The Crime That Shook Canada | Dark Waters Of Crime | Amplified

paper was light gold in medieval times I want tobacco sugar so everything we thought we knew about the world could turn out to be completely wrong source of life and cause of death water can eliminate clues dilute evidence and hide bodies for investigators water can be a cunning opponent for criminals the most accommodating ally for the perfect

crime

just add water one of the most chilling cases in Canadian history the victim and perpetrators are all teenagers between the ages of 13 and 16 and all but one are girls a

crime

so violent that it sent shockwaves through Victoria, the peaceful capital of British Columbia, and made headlines around the world.

Reena Virk, who has been living in a foster home, was going to spend the weekend with her parents. On Friday night, a friend of hers calls to invite her to a party by the river. Marina first says that she would prefer to stay home but in the end she decided to leave. Rina's mother is worried about the safety of her rebellious daughter. I don't know if I feel comfortable with this. Her mother said don't go. These girls don't like it. you, why would you go well? I think they want to bury the hatchet. I think they want to fix things and she agreed to meet them early in the morning.

Rina hasn't returned. Her mother calls the foster home, but Rina is not there by law either. The foster home is required to notify the police when residents fail to comply with curfew so a young person goes missing on a Friday night and is reported missing, especially in a foster home which is where this girl was in That time, it's nothing unusual, they normally return home within Monday morning, 72 hours later, Marina is still missing. The police investigate at her school. In the following days, disturbing rumors begin to circulate among the students. The number one rumor was that there had been some kind of altercation and that a young woman had disappeared or gone missing.

In fact, perhaps she had even been murdered and what made the case a little more difficult at first was that some of the children had reported seeing the missing girl after she was supposedly murdered, so the information It was inconsistent. She is about a young woman who had been missing before. She had been reported missing before and, as a result, we believed that she would probably show up in the next few days as she had in the past. Rina's parents emigrated from India desperate for care. Her classmates excluded her and she distanced herself from her family. good girl other stories lied about things to do with her parents lied about things to do with her friends and had a hard time fitting in so she would do what she could to fit in the rumors circulating that she was savagely beaten by a swarm as children and that she had died in the attack, but there was nothing concrete, we didn't have anyone who had seen her die, we didn't have anyone who had heard firsthand because we're trying to get an idea if we're doing a missing persons case. here we're doing a homicide investigation finally the police get the lead they've been looking for someone identifies chloe and jesse and says they've been bragging about beating rena so bad they broke her nose it turns out these two girls really live in the same area rena foster home, the police visited them and took them in for questioning, things started moving quickly after that, it wasn't long before the first girl started confessing that she was involved in the assault and what she knew about the actual murder she was not a witness to the murder and only had it second and third hand bob downey gets the first confession chloe gives him the names of all the attackers one boy and seven girls the boy is 15 years old and the youngest girl just finished to turn 13 but a confession is not enough Bob Downey authorizes arrest warrants for all suspects He takes charge of their interrogations This is not a case where there are young people who break down, cry and get angry and I can remember several The young women The people responsible for the assault were sitting there, chatting and laughing, and I remember walking around feeling almost disgusted, it was almost unexpected.

Police learned that these children are often found under the Craig Flower Bridge in a riverside park. The bridge is close. their school and every week they party there late into the night, a favorite hangout hidden from the watchful eyes of adults where kids feel free to do whatever they want. The victim was lured to this location under the auspices of attending a party and you. They knew they had set her up, they lured her there and they were ready and they had planned to hit her and that's what they did on this particular night. Rina had decided to join the group under the bridge.

When Rena saw Chloe arrive, she knew she wasn't invited. to the party to bury the hatchet, Chloe immediately starts talking about her. One girl even had a cigarette and burned her right in the middle of her forehead, which my opinion would be that due to the victim's ethnicity, that would have been an insult to her. and her customs and her family and everyone and I think that would have been done intentionally and the Mr. Girl responded by moving backwards and basically the fight started and then other kids started jumping up to the point where eight kids jumped up and surrounded her. she had no way out there was no way she was going to win this or escape with the mob mentality that kicked him in that moment she had no one in the world there was no one there for her there is no one on her side finally one of our The suspects saw that she had had enough and this girl was tough, she was a kickboxer, she had been in fights before and they knew she was a tough girl and she made the other kids stop, she said enough, she's had enough, someone else wants beat her up. she was going to have to go through me and it was a good thing she did because that assault would have continued, they stole her purse and were almost like rats with a piece of meat when the swarm was over the attackers left rina due to her fate, so she moved at that time she was walking slowly, some describe her staggering, she did not speak to anyone and began to cross the bridge heading east or towards wild children who saw her, they described her face as bruised and bloody. nose and as I say, staggering in their walk, the eight young attackers make a pact, they agree that reindeer was last seen crossing the Craig Flower Bridge and then, six of the children say that Warren and Kelly separated from the group and they followed Rina. but kelly and warren insist they simply went home conflicting statements lead police to expand their investigation from a missing person case to a possible homicide police decide to focus their search on the river under the bridge the gorge is a river of tidal water flowing from Victoria Harbor is overgrown with weeds and weeds and has a strong current.

Police are well aware that their search will be difficult. Well, water is your enemy. It is an enemy for any type of investigation, especially in the forensic field. It is both a psychological barrier for police officers and for criminals. Very often a criminal throws something into the water thinking that it is gone, no one will find it, I am saying that it has been thrown, you know, in quotes, into the ocean. Well, that's why the diving equipment is there to help us eliminate that psychological barrier to leaving. down there and to find things the diving team has determined the search area taking into account the tide level on the night of the crime the river is not very deep but the bottom is mud each step makes the water more cloudy For divers, this means that visibility is almost zero, they will have to find their way in the

dark

.

Rick Gosling knows how difficult it is to search for evidence underwater. He first does it quite often by touch and from a flat, muddy surface to suddenly reaching out and touching. a body can be quite emotional, quite frightening and then out of the

dark

ness, I guess you would say the body blooms on you, and the fact that the visibility is so bad, you have to be quite close to confirm that. which is a body psychologically is very hard for many divers make the first discovery a pair of girl's underwear most of the items we find are at the bottom they no longer float they are not subject to the tides quite frequently objects that sink until the bottom, even light objects like clothes, papers or things like that, once they flood and hit the bottom, quite often they remain there, since on dry land all precautions must be taken when recovering evidence underwater, never You know what small amounts.

Some evidence may still be slightly attached to the fabric, so what we try to do is every time we grab an object underwater we try to have a big enough bag because we can encompass it without maybe picking it up and moving it and in that In this way, we also capture some of the water immediately surrounding the object, which may or may not contain traces of evidence, hairs, fibers, things like that. Then the dive team finds a pair of jeans, so at that point we thought we were on the right track. had been moving in the direction we thought a missing girl might be if she had entered the water at that time, we were confident that within a short period of time we would be able to find her.

Hours pass and the divers have found nothing but the two pieces of clothing. It was very frustrating and we were sure that she must be somewhere, it would have to be a fast, heavy and extremely unusual current to move a body once it it was in the background so we weren't sure why we weren't finding uh the missing girl if we found her clothes unless maybe it just wasn't there. It's been a week and Rina is still missing. Crown prosecutor Stan Lowe is keen to charge the suspects as soon as possible, but on what grounds will the teenagers be charged?

Because of Rina's assault or her murder, a fourteen-year-old girl has been missing for a week and is now presumed dead. One boy and seven girls are detained in Victoria, British Columbia. These boys have admitted to savagely beating Reena Virk, but no charges have yet been filed. They have been turned against investigators continue searching for the missing girl. A coast guard helicopter is brought in to assist with the search. The

waters

are very dark, it almost seems a deep gray color. um, that time of year we passed over the dive site. team and we were only about 400 meters from the dive team when in reality we had just started the search and, absolutely shocked, I looked down and there she was in the water, she was very, very well hidden from both of us. from the shore and from the gold in the water, however, from the position of the helicopter just above it was very clear that she was there.

Investigators are surprised that Rina's body was not found downstream of the bridge where they had recovered her clothes; contrary to logic, the body had drifted away. upstream and got caught in the tall brush hiding it from view except in the air, she was floating just below the surface, probably an inch or two, she was wearing a t-shirt as I remember, but of course nothing more, we found the clothes she had on Before that, she had on her jeans and underwear, so it was really just a t-shirt. The divers proceeded with caution to avoid disturbing the muddy river bed around the body, taking care not to destroy any traces of evidence, obviously the body had been in the water for a week, how much physical evidence or DNA would there be for the investigator boss Bob Downey?

The discovery of the body means they can now start building a murder case, so finding the body is almost a relief. There are fewer things to do and it sounds cold to say that, but now we have a crime scene that we have to go into and forensically treat and we have a body so that further investigative steps can be implemented after news of the discovery. Send shockwaves through Victoria. People are horrified and outraged that a group of teenagers could commit such a ruthless crime. The murder attracts worldwide attention. In my opinion, it had a great impact on the city due to the age of the people involved and the fact that there was a young woman who had been murdered in the area where she lived and not only that but there were other young people who were almost children, I mean, we are talking about people aged 13 and 14 15 who were the suspects in this.

So this was not a pedophile case or something like that, but rather it was about children murdering other children. What makes this case particularly disturbing is that all of the defendants are teenagers, seven of the eight are girls. Rina's body has been taken for an autopsy to find the cause of death is crucial if she died due to the beating there would be eight murderers if she drowned there would only be two suspects warren and kelly whatever the result the autopsy witnesses the extreme brutality of the attack what I can say is that the missing girl suffered significant trauma, deep bruising in the deep tissues,he had bruised internal organs, it was a significant trauma, it was crushing in nature.

I've seen several autopsies, I haven't seen this level of bruising, uh, before recently. maybe in a car accident that type of injury the results prove that rena did not die due to a deep heartbeat in her lung tissue the pathologist finds traces of gravel I attended the autopsy as an exhibit officer and the cause of death was well She drowned and I think that was indicative of the victim being forced down. It was pretty shallow water where she drowned and it was probably the last attempt to breathe near the bottom and suck up those little pebbles from the ocean floor. in her throat investigators focused their efforts on warren according to the gang's testimony he is one of two children who followed rena on the bridge after the attack warren's life has been difficult at 16 years old he has been living alone for more One year later his father moved to California and the last time Warren saw his mother she was completely drunk in her trailer park.

Warren became fascinated by a Los Angeles gang called the Crips, they inspired him to start his own mafia cartel. He always dressed in white and his gang wore blue, he took investigators to the scene, basically walking them through what What had happened, further minimizing his own involvement while I was there, I saw what happened, I think he could have said that he was perfectly involved in a bit of the assault. The police begin to pressure Warren and they tell him that Reena's body was removed. of the river and was naked below the waist they suspect that she had been raped and the DNA analysis would prove if it was worn They also explained to her that they are searching for fingerprints on all the evidence, in particular on the running shoes that they found on the bank of the river for the first time, Warren seems bewildered and admits that he and Kelly demanded that Rina take off her jacket and shoes and that he had picked them up desperate for help.

Warren asks to speak to his father. He was heard yelling at his father over the phone and swore he was actually awake. You know, it's about what he did, not what happened to the missing girl, and that's typical of most of these. children interrogations are complicated by the juvenile criminal justice law warren is 16 and kelly 15 at the time of the murder kelly simply refuses to cooperate and declares that he had no idea what happened after rina crossed the bridge despite that the witnesses had seen her and warren following rena the police can't go any further with the juvenile criminal justice act and the young offenders act of the day once they say i don't want to give a statement we have to arrest kelly lives with her mother and stepfather middle class family in her peer group kelly is the most relaxed and withdrawn shortly after her arrest the police search kelly's locker at school they make some disturbing discoveries one thing i remember clearly are some drawings that were confiscated from the suspect's school locker, one of which showed a police officer being shot and the bullets hitting the officer and then blood gushing out, also dreams of becoming a gangster like his hero Al Capone, from In fact, you have made a good start in that direction and that is why you have finished.

Jessie's story in foster care is similar. Her mother was unable to control her violent behavior and placed her in the house in the hope that it would calm her down. Armed with dozens of search warrants, police searched for evidence on all the suspects. They even confiscated the clothes they were wearing on the night of the attack. All of this evidence is sent to the forensic laboratory for analysis. The dive team returns to the crime scene searching the riverbed for any evidence they may have missed. We started running into little things a little bit. address book um pens uh like a pencil, a fun little eraser and then we started coming across papers, individual diary sized sheets of paper, you would have thought they had been washed, but they were still stuck to the bottom. and it was obvious soon after that this was the missing girl's diary.

Uh, I was very excited. Rina's diary was sent to the rcmp forensic lab. Maybe it contains some clues that lead to her killer. Reena Burke has been besieged, savagely beaten and drowned. by youth gangs police seek clear motives behind such vicious attack on 14-year-old girl police dive team just recovered greena's personal diary in river gorge diary sent to rcmp forensic lab john Kovacs a document specialist gets to work every second counts as the water continues to dissolve the paper, diluting the ink and removing traces. The first, most important thing was to separate the individual pages so that any information that was visually present could be preserved and transmitted to the researcher.

Evidence found in water should be packaged with the surrounding water to preserve traces of evidence. For paper documents, this must be done quickly before the paper breaks down. The paper created probably contains 97 water and some fibers floating around while it is created into paper. remove the water and fibers that were left in place now that the document has a natural fact and subject to an environment where there is humidity it swells considerably and begins to decompose into its component parts the first task is to separate the pages that have begun to join In fact, there were areas that had been eroded in this particular case, almost all of it was readable text and it was natural thought written predominantly with a pen that is not a water-soluble link.

In this particular case, I created a photocopy record of all the documents so that the researcher can actually handle it without worrying that it will cause some kind of problem with the original document itself. John Kovac's goal is to preserve documents so that they can establish potential links between events and people. That could shed light on the rena swarm. Police expand their search. They begin to question family and friends of the accused in order to reconstruct a motive for this violent attack. Investigators discover that in the two weeks prior to the attack, Chloe and Jesse Reena. roommates at the foster home had been talking a lot on the phone with Kelly when they were in the planning process.

They had talked about strange things like taking her to the forest and burying her in a hole. I mean, again, this is all the other kids know. we're told that investigators found out why chloe and jessie were mad at rena, she had stolen chloe's address book and then called chloe's friends telling them horrible lies about her, things like chloe had AIDS, chloe was absolutely Furious, even worse, Rina had been flirting with Sam Jesse's boyfriend. the girls had seen her wearing her jacket some even said that rina had slept with sam when jessie heard him scream that she was going to get revenge on rena it was absolutely revenge you can't do this to me you can't sleep with my boyfriend you can't take my books and call my friends and telling them that I'm a good friend of yours because you're a misfit, but nothing gave Warren and Kelly a strong motive to commit such a brutal act during interrogations.

Warren. gives several different versions of events that he maintains for a long time, how he just headed home without having seen rena again, but the police have a witness, what we have is a witness who says that the missing girl left and then Two others left and as we describe later, we have three people crossing the bridge, only two returned. Warren finally admits that what the witness said was true. He actually intended to go home, but Kelly asked him to stay. She said, "Come on, let's go see if Reena is there." Well, he later told us that he knew we weren't going to see if she was okay, that we were going to hurt her more.

Warren finally gives a full confession to investigators. The girl asked the missing girl: Are you going to tell on us? and her. She was beaten, she is beaten and has no means to protect herself and, of course, her response was no, I am not going to tell on you. The girl, the suspect then said, "We're not stupid," took off her jacket and took off her shoes. those things and they put them aside so now they started what is an uprising again to humiliate her even more to show again the power they had over her and then the boy and the girl started beating the missing girl.

They started, both punching and kicking, it was a horrible scene to the point that she was knocked unconscious, the two then dragged her towards the gorge channel on the way down, her jeans began to slide down exposing her buttocks. Warren says when they arrived. near the water he saw that Kelly wanted to drag Rena into the river. He asked her three times for her to stop, but Kelly didn't. She pushed Rena into the river deep enough to keep her head underwater for a long time. The boy described seeing red foam coming. to the surface from where the girl is being held and he would see this in the light of the moon which was a full moon that night Kelly continues to deny everything she claimed, she had simply returned home that night like all the others she remembers being. taken. a shower before going to bed she insists that the others had decided to make her a scapegoat but in the end she is innocent the diary offers no new clues she probably didn't know much about the victim but I formed some opinions from the reading her diary and I felt that this was a girl growing up who wanted to be accepted, wanted to be popular and probably had difficulties at home because of her expectations, which were normal expectations because of her and her parents' value system, since You know, fighting against it.

Despite some limited evidence, attorneys have their work cut out for them, as they must prepare strong cases against eight defendants, six for aggravated assault and two for second-degree murder. Prosecutors decide that Warren and Kelly will be tried as adults in Victoria, British Columbia. Eight teenagers show up. trial in beating and murder of reena burke six young girls are charged with aggravated assault warren Glowatsky and Kelly Ellard are charged with murder people around the world await results assault case is airtight and should end quickly prosecutors have evidence, witnesses witnesses and confessions the girls are charged under the juvenile criminal justice law all plead guilty and are sentenced to between six months and one year in prison warren and kelly are tried as adults both revoke the decisions but appeals are planned there are no witnesses to the murder not one saw kelly or warren drag sand into the river and drown his crown attorney stan low is looking for concrete evidence that will lead the suspects to the crime scene if the water had washed away the incriminating evidence the first piece of evidence It's the pair of jeans that Warren was wearing on the night in question, will they put it at the crime scene?

He was wearing white jeans, he had a girlfriend at the time and, as I mentioned, one of the witnesses was sleeping at his house. The girlfriend and the witness described it as the size of a dime or quarter what they thought was a blood stain on his jeans. He took his jeans and socks and washed them. In fact, he asked for instructions on how to bleach the stain on his pants when I got the jeans later, we were able to find the mark but we couldn't trace it until it was actually blood and that's because of the bleach that was used, he didn't want to be linked to that at all, I knew.

There was evidence there and he did everything he could to get rid of that evidence. The following evidence is the shoes worn by the accused. Each pair is placed in individual display bags. Scott Greene examines the shoes at the RCMP forensic lab and notices something strange. What I found later was that those shoes, although they seemed to be dry when they were put in the bag, began to sweat and water leaked out of those shoes and formed at the bottom of those bags, something that did not happen with any of the other shoes that we seized and my theory today is that those were the same shoes that those two suspects were wearing the night of the murder, they got soaked and never completely dried.

The forensic analysis was not considered conclusive, it was not strong enough to place them at the scene. crime scene the third piece of evidence is the pair of genes recovered downstream from the victim the forensic analysis found no DNA evidence to put rena on the jeans the fourth piece of evidence is the jacket found near the bridge Craig Flower the jacket It had its own interesting story They took it from the girl They folded it and left it A person passing by on a bicycle found the jacket He thought it might belong to a friend of theirs They picked up the jacket They saw blood on the jacket and they took it home and they took it home laundered the crown prosecutor knows that without concrete evidence it will be almost impossible to place the suspects at the scene although Warren has made many confessions Kelly has denied everything Warren goes to trial first charged with second degree murder from the beginning Warrenseems vulnerable He seemed young, small, nervous, apprehensive.

Prosecutor Stan Lowe begins with a powerful opening statement. Three crossed the bridge. Only two returned. Warren admits to crossing the bridge with Kelly and catching up with Rena. It's a point for the crown. I heard a very generalized antiseptic version of events. which deflected the blame from himself onto Kelly Allard and portrayed himself as a person who was trying to stop her by asking her to stop no less than three times. What he did was minimize her involvement without any details and was completely devoid of any description of the The victim during the course of the incident in the interrogation Stan Lowe asks Warren about the events of that night moment by moment, but not in chronological order.

He is counting on this tactic to throw Warren off balance. He didn't talk about what his motivation was, so I took him away. He there he spoke in general terms of the events that occurred, but he took you through each one. I asked him what he was thinking at that moment. What was happening. What did you expect to happen? Why would he help her take off her shoes and jacket? I didn't know that the questions investigated his actions, which, I say, speak louder than words. He didn't have a reasonable answer. The trial lasts a month. The judge makes a long judgment until his last word.

It is impossible to predict what the verdict will be. will be guilty the mandatory meaning at the time was a life sentence with no eligibility for plural for seven years Warren was 15 at the time of the crime 17 when he was sentenced to life in prison attorneys believed that Warren's conviction would help with the prosecution of kelly, or so everyone thought, in fact the crime has sparked such outrage in victoria that kelly's lawyers have requested that his trial be moved to vancouver, 150 kilometers away, after two years of delays kelly Ellard finally arrives in court and has admitted to being part of the first beating but Kelly's lawyer only emphasizes that nothing endangers his client at the crime scene without DNA or fingerprints nothing that simply states that Warren lied regardless of Kelly Ellard is found guilty and sentenced her lawyer appeals immediately five months later Kelly is released catherine murray a colleague of stan lowe has been following the trial The cases I was working on were street gang cases when we found out about the appeal and I immediately called my office and said I really wanted to do the Ellard case.

Stan was involved in another murder trial and I ended up taking it. This was horrible. crime simply terrified the people of victoria for prosecutors that's the final challenge that really matters as she prepares for trial catherine murray learns that the jacket kelly was wearing the night of the crime was confiscated during a search had what looked like be dry salt stains on the jacket almost up to where the waist would be and a little up to the arms robert groves at the rcmp laboratory in vancouver examines the stains on kelly's jacket asks for a sample of water from the river to use as a comparison he wanted to trying to replicate what would happen if this particular garment, not a similar garment but this identical garment, was in contact with seawater.

What happens when her neck is submerged? The water penetrated the fabric. You could see it gradually being absorbed when I felt that it had already transferred enough. I removed the collar from the liquid and let the jacket dry once it was dry. I could see a similar pattern of this random line of white material in the area where the necklace had been dipped and everything I finished. What I found was basically sodium and chlorine, so I was basically able to solve the puzzle to some extent: the jacket certainly could have been in contact with seawater and because the items I found in my test area were indistinguishable from the items I found.

According to the questionnaire, the evidence was not enough to place Kelly at the crime scene. However, Catherine Murray has an idea of ​​how the jacket could be put to good use. Murray develops another tactic and asks Warren to testify at Kelly's second trial. Time was serving her sentence and he was just working on himself. He was getting involved in all kinds of programs getting counseling. Warren agrees to testify seven years after the crime. Kelly Ellard's second trial begins this time. Kelly will have to face Warren for the first time since then. her arrest her behavior was interesting on direct examination by her lawyer she was one-sided and then on cross-examination she turned around and kept telling me to hurry up I was wasting my time she was crying she denied it over and over again one point, she He said, no matter what you say, the answer is no, it was an interesting test.

Warren told a very compelling story. He recounted how he and Kelly began attacking the victim, hitting and punching her. How she fell to the ground. They started kicking. her stomping on her actually physically stomping on her up and down until she stopped moving clearly unconscious how Kelly then grabbed one of the victim's feet he grabbed the other and how they began to drag her towards the water how once they got to the edge of the water they stopped and watched as Kelly dragged the victim into the water up to approximately his waist and then watched as Kelly held the victim's head underwater until he stopped moving.

He then told us how the victim was floating at the end of Kelly's cross-examination. Catherine Murray takes out the jacket and shows it to Kelly. The courtroom is shocked by Kelly's reaction. I just held her up and said the jacket tells the story, doesn't it? and she broke down and said: you got what you wanted I'm going to be convicted I'm going to be in jail for the rest of my life Does that make you happy? Words to that effect. The jury's verdict was a bombshell after five days of deliberations. Lado number two resulted in a hung jury. 11 guilty. and one not guilty when that happened we immediately got on the phone and started calling witnesses we told them they would be there to help us again so we started again and made Ellard three Warren got back on the line and she was Kelly . convicted of murder for second degree murder kelly ellard appeals once again, but in 2009 his conviction was reinstated, ending a legal case that lasted more than a decade in 2007 after he apologized to the burke family to warren galawatsky He was granted one day's parole.

I think this girl died in vain. Her legacy has accomplished much. This made international news at the time and what she did was put the issue of youth violence at the forefront not only in this city or in this province but throughout the country. It was significant that Warren and Kelly believed that the water would hide their secrets but that was not the case. Justice has been done in Perina's work.