White teacher Cindy Blazek was trying to educate the savage child-race known as Red Indians and try to bring them up to the standards of the modern world.
In return, they killed her. Decades later, Yorkton This Week reporter Lisa Joy tried to warm up the cold case.
Before the sun would rise over the isolated community the next cold winter morning, Cindy would be dead.Police believed she was attacked by at least two assailants. The RCMP charged Brian Oliver Perry, 22, and a 17-year-old youth from Lloydminster. During their trials the court heard that Cindy was stabbed 13 times, 11 of those were on her neck, reported the News-Optimist. A Saskatoon pathologist said Cindy’s cause of death was from one of the wounds to the neck that hit an artery, causing her to bleed to death.The house was set on fire and Cindy’s charred body was discovered in her home around 3 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 7, 1986.
Well if two guys were charged, there's justice, right? What's the problem?
Now, almost 35 years later, Cindy’s killer(s) is still out there and her family wants justice for her.In fact, the lack of progress in Cindy’s case prompted Jamie to investigate his younger sister’s murder himself, making countless trips to Onion Lake and talking to dozens of people.“Although (the RCMP) would like to put more time into it, they are understaffed and they spend their time on more recent cases,” said Jamie during an interview in March.“I have found a lot of new evidence that the police should definitely look into,” he said, adding that everything he dug up he provided to the RCMP.“I’ve always believed whoever did this has a terrible hatred towards women,” said Jamie. “The torture and beating is not what you would do to silence someone so you can get away with rape. The attack was so brutal and done with so much hatred.“To think that the murderer is still walking free is hard to take.”
So....what happened?
In January 1988, an eight-man, four-woman jury in Battleford Court of Queen’s Bench found Perry guilty of first-degree murder.Within days of the guilty verdict, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal overturned Perry’s guilty conviction and a new trial was ordered after it was discovered that the jury saw information from the preliminary hearing by mistake.Perry’s defence lawyer Richard Gibbons successfully had the second trial moved from Battleford to Prince Albert Court of Queen’s Bench.Justice G. E. Noble found Perry not guilty at the non-jury trial in June 1988.Justice Noble said the Crown’s case, when viewed as a whole, didn’t meet the test of proving that Perry was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.Justice Noble said it was significant that a key witness was asked at a preliminary hearing how he identified the accused and he replied that he did from a photo-lineup shown to him by police, reported the StarPhoenix.Justice Noble said the witness’s identification of Perry from the photo-lineup was “seriously flawed” because Perry’s photograph was “clearly distinguishable” from the 13 photos accompanying it and the officer administering the test directed the witness’s attention to Perry’s photograph, reported the StarPhoenix.A young offender, who can’t be identified in accordance with the Youth Criminal Justice Act, was found not guilty of Cindy’s murder after a trial in Lloydminster, Sask., in February 1988.Judge Lloyd Deshaye dismissed the first-degree murder charge against the youth saying the Crown’s case fell short of proving his involvement in the murder. Judge Deshaye said he found the youth to be a “bold and clever liar” when he took the stand in his own defence but without further evidence he couldn’t convict him, reported the StarPhoenix.“At best, the youth’s testimony puts the accused at the scene of the crime,” said Judge Deshaye, adding that the Crown didn’t show he personally caused Cindy’s death, reported the StarPhoenix.
More of that White Privilege at work, apparently...
