Shannon Murrin threatens to sue police, justice officials
Last Updated: Thursday, January 7, 2010 | 12:37 PM NT
CBC News
Shannon Murrin says he will use some of the money he was awarded in an out-of-court settlement with the RCMP to take legal action against another police agency, the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary.
Murrin recently settled a lawsuit in British Columbia in which he claimed a former RCMP officer had him beaten to get a murder confession out of him in connection with the death of Mindy Tran.
Murrin lived near the eight-year-old in Kelowna, B.C., when she was slain in the mid-1990s. Murrin was charged in 2000 with murder and acquitted.
His lawsuit against a former RCMP sergeant investigating the Tran case was based on a beating he suffered in 1995 that put him in hospital for 11 days.
Murrin told CBC News on the weekend that as part of the settlement of the lawsuit, he can't say how much money he was awarded. But he said he will use some of it to sue justice and police officials in Newfoundland and Labrador over their alleged handling of a double slaying outside St. John's.
In late May 2009, Murrin was named as a suspect in the slayings when the Newfoundland Supreme Court accepted an agreed statement of facts in the case against Joey Oliver. Oliver had pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the 1993 deaths of Dale Worthman and Kim Lockyer and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Oliver claimed he drove the couple to a remote wooded area on the outskirts of the city but he said Murrin shot them to death. Their bodies were found in the woods at the edge of St. John's three years ago.
In the statement of facts, Crown prosecutors Jim Walsh and Elaine Reid said Oliver's claim that Murrin was the shooter is uncorroborated. The police never charged him in the deaths of Worthman and Lockyer, and Murrin dismisses the allegation.
"How come I'm out here walking around, if they could prove anything that he said?" he asked in an interview with CBC News.
Murrin said he wants to sue the provincial police force and lawyers on both sides of the St. John's case for letting him be named in the statement of facts as an accused killer.
The police paid a $50,000 reward in the Oliver case, but they won't say who received the money.
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