Jorge Barrera
Northern News Services

Stony Mountain, Man. (June 07/02) - Seven years after Roger Warren was convicted of killing nine men in the worst labour disaster in Canadian history, his name is still in the Yellowknife phone book.

Warren, 58, says he doesn't know why it's still there but he believes his name and the events that cling to it will haunt this city until the answers behind the Sept 18, 1992 bomb blast, trump the questions.

"It won't go away as long as there are questions and there's always been questions," said Warren in a phone interview from prison on Wednesday.

In 1993, after 16 interviews and two lie detector tests, Warren confessed to planting a bomb on an underground rail-track that killed nine replacement workers riding a man-car on their way to work at Giant Mine.

He is serving a life sentence with a 20 year-minimum parole eligibility date for second degree murder in Stony Mountain medium-security penitentiary north of Winnipeg.

The blast shook a city already embroiled in a bitter five month-old strike that pitted neighbour against neighbour after the mine's management broke a 50 year-old unwritten mining rule by hiring replacement workers.

The strike lasted 17 months.

The story seemed to end after the Northwest Territories Court of Appeal shut the door on Warren's appeal in 1997 for his 1995 murder conviction.

A new investigation

But last summer, a board member from the organization that helped free Guy Paul Morin and David Milgaard got in contact with Warren and they are currently investigating his case.

James Lockyer, director for the Association for the Wrongfully Convicted, said Warren's case "has many of the hallmarks of a false confession to it."

Warren believes he was coerced into confessing.

"I'm positive it happened," said Warren. "Rather, it was over-coercion."

Warren's lawyers used these very arguments in his 1997 appeal, but the three-judge panel would have none of it.

Those three judges might have a different take on coerced confession today, said Lockyer.

"In recent years there's been an enormous development in the law's understanding of false confessions," said Lockyer. "In the U.K. and the U.S. they have discovered numerous wrongful convictions based on false confessions."

Warren believes severe depression and heart medication were some of the factors that triggered his confession.

"It's a pretty complicated thing (the confession)," said Warren. "There were a whole pile of factors involved. I'm pretty vague on it now. It just seems unbelievable.

"I guess you could say I was pretty detached. I know reading the transcripts and listening to those tapes, it's just really weird.

"It was definitely a suicidal act.

"It was my way of dealing with it.

"I think I had it at the time. I had to get it over with without causing too much trouble. I was just kind of irrational.

"I'm not really introspective, I always found it egotistical. I know one of the (psychiatrists) we engaged with said I had a certain disdain for their profession. I don't have a disdain for it, I never understood it, I considered it witchcraft.

"I wouldn't believe a person could get depressed like that but it happens because you always have it in your head you are a strong person. Sometimes you are not as strong as you think you are," said Warren.

Supporters raising money

There are some in this city who have never doubted Warren's innocence.

Steve Petersen, spokesperson for a small group called the Roger Warren Appeal Fund Committee, calls the 1995 trial a "sham."

The group has raised $2,000 for any costs arising from the current investigation.

Penny Johnson, Warren's daughter, said she lost her faith in the justice system when it put her father away.

"It's frustrating because I want to teach my children to believe in (the justice system) but I feel like a hypocrite because I don't believe in it," said Johnson in a phone interview from her home in Peace River, Alta.

The last seven years have been tough on the family.

"It's been a nightmare," said Johnson.

She doesn't want to get her hopes up about the new interest in the case and what it could mean, but it's difficult.

"You want to believe there is always a chance," she said. "It's the only way we can deal with it and hope eventually he'll be home where he belongs."

But the dead must not be forgotten among the living.

The families of Verne Fullowka, Norman Hourie, Christopher Neill, Josef Pandev, Shane Riggs, Robert Rowsell, Arnold Russell, Malcolm Sawler and David Vodnoski, will never see their loved ones again.

And for some, the feelings are still very raw.

"I'd be lying to you if I said I wasn't still bitter," said Joe Pandev, son of Josef Pandev.

Pandev, who is a carpenter in Yellowknife, was in his early 20's when his father, a year away from retirement, was murdered in the Giant Mine bombing.

"My father was a very kind hearted man," said Pandev. "He had no enemies. I don't think there was anyone who met him that didn't like him."

Joe Pandev doesn't buy the coerced confession story.

"You can coerce a young mind, but someone of Warren's age at the time...It just doesn't seem plausible."

He's not happy with Warren's case hitting the spotlight again.

"From where I sit, (the original conviction) that's the truth," said Pandev.

"It's one thing to read about it, it's another to actually live through it," said Pandev who worked at Giant Mine for 10 years before quitting last year. "It's a whole lot harder to forget.

"I think everyone wants to forget it ever happened," said Pandev.

"I want people to remember what happened and to be embarrassed by it.

"The way people acted, it was just embarrassing for a community to turn on itself like that. And over what?"

In 1999, the mine was discarded by Royal Oak after it went bankrupt, unable to recover from the strike, and picked up by Vancouver based Miramar Mining.

Theories but no names

"I have theories," said Warren.

"But as far as putting names to it I couldn't do it."

"I think something was missed, I think people looked at the obvious and weren't interest in the not so obvious," is Warren's cryptic version of what happened that September day.

He's had a long time to think about it.

Prison life hasn't been so bad, said Warren.

He works at the prison machine shop, fixing the pen's cars and machinery, reading books and The Free Press. He's currently reading a book called The Bandy Papers about Canada's version of Forrest Gump.

He watched Sept. 11 from his one-bed cell and called the events "outrageous."

"There is no excuse for that sort of thing," said Warren. "I don't know what they are trying to accomplish with that type of stuff."

He thinks about Yellowknife sometimes, about pitching in the recreation fast-pitch league in the summer.

He doesn't know if he will ever return to the city should he get out.

His wife, Helen and other daughter, Anne, still live in the city.

If his name is cleared, he doesn't plan to sue for compensation.

Warren said he made the choice to confess and will live with the consequences.

"The taxpayers get soaped enough," said Warren. "Nobody asked me (to confess). Nobody held an axe over my head."

He is not one for self-analysis and has little stomach for subjectivity, preferring a black and white view on things.

"I worked in the mine for 20 or 30 years and you are never measured on your personality or your inter-personal relationships. You are measured by a tape.

"You don't have to be mister nice guy. It's how far did you go through the rock, how many tons did you produce. It's something concrete. That is 50 per cent of why I like that profession.

"Performance talks, BS walks."

Mention Royal Oak president Peggy Witte (now Margaret Kent) and you get a bland response.

"You got to admire her."

"I'd like people to know that I am not one of those people who seethe with vindictiveness and have some sort of implacable hatred for people."

So, did you do it Warren?

"Of course not."

"I've been looked at under a microscope for quite a while and I'm sure I don't have to prove to anybody I've never hurt a soul in my life. Maybe I did verbally, but physically never."