Peter B. Smith - CSI Alberta. The Secrets of Skulls and Skeletons

Peter B. Smith lives with his wife on Quadra Island, British Columbia, where he retired after a 37-year career as a newspaper crime reporter. He was the crime reporter for The News in Portsmouth, England, for 21 years, where he was on call with all three emergency servicesfire, police and ambulancecovering thousands of stories of death and destruction. After immigrating to Canada in 1987, he was the crime reporter at the Calgary Sun for 16 years, retiring in 2003.

Peter has received numerous accolades, including awards for his coverage of the massacre at the Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado. Peter also travelled to England to cover the story of Dr. Harold Shipman, the physician who murdered 216 of his patients.

To satisfy his two main interests in life, sea fishing and stamps, Peter ran a twice-weekly sea-angling column for 10 years in England and wrote more than 600 columns for stamp collectors in the Calgary Sun , spanning 13 years and earning a national Canadian philatelic literary award.

Peters first Canadian true-crime book, Prairie Murders: Mysteries, Crimes and Scandals , is also published by Heritage House. His previous works include Sea Angling in Southern England and the official history of the Portsmouth (England) Fire Brigade, Go To Blazes , as well as a specialist stamp book called Vanuatus Postal HistoryThe First Decade . Peter is currently working on a history of the postal service, post offices and postmasters on the tiny islands around his Quadra Island home.

I would like to thank the many police officers across Alberta with whom I worked on the cases documented in this book during my years as a crime reporter with the Calgary Sun . They helped me with inside information about these crimes and mysteries. Many of these officers were with the Calgary Police Service. Especially, I want to thank all the secret sources among them, who have had to remain anonymous at all times. You know who you are!

I would particularly like to thank two former Calgary city police homicide detectives, Wayne Lauinger and Allan Hargreaves, who gave me their time and took the trouble to share their memories of the roles they played in two of these cases. I also appreciate the time given me by celebrated anthropologist Dr. Owen Beatty in analyzing the background to the Septic Tank Sam case, on which he had been consulted by police years earlier. I am also greatly indebted to Nicole Giasson, the editor of the Tofield Mercury newspaper, and Kathy Levesque of the Edmonton Sun library, who worked hard to uncover a wealth of newspaper cuttings for me about Septic Tank Sam.

Thanks once again to my wife, Amanda, who has endured my talk about human skulls, skeletons, murders and torture while I was writing the book. And thanks for allowing our house to be filled from study to attic with my murder files, notebooks and newspaper cuttings. Her computer skills have again been invaluable in saving me when parts of the book were in danger of disappearing into cyberspace forever.

There is no bibliography for this book, as none of these cases has appeared in any previously published book. All 10 mysteries and murders are cases that I worked on as the crime reporter for the Calgary Sun .

I was the reporter whose exclusive scoop broke the story of the Ted Gawron case, when no one in Medicine Hat had any clue it was happening under their noses. Also, I was at the scene when Teds remains were discovered in his backyard. I was there the day they dug up Sherwin Fettig from his makeshift grave west of Calgary, and I joined the search for little Jesse Rinker before they found his remains west of Rocky Mountain House. I was at the sewage plant where they found Albert Boudreaus bones and was on the steps of the Canmore courthouse when Jason (Jacob) Lee forgave the media.

To research the other cases, I interviewed family members, lead investigators in the homicide unit and forensic scientists. Over the years, I have saved my notebooks, newspaper cuttings, murder files and court records that provided the original research material for these stories.

Copyright 2009 Peter B. Smith

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, audio recording or otherwisewithout the written permission of the publisher or a photocopying licence from Access Copyright, Toronto, Canada.

Originally published by Heritage House Publishing Co. Ltd. in 2009 in paperback with
ISBN 978-1-894974-84-4.

This electronic edition was released in 2011.

e-pub ISBN: 978-1-926936-16-1

e-PDF ISBN: 978-1-926936-38-3

Cataloguing data available from Library and Archives Canada

Edited by Lesley Reynolds

Cover image by Stefan Klein/iStockphoto)

Heritage House acknowledges the financial support for its publishing program from the Government of Canada through the Canada Book Fund (CBF), Canada Council for the Arts and the province of British Columbia through the British Columbia Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

www.heritagehouse.ca

To all my secret sources.
Right on.

Following is a list of keywords based on the index in the print edition. Variations of these words can be used to search this electronic edition.

Antinello, John Joseph

Hermesh Austin

Dr. Owen Beatty

Blairmore

Albert James Boudreau

Corinne Boudreau

Dr. William Brady

Leslie Charles (Les) Brown

Wilma Brown

Dr. John Butt

Calgary

Calgary City Police

Calgary Herald

Calgary Medical Examiners Office

Calgary Sun

Canmore

Cardston

Cochrane

De Winton

DNA evidence

Edmonton

Edmonton Medical Examiners Office

Exshaw

facial reconstruction

Sherwin Fettig

Sofia Gawron

Tadeus (Ted) Gawron

Jamie Graham

Gregory Kungel

Eda Lee

Jason (Jacob) Lee

Lethbridge

Medicine Hat

Charlie McLeod

Nordegg

North Vancouver

Pincher Creek

Platner Joey

Richard Richards

Jesse Rinker

Karen Rinker

Rodger Rinker

Rocky Mountain House

Saskatoon Medical Examiners Office

Shellbrook

Sibbald Flats

Dr. Clyde Snow

Stony Plain

Billy Stuppard

Sunchild First Nation Reserve

Three Hills

Tofield

Tofield Mercury

Veterans Affairs Canada

It was the most dramatic twist you could ever imagine in a murder trial. For four years, a killer had evaded the police. Even after being arrested he declared his innocence and fought for his freedom. But he was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with no parole for 25 years. Still insisting he didnt do it, he successfully appealed the conviction. The appeal court judges agreed with his lawyers that a legal technicality had played out against him. The conviction was quashed, and he earned a new trial.

This time, as the retrial got under way in 1995, the legal technicalities seemed to be working in the prisoners favour. Testimony from one witness against him was struck down by the judge and could not be admitted as evidence. John Antinello was winning the fight against the charge that he had murdered Sherwin Fettig. Antinello was edging ever closer to freedom.