hid
Speaker 1: that evidence, though, choosing to stay with the course they
Speaker 1: knew was a farce, and Glenn spent over sixteen long,
Speaker 1: miserable years behind bars until Innocent's Canada was able to
Speaker 1: unearth that detail and spring and from prison. However, nothing
Speaker 1: will ever replace all of the years stolen from Glenn
Speaker 1: and his family. This is wrongful conviction with Jason plom
Speaker 1: Welcome back to wrongful conviction with Jason Flom. That's me,
Speaker 1: of course, I'm your host, and today you're going to
Speaker 1: hear a story from north of the border. We have
Speaker 1: two incredible lawyers, Sean McDonald and Phil Campbell from Innocence Canada. Sean,
Speaker 1: first of all, welcome to Wrongful Conviction. Thanks for being here.
Speaker 1: Thanks very much for having me and Phil. I'm so
Speaker 1: glad that you're here as well to highlight the work
Speaker 1: that Innocence Canada does because I don't believe that this
Speaker 1: organization gets enough attention and we want to change that.
Speaker 1: So thanks for being here as well. Thanks so much,
Speaker 1: And of course save the best for last. We have
Speaker 1: a guy who I can only call a hero to
Speaker 1: so many of us, Glenna Soon, who went to hell
Speaker 1: and back and is here to share his story with us.
Speaker 1: So Glenn, thank you for being here. Thank you. I'm
Speaker 1: glad to be here. Yeah, it's sort of a miracle
Speaker 1: that you made it through and that you are here,
Speaker 1: and it speaks to your strength and your spirit. So
Speaker 1: I'm really excited that you're here and I'm sorry you
Speaker 1: had to go through this. Let's go back to the beginning, Glenn,
Speaker 1: where did you grow up? I grew up in Sydney,
Speaker 1: Cape Brenton, Nova Scotia is a small town. And how
Speaker 1: was your life before this? What were some of your hobbies.
Speaker 1: My hobbies was playing a guitar, try to learn how
Speaker 1: to play a guitar properly and stuff, listen to country
Speaker 1: music and trying to play a country music And you
Speaker 1: were raising a pretty large family as well at the time, right, yes,
Speaker 1: I had three kids to raise back in the seventies,
Speaker 1: and then everything went to hell in a handbasket. We're
Speaker 1: talking about Sunday morning, November twelve five, your ex girlfriend,
Speaker 1: Brenda Way, was discovered behind an apartment building in Dartmouth, Nova, Scotia,
Speaker 1: and her throat had been split. Even I think for
Speaker 1: avid listeners of the show, who have heard so many
Speaker 1: of these stories, this one, it's fucking sick. Now. This
Speaker 1: is where I want to turn to the legal team
Speaker 1: because the preventable nature of all of this, it's so
Speaker 1: stunning to me. Tell me what the hell happened here.
Speaker 1: So at the beginning, police rightfully interviewed all the people
Speaker 1: that had contact with Brenda Way. They interviewed Glenn. They
Speaker 1: determined that he had an ALBI. He was with his
Speaker 1: roommate and friend and Morse all night with two other
Speaker 1: roommates that night, so he had a supportable, credible truthful,
Speaker 1: most importantly alibi, And in the end it appeared to us,
Speaker 1: at least on the record that we reviewed, that they
Speaker 1: cleared him as a suspect, or at least d prioritize
Speaker 1: him as a person of interest and moved on to
Speaker 1: look at other things. Yea. So he had this excellent
Speaker 1: alibi armed within hours of the discovery of the body,
Speaker 1: and sometime in the year or two afterwards, the brenda
Speaker 1: Way homicide shifted to two different officers, and those two
Speaker 1: guys decided that Glenna soon must have done it. And
Speaker 1: really it's a kind of classic example of the tunnel
Speaker 1: vision that so often characterizes wrongful convictions, where you stop
Speaker 1: investigating a crime and you start investigating a person. And
Speaker 1: once they fixed on Glenn, the first thing they had
Speaker 1: to do was discredit the alibi. So they pulled in
Speaker 1: Anne Morse, who had told the truth. They arrested her
Speaker 1: for obstruction of justice for having told the truth. They
Speaker 1: told her she was going to jail for three to
Speaker 1: five years. They intimidated her, and then they finally persuaded
Speaker 1: her that maybe she couldn't know, and maybe she wasn't sure,
Speaker 1: even though she had always said before then it has
Speaker 1: always said afterwards that that statement I gave the morning
Speaker 1: Brenda was found was the truth. So they thought they
Speaker 1: had a little c in the alibi. And then they
Speaker 1: started finding recruiting other witnesses, and there was just a
Speaker 1: daisy chain of witnesses, each less credible than the either,
Speaker 1: but collectively they made up the case that the Crown
Speaker 1: eventually put in front of the jury. It's like they
Speaker 1: send in the clowns, right, One farcical witness after another
Speaker 1: is dragged into this. Can you walk us through this
Speaker 1: cast of characters real quick? Glenn was hitting the streets
Speaker 1: after Brenda was killed, trying to find out who killed her.
Speaker 1: One of the people Glenn was regularly speaking with was
Speaker 1: a woman by the name of Margarette Hartwik. Margaret was
Speaker 1: a well known street prostitute. Now it's interesting because at
Speaker 1: different times Margaret Hartrick would call Glenn and say I
Speaker 1: have information on Brenda's murder. And there were a number
Speaker 1: of occasions where Glenn brought Margarette to the attention of
Speaker 1: the police because she was telling him I know what happened.
Speaker 1: I'm hearing on the streets what's happening, And Glenn was saying, well,
Speaker 1: you know, tell the police. Mark Good eventually was picked
Speaker 1: up by the police in relation to a customer of
Speaker 1: hers who had died, and while she was speaking to
Speaker 1: the police about this, she said to them, well, I
Speaker 1: also have information on Brenda Way's homicide. And so the
Speaker 1: police officers said, okay, well you know what do you
Speaker 1: have to say, and they sat her down and she
Speaker 1: started to go on, just rambling die tribe about psychic
Speaker 1: visions and psychic dreams that she had where she saw
Speaker 1: areas of Dartmouth where Brenda was taken by different people,
Speaker 1: and how she was killed, to the point where the
Speaker 1: cops just said, look, thanks for the information, and they
Speaker 1: started to shuffle her out the door, or at least
Speaker 1: this is the way they recall the conversation and when
Speaker 1: they testified at Glenn's trial, and then Margaret suddenly said, well,
Speaker 1: I guess you don't care that Glenn was at the
Speaker 1: sight of the murder at four fifteen am and the
Speaker 1: morning Brenda was killed. So suddenly they're saying that she's
Speaker 1: changing her evidence after forty five minutes of psychic ramblings,
Speaker 1: after months and months of ramblings with and to the police,
Speaker 1: and puts Glenn at the scene of the murder inconsistent
Speaker 1: with the alibi that they already checked out and found
Speaker 1: to be credible. And that was the moment where the
Speaker 1: new officers investigating this case had their witness The investigation
Speaker 1: increased in pace from that point forward. The next development
Speaker 1: was the emergence of Brenda's sister, Jane. Jane told the
Speaker 1: police that she had found a knife, and she said
Speaker 1: that she had been looking for the knife near the
Speaker 1: scene of the crime, which had been thoroughly searched by police,
Speaker 1: because a psychic had told her that her sister was
Speaker 1: killed by a broken tipped knife, and lo and behold,
Speaker 1: she had gone out, looked around the area adjacent to
Speaker 1: the murder and found a broken tipped knife. The police
Speaker 1: would ultimately seize this knife. The knife would have no
Speaker 1: forensic evidence that tied it either to the homicide or
Speaker 1: to Glenn as soon, but it ultimately became an exhibit
Speaker 1: trial and it became the focal point of the next
Speaker 1: key witnesses story, and that is a woman named Mary Cameron.
Speaker 1: Marry Cameron was, unsurprisingly to us, a friend of Jane,
Speaker 1: a sister, and she popped up to the police with
Speaker 1: a story that she had been with a friend of hers,
Speaker 1: and Glenn had walked in and said, I killed her.
Speaker 1: I got her ear to ear, I cut her so
Speaker 1: hard I broke off the tip of the knife. This
Speaker 1: is a confession. He supposedly volunteers in front of a
Speaker 1: complete stranger, and Mary becomes the next crown witness, even
Speaker 1: though the woman who she was with her friend, who
Speaker 1: also knew Glen, flatly denied that any such conversation had
Speaker 1: taken place, so that Margaret and now Mary so. Brenda's
Speaker 1: cousin is a woman by the name of Karen Way. Karen,
Speaker 1: within two weeks of the murder, was at a bar
Speaker 1: with her boyfriend and heard two guys walking down the
Speaker 1: bar in this dark ced bar in Dartmouth, one guy
Speaker 1: telling the other guy you should have seen the look
Speaker 1: on Brenda Way's face when I slid her throat. And
Speaker 1: the guy who said it was a burly guy with
Speaker 1: dark hair and a beard, and it was so disturbing
Speaker 1: to Karen. Karen calls the police. The police show up
Speaker 1: and they do nothing. They take a report. That report
Speaker 1: gets filed. The officers did not go back to Karen
Speaker 1: Wade to try and talk to her about what she saw.
Speaker 1: They didn't go to the bar. They didn't look at
Speaker 1: cameras around the bar, they didn't do anything. And that
Speaker 1: description very closely tracks the description of Michael Wayne McGray,
Speaker 1: who is a serial killer currently doing life in prison.
Speaker 1: I think for seven murders or maybe eight that he's
Speaker 1: confessed to so far. The detective that investigated Glenn didn't
Speaker 1: give a crap about that evidence. Nothing was done with it.
Speaker 1: It's so sickening because aside from the grotesque in justice
Speaker 1: that was done to Glenn and his family, all they
Speaker 1: had to do was follow up on that and then
Speaker 1: the rest of this mayhem could have been avoided and
Speaker 1: these other victims would never have known the terrible faith
Speaker 1: that befell them. So it's just sickening. It it doesn't
Speaker 1: make any sense. It's never going to make any sense.
Speaker 1: But gleanned back to you. So back in March, you
Speaker 1: surrendered to the police, right, and you still maintained that
Speaker 1: this was just going to get worked out because you
Speaker 1: with somebody who I presumedly believed in the justice system. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought it was going to be worked out in
Speaker 1: two weeks time at the tops, because I knew I
Speaker 1: was innocent, I knew they were making a mistake. But
Speaker 1: I found that there was a can of wide warrant
Speaker 1: one for me, so I turned myself into the RCMP.
Speaker 1: They arrested me, They took me on a plane, took
Speaker 1: me back to Nova Scotia, and I was never so
Speaker 1: embarrassing on my life since shackles and change, going to
Speaker 1: an airport that was clogged full of people. It's just
Speaker 1: all happened so fast. So they gave you a polygraph.
Speaker 1: You passed the polygraph, but of course they ignored as well,
Speaker 1: and you were smart enough to see what they were
Speaker 1: up to, which is why you requested a lawyer. But
Speaker 1: now it takes a crazy turn in the courtroom, and Sean,
Speaker 1: if you could take us through that, Glen didn't see
Speaker 1: eyed eye with the lawyer that he had. Glen's approach
Speaker 1: was pretty simple. I'm innocent. Bring everybody in that you
Speaker 1: can find to say whatever they have to say, because
Speaker 1: the truth will show the jury that I didn't commit
Speaker 1: this murder. And that created tension between him and his lawyer.
Speaker 1: That hit a crescendo and Glenn fired his lawyer at
Speaker 1: the very beginning of a long jury trial four second
Speaker 1: degree murder, and at that point Glenn was granted a
Speaker 1: short adjournment to try and find another lawyer. However, inmates
Speaker 1: inside of correctional facilities can't just go to a phone
Speaker 1: anytime they want to pick it up and dial a lawyer.
Speaker 1: They've got to have somebody except to cleck call. On
Speaker 1: the other hand, they have to have a lawyer who's
Speaker 1: willing to talk to them, and they have to have
Speaker 1: a lawyer who's capable and has the time to prepare
Speaker 1: for a murder trial. And in Glenn's case, those things
Speaker 1: didn't align and the court lost patience with him, and
Speaker 1: the judge said, I'm not giving you any more time.
Speaker 1: You're going to represent yourself with the grades six education
Speaker 1: and don't worry about it. Everybody has to have their
Speaker 1: first case, and that is when Glenn's trial started. This
Speaker 1: is basically like asking someone to go perform surgery on themselves.
Speaker 1: I mean, I think that's not an unfair comparison because
Speaker 1: the odds of success are about the same. And at
Speaker 1: one point, Glenn, um, you told the jury you're innocent,
Speaker 1: that evidence was being hidden from them, all of which
Speaker 1: was true. And then the judge ordered the sheriffs to
Speaker 1: physically cover your mouth and drag you out of the
Speaker 1: courtroom in front of the jury as you screamed out
Speaker 1: your innocence. It's a fucking horror show. What was that
Speaker 1: like from your perspective? I said to myself, I I
Speaker 1: need a lawyer. I can't do this. So I decided
Speaker 1: when the judge came in, I'm gonna tell her that
Speaker 1: I need a lawyer. So long story short, I had
Speaker 1: no idea that you can speak in front of the the jury.
Speaker 1: And I stood up and said, your honor, I'm an
Speaker 1: innocent man. I need a lawyer. She said, take him out.
Speaker 1: Take him out. So two sheriffs dragged me across the
Speaker 1: courtroom floor and right in front of the jury. The
Speaker 1: judge said, if I hear any more outburst and mutmaster,
Speaker 1: assume you'll be watching your trial through a total circuit camera.
Speaker 1: All I could do is stay up all night and
Speaker 1: reach statements and radio questions to ask these people if
Speaker 1: it gets them in their lives. Every time I would
Speaker 1: get to a point where I was putting them in
Speaker 1: a corner where they had no choice to tell the
Speaker 1: truth to Crown an object and cleared the courtroom. I
Speaker 1: don't know how many times the jury was cleared in
Speaker 1: the courtroom several and I was exhausted, but I kept
Speaker 1: on going through it, and of course the results were predictable.
Speaker 1: September seventeenth, the jury went out and they found you
Speaker 1: guilty of second degree murder. And can you describe that
Speaker 1: horrible moment for us? It was a fielding I felt
Speaker 1: before and I should have said I'm wrongly convicted. Now
Speaker 1: it's official, and she objection to it. She said, Mr Son,
Speaker 1: you had your chance to testify in the trials over
Speaker 1: now you can't be talking. I knew I was being railroaders,
Speaker 1: railroads to hell. This episode is underwritten by the A
Speaker 1: i G pro Bono Program. A I G is a
Speaker 1: leading global insurance company, and for over a decade, the
Speaker 1: A I G pro Bono Program has provided thousands of
Speaker 1: hours of free legal services and other support to nonprofit
Speaker 1: organizations and individuals most in need. More recently, the program
Speaker 1: added criminal and social justice reform as a key pillar
Speaker 1: of its mission. This episode is brought to you by
Speaker 1: Stand Together. Stand Together is a philanthropic community dedicated to
Speaker 1: helping people improve their lives. For more than twenty Stand
Speaker 1: Together and its partners have been on the front lines
Speaker 1: of criminal justice reform by empowering people to take action,
Speaker 1: supporting nonprofits and working with businesses. Stand Together tackles the
Speaker 1: root causes of problems in our communities and empowers those
Speaker 1: closest to the problems to drive solutions. Solutions like reducing
Speaker 1: unjust prison sentences through the First Step Act, empowering community
Speaker 1: based programs that help people re enter society, and now
Speaker 1: working to bridge divides in our communities. To learn how
Speaker 1: you may get involved, visit stand Together dot org slash conviction.
Speaker 1: There you are sentenced to eighteen and a half years
Speaker 1: to life on December thirteenth of nineteen. I think many
Speaker 1: people in United States have a vision of Canadas a
Speaker 1: peaceful place with a more just system that is violent perhaps,
Speaker 1: But in fact the prisons there are just as bad
Speaker 1: as here. And you were sent to one of the
Speaker 1: worst ones. Is that correct? That's correct? And I went
Speaker 1: to Dorchester Penitentiary and that's the last I have seen
Speaker 1: any scenery because it's a forty five ft wall around
Speaker 1: the place, and that's all I've seen is that wall.
Speaker 1: And uh, it was dangerous there for me. I almost
Speaker 1: got killed here a dozen times. I was telling anybody
Speaker 1: and everybody who would listen to me, because I'm an
Speaker 1: innocent man. They made a mistake. So I knew a
Speaker 1: guy in there who was done leather work. I had
Speaker 1: a hat with just a blank hat, and I got
Speaker 1: him to make up a patch on my hat. Wrongly convicted,
Speaker 1: and I wore that had around the prison until I
Speaker 1: wore it out, and then the guards took it from me.
Speaker 1: The guards came to me one day and they said,
Speaker 1: we're putting you in the hall. I said, why why
Speaker 1: you put me in the hall? I didn't do anything,
Speaker 1: So the handcuffed me, took me down the hall. They
Speaker 1: got me in there and they shoved me against the
Speaker 1: wall and they got me on the floor and I
Speaker 1: was still handcuffed behind my back. Mind you, and this
Speaker 1: guard he would wait about two seventy five pounds. He
Speaker 1: was beating me with it looks like a staying a
Speaker 1: steel pipe. So he was beating me over the head
Speaker 1: with that, and he broke my ankles with it. And
Speaker 1: they cut the clothes off me right there with a
Speaker 1: pair of scissors while I was still laying in my
Speaker 1: face taking a beating. And uh, they beat me half
Speaker 1: the debt and then they took me into a camera
Speaker 1: cell and just left me there for about five hours.
Speaker 1: The only thing I had on me was my underwear.
Speaker 1: They caught the boots off of me and everything. The
Speaker 1: only thing was in there was a toilet and a sink,
Speaker 1: and the sink didn't work, so the toilet did. I
Speaker 1: was beat so bad I flushed the toilet a few
Speaker 1: times and I drank water the toilet. I was so
Speaker 1: dehydrated from the beating that it took me. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's hard to even hear this story, and I just,
Speaker 1: you know, I wanted to apologize to you on behalf
Speaker 1: of you know, the entire human race, because nobody should
Speaker 1: ever be subjected to a fraction of what you went through.
Speaker 1: And you had to go through all of it. And
Speaker 1: here you are a guy that I think a lot
Speaker 1: of people can probably late to you more than you know.
Speaker 1: I mean, here you are a guy in your forties,
Speaker 1: five ft five forty pounds, no history of violence, no
Speaker 1: ability to navigate this orn situation that you're thrust into.
Speaker 1: It's literally something out of a movie that would give
Speaker 1: anybody nightmares. And you went through it. But somehow or other,
Speaker 1: you got through it, and then, you know, things eventually
Speaker 1: turned around. How did Innocence Canada become aware of the
Speaker 1: case and how did you manage to unravel this insanity?
Speaker 1: Added around two thousand and six, I was in the
Speaker 1: Innocence Canada office for a meeting with our executive director,
Speaker 1: and I had some time to kill and I was
Speaker 1: sitting in the boardroom. And in the boardroom at Innocence Canada,
Speaker 1: like most innocence organizations across the country or the world,
Speaker 1: there's boxes of documents and memos everywhere. So I happened
Speaker 1: to pick one up and it was a memo written
Speaker 1: by a lawyer at Innocence Canada by the name of
Speaker 1: Jerome Kennedy. And Jerome had represented Glenn a year beforehand
Speaker 1: on his appeal. And as I turned the pages, as
Speaker 1: everybody does with this case, I got madder, and I
Speaker 1: got madder, and I got madder, And by the time
Speaker 1: I finished that overview memo, I was in And from
Speaker 1: that point forward, I knew that I wasn't gonna start
Speaker 1: I wasn't gonna stop working on Glenn's case until we
Speaker 1: were able to get them justice. So I looked at
Speaker 1: the five witnesses that were called a trial from the
Speaker 1: perspective of an appellate lawyer, and Mary Cameron was the
Speaker 1: strongest crown or prosecution witness, but Sean did some digging
Speaker 1: on her and eventually she signed an affidavit that took
Speaker 1: back most of her evidence, and Cathy Vlad, who had
Speaker 1: witnessed the supposed confession, made it very clear that nothing
Speaker 1: like that had ever happened. We managed to develop links
Speaker 1: between the sister of Brenda, Jane, who was led by
Speaker 1: the psychic to the knife, with the three core witnesses
Speaker 1: in the case. Each of them had connections to Jane
Speaker 1: or to her family, and so the thing started to crumble.
Speaker 1: But critical to it was a girl who also worked
Speaker 1: the streets of Halifax and who experienced something dreadful in
Speaker 1: the winter of seven. We call her Megan. That's a pseudonym,
Speaker 1: but Megan had been picked up by a burly man
Speaker 1: with dark hair and a dark beard, and he had
Speaker 1: taken her out to an industrial site in the middle
Speaker 1: of winter at night in the dark, assaulted her and
Speaker 1: raped her, and then, rather than killing her, drover back
Speaker 1: into the city and in the course of that admitted
Speaker 1: that he was the killer of brend Away. Glenn had
Speaker 1: been brought back from British Columbia in the spring of
Speaker 1: nine nine, in a blaze of local publicity, arrested for
Speaker 1: the murder of Brendaway. Megan had seen that on TV
Speaker 1: and said, well, that must be the guy who assaulted
Speaker 1: me and confessed to killing Brenda Way, and so she
Speaker 1: went to the police with that story, believing that it
Speaker 1: was true. Although the man she described had striking similarities
Speaker 1: to the description of Demand that Karen Way had heard
Speaker 1: Bragg about committing the murdered days after it had happened
Speaker 1: in nineteen five, Glen, as it turned out, had spent
Speaker 1: that whole winter when that attack took place in Halifax,
Speaker 1: on the other coast of Canada, thirty five hundred miles away,
Speaker 1: and that could be documented. However, the Crown at trial
Speaker 1: ran a theory that Glen had somehow gotten a plane
Speaker 1: ticket flowing to Halifax in the middle of winter, raped Megan,
Speaker 1: confessed to the murder of Brenda, and then flown back
Speaker 1: without any other trace, no evidence of his presence in Halifax,
Speaker 1: no evidence of his flight from British Columbia to Halifax.
Speaker 1: By the time of Glenn's appeal in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: Michael McGray, a burly bearded man had been arrested and
Speaker 1: publicly identified as a serial killer. Indeed, he had shown
Speaker 1: a propensity to break about his killings, and he bragged
Speaker 1: about killings enough that he was quickly identified as a
Speaker 1: serial killer. With McGray and custody and publicly known as
Speaker 1: a serial killer. Jerome Kennedy, acting for Glenn an appeal,
Speaker 1: asked for disclosure of what the police had on Michael McGray,
Speaker 1: and the police came back with a document that said
Speaker 1: that he was not viewed as a suspect by the
Speaker 1: police and the killing of Brenda Way. Jerome tried to
Speaker 1: advance that to the Court of Appeal, but it had
Speaker 1: no substance and it was rejected as a ground of
Speaker 1: appeal and Glenn's conviction was upheld. So that's the case
Speaker 1: that we were handed and we thought that Michael McGray
Speaker 1: looked like a good suspect if we just had more
Speaker 1: evidence about him. And at that point Sean, who was
Speaker 1: a lawyer but also an on the ground investigator in
Speaker 1: this case, got in touch with a couple of guys
Speaker 1: by just working the prison system. During the course of
Speaker 1: those inquiries, we found two people who had done time
Speaker 1: with Michael McGray, and both of those witnesses independent of
Speaker 1: one another, none of whom knew Glen, told us stories
Speaker 1: about McGray, providing detail of murders that he committed to
Speaker 1: them while they were in prison together. The story they
Speaker 1: told was chilling, and it was chilling not only because
Speaker 1: it demonstrated what we felt we already knew, which was
Speaker 1: that Glen was innocent. They were disturbing because of the
Speaker 1: detail they provided. And these people had no idea what
Speaker 1: details attached to Brenda Way's murder. But suddenly we're getting
Speaker 1: these people giving us affidavits providing that detail. We later
Speaker 1: found out that McGray had lived but a hundred yards
Speaker 1: away from where the body was found, and we had
Speaker 1: another witness that came to us and told us they
Speaker 1: moved out of that apartment McGray and his girlfriend within
Speaker 1: forty eight hours of the murder. And not only did
Speaker 1: they move out, they left their furniture on the front stoop.
Speaker 1: So we've got McGray as a very plausible of suspect
Speaker 1: in this case. Remember, Megan. Megan added one other really
Speaker 1: striking feature, the only very distinctive feature about her description.
Speaker 1: She said that the man who had confessed to Brenda's
Speaker 1: murder while raping an assaulting horror though it was the
Speaker 1: middle of winter and a very cold night with snow
Speaker 1: on the ground, was wearing socks and sandals on his feet.
Speaker 1: When we began to look at photos of McGray and
Speaker 1: then talked to these inmates who knew him, it became
Speaker 1: clear that that was a very well known characteristic of
Speaker 1: Michael McGray. So we've got a guy who fits the description,
Speaker 1: including in that unique way, who fits the m oh perfectly,
Speaker 1: and so we were developing that for the Minister of
Speaker 1: Justice when something really stunning happened. We got information from
Speaker 1: the retired our CMP officer that he had been speaking
Speaker 1: with another our CMP officer who knew much more than
Speaker 1: we ever dreamed about Glenna Sooon's case and about Michael McGray.
Speaker 1: This fellow was an officer with the Behavioral Profiling unit
Speaker 1: of the RCMP in Halifax, and he accumulated every data
Speaker 1: point possible about McGray. He spent the better part of
Speaker 1: a year conducting an investigation into McGray, but specifically into
Speaker 1: the murder of brend Away, which by this point was
Speaker 1: a solved, closed case, and he eventually reached the conclusion
Speaker 1: that McGray or another guy he identified were very probable
Speaker 1: killers of Brenda Way and that glennissoon was innocent. He
Speaker 1: had tried his best for months and months to get somebody,
Speaker 1: you know, either the RCMP which he worked for, or
Speaker 1: the Halifax Police Service which had investigated this case, to
Speaker 1: do something about it. And remember, Glenn is still before
Speaker 1: the Court of Appeal while this is happening. And not
Speaker 1: only that, but Jerome Kennedy, his lawyer, has made a
Speaker 1: specific request of the prosecution to obtain information about McGray
Speaker 1: to see whether there was anything relevant that he could
Speaker 1: use on Glenn's appeal. And rather than disclosing this information,
Speaker 1: the report he got back from the Crown, who got
Speaker 1: it from the police was that there was no relevant
Speaker 1: information and McGray was not viewed as a suspect. It
Speaker 1: is hard to believe, but it is as blatant and
Speaker 1: as well documented as I have just summarized it. Eventually
Speaker 1: we were able to establish exactly what I've just said,
Speaker 1: that is that the police themselves had identified Michael McGray
Speaker 1: as a suspect for the murder Glenn was doing time
Speaker 1: for and had suppressed it throughout the appellate process. I'm
Speaker 1: going to just go through that again, because it's so
Speaker 1: incredibly it's just breathtaking in terms of the misconduct. While
Speaker 1: the Department of Justice was investigating, but unbeknownst to Glenn
Speaker 1: or his legal team, this police officer, this good cop,
Speaker 1: conducted a multi year investigation into Glenn's conviction and concluded
Speaker 1: that he was innocent. He had concluded that a serial
Speaker 1: killer McGray had lived a hundred yards from the murder
Speaker 1: scene and was the real killer. Oh my god. And
Speaker 1: then it gets worse. So this guy, to his credit,
Speaker 1: told all of his superiors that he believed there was
Speaker 1: an innocent man in prison with Glen, of course, but
Speaker 1: instead of looking into the claims and freeing Glenn, as
Speaker 1: they clearly should have done, they transferred this officer from
Speaker 1: his unit and destroyed the fucking evidence that he had
Speaker 1: compiled over the course of his investigation. I mean, there's
Speaker 1: really there's a special place in hell for people who
Speaker 1: conducted themselves in this manner. I don't know how else
Speaker 1: to say it, so slightly less colorful language. That was
Speaker 1: our submission to the Minister of Justice. Well, well that's
Speaker 1: a good thing I didn't write it. So between the
Speaker 1: information that suggested McGray was the killer and the massive
Speaker 1: constitutional violation represented by the non disclosure of evidence of innocence.
Speaker 1: We eventually had a very powerful case for first getting
Speaker 1: Glenn out of jail, which we managed to do in
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen, and then getting him exonerated, which the
Speaker 1: Minister of Justice and then the Supreme Court of Nova
Speaker 1: Scotia did in two thousand nineteen. Glenn, what was it
Speaker 1: like to walk out of this like living tomb that
Speaker 1: you were in, this this torture chamber, into free air
Speaker 1: for the first time in this uh, in this century.
Speaker 1: It was the happiest day in my life. I couldn't
Speaker 1: It couldn't be any happier. And it was just astronomical
Speaker 1: feeling of happiness to be a free man. And I
Speaker 1: don't know, I can't explain the feeling for you that
Speaker 1: I felt when when I first got to my brother's place.
Speaker 1: The first day I woke up a free man in
Speaker 1: a beautiful home. I went outside just to smell the air,
Speaker 1: and I went out in the backyard, and uh, I
Speaker 1: wouldn't go nowhars for about a week. I was too
Speaker 1: scared to go anywhere because I thought the cops are
Speaker 1: gonna frame me again. So it took still almost another
Speaker 1: five years for the full exoneration. And I want to
Speaker 1: talk to the guys about how good did you feel?
Speaker 1: How good do you feel today knowing that Glenn is
Speaker 1: never going back, He's never gonna have to wear an
Speaker 1: ankle monitor again, He's never gonna be subjected to this
Speaker 1: inhumane system again. You know, I think the person who
Speaker 1: summed it up best was the judge that acquitted Glenn
Speaker 1: on March the first of two thousand and nineteen of
Speaker 1: his justice, Chipman, and he said, you kept the faith
Speaker 1: with remarkable dignity. That you are to be commended for
Speaker 1: your courage and your resilience. You are a freeman. I
Speaker 1: sincerely wish you every success. And that sort of summed
Speaker 1: up our feelings too has been steadfast. I mean, he
Speaker 1: is now a member of our family. He's not just
Speaker 1: a client. That that's the truth, you know. I get
Speaker 1: asked very often two things, whether the people who framed
Speaker 1: the innocent man or woman faced any disciplinary actions, much
Speaker 1: less prison for their own misconduct, and whether or not
Speaker 1: the person who suffered so greatly the exonerated person themselves
Speaker 1: received any compensation. And I'm assuming the answer to both
Speaker 1: of those questions in this case is unfortunately no, so no. Actually,
Speaker 1: this case is really taken on an increased significance in
Speaker 1: Canada anyway, because it is the first case in Canadian
Speaker 1: history where the premier or in other words, of the
Speaker 1: governor of the province in which the rawful conviction took
Speaker 1: place ordered his Attorney general to start in a criminal
Speaker 1: investigation into the officers who were involved and contributed to
Speaker 1: the miscarriage of justice and the destruction of the evidence.
Speaker 1: So the answers yes to that, And the second part
Speaker 1: of your question with respect to compensation is also yes
Speaker 1: to the credit of Prime Minister Trudeau, an Attorney General
Speaker 1: Lametti and of course the government of Nova Scotia. They
Speaker 1: came to the table and took this very serious. They
Speaker 1: understood that it was an egregious, wrongful conviction of sort
Speaker 1: of historic proportions, and we were able to negotiate financial
Speaker 1: compensation package for Glenn that as far as money can contribute,
Speaker 1: it's going to give him an opportunity to try and
Speaker 1: as best he can with the years he has left,
Speaker 1: move on with his life and you know, have a
Speaker 1: pickup truck and a dog and a maybe you know,
Speaker 1: a little place in the woods where he can sort
Speaker 1: of relax and try and find peace to the extent
Speaker 1: that he can. Well, that's amazing news and I'm so
Speaker 1: glad they finally came around on this. But nothing is
Speaker 1: ever going to make up for all the time lost.
Speaker 1: Now this does go a long way towards making Glen
Speaker 1: more comfortable. As you said, I like the visual with
Speaker 1: a pickup truck and the dog, but he deserves every
Speaker 1: blessing that life has to offer. Um, if anyone wants
Speaker 1: to get involved or help out with the great work
Speaker 1: that Innocence Canada is doing, your help would go a
Speaker 1: long way. So we're gonna have a link in the
Speaker 1: episode bio and you can also follow Innocence Canada on Instagram.
Speaker 1: Scroll down, click get involved. And now this is as
Speaker 1: good a time as any to turn to the part
Speaker 1: of the show called closing arguments. First of all, I
Speaker 1: want to thank Sean McDonald, Phil Campbell, and most of
Speaker 1: all Glenn as Soon for joining me and us here
Speaker 1: and sharing your story and your spirit with our audience.
Speaker 1: And now I'm going to turn my microphone off, kick
Speaker 1: back in my chair and just listen as you say
Speaker 1: whatever you want to say whatever that's left to say,
Speaker 1: and let's start with Phil, then Sean, and it's with Glenn.
Speaker 1: Of course. One of the things I find about innocence
Speaker 1: cases like Glens is that when you look back on them,
Speaker 1: when you start to unravel them, you see so many
Speaker 1: places where things could have taken a different turn, where
Speaker 1: things could have gone right but went wrong. There's never
Speaker 1: just one thing. There's always a cascade of injustice and error.
Speaker 1: And when I think back to the original police who
Speaker 1: had a sound alibi and acted on it and treated
Speaker 1: it with the seriousness that deserved, that was one place
Speaker 1: where things could have gone right but went wrong. When
Speaker 1: I think back to the trial that Glenn went through,
Speaker 1: and this was not a contest of equal adversaries, and
Speaker 1: then I think of the appellate process when the truth
Speaker 1: not just a glimpse into the truth, but a full
Speaker 1: dossier on the truth about what I believe is the
Speaker 1: real killer in this case was a veil able to
Speaker 1: the authorities and it didn't emerge. When you go through
Speaker 1: that kind of history, you realize what I think is
Speaker 1: the great lesson of the criminal law, which is that
Speaker 1: we should always approach this business of arresting people and
Speaker 1: charging them with crimes and putting them on trial and
Speaker 1: throwing them in jail. We should always approach it humbly,
Speaker 1: because we are fallible, and our processes, as well refined
Speaker 1: and carefully reviewed as they are, are fallible. The police
Speaker 1: we trust, the prosecutors we trust, the juries we trust.
Speaker 1: All of those things will fail sometimes, and we are
Speaker 1: best to go at this whole business of crime punishment
Speaker 1: with a lighter, humbler touch. And this case, just to me, illustrates,
Speaker 1: as so many do, how many ways there are to
Speaker 1: go wrong, and how vigilant we should be to ensure
Speaker 1: that things go right. I look at this case as
Speaker 1: the evolution of not just a wrongful conviction case, but
Speaker 1: for me, looking back now, weren't the evolution of of
Speaker 1: of a friendship and in the friendship that I developed
Speaker 1: with Glenn from the first call that he made to
Speaker 1: my phone when it was only the two of us
Speaker 1: in this world. It was him on a penitentiary pay phone,
Speaker 1: me on my phone talking to a guy that I
Speaker 1: clearly knew was in some deep, deep pain. And uh,
Speaker 1: you know the evolution of that as it expanded and
Speaker 1: we started to work harder and get more evidence slowly
Speaker 1: as it's sort of the gratitude that Glenn and I felt,
Speaker 1: has more and more people got involved, including Phil, you know,
Speaker 1: including using the resources of Innocence Canada. We use many investigators.
Speaker 1: One in particular who isn't here today, who died. His
Speaker 1: name is Steve Jones, was an amazing investigator. I'm grateful
Speaker 1: to Steve. I'm grateful to Fred Fitzsimmons, who was another
Speaker 1: investigator who was an x RCMP pomicide investigator who probably
Speaker 1: put a hundred people in jail for murder rightfully, but
Speaker 1: believed in Glenn's innocence. You know, I'm grateful to everybody
Speaker 1: else that got involved, including celebrities like Michael B. Jordan's
Speaker 1: supported glass case and did a video and we were
Speaker 1: in the process now of writing him to think him.
Speaker 1: But the point is that has the case evolved, our
Speaker 1: friendship evolved, and has more people got involved. Both Glenn
Speaker 1: and I are thankful to everybody that helped bring it
Speaker 1: to this point. Glenn, over to you. Well, I'd just
Speaker 1: like to say to my two lawyers, Sean McDonald and
Speaker 1: Phil Campbell, I'm so grateful for your help and for
Speaker 1: saving my life because because you did you literally saved
Speaker 1: my life. If you had to come along, I wouldn't
Speaker 1: have made it. I would have been dead by now.
Speaker 1: Just let you know I had four heart attaction prison
Speaker 1: and they only took me out for one, and I
Speaker 1: got stints in my heart now and I only got
Speaker 1: thirty five percent of my heart left because of what
Speaker 1: happened to me. Well, we love you, Glenn, as simple
Speaker 1: as that. Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 1: Jason Flam. Please support your local innocence projects and go
Speaker 1: to the link in our bio to see how you
Speaker 1: can help. I'd like to thank our production team Connor Hall,
Speaker 1: Jeff Clyburne and Kevin Warns. The music on the show,
Speaker 1: as always, is by three time OSCAR nominated composer Jay Ralph.
Speaker 1: Be sure to follow us on Instagram at Wrongful Conviction
Speaker 1: and on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast. Wrongful Conviction with
Speaker 1: Jason Flam is a production of Lava for Good Podcasts
Speaker 1: in association with Signal Company Number one