Canada - Woman wants bodies of First Nation boys she says her father killed, found

[zwiebel]

More than 50 years ago, Glenna Mae Breckenridge says she witnessed her father killing three Aboriginal boys on their farm near Pefferlaw, Ontario, Canada. The unidentified boys were never reported missing and their bodies have never been found. No arrest was ever made either, although her father was questioned.

Last weekend though, a dozen members from several First Nations came together with Glenna to remember the victims, and ask for action in their case. A hawk joined them too, flying overhead. She says that in 1955, one of her father's young farmhands caught her father abusing her, and intervened. Her father stabbed the young Aboriginal man to death with a pitchfork, and when his two friends came searching for him the next day, Glenna's father killed them too, with a shotgun.

Glenna has always insisted her father buried the three boys under their barn, and recent tests run on behalf of CBC's 'The National', which made a documentary about her story, did indicate human remains might be present there. Law enforcement have never carried out any excavations but have told Paul Hunter of CBC that they 'want to look into' the program's findings.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/f...s-of-3-aboriginal-boys-50-years-ago-1.2821122

Here is a link to the documentary, 'Memories of a Murder': http://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV Shows/The National/ID/2530024258/

 

[zwiebel]

Oh, I just watched the documentary. The current farm owner didn't object to ground penetrating radar being used in the barn, but does object to it being dug up.

Glenna Mae's father died five years ago.

 

[carbuff]

Wow, that's an amazing story. I hope they can find the bodies and that there's enough information for them to be identified.

 

[Little Jedi]

Oh, I just watched the documentary. The current farm owner didn't object to ground penetrating radar being used in the barn, but does object to it being dug up.

Glenna Mae's father died five years ago.

Even if the radar does show anomalies ? :thinking:

 

[Jacie Estes]

Thanks zweibel. I'm gonna watch it now.

Interesting that they won't dig to see if the images are, in fact, bodies. Aboriginal families in the area would remember if a brother went missing or, after this amount of time, if an uncle went missing.

 

[zwiebel]

First Nations locals checked, but there was no-one missing. But there was an awful residential school system in operation at the time, that meant kids lost touch with their families, so they may not have been local. That's how I understand it, anyhow.

The radar finding three 'anomolies' under the concrete when there were supposedly three boys killed and there should only be earth, is interesting, to say the least. If I owned that barn I'd be digging it up myself if I had to, to find out.

 

[wfgodot]

False Memory Syndrome? And, as for the "anomalies," we're not talking about anything precise. Jury's still very much out on that "technology" -- a form of dowsing, say some.

 

[zwiebel]

Oh. Is it? I didn't know. It seems to be used a lot in England. Though more often for archeology than murder investigations, I think.

There were five children in the family, so I wonder what any of the siblings have said?

 

[wfgodot]

Oh. Is it? I didn't know. It seems to be used a lot in England. Though more often for archeology than murder investigations, I think.

The Moira Anderson case in Scotland's a fairly recent example of the failure of "soil anomalies" to indicate anything substantive.

 

[wfgodot]

And also, in a couple of fairly high profile cases, authorities haven't shown enough faith in the efficacy of ground penetrating radar to order digs: Springfield MO's 3 Missing Women and Cedaredge CO's Roger Ellison disappearance. As with the Anderson case above, each featured alleged "soil anomalies" "spotted" by GPR.

 

[wfgodot]

As for the woman's claims of murder(s), these remind me of the Mohler case in Missouri a few years ago -- no bodies were found and charges were dismissed; even the sex abuse aspects of the case were not validated. (The Mohler case but also a plethora of false memory cases involving Satanism in the closing decades of last century; "Daddy Was the Black Dahlia Killer"; etc. etc.)

 

[carbuff]

False memories do happen, so it's worth keeping in mind. But the school system for first nations in canada and native tribes in the US routinely ripped children from their families and sent them to boarding schools or foster families so they could be raised white. I am not advocating or defending, just reporting what happened. I went to college with some people of Navajo and hopi descent who had been through the system. Some of them didn't even have enough information to find their birth families or tribes after they grew up.

 

[wfgodot]

Yes, I'm an eighth Cherokee, grew up in the "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" generation, and well realize the ills visited upon first peoples. But little if any of this affects the veracity of the account here; sure, records could be missing but this in itself scarcely equates with or proves a triple homicide alleged to have occurred in, and kept quiet since, the mid-1950s.

 

[carbuff]

Yes, I'm an eighth Cherokee, grew up in the "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" generation, and well realize the ills visited upon first peoples. But little if any of this affects the veracity of the account here; sure, records could be missing but this in itself scarcely equates with or proves a triple homicide alleged to have occurred in, and kept quiet since, the mid-1950s.

Of course it doesn't prove it. But I don't see anything obviously wrong, either. All I'm saying is that we'll need to wait and see on this one.

 

[tiredblondy]

False memories do happen, so it's worth keeping in mind. But the school system for first nations in canada and native tribes in the US routinely ripped children from their families and sent them to boarding schools or foster families so they could be raised white. I am not advocating or defending, just reporting what happened. I went to college with some people of Navajo and hopi descent who had been through the system. Some of them didn't even have enough information to find their birth families or tribes after they grew up.

So true and so sad. It's been my experience that a lot of things were easily kept quiet in the 50's and 60's. Speaking only for myself here, if I owned the land where the barn is now I personally would want the anomalys dug up to determine if they
were bodies. I don't think I could live with the possibility that the bodies were there and carry on as if it were not possible. I would want them to be given a proper burial. Thinking back about my Grandparents who had barns and a rural farm they would have felt the same way.
I keep thinking about that place in Florida and how accurate the ground penetrating radar was on finding the unmarked graves of those students at that reform school.

 

[wfgodot]

Another recent probable FMS case.

Farm case woman Janet Holt claims Fred Handford murder (BBC News)

 

[wfgodot]

One, as they say, can't prove a negative; i.e., I cannot state with certainty that, here, no murders took place. But the burden of proof lies with the claimant, and I've seen very many claims of this nature and very few, if any, accounts substantiated years later. So I'd bet this one's bogus too.

 

[carbuff]

Well, the Florida boys' school case comes to mind as one that was real. And it seemed too horrifying to possibly be true.

eta: I see tiredblondy already beat me to mentioning it.

They have successfully used GPR to locate several bodies for exhumation, but that's within a graveyard so not exactly parallel.

 

[wfgodot]

True about Dozier. Multiple witnesses made it believable before a spade of dirt was turned.

 

[unattainablebeauty]

Have you ever thought that there may be two sides to the story? There is so much missing from this story on the other side of the fence, everyone is just going along with Glenna Mae's words without taking into account some of the missing honest truth. She has a diagnosed mental disorder, take a look at this youtube clip on false memory syndrome and maybe people would think twice about judging an innocent dead man. At the end of the day, Glenna Mae will have some explaining to do after they dig up the barn to only find nothing is there and that the sexual abuse accusations were also false.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdR8r-i6rDM