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Kenora's Shame

W-FIVE

Kenora's rugged beauty and lakeside setting is a magnet for the outdoor types. But there's a dark side to the city you won't read about in the tourist brochures. If you're poor and native, Kenora can be a dangerous place.

The number of assaults, many of them fueled by booze, is rising every year. If you want to make money in Kenora, just open a bar.

There is one exception, with the unlikely name of the Whistling Monkey. Justin Carambetsos, who owns the place, has become a pariah in his hometown -- afraid to even walk on the streets.

In Kenora, many believe Justin is a killer.

"I don't go out alone very much at all," he says. "So I prefer to just stay with friends or at the pub where I'm comfortable."

It all goes back to a favour that Justin did for a friend five years ago. Maria Campanella was alone in her apartment after midnight when she heard a noise -- somebody was in her apartment.

"I got a little bit nervous. I was home by myself, sleeping. And I had no idea who it was," she says.

Maria called the bar where Justin was working at the time and he offered to come over to take a look around. What Justin and Maria discovered was a man passed out on a chair in her living room, with blood on his face.

"I figured he'd got in a fight," says Maria. "I automatically freak out, start swearing, start crying. I'm, like, what's going on? I don't understand this."

Justin says he carried Maria's uninvited guest -- someone he'd never seen before -- out of the apartment and dumped him unceremoniously on the sidewalk outside. But neither Maria nor Justin ever called the police.

"No, I didn't even think of it," says Justin. "I didn't think it was a big deal. I figured he'd get up and stagger away wherever he was going."

And Justin insists the man was alive when he left him.

"I tossed his shoes at him. One of the shoes hit him in the leg and he wasn't too happy and he called me an 'asshole,' I believe."

BUNGLED INVESTIGATION

What Justin didn't know was that someone was watching -- a woman out walking her dogs. She saw Justin throw something -- probably the running shoes -- at the figure on the ground. Once Justin had left, the woman crossed the street to get a closer look.

What she says she saw then, and what she would see a short time later, became crucial evidence that the police would try to ignore.

In the meantime, though, things were getting a whole lot worse for Justin. He was arrested and charged with murdering Max Kakegamic, the man he had hauled out of Maria's apartment the previous night.

An autopsy found injuries all over Max's body. The coroner testified he was likely killed by a vicious kick to the neck. Just how and why Max, a native from North Spirit Lake reserve north of Kenora, ended up in that apartment remains a mystery.

Two Kenora police officers, Tom Favreau and Lloyd White, were put in charge of the case. Justin explained to Officer White what had happened and insisted Max Kakegamic was alive when he left him on the sidewalk. But White never recorded Justin's statement or told the prosecution about it, as required by law. That was the first problem.

The second problem involved the woman out walking her dogs the night of the murder. After she saw Max Kakegamic lying on the sidewalk she went back to her apartment, just across the street. And from her back window she says she saw something else -- another man acting suspiciously.

She went back outside for a closer look and saw him again, this time hurrying away.

From his characteristic limp and his white cap, she identified him as Danny Favreau, a local troublemaker. She also noticed something else. Max had been moved a couple of metres from where she first saw him, his pockets turned out. All of a sudden police had an eyewitness, another suspect and another motive.

But the police would do little, if anything, to investigate Danny Favreau, even though Favreau had a criminal record and had been seen assaulting and robbing an unconscious aboriginal man not far from where Max was found. Surprising? Perhaps not. Danny Favreau, it turns out, is the nephew of one of the investigating officers, Tom Favreau.

"Certainly he should have removed himself immediately from the investigation at the minute that his nephew's name was raised and that was a problem," says David Gibson, the criminal defence lawyer who represented Justin Carambetsos.

And there was another problem -- a history between Justin and Lloyd White, the other investigating officer. Justin says an incident happened one night at the bar when Officer White was off duty.

"He was drunk and belligerent, wanted to fight me. He was the last person in the bar and he was trying to come behind the bar to get another drink and we wouldn't let him. He threatened to go home, get a gun, come back and shoot me," says Justin.

For Justin, the criminal charges and the bad blood spelled big trouble.

"There were some obvious legal issues right from the beginning of the case," says Gibson.

The issues started with Justin's initial statement to police that was never recorded or entered into evidence. Then, of course, there was the eyewitness who told police about a second suspect, and that Max's body had been moved from where she first saw it -- all facts that were ignored or not immediately followed up on by the police.

And when prosecutors began realizing there were problems with the investigation, and started asking questions, the officers held a secret meeting to try to get their stories straight.

"A number of the officers present in the meeting realized that the affidavits that they had prepared independently were not consistent and they took the affidavits back, changed them to make them consistent and then submitted the altered affidavits as original affidavits," says Gibson. "At that point it became clear that there was something very seriously amiss."

As the case against Justin began to unravel, his lawyer asked the judge to stay the charges against Justin -- in effect, to throw the case out. He eventually did, ruling that it was impossible for Justin to get a fair trial. But the judge reserved his harshest language for Officers White and Favreau of the Kenora police.

In his ruling, Ontario Superior Court Justice Peter Hambly said: "These officers were a force unto themselves…. The courts will sometimes make allowances for poor police work done in good faith. What the courts cannot tolerate is police dishonesty."

Justin's lawyer says he believes the judge felt personally misled by the police officers' testimony.

"His outrage at that stage was quite palpable to anybody who had been following the case," says David Gibson.

Justin was a free man again, but he was never proven innocent -- or guilty -- in court. His problems were far from over.

FIVE YEARS LATER

On October 4th, 2005, the fifth anniversary of Max Kakegamic's death, natives and their supporters marched through Kenora to protest the lack of progress in the investigation. The case against Justin had been thrown out but the police were no closer to finding Max Kakegamic's killer. Among the protesters was Max's mother, Margaret Kakegamic.

"I cannot explain how saddening and frustrating it is that five years after our son's death no one is currently being tried for his murder," she told the crowd.

The case has become a flash point for native grievances. Proof -- as if more were needed, they say -- that when an aboriginal person is murdered, it's not a priority for the police or the justice system.

"The most troubling aspect is the possibility that this case will be forgotten, that the whole thing will disappear and people will think, 'Oh well, so what?'" said Mary Alice Smith, a local advocate for native rights.

One thing that hasn't disappeared is the cloud of suspicion that still hangs over Justin Carambetsos. Even though the charges against him were thrown out, many people in Kenora continue to believe he killed Max Kakegamic.

"I've had three death threats in the last month," Justin told W-FIVE. "Like people actually coming into the restaurant and telling me they were going to shoot and kill me."

It's little wonder that business at the Whistling Monkey is way down. Justin's parents, George and Arlene, had to mortgage everything to cover their son's legal bills. And they still worry about their son's future.

"Do I think he'll forget it? Never," says his mother Arlene. "On the day of the stay when our lawyer walked in here and told Justin (the charges were stayed), Justin stood up and said, 'What do I do? What do I do now? For three and a half years I put a suit on and I sat in a little box. What do I do now?' How do you answer that?"

Much of Justin's anger is still directed at Tom Favreau and Lloyd White, the two Kenora cops accused by Justice Hambly of dishonesty.

Following the judge's ruling, the Ontario Provincial Police were called in to investigate the officers' behavior. But in spite of the judge's unusually blunt language, saying that Officers White and Favreau had lied under oath and suppressed or fabricated evidence, the OPP said it could find no reason to lay criminal charges against them -- a decision that surprised Justin's lawyer, David Gibson.

But the two officers were charged with misconduct in an internal disciplinary hearing. Officer Favreau is still fighting the Police Services Act charges, while Officer White pleaded guilty. White was demoted but is back on the job -- something that shocks Justin Carambetsos.

"I don't know how they could ever take his word for anything ever again in court. There's no way he should have kept his job. I think it's absolutely ridiculous," said Justin.

W-FIVE wanted to hear Officer White's side of the story, but when we met up with him, he was in no mood to speak to us.

Justin is now suing the Kenora Police Service and the officers involved for $5 million. It's because of that suit that the Kenora police, the Crown Attorney's office and the OPP all refused to speak to W-FIVE.

In a letter to W-FIVE, the OPP, which has taken over the Max Kakegamic murder investigation, insisted the case was not closed and that all information is investigated thoroughly.

INVESTIGATED THOROUGHLY?

Investigated thoroughly? What about the second suspect, the man identified as Danny Favreau? From court records, we discovered another startling fact. Favreau had worked as an informant for the OPP. The woman who spotted him on the street the night of the murder was Heather Gunne. And here's what she told the OPP in a videotaped statement obtained by W -FIVE:

"I said his pants pockets were taken, pulled out and I figured he was robbed," she said of Max Kakegamic. "I told them that. And I had seen Danny. I am sure it was Danny."

Some time after the murder, Danny Favreau packed up and left town and no one in Kenora has seen him since. W-FIVE did manage to track him down in Thunder Bay, Ontario. Remember, not only is Favreau the nephew of one of the Kenora officers, he was also a paid informer for the OPP, which took over the investigation.

Favreau, who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome and does indeed have a distinctive limp, is living on a disability pension with his girlfriend and their newborn child. He agreed to speak with W-FIVE as long as his lawyer, Christopher Watkins, was present.

Favreau denied assaulting or killing Max Kakegamic and insisted he wasn't even in the area the night of the murder. He also denied his uncle, Officer Tom Favreau, was trying to protect him.

"He wouldn't cover for me. He wouldn't want to lose his job just for me," Favreau told W-FIVE.

When pressed, though, Favreau did admit he once worked for the OPP as a paid informant.

So were the police protecting an informant? Favreau said he has no idea -- but he did confirm the OPP never talked to him after they took over the Kakegamic murder investigation, even though Judge Hambly, in his ruling staying the charges against Justin Carambetsos, pointed to Favreau as a possible alternative suspect.

"That's something for the authorities to decide. That's not for Mr. Favreau to decide," said Favreau's lawyer, Christopher Watkins. "If there's some suggestion that he's an alternative suspect, that position is wrong."

MAY NEVER KNOW THE TRUTH

At the site where Max Kakegamic's body was found, friends and supporters still come to place offerings. And they're now pressing for a public inquiry into a justice system they say has failed.

"The Crown Attorneys are saying that they're not going to pursue any further investigation. And they're saying that's mainly because of the judge's ruling, that because of the way the investigation was conducted in the first place they can't ever go back and reopen it. And we're saying that's not acceptable," says native rights advocate Mary Alice Smith.

Still, Justin's lawyer, David Gibson, said with the passage of so much time, with a police investigation that was bungled from the start, we might never find out the truth about who killed Max Kakegamic.

"Short of a confession, short of someone coming forward and acknowledging that they committed the offence, I think it's hard to imagine that," says Gibson.

While the murder charges against Justin were thrown out, his troubles with the law are not over.

A few days before this broadcast, the OPP raided the Whistling Monkey as part of a crackdown on Hells Angels and their associates. Justin was arrested and charged with possessing a prohibited weapon ... apparently brass knuckles.

So, just who killed Max Kakegamic is a question that will continue to divide Kenora … a small town with a dark side and a long memory.