Long before her time at Quantico, she remembered coming across a double fatality on a roadway and pulling up to the scene alone. There were “grapefruits all over the road,” which one of the vehicles had been transporting. She could still visualize the fruit, which was a trigger and immediately transported her back to the trauma.
In thirty-three years on the job, she was, somehow, involved in approximately one thousand cases primarily involving violent crime. The youngest murder victim she dealt with was two months old; the oldest was eighty-three years old.
“Children[-based] cases are the worst of the worst,” she said.
One of the thousand files she worked on involved her tipping point. “The armour was off. I wasn’t in the zone,” she told the conference crowd.
“My trigger was unusual,” she said, of the 2003 case.
The nature of the case is disturbing. Please read with care. I have tried to keep the details to a bare minimum.
In our interview, after her speech, I asked Lines about the trigger and, specifically, how her work has impacted her. She discussed both and started with the 2003 case, which involved a pedophile and animal sexual abuse. She was the head of OPP Behavioral Sciences at the time.
“I do talk about a particular incident that just kind of blindsided me. I’m used to working with human beings, and all of a sudden, I get presented with a case that has to do with a pedophile who was watching children play – obviously looking for sexual stimulation, sexual relief – and starts to, in his car, sexually abuse an animal. I couldn’t believe it,” she explained.
Kate was not present at the scene. She was, as a senior officer, asked to review a videotape brought to her by a junior officer who wanted her professional opinion. The video depicted the scene of the man in the front seat of the car abusing the animal while he watched the children. She could not finish watching the video.
Kate does not believe she has PTSD, but she has been affected by the grotesque imagery. She is supportive of her peers who have been diagnosed with PTSD. She has also supported and assisted in developing mental health initiatives while she was a senior officer within the OPP.
“I worked with our forensic psychiatrist that we had, to develop [initiatives],” said Kate. “PTSD was not on my radar at the time, but that’s what we were seeing with some of our different officers … in the OPP and undercover people who worked in very unstructured, unsupervised circumstances. [They] needed some support and their families need some support, especially in long-term undercover projects. So I know all about that; I certainly was empathetic. I tried to be a good boss … if someone was being transferred in from another unit and they had PTSD, they could work in my area and I would support them. So I thought I was doing really good with the boss stuff.”
She never thought her own mental well-being would be negatively affected by her work. “So when this happened [her reaction to the videotape], I knew exactly what it was. I am watching this videotape and I have this visceral [reaction]. It was a full-blown panic attack. I was familiar with this because I have friends and family who had issues in the past. I knew what they told me was what I was experiencing. And in hindsight, I got blind-sided. I had a shield for human suffering. I didn’t have a shield for animals suffering,” she explained, of the horrific case.
“That was the first time I’d seen an animal [being abused]. I’d heard about it. I certainly had cases which talked about it. But I was actually seeing it happen before my eyes, which I had never seen before. I don’t know why that was it [the tipping point],” she said.
The videotape incident and fallout did not lead to a specific diagnosis. Kate retired in 2010. Now working as a private investigator with her own firm, Lines investigates corporate crime, criminal harassment, workplace issues, and online crimes.
Her work on her book has also been an important, yet unexpected, part of her healing journey. “[The] experience was fulfilling and cathartic to be with [the] victims without your police armour on,” she explained via email in a followup interview.
As writers, we discussed the impact of writing about trauma, as people who had worked around it extensively, when we spoke in person. “Who would have thought writing a book would put it all to rest? It’s done. I don’t think about it anymore,” Kate concluded.
JL: “So you feel the process of going through your book was so cathartic for you that you have been able to put it [the tough cases] to rest?”
KL: “Yes. You [she or someone else] may go to a doctor or a counsellor who would say, ‘You have PTS[D].’ I don’t know. All I know is I’m okay. I don’t have nightmares. I don’t have anything that leads me to believe I have anything after the fact.”
Spending time interviewing, researching, and writing her book, while focusing on the victims and their families instead of the perpetrators, has helped Kate Lines, the first female criminal profiler in Canada, heal and move forward.
“And that’s when I go back to the words of Ken Lanning. ‘Did I do the best possible job I could?’ And the answer is ‘Yes.’ So I don’t bear guilt that the case is unsolved, nor should anybody else involved in it, because there’s just going to be those cases,” she said.
Kate was also involved in another Canadian case that has been solved, but continues to be enormously painful for many. The retired profiler said, in her opinion, the Paul Bernardo case was a “failure.” “It was a failure in that we didn’t catch him quick enough. If DNA samples would have been tested earlier, no one would have been killed, because he would have been identified as the Scarborough Rapist,” she explained.
The so-called Scarborough Rapist persona of Bernardo’s twisted criminal identity is explained this way on Wikipedia: “Bernardo committed multiple sexual assaults, escalating in viciousness, in and around Scarborough, a city in the east of Metropolitan Toronto. Most of the assaults were on young women whom he had stalked after they exited buses late in the evening.” A staggering eighteen rapes or attempted rapes are listed. The women were between the ages of fifteen and twenty-one years old. The crimes occurred over a three-year period between May 1987 and May 1990. Bernardo has admitted to more than a dozen rapes in the southern Ontario area.
The killing started in late 1990.
As widely reported, Bernardo and partner Karla Homolka murdered three young women during 1990 and 1992. The first, in December of 1990, was Karla’s younger sister Tammy. The year after, in June 1991, fourteen-year-old Leslie Mahaffy was abducted, raped, tortured, murdered, and dismembered. In April 1992, Bernardo and Homolka cornered their next victim, fifteen-year-old Kristen French, who was left in a ditch in Burlington on April 30, 1992, not far from the cemetery where Leslie was buried. The rapes and murders continue to horrify a nation.
JL: “What was your role in the Bernardo case?”
KL: “Karla Homolka’s sister, Tammy, had already been murdered or had died … with the use of drugs: a drug overdose. Then Leslie Mahaffy went missing and then Kristen French. I came in [to the investigation] after Kristen French went missing. I got a call from the lead investigator who said they’d already been to the FBI and I knew the FBI had already done a profile for them. But they wanted to do an emotional plea [on television for leads] … they got CHCH [TV in Hamilton] to do a ninety-minute special. It went all across the U.S. and Canada. It was in relation to a plea for information, in particular with Kristen, because we had a lot of information about Kristen. We had eyewitnesses [of the abduction], so there was lots to talk about on a TV show. With Leslie Mahaffy, we were pretty sure the cases were connected. But we didn’t have a lot of evidence for Leslie, except the discovery of her body. I was working as a profiler helping to develop the ninety-minute plea. It was commercial-free. It won awards.”
The Abduction of Kristen French aired on July 21, 1992, and is now viewable on YouTube. Kate had returned from her FBI training in Quantico the year before. In the show, Lines held the rank of sergeant and was still using her maiden name, Kate Cavanagh. She was introduced a
s an OPP Behavioral Analyst and profiler. Kate was still only the second profiler in Canada when the hunt was on for then unknown offenders Bernardo and Homolka.
During the broadcast, viewers see Kate three times: twice on the roadside where Kristen was found, and the last time, near the spot she was abducted.
Kate reviews a number of probable offender characteristics near the end of the show with these traits appearing on the screen, among others: 1. “Prior surveillance by the offender in areas teenagers congregate.” 2. “Possible prior attempt to lure or con teenage girls to a car, asking for directions etc.” 3. “Two offenders who are close – one a leader, the other a follower – prior criminal history.” 4. “Someone who is angry towards women, who has a history of assaulting women or who is now in a relationship where a female is being abused.”
Despite the fact she had only been on the job as a profiler for a short time before the broadcast, her “probabilities” describing the two offenders were eerily accurate.
There was huge public outrage over Homolka’s so-called “Deal with the Devil” as it was dubbed by the media, which saw her released from prison in 2005, after serving twelve years and testifying against Bernardo. He remains in prison and is listed as a Dangerous Offender. The videotapes the duo made with each of the two murder victims were found only after the plea bargain and have since been destroyed.
Reports indicate Homolka/Teale/Bordelais (she has used multiple surnames) and her family have moved back to Quebec where, as of 2016, people in her neighbourhood had voiced their disgust over her living and interacting there, whenever and wherever possible.
As for Kate, her focus is no longer only on the Bernardos and the Homolkas of the world. “For the first time, in the book, I am with all of the families … I never spent time with the families when I was doing investigations,” she said. It has become a healing experience for the profiler, who ended our conversation by talking about the victims and their loved ones.
Kate used one poignant example of meeting Michael Dunahee’s family in British Columbia for the first time while she was researching for her book. “Michael Dunahee’s sister has a tattoo of her brother on her arm. She never knew him. She was six months old [when he disappeared],” she concluded, softly.
On March 24, 2016, twenty-five-year-old Caitlin Dunahee appeared in a Global BC news story, twenty-five years to the day after Michael went missing from the schoolyard play area. “My mom said he always liked to help out and change my diapers and play with me and was very protective,” his sister said.
Michael’s parents, Crystal and Bruce, who also appeared in the story, said they remain hopeful. That may seem incredible, but clearly, what other choice do they have, except the harsh reality which has been forced upon them by Michael’s captor(s)? “We believe he’s still alive, until we get proof otherwise,” his father said.
“Someone knows something and we just want that person to tell us,” Crystal said, pleading for help, again, for their son and family, a quarter-century later.
As for the police involved, John Ducker, a junior detective at the time of the disappearance, said, even in retirement, he still thinks about Michael and the case every week. Trauma lingers.
John Ducker retired in 2013 as Victoria Deputy Police Chief. “It’s my greatest professional disappointment,” he summarized, with Global News Hour at 6 BC. “When something this tragic happens you always second-guess yourself. But … I reconcile it from knowing the department threw everything it had into it at the time. It was the hardest effort we probably ever made into an investigation,” the now retired deputy chief said.
His words echo the exact conversation Kate Lines remembered Ken Lanning having with the Michael Dunahee investigators back at Quantico. Was John Ducker one of them? If he was not, he had clearly spoken to some of the investigators who were present to hear Lanning.
That questioned lingered, so I asked Kate via an email interview if John Ducker was part of the British Columbia contingent who flew to Quantico in the early 1990s. She replied, “Yes.”
Ducker was clearly still affected by what Lanning said to him, more than two decades after that conversation occurred at Quantico. It is a clear example of how our words can build others up, or tear them down. In this case, Ken Lanning’s words to the Dunahee investigators helped at least two of the people who heard them – Kate Lines and John Ducker – and perhaps others who now read them here.
Michael Dunahee was taken in broad daylight from a busy school/sports field area, where the perpetrator(s) may have easily been caught, or at least seen, by someone. Perhaps that someone is you.
“We want our son back with us, that’s all,” Bruce Dunahee told reporters.
It is time to bring Michael back home to his loved ones.
Kate Lines’ Legacy Letter
For the Good Guys:
During my thirty-three years as a police officer, I worked on hundreds of violent crime investigations. The majority of them involved providing my services as a criminal profiler.
An important part of my work as a profiler was to find out as much as I possibly could about “my” victim – why and how they came to be a victim of violent crime.
Rarely did I meet any of them personally, relying solely on their statements and other information provided to me by the investigators.
Sadly, most victims in my cases did not survive their attacks and I had to learn the details of their deaths through photographs and investigative reports.
After I retired from policing, I was approached by a book publisher to share stories from my career.
At first, I was hesitant, knowing that my stories didn’t have many happy endings.
But as I thought more about it, I recalled how buoyed I was throughout my career by the personal behind-the-scenes stories related to these crimes.
They were the stories of survivors, family members, and police investigators. These were the “good guys” and it is their experiences, along with my own, that I chose to share.
In the process of writing my book, I came to realize that many victims and their families are not defined by the traumas and tragedies that took so much away from them.
Some even empowered themselves to make changes to our criminal justice system that would make their communities safer and prevent others from harm.
And I learned of the tenacity, patience, and commitment of police officers who never gave up on solving cold cases that were described by some of their colleagues as unsolvable – even one that took thirty-eight years to prove the naysayers wrong.
Never did I realize what a cathartic experience sharing these stories would be.
Time and again I was deeply struck by the strength, courage, and resilience of “the good guys.”
I am honoured to have been able to share their legacies.
8
Elder Joe Michael and Morgan MacDonald: Comemmorating The Ultimate Sacrifice
Another legacy, this one physical in nature, was unveiled in Moncton, New Brunswick, on June 4, 2016. It was two years to the day when three families lost their sons, brothers, husbands, fathers, friends, and colleagues, and a Canadian city lost three of its RCMP officers on June 4, 2014. Three Moncton RCMP officers died and two others were shot and wounded, in what has been the worst attack on the RCMP since the 2005 Mayerthorpe tragedy, in which four RCMP officers were killed.
Two years after the incident, the City of Moncton, members and veterans of the RCMP, the media, families, friends, loved ones, and first responders across multiple professions and from across borders congregated on Moncton’s waterfront. They came for the opening of a memorial park and the unveiling of three incredibly detailed statues which honour the men who died: Constable David Ross, a thirty-two-year-old dog handler with the RCMP from Victoriaville, Quebec; Constable Douglas Larche, who was forty years old and from Saint John, New Brunswick; and Constable Fabrice Gevaudan, who was forty-five and from Boulogne-Billancourt, France.
Each of the officers’
families and friends had their own specific time to privately view the statues with their own invited group before the public unveiling. Constable Gevaudan’s wife, Angela, personally invited me to attend the private unveiling of the memorial statue the night before the public event. I had never met Angela or her late husband, or the other two deceased officers or their loved ones.
The personal invitation to the private event came because Angela and I share a common bond. We both support the Tema Conter Memorial Trust and are friends with the founder, Vince Savoia. Angela is now an ambassador for the Ontario non-profit.
Savoia, the group’s executive director, is a former Ontario paramedic who lives with PTSD. Vince and the other Tema volunteers work across Canada to support educational and mental health initiatives for first responders. emergency personnel, members of the military, and their loved ones. Tema Conter was a young woman from Halifax living and working in Toronto at the time of her murder. Vince was one of two paramedics who attended at her bedside at the murder scene. Tema’s story and the work of her brother, Halifax physician Dr. Howard Conter, also appear in The Price We Pay. Dr. Conter’s unwavering work, commitment, and fundraising skills are a chief component of the Tema Conter Memorial Trust.
Angela Gevaudan is friends with Dr. Conter and his wife Karen, as well as Vince and a large group of Tema Trust supporters who also attended the Moncton weekend and private unveiling. In that group was a prominent member of the Tema team: Director of Communications Erin Alvarez, who is the wife of an Ontario advanced care paramedic.
Erin is a former television broadcaster and is vocal, both on and off social media, about the impact of trauma on the family members of first responders. We bonded immediately when we met in Vaughn at the Common Threads conference. Erin had vouched for me with Angela and I know that is why I was allowed to attend the behind-the-scenes unveiling in Moncton. It was an incredible honour. I would like to thank the entire Gevaudan family, especially Angela and their then thirteen-year-old daughter, Emma.
The Legacy Letters Page 10
