September 28, 2020
Premier Scott Moe;
Re: HEATHER GRAY – coverup of disgraceful conduct, criminal and sexual misconduct by members of the Regina Police Service over a period of 20+ years and what happened as a result of this criminal and sexual misconduct.
I couriered a letter, which is attached, to you Premier Scott Moe, on the 4th of August 2020 and for which you failed to acknowledge receipt of said correspondence. Completely failed to advise of any steps you have taken to look into these serious criminal allegations. Why?
SO, WHO ARE YOU SCOTT MOE?
Will you be part of the ongoing damage and coverup or part of the solution?
Your rise to power came about at a leadership convention, Don Morgan seen hustling the floor, getting votes for you Mr. Moe, drawing delegates from the other contenders. What kind of a deal would Mr. Moe work out with Mr. Morgan? A man today who holds 5 Ministerial portfolios. While other party members draw zilch. Why does one person hold all that authority? Why indeed.
Especially when Mr. Morgan expressed to his constituents that he thought of hanging it up but he was “having too much fun”! So, who is Don Morgan? What is he covering up regarding Heather Gray?
Once Scott Moe secured the leadership of the SaskParty the local papers would announce the following day, who is Scott Moe? Scott who?……a farmer from Shellbrook SK. A virtual political unknown.
Do we now know who he is? Or does Premier Moe even know? What is it we say, “birds of a feather flock together”?
You have a daughter and a son, Premier; would you cover things up if similar assaults were happening to them, or to your wife? What side of this are you going to stand on Premier?
Heather Gray lives a half a block from where you were announcing a new school construction to the media on September 17th. Land location not secured yet although somewhere in Harbour Landing. A combined agreement, a multi-use school within two years.
Why did you not stop off and talk to Heather Gray? Seeing as how you were in the neighbourhood. You sent her communications soliciting her vote, a delegate even stopping at her home one day. isn’t that a bit of hypocrisy? As I stated to you on the 3 Aug 2020 letter Heather Gray is destitute, days away from living in her truck or a bedbug infested seniors housing unit.
Or are you going to tell me you care about the elderly, the poor, the destitute, the disabled, the homeless or even a former dedicated police officer.
So, who do you care about Premier? Are the above not all residents of Saskatchewan?
Maybe we should go down the list of the et al criminals involving Heather Gray and her son, at the time a 13-year-old boy.
Let’s recap the horrific events that’s led Heather Gray to where she is now. Firstly, she was targeted and bullied and harassed relentlessly while she was a police detective in the most challenging unit in policing – child abuse. But the torment from peers and supervisors that rained down on her until she was suffering from anxiety, insomnia, nightmares, dissociative disorder and ultimately and finally suffering from PTSD is what finished her. Years of horrific treatment that cannot be disputed and yet somehow the overwhelming evidence of the abuse is being subverted by the second gang, that being the WCB, and another gang, that being certain SaskParty politicians. Where does it end? How can this be allowed to continue?
There was nothing wrong with Heather Gray. She was a star, a solid and stellar cop who was too talented for the likes of those who jumped into the slop pit to make up a plan to destroy her career. And the people at the top, Chief Cal Johnston and Deputy Chief Clive Weighill didn’t have the courage to step up and rein in the ogres who were destroying the best officers at RPS.
That abuse from her career at RPS – Regina Police Service — was horrific enough and the ensuing fight with RPS and WCB was so bad that it cost her everything…..her custom home, her friends, her family, her spouse, her financial stability…..but what happened to Heather Gray in 2009 was nothing but a horrific series of unspeakable retaliation that involved police, led by then RPS Inspector Rick Bourassa (currently Chief of Moose Jaw Police Service), along with a SaskParty politician, then an MLA but currently Minister of Policing and Corrections, Christine Tell. That whole sordid series of events should never have happened but once it did it should have been rooted out, not covered up. Shocking, shameful and despicable.
Premier Moe, are you interested in knowing what really happened in that sequence of events? Do you want to know how depraved your own Minister of Policing and Corrections is? Do you want to know just how sickeningly and unabatingly the retaliation is put on heroes like Heather Gray? You have the list. It began with the original abusers from 1997 through 2001 and through the lies and egregious treatment as the once stellar officer fights both gangs, WCB and RPS and then it goes all the way through 2009, where the height of the retaliation reached a fever pitch.
You’ve got a choice…..to add to the coverup and hold tremendous liability and responsibility or to sweep clean the messes that have been left behind and the depth of depravity that have carried on with their evil methods. That is quite a selection.
You need to know that Heather Gray is a wonderful and gifted person and nothing she ever did brought on the wrath that befell her. Nothing. She is truly an innocent in all of this. All of it. As is her family. And her son. And there is a laundry list of rogues who have wrought harm on this woman and her family that have destroyed it all and nothing has been done to right the wrong.
What are you doing to correct this? Where do you stand on this? Here’s a partial list……
Christine Tell, Rick Bourassa, Don Morgan, Evan Bray, Michael Fougere, the list goes on and on and there is plenty enough blame and responsibility to go around.
I’d later learn the initial plan for November 8, 2009 was for a SWAT Team to hit the house at midnight but an unrelated officer involved shooting negated that plan. Rather, about 7 am on Sunday morning, November 8, 2009 approximately 6 – 8 uniformed officers descended on the condo where Heather and her son were soundly sleeping, blissfully unaware that anything was amiss.
Without benefit of any warrant for arrest (known as a Feeney warrant) they barged in demanding access to her 13-year-old son. No information was ever given and Heather and her son were separated at that point. No Feeney warrant (entry for arrest) was ever provided and several items were taken from the house without benefit of a search warrant.
To gain initial entry, the on-scene Sergeant (Darren Wilcox – now retired as an Inspector) banged on the door until Heather attended to see what the trouble was and encountered a cadre of officers who, once she opened the door, streamed in, passing her by and went upstairs to awaken her sleeping child.
She was shocked when told by Sgt. Darren Wilcox that there had been a plan to use a SWAT team! Amazingly, due to an unrelated officer-involved shooting that night, the SWAT team plan was scrapped. Attending with numerous uniformed officers was the plan they executed instead. To the stunning surprise of Heather and her son, the presence and actions of police simply made no sense. And that did not clear up, even after they took them, in separate cruisers, to police headquarters. Although Heather had been a police Hostage/Crisis Negotiator the entry and accosting of both her and her son by an unexpected SWAT team in the darkness of the night would’ve been utterly traumatizing. The reflection upon that across time has not lost its shock and terrifying potential. And it’s utter misuse of police resources and the abuses of power on high.
A little history here.
In the years leading up to 2009, Heather and her (ex) husband, Garry were going through a devastating marital breakdown, due in large part to the crushing stress and horror of the legacy of abuse of Heather Gray by police during her previous years with RPS, then came the turmoil of leaving and subsequently filing and pursuing a WCB psychological claim. That possibility (of WCB), had never been an option provided/told to Heather by anyone at RPS, despite her inquiries as to her options when things got to be too bad, when the harassment reached its worst, causing her workplace injury (PTSD, Major Depressive Disorder, Anxiety Disorder).
After leaving her beloved career because of the toll on her health and on the advice of her physician who had seen, and charted, the decline in her health and the regular stories of abuse that Heather related to Dr. Arndt, there were tough decisions to be made. Across the years and in the WCB case file, which has added incredibly to the strife and stress, are lies put forward by various people, including many from RPS. Not the least of which are lies about why and when the decision was made to move to Edmonton and why and how Heather began her own business. None of what has been put into Heather’s WCB file, by RPS (her abusers) and others who’ve proffered assumptions and had their own selfish reasons to lie about these important events, is true but nonetheless those lies and mischaracterizations have been acted upon and taken as truth because it was in WCB’s interest to cling to the lies.
All of that and the stress of trying to correct it all, while being painted as something she is not, put unimaginable stress on Heather’s marriage and family life. Imagine the pressure of that month after month, year after year, a bureaucracy unmoved no matter what the evidence one injured worker has to the contrary. The whole huge machine of a size of WCB, in collaboration with an injured worker’s very abuser, the RPS, whose interest it is to diminish the very person they’ve destroyed is easy to see how much more damage is wrought upon that person. It is unconscionable. And it causes its own crushing damage as the time and the “fight” progresses. It’s not by accident that people refer to their dealing with WCB as a “fight” is it?
So, one may ask, how did Heather Gray and her son end up back in Regina? Well, funny story, her (former) longtime friend and colleague, Christine Tell, lured her back there. They had known one another for about 30 years and had maintained contact even after Heather and her family had
moved to Edmonton in 2002.
As the marriage fell apart Christine Tell regularly suggested to Heather that she could come back to Regina, that things at RPS had ‘settled down’ and she’d even help get her a gov’t job (Christine indicating $140K/year salary). This was brought into reality when the Olympics were going to be held in Vancouver. It was the winter of 2008 that MLA Christine Tell urged Heather to immediately sell her house in Edmonton and move to Regina. From there she’d get hired by MLA Tell to be the representative/organizer/liaison for the contingency representing the SK Govt for the Winter Olympics. Christine Tell freely shared with Heather how frustrated she was with the two men she had on that project and that they couldn’t organize anything. Christine wanted Heather in that role. She had worked with Heather on conference organizing and other big projects and valued her expertise and capability.
Then, at some point, someone else comes into the picture the (current Chief of Moose Jaw), back then RPS Inspector Rick Bourassa. He must have been very proud of his SWAT tactics and his size to arrest a 13-year-old boy without a warrant. In that entire fiasco he likely broke every law the badge stands for.
I remember the phrase we had when I was in the (RCMP) Force – it was called betrayal of a friend. I believe the new phrase is that he “threw her under the bus”. But it’s so much more than that.
How are we doing so far? We’ve got both Christine Tell and Rick Bourassa. Are they still
“having fun”?
Christine wanted Heather ASAP and that was about January 2009. Heather had a son in school in Edmonton and the crush of selling a house in winter and moving to Regina in a hurry wasn’t something that she could undertake so she had to turn down Christine’s offer. It just wasn’t in the realm of possibility. As that year progressed, Heather was forced by her ex-husband to sell the house and give him his portion of the equity. He was gainfully employed with NAVCANADA and making a healthy wage and was living with a co-worker whom he’d been having an affair. She owned her own home. But nonetheless Heather and her son were being forced out of their home.
Heather was in the worst of situations. She was unemployed, with no income, disabled by her work injury of PTSD/MDD/AD, WCB (and RPS) had colluded to cut her off of wage/benefit losses and promised treatment and she and her son were being forced out of their home and they had nowhere to go. No prospects and no one to step up.
There soon came a time when Christine Tell again offered Heather and her son to move to Regina and stay as long as they liked in the finished basement of her home. Further, Christine offered to arrange to have a gov’t job for her, the same offer as previously put forward w/$140k/year salary, which would allow them to restart a life in Regina.
This sounded safe since Christine did not represent a threat, at least not to Heather, anyway. Heather had seen a very devious, diabolical streak in Christine over the years she’d known her but was glad she wasn’t on her bad side. A move like that, from Edmonton to Regina, did seem like a way to re-start life for her son and if Christine was going to help them then that may be a good offer. Also, Heather’s son’s grandparents live in Yorkton…that could be good for him, to be near them. So, plans were made to move in July 2009 and rested upon the sale of the marital home in Edmonton. It was sold in May of 2009.
Upon arrival in Regina, it soon became clear that Heather and son were being treated by Christine like she used to treat her revolving door of live-in nannies. They became nothing more than cleaners and errand runners for Christine and were subjected to being ordered around constantly. There was no resemblance to the friendship that had previously been at play.
One day, Christine called Heather to “dress up and be ready to go to a SaskParty event”. When they arrived, along with a woman Heather did not know, Christine had Heather sign up for a membership in the SaskParty. Then, as the evening went along, Christine introduced Heather around to everyone. Upon meeting Brad Wall (Premier) Christine announced that Heather was the “communications chair” for the by-election in Douglas Park, Regina, for the candidate opposing Duane Lingenfelter.
Stunner! Heather was completely shocked! That had never been brought up, never mentioned. Six weeks would be taken up with doing everything for a female lawyer running for the SaskParty in a by-election. This was a completely foreign type of work for Heather. Politics was an unknown concept to Heather and Christine was taking advantage. In the meantime, there was no sign of any paid work coming along.
In the meantime, Heather’s son was registered at the school in the vicinity to Christine’s house. He could take a bus or get dropped off there and stay for lunch.
Not long into the fall, it became clear that Christine was dating a retired RPS detective living in AB. As they became more serious, Christine began hinting that they may want him to move to Regina and in with Christine, likely in the new year, 2010. It was time to look for alternative housing. Still no sign of a job in government as Christine had promised.
Christine had the solution to the housing issue though. She told Heather that her friend, Alison Green, had a condo (an old townhouse) nearby (Assiniboine Drive) that she’d rent out and that they could move into it nearly right away. As well, it directly abutted the school her son was already attending. So, off they went to all go look at it.
A strange thing happened. It was evident that both Christine and Alison were lying about some basic things as they all went looking through the house. They claimed the carpets had been shampooed and sanitized but that was clearly a lie….one could see that! However, the pressure to take it was immense. Thus, it was rented.
Upon moving in, Heather realized that there were serious problems with the plumbing and the locks had not been changed from the past tenants, who Alison herself described as a group of young men who’d been door to door sales people, transient, and had apparently been problematic tenants.
Heather asked Alison about both the plumbing (to get a plumber) and change the locks (tumblers) and she flatly declined to do either. She snapped that if Heather wants that done, she needed to do it and pay for it herself. Alison quipped that she wasn’t getting enough rent to pay for those things herself. Upon Heather checking on that, with the Residential Tenancies Office, they advised that it is the landlord’s responsibility to do both of those.
Skipping ahead, the plumbing WAS problematic and the paper trail was discovered by Heather after she got out of hospital (after nearly dying from an overdose), the property management company had taken the move to sever their contract with Alison Green before she rented the condo to Heather because she refused to fix the plumbing. Here, Alison knew all about it and wouldn’t take responsibility for it. Unbelievable.
A shocking discovery about the plumbing was that in the main bathroom on the second floor there was a huge piece of PVC pipe MISSING from under the sink! About 6” of the pipe was completely gone from under the sink so if a person turned on the tap in the bathroom sink the water would flow freely into the vanity! It was curious that during the walk-through with Alison Green and Christine Tell, Heather noted that Alison looked into every vanity (all three bathrooms) and she made a strange comment, “doesn’t anyone leave toilet paper”? It seemed odd but it wasn’t until Heather discovered the entire piece of PVC piping MISSING that Alison’s peering into each vanity made sense. Clearly Alison KNEW about the plumbing issues….she could not claim she didn’t know.
Regarding the takeover entry by the police into the condo that fateful Sunday, November 8, 2009…….it was so surprising that there were a whole bunch of cops there (6 – 8) and they just pushed their way in and went throughout the house. They had awakened Heather, with only about 3 hours sleep, and it was such a surprising event that she couldn’t even formulate words to speak let alone hold off a half dozen or more uniformed officers walking into the house without invite nor discussion.
As Sgt. Darren Wilcox and the cadre of uniformed officers swept past Heather and took over they all just went through the house and no one told Heather why or explained anything.
Darren Wilcox asked about Heather’s gun. She told Darren where it was. The questions were confusing. Here he was, asking for her son and then asking where her gun was. It made no sense. The two of them didn’t go together.
Heather had purchased and owned the gun since about her first year in policing, 1981/2 when she’d been overtly and frighteningly stalked by a violent and unpredictable police hater, Bob Batty, who’d previously taken a police woman hostage in BC, armed with an icepick. He was actively stalking Heather in Moose Jaw, leaving her ‘gifts’ at the front desk, his personal items. He would lay in wait for her after her shift, following her to her car, following her home, waiting for her at her apartment and show up where she was. The unsettling behavior had prompted her to make a formal request of the SK Attorney General to carry her service weapon off-duty. The frightening actions of Batty were escalating across time. Eventually Heather joined the Regina Police Service and moved to Regina.
So, Heather purchased that gun way back then. When she went on to work at Regina Police Service she was tapped to work in CID with Vice Division, she’d been pressed to use it in service. At RPS CID’s vice unit (1980’s) didn’t have enough firearms to go around. It was odd but just something that was required. Other than that, it wasn’t something she ever used nor did she show it to anyone, other than her husband. Her son had neither seen it nor been around it.
That early Sunday morning when police showed up in force, Heather was wearing only a nightgown (a chemise – lingerie) when she was hollered at by Sgt. Darren Wilcox to answer the door. She couldn’t tell what was happening but she could see that there were many officers. She could see at least several shoulder flashes through the kitchen window.
At the condo that Sunday morning, November 8, 2009, Heather and her son were separately forced to get dressed in front of several male officers in each bedroom.
In heavy police presence in both bedrooms, her son hurriedly pulled on clothes he grabbed from his laundry basket. Heather grabbed whatever was handy because there were three male cops hovering right around her as she tried to discreetly get dressed. There was no privacy at all; it was absolutely humiliating.
The police produced no Feeney entry/arrest warrant and none was ever provided. That’s a warrant to allow for entry to effect an arrest. They could argue that Heather let them in but that’s NOT what happened. Heather was bowled over by them forcefully pushing past her. Heather DID NOT LET THEM IN.
While they had separated the two of them in their bedrooms, and they took Heather down to sit in the kitchen, she didn’t know that they’d taken her son out of the house. Without her knowledge they had (apparently) arrested her son (for what?), handcuffed him and placed him in a police unit.
Darren Wilcox later informed her that they “handcuffed him ‘in front’ so he would be comfortable”! Heather was shocked because she didn’t even know they’d taken him out of the house, didn’t know they’d arrested him (for what?) and didn’t know what to say. This whole episode at the condo was stunning and entirely confusing. She couldn’t fathom what was happening.
Heather recalled that after the near constant dealing with Alison for several weeks and Alison’s refusal to do the critical repairs to the plumbing and the damage from the toilet backups, she couldn’t figure out why the police were there.
Alison had never responded to the issues in the condo. The only thing she had done, given that she was the property owner (and Heather couldn’t believe that an owner would care so little as to not care at all), was she sent a plumber to look at the first toilet that backed up. He told Heather that the toilets upstairs, which were the very old type of porcelain and were the ones that allowed for very heavy flows of water when they flushed were problematic. He advised that they be exchanged out for new ones. He also found a huge problem in that both those toilets – the one in the master suite had not yet backed up – that happened a week later. The problem was that they ‘ran on’ constantly. He said that that was a troubling symptom and should be looked after right away. He commented on the huge water stain and runoff from that first toilet backup and suggested that it be dealt with immediately as well, that the ceiling and carpet should be pulled out, dried out and then replaced so as to avoid mold.
The plumber advised that he would recommend those fixes to Alison Green, the property owner. It’s unknown exactly what he advised her given that there was no communication from her the following week, except for the fact that the second problematic toilet (in the master ensuite) backed up and luckily Heather and son were present in the master bedroom when that happened so it was caught very quickly.
Again, calls and messages to Alison Green went unanswered and she did not send anyone to the property.
Heather and her son had no luck at all in their efforts to get Alison to even return a phone call. She simply would not reply. She refused to do the most basic requirements of a landlord…..refusing to change the locks and then with the toilet backups it forced them to basically live out of one bedroom and eat only food from the refrigerator, to avoid the contamination that had backed up and flooded through the second floor and seeped into the main floor ceiling. It had been an upsetting few weeks and Alison Green wouldn’t respond to any phone calls or messages to come over or send a plumber and other repair people to take care of the problems.
Sgt. Wilcox had Heather sit in the kitchen for a very long time. She didn’t know what was happening and she was stunned, confused and trying to determine what was happening by what they were doing. It seemed that the cops had fanned out throughout the condo and Heather was made to sit in a kitchen chair. There was no explanation and she’d lost sight of her son. There was no evidence that police had any right to be there….no warrants of any kind. No explanation.
There were boxes stacked up throughout the condo and furniture was askew. All unpacking of belongings had been halted after the toilet backups so as not to contaminate anything further and in case a move out was required.
Sitting there in the condo that Sunday, Heather could only see what was happening in the kitchen and dining room.
Two officers picked up empty metal safes, shook them as one would shake a gift, trying to ascertain what was inside and then they walked out of the residence with them, right in front of Heather Gray. They stopped by the cruiser where her son was seated, handcuffed and asked him what was in them. He said he didn’t know, which he didn’t, and they kept the safes anyway. No authorization whatsoever to keep them.
They went out of the house without asking Heather anything and they asked her son, who was by then seated in a police car (unbeknownst to Heather) if he knew what was in them. He told them he didn’t know, which he didn’t. In fact, they were empty. Police seized the items without warrant nor permission from Heather. A couple of years later, Heather received a letter from RPS asking what to do with them, give them back or send for destruction. They didn’t have the keys to open them so without the keys they’d have had to destroy the locks to get them open so they weren’t claimed.
At the police station, after being transported separately, Heather and her son were finally reunited in the same interview room. Cory Lindskog who was the son of an officer Heather used to work with (and Cory Lindskog himself who is now an Inspector), went through a ‘warned statement’ for a young person. Heather’s son did NOT WAIVE ANY RIGHTS. They both ensured that he did NOT say anything, confirmed that PARENT (Heather) WAS TO BE PRESENT AT ALL TIMES and if she determined it necessary she would summon an attorney. ALL of that was written and signed on the Warned Statement form. Heather wrote right on there and signed that at no time was her son to ever be without her and that he was not to sign anything nor say anything out of her presence. She also stated that it would either be HER WITH HIM AND POSSIBLY ALSO AN ATTORNEY.
All of the aforementioned comments about being together parent/child at the police station, regarding the parent/child together and protecting the child’s rights under the Youth Justice Act and the rights of the parent/guardian is in keeping with the Youth Justice Act, the Criminal Code and the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
That didn’t last long!!!
The police then announced that they were taking her son to cells to ‘process’ him; Heather cautioned all of them (including son) that he was NOT TO SIGN ANYTHING, NOT TO SAY ANYTHING. IF ANYTHING CAME UP HEATHER WAS TO BE CONSULTED ASAP AND BROUGHT TO HIM.
Heather waited in the lobby. It took forever…..estimated about 45 – 60 minutes went by. It was a ridiculous amount of time. Fingerprints and photographs should only have taken 10 minutes, no more and under law it would’ve been up to the prosecutor to determine whether such processing would be done. Typically processing was done a week ahead of a court date upon releasing a person or conducted in cells when a person is arrested and lodged. Neither of those factors were at play in this scenario and no Justice of the Peace was being properly utilized. Heather was growing anxious every moment.
The Duty S/Sgt that day was Garth Lewis. He had been involved in the promotional exam cheating scandal in 1998. He’d been the one who had taken the promotional exam early and then attended to his shift that night and told certain friends what was on the exam. That was how the cheating scandal became a scandal.
Christine Tell and Heather were the whistleblowers back then and had been asked to take the basic evidence to Internal Affairs on behalf of a police woman from the shift where the cheating occurred. That was Sherree Gay Ortman, (now an Inspector – possibly retired) but somehow Heather was the one who Inspector Hoedel (Inspector in charge of Internal Affairs at that time) assaulted in the parking garage that day. He was also friend to many who cheated as they were all on the police hockey team together. The abuse towards Heather from inspector Hoedel, upon his transfer to CID a few weeks later, ramped up the abuses against her throughout 1999 until it reached fever pitch with the illicit “Work Plan” ambush on Heather on January 6, 2000.
Somehow Christine Tell always came out without any marks on her in all of these things. Apparently, she is good at overtly doing things to people but avoiding anything sticking to her.
That Sunday November 8th, 2009 S/Sgt Garth Lewis kept walking out of the Duty Office and into the lobby to glare at Heather and then go back to the Duty Office. It was creepy and very unsettling.
When Heather’s son finally emerged from Cells and came upstairs she saw he had a handful of papers. He shouldn’t have had anything! She had a horrifying feeling that things were BAD, VERY BAD.
Sure enough, he had a ‘release document’ in his hand. But it was entitled “Release by a Jailer” not a ‘Release by a Justice of the Peace” as would be customary if there was need of such a thing. Heather was STUNNED. WHAT KIND OF SITUATION WAS GOING ON?
Heather knew that on weekends it was customary for a Justice of the Peace to be scheduled to attend to the police office cellblock to handle the releases of anyone requiring it. If there were any proposed conditions placed on the release, the Justice would vet that and ensure that the conditions were reasonable and in keeping with the charges at hand and that they did not impinge on the rights/movements/activities of the person. In all Heather’s years she could no recall of anyone released on a form by a Jailer. Always a Justice of the Peace. On statutory holidays, or otherwise unavailable, sometimes a JP was called in on special overtime to conduct the release.
There’s no legal authority for a jailer to carry out such a thing. It is customary on the weekends that a Justice of the Peace attends to RPS Cells to handle any releases, especially those with conditions on them. The JP carefully screens all of the processes and ensures that the laws are met for each person and conditions are appropriate. There was no authority for a Jailer to override a Justice of the Peace. Further, to place conditions on the release that the child could not attend the residence, which bordered the school he attended, was outrageous and unimaginable. A JP would certainly not have allowed such a proviso.
Nothing made sense. It was like going through the looking glass in Alice in Wonderland.
Heather saw that the papers contained ‘conditions of release’ but thus was careful not to react so as not to alarm her son or let him see that she was upset. After all, the cops who took him downstairs had been given unequivocal ORDERS from HEATHER, THE PARENT, that he was NOT TO SIGN ANYTHING. YET HERE WAS HIS SIGNATURE AND HE CLEARLY DID NOT APPRECIATE OR UNDERSTAND WHAT HE HAD SIGNED!
Heather found out later from her son that they had kept him down there, sitting on a bench while the two cops had been bantering back and forth, talking about their families and about trips to Hawaii and just everyday things. It put him at ease, like he could trust them. So, when he was asked to sign some papers it never occurred to him that there was anything nefarious about it. He didn’t know he was doing “anything wrong”. HE thought it had something to do with the fingerprinting/photographing.
Even though Heather had previously admonished police that her son was NOT to sign anything OUT OF HER ABSENCE, the cops did not lawfully adhere to that. They had breached his Charter rights by tricking him into signing and failing to come and get Heather to be present for the signing of any document. Had they done so, certainly the outcome of that scenario would’ve played out much differently.
Had Heather been there and seen what they had concocted, she never would have stood by and allowed such a thing. At the very least she’d have insisted on a Justice of the Peace (not a Release by a Jailer). Further, she’d have called an attorney right away. What they were doing was unimaginable and sneaky and mysterious. Nothing was explained to them. Nothing made sense. It was like being in a twilight zone. She knew it was bad but the whole experience was utterly terrifying.
Sure enough, once Heather had a chance to see and determine what was in the documents, many hours later, there was the horror. She saw what was in the documents and found that he had been criminally charged with “Uttering a Threat”.
He was under conditions of release. NOT TO ATTEND BACK TO THE CONDO – WHAT? WHY?
She didn’t know what to do……she had the police take them to a hotel and get checked in, allowing her son to go into a room and with permission to order room service. It was mid-afternoon by this time. Late. Long time of terror, fear and confusion. Heather knew it was bad but couldn’t make any sense of it.
Then the police drove Heather back to the condo. Little did she know what awaited her. Oh no! Her thoughts were that she would get clothes and necessities and go back to her son at the hotel and they’d figure it all out on Monday (the next day), November 9, 2009.
But that’s not at all how it went!
On the drive back to the condo the cops were quizzing Heather where she kept her vehicle. She told them it was in the underground parking garage. She didn’t know why they wanted to know that either.
As they pulled up to the parking lot by the condos she could see that there were still a lot of cops there….maybe 4 or 5 present on-scene and the two cops who were with her.
Then she spotted another person……a LOCKSMITH! A man was there changing the locks. Here was someone changing the locks….the very thing that Alison Green (Christine Tell’s friend and landlord to the condo) had flatly refused to do just a couple of weeks earlier. She had refused to change the locks and refused to fix the plumbing…..and now the locks were being changed.
Heather was even more confused. SHE WASN’T BEING PROHIBITED FROM ATTENDING THE CONDO…..WAS SHE? So why the lock change now? It made no sense.
That’s when the on-scene NCO, Sgt Darren Wilcox (who recently retired as an Inspector), ordered Heather that she was NOT ALLOWED TO ENTER the condo. What?
Heather got into a bit of a heated discussion with him then. This was definitely not lawful and she’d had enough.
She told him…… “everything we own in the world is in that condo”, “I have color of right to go in there and get my belongings” “that if I need to I can hire a locksmith to change the locks for me or I can break the little pane of glass in the door by the lock and open it and go in and retrieve my possessions”…….all within the law. Legitimate.
Sgt Wilcox said NO! He told her that if she were to do anything like that he is UNDER ORDERS to ARREST HER!
He said his ORDERS came straight from Inspector Rick Bourassa…..”Acting Deputy Chief Bourassa” that weekend. Power tripping. Somehow his ‘orders’ superseded the Criminal Code and the Charter of Rights.
Heather reminded Sgt. Wilcox that according to LAW, the Criminal Code allows that a person whose belongings are being (unlawfully, without color of right) withheld, a person can use any reasonable manner to get to them so as to retrieve them, thus no breach of the Criminal Code. It’s permissible for her, being the owner of the property inside, to gain entry and simply gather up and retrieve her own belongings.
Wilcox tells her NO – he’ll arrest her.
She asks him what would he charge her with?
He can’t answer.
She said to him, in front of the other, younger officers there…..”did we not take the same criminal law classes?” “If I go in….would I be “breaking and entering and committing the indictable offence”….. of WHAT exactly? Getting her own property? That’s not a criminal offense.
It was at that point that Heather called Christine Tell to come over to the condo. She lived less than a kilometre away.
When Christine Tell showed up Heather took her aside. She had no idea that Christine Tell was in on it and knew all about it. Heather explained the crazy situation to her. As Heather explained to Christine how this whole mess is a CIVIL MATTER…….If Alison Green wanted to evict her she has a process to go through. Then Christine said, in response to the assertion that it’s a civil matter…… “not today it isn’t”! That comment is recalled clearly because it was both grammatically incorrect and she said it several times. It made no sense and Heather couldn’t figure out how Christine couldn’t understand this.
Sgt Wilcox was REFUSING to allow Heather into the condo to retrieve even the most basic essentials/necessities. He wasn’t even allowing her to retrieve clothing, bathroom essentials, medical/Rx, essential documents, their computers and her son’s school backpack and games. Sgt Wilcox expressed that he was under VERY STRICT ORDERS from BOURASSA to NOT ALLOW HEATHER in at all! Without retrieving these basic needs, he’d be forcing Heather and her son to be left with ONLY THE CLOTHES ON THEIR BACKS which is how they’d been taken out of there, first thing that morning!
Finally, Christine Tell (MLA for the SaskParty since 2007), even the MLA for that very constituency, convinced Sgt Wilcox that she’d go in with Heather to allow her to get some things in a suitcase – clothes for son and her, medications, legal documents, their laptops and games for her son. So, they did that and put the items in Heather’s vehicle. She was left to drive away, leaving everything she owned in that contaminated condo with no comfort that anything would be left intact. It all was so unsettling and the dealings with police had been so vicious, secretive and intimidating.
Sgt Wilcox ASSURED Heather repeatedly that all her belongings, everything in the condo (a mixture of some unpacked items but certainly lots of things still packed, which had only recently been brought to the condo from a storage unit) would be there when her movers could attend. She’d stored many items at a storage unit since the move from Edmonton in July to await the right time to move into a place.
When the toilet backups had occurred, coupled with a fall on stairs in the condo that netted an injury that had torn Heather’s ankle, rendered her to keep off her feet and use crutches, Heather didn’t unpack anything more. It became clear, in that the landlord, Alison Green, wasn’t making any move to fix the problems, that there may have to be another move to somewhere else, while landlord Alison Green got things fixed. Everything was uncertain.
It made no sense that police forced Heather’s son to NOT RETURN there, a property which was ADJACENT TO HIS SCHOOL, which would preclude him from going back to school. What on earth was the reason?
HE WOULDN’T BE ABLE TO GO TO SCHOOL. THERE THEY WERE, STUCK IN A HOTEL (RENDERED HOMELESS), AND NOW HEATHER WASN’T BEING ALLOWED IN THE CONDO EITHER! AND WITH NO LAWFUL REASON WHY. NO LAWFUL REASON. JUST THE THREAT FROM THE POLICE. UNLAWFUL ORDER. WHY?
No lawful reason, no arrest warrants, no search warrants, nothing lawful to cover the police in any of this. Heather’s head was spinning. And then there’s Christine Tell telling her that there’s something about that day that it’s NOT a civil matter!
Heather reluctantly took Sgt. Wilcox at his word (what choice did she have?) that all their earthly belongings would actually be there when the movers would be booked. IT MADE NO SENSE!
Jumping ahead to the following day…Monday…when Heather booked the movers she then called to let police know when and they advised Alison Green. Everyone knew the date that movers were scheduled. Heather got the earliest possible date for a move…it was difficult as it was for a mid-month date and movers were booked up because of that, along with a statutory holiday, Remembrance Day within that as well.
Heather returned back to the hotel on Sunday afternoon and she and her son hunkered down to spend the first night of terror that somehow, in some twisted way, their lives had just been derailed and they were in a reality that was not going to get better any time soon.
The next morning, Monday November 9, 2009 Heather called the youth court prosecutor about the whole undertaking that her son was released on and explained that the conditions on which he was released meant that he couldn’t even go to school. Never mind that the entire thing was ridiculous. She told Heather that she could come to court that afternoon and make her case to the judge. Heather told her that that likely wasn’t a good option. Heather needed the prosecutor to support her because the judge would merely look at her to ask her opinion and what would she say? That there must have been some reason that the police put that in there…..and the judge would side with the prosecution. Done. Heather didn’t go. She was demoralized.
Heather called her son’s school and booked him off, telling them that he was going to be away for awhile. Clearly, they were in for a long battle and it was with much trepidation that Heather told the school that she didn’t know when he would be back.
Heather was sickened by the whole thing. What on earth was she to do?
She went over the documents her son had been given. Stunning. Just stunning.
There was no rhyme or reason to block her son from returning to the condo, from going to school. From getting their belongings out of the mess of a condo. Nothing about the events made sense.
Heather called Legal Aid to get an appointment for her son. They went and had a short meeting with the lawyer. They were shocked at how deplorable the offices were, lawyers crammed in and a waiting room full of people. The lawyer assigned did not care about anything, didn’t want to hear about problems with RPS, didn’t care about Charter Rights breaches, didn’t want to know anything about the involvement of a politician or that the POLICE HAD DONE EVERYTHING AGAINST THE LAW! It was a wash. He was no help.
Heather called her ex-husband, her son’s father, and tried to explain what had happened. He was cold as ice. Heather told him that THEIR son desperately needed a real attorney because Legal Aid was no help. They were not going to be adequate under the circumstances. Heather asked for financial help to hire a lawyer and Heather’s former husband, son’s father quipped “you’re on your own”. Then he hung up. No help there.
It all hit her at once. Complete breakdown in the car that day. Sobbing and couldn’t stop. Heather knew she couldn’t manage this any further. She plugged the meter and went over to the mental health clinic. Still sobbing she asked to see someone ASAP. They took her in right away and tried to interview her. The words wouldn’t come and the whole thing felt like it couldn’t be salvaged. It felt like DOOM. THIS WAS THE END. HOW COULD ANYONE COME BACK FROM THIS? THERE WAS NO WAY TO GET HELP. NO ONE WAS IN HER CORNER. NO ONE WAS IN HER LIFE WHO CARED. AND HEATHER NEEDED TO STAY STRONG FOR HER SON. HOW?
EVERYTHING THAT HEATHER BELIEVED IN AS A POLICE OFFICER WAS NOT THERE FOR HER. SHE WOULD HELP CIVILIANS IN A SIMILAR PLACE AND THAT HAD NOW FAILED HER. THE VERY HELP THAT HEATHER HAD GIVEN OUT NUMEROUS TIMES TO PEOPLE IN A CAREER WERE SIMPLY NOT THERE FOR HER THAT DAY. AS A POLICE OFFICER SHE HAD BEEN BETRAYED BY EVERYTHING THAT HAD BEEN PROMISED TO HER. THE WORLD IS AGAINST EVERYTHING THAT HEATHER WAS TRYING TO DO TO JUST SURVIVE THAT DAY AND HELP HER SON.
NO ONE TO TURN TO AND BETRAYED BY EVERYONE.
There was now severe and horrifying retaliation being levelled against Heather, although they were doing it against her son. What better way to punish her? By punishing her child!
Insp Bourassa (Acting D/Chief that fateful weekend) where he had schemed to set the SWAT TEAM** TO ATTEND THE CONDO IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT TO SET UPON THEM). He had also been the RPS’s senior officer who created the character assassination against Heather for RPS and testified at the WCB Hearing in May of 2007. His efforts were instrumental in getting Heather’s WCB case reversed, stripping away her WCB stipend, derailing her chance at treatment for PTSD et al. His conduct was abhorrent. How does anyone come up with things like this? It’s just cruel and unimaginably damaging.
** SWAT plan was scrapped that night even after they’d been mustering at the PO, when there was an officer involved shooting. Sgt. Wilcox expressed that he was upset at being called in by BOURASSA in the middle of the night to do the call and then had to wait until the early morning hours to attend at the condo. He was perturbed about it and seemed mad at Heather! Confusing.
Here was ugly and devastating retaliation by RPS w/Bourassa, Christine Tell and her friend Alison Green (a ‘wealth manager’ from RBC – yes, the Royal Bank of Canada) who was involved. Heather had no idea how ugly and terrifying it was going to get. They used her young son to retaliate against her. She was in disbelief!
All the worst-case scenarios were running through her mind. What more will they do to her son? What if they charge Heather with something bogus and take her away from her child? He couldn’t go through anything more. Neither could she. They needed to be together. What a horror. She was fast becoming overwhelmed. But she had to hold it together and show her son that they were strong and would figure it out.
Then there was the matter of ALL of their earthly belongings being withheld in a contaminated condo. Heather imagined black mold growing on things, her son was charged with a criminal offence and they were living in a hotel without any of their belongings. Heather could feel herself having a nervous breakdown. She couldn’t stop shaking and was on the verge of crying every moment. She had no social support network and no family. It was a terrifying, lonely and frightening time.
Heather had to find out what to do about their belongings. She queried the Residential Tenancies Office and explained the series of events to them. They grasped the entirety of it and they set a hearing date at the earliest time possible. It was about two weeks hence and it felt like forever.
In the interim, the Residential Tenancies Office RTO set about trying to rectify the situation and at least get Heather access to her property. Staff at the RTO took it upon themselves to repeatedly call Alison Green at her work and at home to tell her that what she was doing to Heather Gray was ILLEGAL. They tried over and over to get her to provide Heather with the keys so that she could get her property out of the condo. ALISON GREEN REFUSED AND STAUNCHLY STUCK TO THE FACT THAT IF IT WAS ILLEGAL WHY DID THE REGINA POLICE AND CHRISTINE TELL DO IT? She was firm in her stance that she wasn’t going to waver and there was no way she’d listen to the RTO.
After about a week and begging to get more clothing and some business papers, a social worker was allowed to get the new key from Alison Green and attend the condo with Heather to gather up a few more clothing items for Heather and her son. At that point Heather couldn’t tell what had been tampered with and what hadn’t. It was a disgusting mess. Heather wasn’t in the property very long and couldn’t take stock of it all.
Finally, it was the day of the Residential Tenancies Office Hearing. Heather attended alone and found that Alison Green was there with her lawyer, Brad Hunter. He had been Christine Tell’s Campaign Manager for her election bid in 2007 when she’d won. It was Hunter’s firm where the female lawyer worked and who was running in the by-election where Christine Tell had snookered Heather into being the “Communications Chair”, name not recalled right now.
The hearing was short. Heather submitted her claim for hotel/meal charges while they’d been put out by the RPS Bourassa/MLA Tell. Almost immediately lawyer Brad Hunter spoke out and announced that, “even as we speak, Ms. Gray’s property is now being held at an undisclosed location” and is “being inspected by the Regina Police Service”!!
Heather was stunned and couldn’t even think. The blood drained from her brain and she felt like she was underwater. She barely registered what the Hearing Officer was saying as she slid the claim document back across the desk. She told Heather that she may want to re-file it once Heather gets an opportunity to inspect her property and see what damage there may be.
What? Wait! Hold on! Sgt. Darren Wilcox told Heather, assured Heather, promised Heather, that all her belongings would be safe there (in the condo), that nothing would happen to them, that everything would be there on the day that her movers would come to get everything! What was happening? Heather couldn’t believe what was going on.
But that wasn’t all. There was no explanation as to how her property managed to be “at an undisclosed location” or why it was “being inspected by Regina Police Service”…..nothing. No explanation. Again, Heather was thrust into a horror show.
Lawyer Brad Hunter advised that the following morning, the day the movers were scheduled to meet at the condo to move everything….. by 8 am there would be something awaiting Heather at the front desk of the Hotel.
There would be an envelope with the address of where Heather’s belongings were being held and the key to access it all.
As Heather left the Hearing, Alison and Brad were giggling and talking excitedly all the way out of the building. It was horrible. What on earth was this all about? How could people act this way? How can people steal all of another’s belongings and think that it’s funny?
Heather had looked after Alison’s condo and was concerned about the plumbing. She hadn’t done anything wrong, just wanted Alison to care and to get proper attention to it. And she was treating Heather and her child like criminals, as if they’d done something wrong. Heather and son were being enormously punished and none of it made sense. And the police and a provincial politician were all party to it!!
That evening, Heather drove out to the condo and with a flashlight, peered into the windows and saw…..absolutely NOTHING. IT WAS VACANT. COMPLETELY EMPTY. NOTHING WAS REMAINING OF HER AND HER SON’S BELONGINGS. WHAT’S NEXT?
There was no sleeping that night. In the morning Heather retrieved the packet from the front desk. It was a note that everything was at a storage unit behind CTV-News Regina, just outside of town. There were pass-code instructions along with two padlock keys.
Heather called the movers and met at the location about 9 am.
Heather and her son were filled with terror and anticipation as they steadied themselves to see what awaited behind the overhead doors.
There were two small units, perhaps 10 x 12. When Heather had brought her property from Edmonton to Regina, she’d rented two large ones 10 x 20 at another facility, with concrete driveways everywhere. This place had small, low overhead doors and just gravel/crusher dust along all the access roads. It felt dirty, dusty. When Heather tentatively unlocked the first padlock and raised the first door she held her breath.
When she saw the condition of the first items she was sickened. Literally sickened and nearly passed out.
There were her gorgeous, brand new mattresses ~ a king and a queen set, the formerly gleaming, high quality white and gorgeous, lush and expensive mattresses, purchased from Sleep Country only 10 days before the police illegally removed them from the condo, with a price tag of $2400. They were now a sickening grey color, dusty and covered with crusher dust and filth, police boot sole marks on them. They were there, piled up askew, unprotected and clearly having been rolled in the gravel by the lockers ~ completely soiled and destroyed.
Under those soiled new mattresses sat Heather’s other brand-new bedroom suites, a gorgeous dark chocolate set, a huge, king size sleigh bed and a long sleek dresser and two large night stands. They showed the gross evidence of police boot soles having walked, stomped, scraped and scratched as someone(s), heavily slugging all over the fine, rich beautiful deep chocolate finish. Heather was sickened. Just that much damage, to both the new bedroom suites, held a value of over $7,000. No wonder the Residential Tenancies Hearing Officer slid the paper back the previous day…the piddly little amount that had been claimed for hotel/food was now a pittance compared with what was evidence by all of this damage.
The movers for Heather were also shocked at what was there and the way everything had been destroyed and thrown into the storage units. They weren’t sure what to do first and were awaiting Heather’s cue.
All of Heather’s personal, medical, divorce, business and financial documents had been yanked out of their file folders/boxes and flipped and tossed into others, thus making them into a terrible, almost irretrievable, sense of order. The same was true for the dozen or so large plastic file boxes of evidence of Heather’s abuses at RPS and all of the WCB case. They’d gone through those with impunity. They shuffled them all around. Pulled things out of binders, threw them amongst other files, tossed things so much that in about 40 ~ 50 boxes of files – a mixture of banker’s boxes and the much larger plastic file bins (held about 4x what a banker’s box held) — nothing went unscathed. It was overwhelming.
Heather had recently had all her files meticulously organized, everything sorted in good order, with the help of an administrative assistant and an accountant in Edmonton, before leaving. Heather couldn’t fathom what she was seeing. It would take months, years to get everything sorted out again. In the state Heather was in she couldn’t imagine having to tackle all of this again! She was stunned.
Most pressing, she had to get her most recent four years’ of CRA receipts and filings for her business (which was essentially defunct) and she’d spent many hours of many days sorting boxes full of receipts in Christine’s basement, then labeling and filing them all in readiness to go to both her business lawyer and business accountant in Edmonton to finalize the ending of her incorporated business and do up the past three years of CRA filings.
She’d already had to get extensions from them for late filings and was paying penalties for that. What did she find? They had taken all these meticulously, carefully separated and filed by date and subject and FLUNG THEM AROUND INTO ANY OTHER FILE BOX AND COMPLETELY DISRUPTED ALL THE HOURS AND HOURS AND DAYS AND WEEKS OF WORK. SHE WAS BESIDE HERSELF. What kind of person/people would do such a thing?
Then there’s the personal and physical violation, like being symbolically raped, gang raped by unknown men, maybe women too, don’t know, but THEY ARE POLICE OFFICERS, ALL UP IN PERSONAL THINGS, HER MOST INTIMATE BELONGINGS, MOST INTIMATE APPAREL. IT WAS HORRIFYING REALIZING THAT JUST ANYONE HAD BEEN THROUGH THE MOST INTIMATE THINGS. IT’S JUST AN INTRUSION THAT’S UNACCEPTABLE.
They had taken most intimate items of clothing out of the dresser drawers and stomped on them in the gravel as well; it was visible both with the gravel and the deep, dark treaded soles of police boots. Then they threw the items back into the drawers randomly, throwing other items in that didn’t belong, like a large wrench, a shoe, a flashlight. Complete annihilation.
BUT THEY WEREN’T DONE YET
SPITS EVERYWHERE!! Then there were the sunflower seeds spits! It was viscerally disgusting……because it was that they spit the husks into all personal belongings – including things that Heather would have worn, things that they would have eaten from, utensils, dishes, bedroom drawers and linens and, most of all, every piece of Heather’s most intimate clothing. The clothing that Heather found most of the contamination and signs that “they’d been there”, and continued to find, for weeks to come, was like storming through a series of sexual assaults by so many police men (one presumed). Who would do such a thing? Why? It was invasive and horrifying enough if they’d have looked through items at the condo. But this was too much to take in. Heather wanted to burn it all. But she couldn’t. She had to figure out how to get it all moved to the house they’d rented.
Sunflower spits had been spit into every drawer and in almost every single file folder and every place imaginable – a signal to Heather that THEY HAD BEEN THERE TOO….A HORRIBLE MESSAGE THAT HEATHER CONTINUED TO FIND WEEKS, EVEN MONTHS LATER.
While at the storage lockers Heather went to speak with the property manager. The woman told her that two people, Alison Green and her partner, Steve (?), had rented the two units on Sunday. They used their own names on the rental form. She had shown them the array of $5 zippered mattress protectors and they’d laughed that they didn’t need those. They’d shown up the following day with movers, TWO SMALL MEN WITH BIG HEARTS moving company and they were very rough handling the furniture. When she saw them mishandling things so badly she had gone out to speak with them. They’d told her to mind her own business. She watched as they rolled the mattresses in the crusher dust and throw them into the storage unit.
The manager told Heather that the day after that the police showed up, a stream of them throughout the day and that they, too, were being rough and mishandling the items in such a fashion that she again went to speak to them. The police were very harsh with her and ordered her to mind her business and that she should go back to her office and leave them to their work. She was very intimidated by how many there were and how carelessly and viciously they were handling the property.
Heather asked if she could provide a video of the events of the days and although the manager tried, even getting a technologist to try and obtain a video she was unsuccessful. She did, though, say several times how intimidating the police had been and how many of them had come and gone throughout the entire day. She’d never seen anything like it.
In organizing Heather’s and her son’s move from Edmonton to Regina, Heather had specially purchased, and used, extremely huge Rubbermaid bins, tan/caramel colored, to ship her clothing. Over time, she had acquired an enormous wardrobe of clothing because she’d been doing a lot of professional speaking and corporate training. The clothing was all designer, well made and expensive, classics all of them. She adored her clothes.
Anyone who has ever had a career where a uniform is required, can appreciate that when there’s an opportunity to garner a wardrobe that’s vastly different, and especially if one loves clothes like that, then it’s a thrill. She highly valued those precious, classic and expensive clothes and wore them well for the speaking she was doing all over North America and conducting corporate training, along with consulting threat assessments
with, and for, organizations.
When these rogues were “packing” and absconding with all of their earthly belongings, which they had no right to do, did they use those bins for Heather’s clothing? No, they threw a slew of heavy books into those bins. In fact, an entire resource library of books had been thrown into all those bins. It was a ridiculous thing to do because it rendered them so heavy that they couldn’t be lifted once they were filled.
It was ludicrous and it was spiteful and the actual moving company they hired had to have been complicit in it too. They had used the Two Strong Men with Big Hearts Moving Company. No word on their brain or moral proclivities. All Heather knew is that her moving company was shocked at what was found and what extent the culpable moving company must have been complicit in as well.
Back to the clothes….Now understand that this “packing” day, Heather discovered, involved Alison Green (owner of the condo), her wealthy boyfriend Steve (?) and Christine Tell were all there and they all participated! Tell was Heather’s former friend, also former RPS police officer, former President of the Regina Police Association, also at that time she was a SaskParty government MLA for Wascana Plains (and is CURRENTLY MINISTER OF POLICING and CORRECTIONS).
Recollect, on-scene officer on November 8, 2009, Sgt Darren Wilcox who was under DIRECT ORDERS of Acting D/Chief Rick Bourassa had assured Heather that all her belongings would be safe and sound, exactly in the location they were in at the condo that Sunday. Sgt. Wilcox PROMISED that. He promised her that they’d all be there until she could get her mover to come and get everything. Heather booked her mover as early as possible. Clearly, she wanted her belongings out of there as quickly as possible. She kept everyone apprised of the date of the movers attending.
As an aside, when Heather had purchased the king size sleigh bed and it was delivered, on October 10th, there had been problems carefully getting it into the condo. It’s an old building and the headboard couldn’t be taken through the house and up the stairwell. Heather and the furniture delivery people had to pad it with bubble wrap and blankets and hoist it with ropes up to the second floor balcony and through garden doors in order to get it into the master bedroom. It was a very tricky manoeuvre. Knowing later how rough and carelessly they handled everything she owned, coupled with the overt damages done to all of it, it was distressing to see how all of this brand new, expensive furniture had been treated. It was unconscionable. Everything was damaged severely and it would have been clear to all of them that the furniture was BRAND NEW!!
Back to the matter at hand…..What Alison, Steve and Christine did, according to a sworn affidavit by Alison Green via her attorney, Brad Hunter LLB, they went to the condo a mere three days ahead of when Heather’s MOVERS WERE ARRANGED TO COME, they took it upon themselves to smash, break and stuff the belongings that had been unpacked and they destroyed them as they “packed” them into other boxes, some that were already full.
For example, they put a large earthenware ovenware casserole dish, smashed into a box of drinking glasses, thus smashing the glasses all to heck and broke apart the clay casserole dish. Heather owned an array of expensive file boxes of which they’d smashed ALL the closures, the hinges and the handles, smashed and broke them off so as to make them unusable. Nothing that they re-packed, of the items Heather unpacked, went unbroken or soiled in some manner.
One method that was particularly troublesome was a that of irreversible contamination. Heather previously mentioned the large Rubbermaid bins that are huge and that she had used to transport her extensive and valuable wardrobe of clothing very carefully so as not to soil them nor damage them. Well, since they didn’t use those for the clothing, although they were sitting right beside the closets on the second floor – pretty obvious what they were for……yet they chose another method that was purely sadistic and cruel.
When Heather had first unpacked some of the smaller things, kitchen items mainly, she’d broken down those cardboard boxes and laid them down in the courtyard that was just outside the kitchen/dining room doors. The plan was that they would be discarded and taken to the recycling bins. It was October/November and the boxes got wet from some light rain.
Christine, Alison and Steve used these soiled boxes, taped them up and crammed Heather’s gorgeous clothes into the boxes. Why does this matter? It wasn’t enough that the cardboard was used and that it was wet and broken down and stored outside but also the fact that the boxes had cat pee on them. Disgusting. Horrifying. Unimaginable.
Heather recalls a time, weeks before, that when she helped Christine go through her own closet of clothes and take them for her to the consignment shop Heather used some of those very Rubbermaid bins to get Christine’s (precious) clothes to the shop. Christine had already seen them being used in this way. So why wasn’t that translated to this task.
Someone in that group specifically decided to retrieve the used, broken down, wet and smelly cardboard boxes that had been folded down and stacked in the courtyard awaiting to be taken to the recycling bins but they were clearly wet AND cats had peed on them AND USE THEM FOR EXPENSIVE CLOTHING. Disgusting.
Rather than using the huge, pristine Rubbermaid bins for gently laying all Heather’s clothing, still on the hangers, into them, keeping them beautiful, clean and pristine…..there were all her clothes……stuffed – literally stuffed — into those wet, cat pee covered, contaminated boxes which rendered the clothing thus, completely destroyed.
Not only that, once Heather’s movers had retrieved everything from the storage units and got things into the rental house, the clothing boxes were all placed into a basement bedroom. This was at the next rental house which Heather had frantically tracked down and rented from when she and her son were living at the hotel. She couldn’t even deal with the pee-boxes stuffed with clothes in the boxes on moving day, so the movers put them downstairs in the spare bedroom.
Now mind, this was in early/mid November and the heat was on in the house. Within a very short time, two hours perhaps, a horrible odor/stench of cat pee overwhelmed the entire house! It was crazy making. Imagine having the stench of cat pee fill and overwhelm an entire house when only a few hours before it was a fine, albeit older, bungalow with hardwood floors. It was horrific and traumatizing. What to do? When is enough, enough?
Heather’s first call to her new landlord, a lieutenant firefighter, was to tell him that disgusting story. As a firefighter, he jumped into action. He brought in some huge square smoke fans they use at fires to air the smoke out of houses. Then the boxes and contents were removed to another area so as to be figured out later. Heather’s now completely destroyed clothing would have to be figured out later.
The new landlord ended up tearing out the carpet in that bedroom, hauling it out of the basement and throwing it outside into the snow. The fans ran for nearly three weeks non-stop! Heather and her son were sickened by the odor every day for the next few months. It never went away…not completely. Doing anything in the basement brought with it the nauseating stench and sick feeling that once again overwhelmed. Every day when the furnace came on the stench returned. It was horrible.
After Heather had gone through all her belongings and sorted/discarded/sold/donated everything and inventoried it all, she prepared a Statement of Claim for Damages and had it served on Alison Green’s lawyer, Brad Hunter.
The Statement of Claim for Damages, which conservatively estimated at $45,000 was replied with, among other things, an explanation of exactly how much involvement the RPS and Christine Tell, the SaskParty politician had on this entire mess!
They were all right in there up to their elbows. The politician herself, Christine Tell (currently Minister of Policing/Corrections), an MLA at the time, had actually assisted in “packing” which was the “smashing” of all the kitchen items, damaging and contaminating Heather’s belongings, amongst many other things. That was all sworn out in Allison Green’s affidavit! A stunner.
The damages amounted to…..conservatively, $45,000! Unfortunately, Heather was in no health, no frame of mind nor of any wealth to pursue a lawsuit against those people individually, the Regina Police Service, the moving company, the SaskParty Provincial Gov’t.
Given their blatant disregard of the law and how it doesn’t seem to apply to them and that they can, with impunity, do whatever egregious things they want to people like Heather and her son, upon whom they wish to carry out retribution. They knew that, as a single mother, with no resources and no power to fight back, they had the upper hand in every way. Who would Heather report to? Where does one go to report when it’s the police and politicians who are meting out the harm?
It had been Heather’s own ‘friend’ who lured her to Regina; Christine was Heather’s Judas. Who could she possibly trust? No…. her son and she were truly alone. She was beside herself and panicked. Heather was never herself again. Life as she knew it had been changed forever.
This whole ordeal had set Heather on a path that ramped up her PTSD, MDD, AD et al so great that she became triggered every moment of every day. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep and was hyper vigilant, hyper-aroused and in a state of FEAR that she could never release. It was like nothing as powerful as she’d ever felt before. It never ended. She wondered if she’d DIE FROM FEAR/FRIGHT. She paced the house constantly. She was having panic attacks and flashbacks and her “suicide brain”, that Heather described to me was initiated and triggered ALL THE TIME. Little did Heather know at time that her life and her mental/physical health would forevermore be substantially damaged.
As a former mounted policeman and the amount of living I have done to this date I had never been aware of that phrase “suicide brain” until Heather Gray explained it to me. Yet I am a founding member of the Brain Injury Society of Canada. I’d never heard that before. But I can see how that makes sense and how debilitating it is.
Heather couldn’t reconcile what “they” had done to her, to her young son, who’d just turned 13 at the time. They’d been through hell, having left an abusive father/husband, left their custom home that they’d built in Edmonton and all the friends they’d made there. Here they were in the worst situation, her former colleagues threatening and harming and conducting illegal activities, doing outright CRIMINAL actions against them! It was a horror movie and there was no way of stopping the nightmare.
They had run Heather Gray out of Regina once, were they out to do it again? Yet she had done nothing wrong.
How many of us could deal with this?
Who and where was she to go to for help? The shock of it all was too much.
She had the real, well-founded fear that the police would come back, would do more to them. She felt unsafe in the world. She felt alone and that she had to guard her son, guard their safety and try to figure out how to get them both to safety, keep them safe and she didn’t know who, if anyone, she could trust.
She kept the house in darkness. They lived in one bedroom, the windows all covered with blankets over the blinds so that no one could peer in. The house was located on a busy intersection and at a four way stop with a 7/11 store on one corner and a neighborhood grocery store on another. It felt like they were living in a fish bowl. They only watched television in the one bedroom where they spent all their time.
The front door was flimsy and entered directly into the living room. Whenever anyone knocked on it, it sounded so loud it rattled nerves to the core. Heather never answered it. But it sent her into a panic attack. The same happened whenever the phone rang.
Heather couldn’t eat anything, couldn’t sleep, pacing day and night. She guarded her son, checking on him every few minutes to ensure he was asleep and breathing. Heather could feel herself losing her grip. She had no one to turn to.
Within about three weeks Heather was completely breaking down. She needed to rest. She was not going to get it. No one was helping and she couldn’t think of anyone who could or would help. She had no resources to turn to.
One evening Heather must have been out of her head with grief, fear, loneliness, insomnia and feeling the huge pressure of it all……and then there was the deep craving for sleep.
I don’t think for one second that Heather Gray intended to take her life. She wanted a break from everything that was coming down on them. She realized that she needed to rest and took a handful of pills.
For this next few comments and space and time, Heather has no memory and only scant recollections of what happened in the hospital. It has only been through the comments, stories and recollections of others that Heather has been able to know anything about those lost days.
Heather’s child, only 13 and having had to go through so much as well, heard her fall. She was unresponsive on the bedroom floor. He called 9-1-1 and in came fire rescue, police and EMS. They took both of them to the hospital. It came to pass that a former police partner of Heather’s sat with her son at the house through the night and in the morning, he was picked up by Social Services and placed in an emergency, short term foster home.
She has no memory about the first two days in the hospital. She does know that they put her in CCU/ICU and then moved her to the psych unit. It was for a span of a little over a week. It was horrible.
Every now and then someone would walk by and ask Heather if she were staff. Shaking her head and wishing she could just get back with her beloved son. The torture was in figuring out how this all went off the rails within so short a time and had ended up so badly.
Heather’s son was the one who suffered a horrific nightmare through those days. Because Heather and her son had no one in Regina, he was placed in a short stay foster home for about 10 days. For what he had to suffer what he did it may as well have been years. She’ll never forgive herself. That haunts her mind and heart every day. She’s since assured him that she’d never leave him like that, taking her own life. However, the place Heather is at and the dire poverty she is in now, makes her wonder if she can truly keep that promise.
Heather Gray is a victim of circumstances that she has never created. And until these circumstances have been alleviated she cannot keep that promise.
When Heather tries to analyze what she did that night and yet knows that she didn’t want to die….it was sheer exhaustion and the power of these levels of police and politician for whatever their agenda….. why did they have the audacity to again take such hideous retribution on a broken, wounded, and injured single mother who they had forced to lose her way. She lost everything that formed her identity. Just trying to figure out where and how to start over. These men and women have never been accountable — they have everything to lose if what they have already done becomes public. They have more reason now to make sure it doesn’t become public. How much longer are we, the public, going to allow this to happen to Heather Gray?
For whatever their agenda, some decided that they had the audacity to take such hideous retribution on a broken, wounded and injured single mother who had already lost her way, lost everything that formed her very identity and was just trying to figure out where and how to start over. Having been away from Regina for eight years wasn’t enough to buffer the zest for retaliation, they still felt entitled to mess her up. They had no choice, in their minds, because they wanted to keep the whole mess covered up. They’d never had to accept responsibility or answer for any of their horrific wrongdoing.
While Heather was in hospital, her son was sent to a different school, where he knew no one and rather than getting his backpack from home, which they could have done, they sent him to a school where he knew no one. No one accompanied him as they sent him in a cab. They didn’t even send him with any school supplies. Not even a pencil. NOTHING.
Heather was shocked and felt deeply, deeply guilty about all of that when she found out what they’d done. It was a neighborhood school and very cliquey and her son didn’t know a soul. Right from the first moment he arrived they pounced on him. They told him he should ‘go away and die’. They said they hated him, he didn’t belong there, they wanted him gone.
Even after getting home from hospital, about a week later and they were getting help with counseling, Heather’s son was coming home every day, upset himself, because of all the taunting and the rejection he was receiving at the new school. It was a nightmare all the way around. And they couldn’t figure out how to fix it.
After about a month of this torment, Heather finally managed to work with the principal and the school superintendent to find a program at another school which suited him perfectly and it was a godsend. Heather credits those two women and their kindness and the program for accepting him with saving both their lives. They were in a deep, deep pit of despair at that point and they only had one another for support. It was a desperately sad hell and both of them were just merely hanging on by fingertips. They truly feared for their lives throughout that time period. Heather knew she was at high risk of not surviving “suicide brain” which she came to understand in her own way and then given her insight of traumas that her son was also realizing.
Shortly after the events of November 9, 2009 occurred, still smelling the gross cat pee throughout the house, Heather was forced to sadly rid herself of all her gorgeous clothing that Tell and Green had destroyed. She also went on a frenetic purge of nearly everything else she owned. People came over, even Heather’s landlord’s wife and her friends. Heather gave away everything. The lady got an entire 70 piece, every glass style/size of Mikasa crystal ~ worth about $2000. All gifted to a friend of the landlord. They weren’t put off. But Heather couldn’t manage it. She wanted it all gone, along with the traumatic memories they evoked.
All the while that Heather’s been ‘fighting’ the powers that be, to obtain WCB benefits of lost wages/benefits/treatment/pension, top-up from RPS, she has done nothing wrong. She’s played by the rules. In fact, she’s done everything right. And Heather’s proven her case to a level far and away above what’s required for WCB’s quasi-judicial realm.
And yet they are on a disgusting and ill begotten path whereby they’ve stooped to a low bar from Heather receiving her benefits that they’re really not so much angry with Heather ~ they think they are ~ but rather they’ve messed up Heather Gray way, way, way back to the first time she was messed with and that wasn’t handled (correctly). If only it had, none of this would’ve escalated.
Now is theirs, and your, opportunity to set it right.
Heather is not so much brave anymore but rather destitute, in DIRE POVERTY, and she needs her deserved and necessary wage loss, benefits and pensions so as to be able TO JUST SURVIVE. TO LIVE WHILE SHE IS ALIVE. They have taken her to the precipice of the mountain cliff and they’ve already given her the push….waiting for her to hit the ground far, far below.
Heather doesn’t have enough money to cover off even the most basic of expenses. No one can even understand what being truly poor is.
D.M.D. Don Matheson
Epilogue – by Heather Gray
With one extended hand held out to rescue me, my life can begin, again. I’m desperately and hopefully wishing for that fine glimmer of hope to become reality. It must happen.
There are people in high levels, who know all too well about the horrific abuses that have stripped away my last dime, my dignity and all my hope, who know how desperate and destitute I am. Those very people have the power to change my fate with the stroke of a pen. They know where the margins are for me. Yet they hide the truth and fail me.
They also know full well that I didn’t deserve any of this demoralizing and targeted abuse that’s destroyed me, destroyed my family and stolen away my precious son’s life but have they made a move to rescue me/us from this horrific fate? Have they done so? No! Why not?
In 1997, before this ugly, horrific reality settled into my life, before the evil was visited upon me, I was a happy, healthy, new wife, a new mother, enjoying promotions, planning a beautiful new custom home, working as a detective in CID, child abuse unit, had a great partner……everything that I’d worked and struggled for, worked diligently in my career for 15 years and all that toil had finally panned out.
But suddenly the men (and one woman) I describe in the article (Ottawa Life Magazine, October 9, 2018), and several who were mercifully unnamed in those articles, came into the picture and, block by block, they destroyed it all. And others have come along to continue that egregious path towards destroying everything I’d built. Many of those who’ve done me all this harm don’t even know me. They haven’t taken the time to acquaint themselves to KNOW the truth of the situation. They didn’t even care to know the truth. That’s because RPS has NOT SPOKEN THE TRUTH. I HAVE. THEY HAVE NOT. THEY HAVE LIED WITH IMPUNITY.
I don’t know where my story goes from here. I am dead inside yet, somehow, I still wish to live. BUT I CANNOT CONTINUE TO LIVE ~~ NOT LIKE THIS!!! Twenty-three years of hell and traumas and losing EVERYTHING is ENOUGH. MY SON DESERVES THE REMAINDER OF HIS LIFE SALVAGED. HE DESERVES WHAT IS LEFT OF HIS MOTHER RETURNED TO HIM. AND I DESERVE THE PERSON I WAS RETURNED TO A REASONABLE LEVEL OF FUNCTIONING.
There needs someone in the right spot, who has the power and who can, with the mere stroke of a pen, change my fate, to make it all right. And then my life could begin a new chapter. One of hope, health, change, of helping others. I’m still struck every moment that an entire third of my life has been stolen away with this horrific cruelty and has put me into such turmoil with mental and physical pain that never lets me rest easy. Not a second of the day or night is there a reprieve from the result of the harm that others have caused. I don’t deserve any of it and my son doesn’t deserve the life he’s been handed because of it….since he was a mere 5 months old. Think of that in terms of your own children.
The people who wrought this hell on me and my family are all still around. So are the ones who are covering it up. They are in high places and are greedily bringing in hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Living the high life. Imagine that. I haven’t got enough to survive day to day.
I’m the only family my son has. After all he’s been through he doesn’t deserve to lose me too. I implore you to rectify this immediately or I won’t be able to survive it. I’ve barely clung to life for all this time and I cannot do it any longer. It’s just not possible to ‘hang in there’ forever. Please have mercy on me, on my child. We never deserved this 23 years of hell and the loss of everything we knew and everything we had built of a once beautiful life.
I am about to lose the roof over my head. Literally. Time is up. I’m scared out of my mind. Who will step up and make this right? Will you, Premier Moe? If not you, then who?