Mike on Crime (27 page)

Kremer said Li knew the importance of taking his medications for schizophrenia and had shown great insight into what triggered the attack. Kremer said the only security concern as Li ventured out into the community was that some member of the public might attack him.

The Vince Li case had left the courtroom and entered the political arena. The federal government had recently introduced Bill C-54, the Not Criminally Responsible Reform Act, in response to Li's case. The bill would create a new category of high-risk offenders who couldn't be considered for release until a court agreed to revoke the designation. They would be individuals deemed an “unmanageable” risk in the community. They would not have a review of their status for three years, would not be given unescorted passes and would only get escorted passes under narrow circumstances. The law would make public safety the main consideration in such cases and ensure victims would be notified when the offender is released. The law could also be applied retroactively.

Advocates said the bill further stigmatized the mentally ill, incorrectly suggested the likelihood of reoffending was connected to the brutality of the crime and made people unnecessarily afraid of those who had a mental illness.

Federal Public Safety Minister Steven Blaney slammed the review board's 2014 decision and defended Bill C-54 in a news release. “The provincial decision to grant Mr. Li unescorted trips around town is an insult to Tim McLean, the man he beheaded and cannibalized. Canadians expect that their justice system will keep them safe from high-risk individuals,” the release said.

The case further entered the political arena when Manitoba MP Shelly Glover and the Manitoba government took turns swiping at each other about Li's status. Glover blasted the provincial Crown attorney's office for not objecting to enhanced freedoms for Li. In an unusual move, Glover called for Justice Minister Andrew Swan to file a legal appeal of his department's own position on the controversial matter.

“The decision by the Manitoba government not to object to any of the recommendations made to grant Vince Li additional freedoms, including unescorted trips into Selkirk, is an insult not only to the family of Tim McLean but to all law-abiding Manitobans. Our Conservative government is firmly calling on the province of Manitoba to immediately appeal this insensitive decision,” Glover wrote in a news release that was distributed to media by the Prime Minister's Office, indicating it had approval at the highest level of government. Glover's demand drew a quick response from the province, which accused her of “playing politics” with a serious matter.

Dave Chomiak, speaking on behalf of Justice Minister Andrew Swan, said a provincial attorney general could not intervene in a review board decision. Chomiak, a former Manitoba attorney general, said the province had sent two letters to the federal government urging it to change the Criminal Code to make public safety the paramount issue in these types of cases. “Shelly Glover could easily go down the hallway, talk to her colleague in the cabinet [federal Justice Minister Peter MacKay] and have the law changed, as we recommended,” he told reporters. “They have not changed this law. It is their responsibility to do so.”

Then Glover issued a terse response to Chomiak. “The people of Manitoba deserve better protection. Unlike the Manitoba government, which has not lifted a finger while Mr. Li was released onto the streets of Selkirk, our Conservative government has moved to amend the law to protect Canadians from dangerous offenders found not criminally responsible,” her statement said.

Chomiak said he understood some members of the public might be concerned. “If you're going grocery shopping at Sobeys or at Superstore in Selkirk, and you were to encounter him [Li], you would feel unsure of yourself,” he said.

I
t was another bitterly cold day in the winter of 2014 —one of the nastiest in Manitoba history. But the small group of men inside the Selkirk Bowling Centre didn't seem very concerned about the weather outside. Or anything else for that matter. There were plenty of smiles and laughs and mutual encouragement as the group of about six took turns picking up the ball, setting up and firing it down the lane. The cheers were just as loud when it knocked over a few pins as they were when it ended up in the gutter. A competitive men's bowling league this wasn't. The main objective was clearly having fun.

The facility was mostly empty, save for a couple of staff members from the Selkirk Mental Health Centre who were here to supervise this public outing. I'd also made my way inside and stood near the shoe rental counter, making small chat with the lone adult female employee. I'd come here acting on a tip to our newsroom and was trying to be as subtle as possible, telling the woman I was interested in rates for booking a children's birthday party. In reality I was looking for someone. And it only took a few seconds before I found him.

Vince Li was seated on the bench, patiently waiting his turn. He was on one of his regular escorted leaves, a low-key affair that residents of Selkirk were oblivious to. Li looked a lot more relaxed than all of the times I'd seen him in court. It's hard to believe this was the same man I watched years earlier say “Please Kill Me” in court, the same man responsible for the horrors that occurred on the Greyhound nearly six years earlier. According to medical experts, it wasn't. Only time will tell if the public ever accepts that.

Meanwhile, the tragic fallout of this case continues, in ways perhaps we never would have imagined. RCMP Cpl. Ken Barker, who was one of the first police officers on the scene that night, took his own life in July 2014. Family members say he'd struggled for years with the effects of post-traumatic stress disorder. Although the 51-year-old saw plenty of awful things during nearly two decades of police work, his wife said the Li case was the “straw that broke the camel's back.” Barker had been unable to cope with what he encountered on the Greyhound. And it only got worse as the years went on.

In Barker's memory, family members asked for tax deductible donations to be sent to either the RCMP Foundation (
http://rcmp-f.ca/pub/donate
) which supports families of the RCMP for PTSD awareness, or to Little Warriors, (
www.littlewarriors.ca
) a national group which helps prevent child sexual abuse.

COLD WINTER, WARM HEART

W
ho doesn't appreciate a good love story?

When you spend your days immersed in the typical gloom and doom of the courthouse offerings, it can be difficult to find stories that could be considered positive, even uplifting. But every now and then, a little gem comes along that restores your faith in humanity. Even warms the ol' heart. Charles Gonsoulin fits into that category.

An RCMP media release came across my computer one frigid winter day in 2005, providing a few details about a very unusual arrest. An American man had been found shivering on a southern Manitoba golf course, apparently lost and confused. He had illegally entered the country at a nearby border crossing, although the reasons for that weren't released publicly. There was also mention of Gonsoulin suffering some injuries related to his exposure to the cold, but no real specifics.

I wanted to know more: Who was this guy? What had brought him here? What was his experience like? What was his prognosis? Nailing down those details provide to be a lot simpler than I thought. A few phone calls later and suddenly I had Gonsoulin on the phone, directly from his hospital room. The cop who found him also agreed to talk. It was the start of a beautiful relationship between a lovesick fugitive and a reporter—that would be me—who knew he had stumbled on to a great tale.

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 24, 2005

“I was a desperate man who found a desperate way to try and be with the woman I love.” And that, Charles Gonsoulin said, was the best explanation for why he'd done something incredibly stupid. The 41-year-old long-time resident of Los Angeles, California admitted he could have easily died trying to sneak across the Canadian border as part of a poorly-thought out plan to meet up with a woman he'd fallen head over heels for—despite the fact they'd never actually met. It was love in the modern age, the result of an Internet friendship which quickly turned into something more serious.

Now Gonsoulin was sitting in his Morris, Manitoba hospital room, his severely frostbitten fingers wrapped in bandages, explaining to a reporter over the telephone just what he'd endured during four days spent wandering outdoors in the heart of a nasty Prairie winter. There was deep snow in North Dakota. There was even deeper snow in Manitoba. And then there was the cold. Oh, God, was it ever cold.

“I wasn't aware of what the weather conditions would be. It was a lot worse than I thought. It got to a point where I was giving up,” said Gonsoulin.

The medical diagnosis would be “severe hypothermia.” But Gonsoulin was likely headed for something much more dire—try D.O.A.—if not for an RCMP officer who came along at just the right time. “He is very lucky to be alive,” said Cpl. Don McKenna of the Emerson RCMP detachment.

So how exactly did Gonsoulin, a self-employed mechanic, find himself near-death in a Manitoba snowbank? Well, for starters, there was that pesky little robbery conviction two decades earlier which meant Gonsoulin couldn't legally cross the border. So he decided to hatch a plan to get himself into Canada through more nefarious means. But it was safe to say that geography and environmental studies were not exactly his strong point.

Gonsoulin made his way to Pembina, North Dakota just fine. But that's where things fell off the rails. His plan was to sneak across the border, catch a bus and head to Quebec to meet the woman he said changed his life. They had met two years earlier in an Internet chat room for people with depression. Gonsoulin said the woman, Jennifer Couture, restored his will to live when he was at an extreme low point in his life. He needed that will to live as he struggled to stay conscious while battling the elements once he got across southern Manitoba—an approximately seven kilometer trek that apparently took him close to 100 hours on foot.

Gonsoulin was discovered by McKenna, who followed a trail of footprints on a golf course just outside Emerson. McKenna eventually found Gonsoulin wandering in the bush. “When I found him, he was babbling and incoherent. His hands were black and frozen solid. He didn't know who he was or where he was,” said McKenna.

Gonsoulin's frozen body might not have been found until spring if not for some chance happenings. First, a man reporting a traffic accident that day told McKenna he thought he spotted someone wandering around the golf course as he drove to the RCMP detachment. McKenna went just outside the town for a look, but initially didn't see anything suspicious.

“The golf course is closed, so I knew there wasn't supposed to be anyone on it. I started trampling through the snow for a closer look, and luckily we'd had some fresh snow because I saw some footprints,” McKenna said. The officer quickly realized something was amiss when he found a pair of gloves along the trail of footprints. A few steps later was a duffel bag. Then another. “I went down a little embankment and there he was at the bottom,” McKenna said.

Gonsoulin had shed some of his clothing and opened his jacket—a telltale sign that he was suffering from hypothermia, as victims often begin to feel a sense of warmth. McKenna called an ambulance and Gonsoulin was rushed to hospital. His first meeting with his cyberspace sweetie would have to wait. When released from hospital, Gonsoulin would be detained in custody to answer to a criminal charge of illegally entering the country. Once disposed of, he'd be deported back to the United States by Canadian justice officials.

“My past is coming back to haunt me,” said Gonsoulin. He had been sentenced to five years in prison following a robbery conviction in 1984. Gonsoulin said he tried to enter Canada legally in 2004, but was turned away at the New York-Quebec border because of his criminal record. So he went home to California dejected but came up with a new plan to get into the country during conversations with Couture. “I had reached a point in my life, before we met, where I was very despondent and not really wanting to keep on living. I needed someone to talk to, needed someone to listen, and that was her,” said Gonsoulin, a divorced father.

Gonsoulin said Couture was a single mother of little financial means and was unable to travel to California. He bought a bus ticket, which took him to Pembina, where he purchased some winter survival gear, including boots, two tuques, a parka, two sets of gloves, thermal socks and a compass. He also packed some trail mix and water, which quickly ran out. “I was told by some people that west of the Great Lakes, the winter hadn't been very bad this year,” he said.

He picked the Prairies as his point of entry, believing Manitoba's border might be easier to sneak across because of the wide-open spaces and dense brush that could provide cover. “I was looking for the least amount of visibility possible,” said Gonsoulin, who began eating snow but found it only made him thirstier and hungrier. Gonsoulin said he hadn't given up on his quest to be with his love, but admitted they would have to find a less dangerous way of arranging their first meeting.

MONDAY MARCH 7, 2005

“It's a love story with a very sad ending.” Winnipeg defence lawyer Mike Cook, eloquent as always, summarized the plight of Charles Gonsoulin as he stood in a Winnipeg courtroom. It was the latest episode of this real-life soap opera which had made national headlines.

Gonsoulin had just entered a guilty plea to illegally entering the country. And Cook noted his client had lost much more than just an opportunity to meet his Internet girlfriend, Jennifer Couture, for the first time. Gonsoulin was also going to lose every one of his fingers, right down to the knuckle, along with several toes on his right foot. So much for a Hollywood ending to this bizarre international love story.

Wearing bandages on his feet and hands, Gonsoulin was seeking a discharge, which would not have registered as a criminal conviction in Canada. Cook noted his client just had one prior conviction—that damn 1984 robbery at an Arkansas Pizza Hut which had prevented him from coming to Canada in a much less dangerous fashion. A sympathetic provincial court Judge Tim Preston said it WAS clear Gonsoulin had suffered for his crime but still dished out a conviction in the form of a year-long suspended sentence. He said other people thinking of sneaking into Canada must be sent “a strong message.” That would pave the way for Gonsoulin to be deported back to his home in Los Angeles.

“In his lifetime, he had only ever seen a dusting of snow. He tells me the coldest it ever got to in his lifetime has been 10 degrees,” Cook told court. “He didn't really know there was any place on Earth that could be so cold and inhospitable.”

Weeks later, doctors would amputate all eight fingers and several toes from Gonsoulin. And despite having to re-learn how to use his hands and even walk with major adjustments, he continued to be upbeat as he recovered in Winnipeg hospital awaiting deportation. Much of that could be attributed to the fact that he had spoken by phone with Couture, who would come to Winnipeg a few weeks later for that long-sought face-to-face meeting. “It's amazing. He's only got his thumbs left, but he is so positive thinking about the future. I truly admire the spirit of this man. He believes in his relationship,” said Cook. “He believes in a happy future. He's such a unique individual, and I'm inspired by him.”

The meeting did happen prior to mid-June, when Gonsoulin was finally released from hospital and deported. It was done in private, away from the prying eyes of media cameras. “While we know a worldwide interest has grown in wanting to know what has been going on with us as a quote-unquote ‘story,' reporters are forgetting that very deep, powerful, personal, and... often very painful emotions are being lived day in and day out by the two of us towards the other,” Couture wrote in an e-mail to The Canadian Press after the fact. Both she and Gonsoulin declined to give specifics of where their relationship might be headed as Gonsoulin was about to be shipped back to California. “We would prefer not to talk about it anymore. We're all talked out,” Couture told the Canadian Press.

Gonsoulin had actually made one final plea to stay in Canada, citing “humanitarian grounds” during an appearance before Canada Border Services officials. He was denied. As always, Gonsoulin continued to look at his cup being half full. “I'm just a person who followed my heart, to do something I felt I really need to do, to catch my dream so to speak,” he told the Canadian Press.

The love bug that came over Charles Gonsoulin was apparently spreading. Another convicted U.S. criminal—with a much more serious record than Gonsoulin—was caught sneaking into Manitoba to meet a woman he'd fallen in love with over the Internet. Unlike Gonsoulin, he waited until the weather was a bit nicer to begin his trek through the province.

Robert Rowelson, 39, was arrested while walking down Hwy. 12 near Sprague. He pleaded guilty days later to illegally entering the country and was sentenced to 45 days behind bars. He was deported upon completion of his sentence.

“He wanted to come across the border to Winnipeg to meet the love of his life,” defence lawyer Randy Minuk told court.” This was an Internet romance that acted as an aphrodisiac and tempted him to do what he's done.”

Rowelson had been released from prison in 2007 year after serving 11 years for manslaughter. He stabbed a man to death during a 1996 bar fight in Nebraska. Crown attorney Steve Christie said Rowelson first tried to enter Canada in February 2008 through the Sprague border crossing. He told officials he had no prior criminal record, but was quickly caught in a lie when they did a computer check. Rowelson was denied entry and told not to attempt another crossing.

On May 20, 2008, Canada Border Services officials got a tip that Rowelson had tried again and was successful. They notified RCMP, who found Rowelson just west of Sprague. He told police he'd snuck into Canada through the bush to avoid getting grilled by border guards. “He said he was coming to Winnipeg, but that he had changed his mind and was instead going to go to Alaska,” said Christie. “He said he'd gotten a ride up to the border crossing by a guy named Dave in a brown car.”

Provincial court Judge Ron Meyers questioned why Rowelson's Internet girlfriend didn't visit him in the US instead of him attempting another risky entry. “Why didn't he just say to her ‘I was turned back, if you really love me, then join me down here'?” asked Meyers.

“He should have. But what can I say? Love makes people stupid,” replied Minuk.

“Well, she's a very considerate woman,” said Meyers.

I
'd love to tell you Charles Gonsoulin ended up living happily ever after with the woman he risked life—and limb—to be with. But I honestly don't know. I kept in touch with Gonsoulin for a few years after he was deported, occasionally emailing him or enjoying a brief phone chat.

At one point, he had moved from California to a more central US state where he had family members. The idea was to be closer to Couture, who had made trips down south to see him. Gonsoulin had told me the relationship was going well and they were hoping to have a solid future together. But he admitted the distance between them was difficult, and nothing was guaranteed in life. But then he just seemed to vanish. I stopped hearing from him, emails suddenly weren't returned and the only phone number I had for him was out-of-service.

To this day, I often think about Gonsoulin. He was one of the most humble, charming individuals I've had the pleasure of meeting in my career. His positive attitude was infectious, especially considering the grim circumstances in which I met him. I couldn't help but feel a bit sorry for him, but also marvel at the lengths he was willing to go to chase something he felt strongly about. Isn't that a quality we'd all like to have?

I honestly hope he's doing well, wherever he might be these days. Perhaps he's off on another adventure, following his heart. I just hope he remembers to check the forecast ahead of time.