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TRANSCRIPT: The Village, S2E5: Accountability and Apologies.

JUSTICE EPSTEIN: We are all here today listening to the results of this review for one reason. Because people went missing, because lives were lost. The public is entitled to know the truth. So are the loved ones and friends of those who went missing [sad music fades in]: Skandaraj Navaratnam. Abdulbasir Faizi. Majeed Kayhan. Soroush Mahmudi. Kirushna Kumar Kanagaratnam. Dean Lisowick. Selim Esen. Andrew Kinsman. Tess Richey. Alloura Wells.

[Justice Epstein fades to the background]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] In September, 2018, Toronto’s police services board appointed retired judge Gloria Epstein to investigate how the city’s police handled missing persons cases and its relationship with the queer community. This is the story we told you in the first season of this podcast. The story of how a serial killer, Bruce McArthur, was able to operate for seven years without being caught. And to answer why investigations into other missing people were slapdash, inconsistent, and often bungled. One of those cases was Alloura.

JUSTICE EPSTEIN: Alloura Wells, a member of Toronto's trans community, also went missing in 2017. Although her bodily remains had been in the morgue for months, it took too long before they were linked to her disappearance. This could have been done very differently.

[Sad music fades out]

[Drum beat comes in]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] The final report was released in April, 2021, and it was scathing. It identified systemic failures to take missing persons cases seriously, and a failure by the Toronto Police service to recognize, or even to understand, the daily realities of those who live in the Village.

JUSTICE EPSTEIN: I conclude that many of the investigations I examined were seriously flawed.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] I’m Justin Ling. This is the Village.

JUSTICE EPSTEIN: I will remember every interview I conducted. None more so than the time I spent with Michael Wells, Alloura Wells' father, as he described his experience in reporting his daughter's disappearance to the police. Proper missing person investigations should not depend on whose voices are the loudest or most empowered in sounding the alarm. The goal must be to make any future public inquiry or systemic review unnecessary. This is how we truly can honour the lives lost.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Justice Epstein led the review, but the work was done by a small team: including prominent lawyer Mark Sandler.

MARK SANDLER: Those failings existed at a systemic level and raised all kinds of concerns about culture, about practices, about resources, about systemic discrimination, and more generally about how the service relates to those communities over and above how missing persons cases are done.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Sandler has worked on a ton of these reviews into police practices. A large part of his career has been focused on investigating when police fail, especially when it affects under-served communities. In the first season of this show, you heard from friends of some of the missing men. Particularly of Skandaraj Navaratnam, and Hamid Kayhan — they tried to ring the alarm bell early on.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] When you finally realize you actually have three missing persons cases that look similar and you have a community coming out and saying this has all the hallmarks of a serial killer, you have the friends of those men saying this looks like a serial killer. Our friend wouldn't just disappear like this. Police weren't willing to kind of upgrade that to the level of a full homicide investigation.

MARK SANDLER: And that's the problem. So, you've put your finger on the problem. And I have to say, some of the officers candidly who spoke to us acknowledged that this was a problem.

[Drum beat ends]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Sandler picked up on something which has always bugged me about these cases — it’s just how randomly they were handled.

MARK SANDLER: The reason that struck us so profoundly was that you would see one investigator that would reach out to the LGBTQ community to see whether some leads could be pursued. You'd see others, by and large, that never did. So, it was happenstance whether an investigative step would be taken and one feature as opposed to the other. And that just can't be best practice in policing. Leave aside issues about discrimination and marginalized and vulnerable communities. Police officers have to know what the essential steps are in any missing person investigation. Otherwise opportunities are going to be lost, which we saw here.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] In all my years working on this story, it is galling just how uninformed many of the cops were, and still are, about the queer community. Sometimes, they didn’t even realize the missing person was gay!

MARK SANDLER: In the majority of the cases, the officers became aware at some point of this of the sexual orientation of the people who had gone missing. But in a number of instances, they didn't know what to do with it. You know, the service has an LGBTQ2S+ liaison officer, the liaison officer was virtually never used as a resource.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] The inquiry lays bare just how many times McArthur could have been caught, and wasn’t. Some of it is technological. Some of it was bureaucratic. A massive part of the problem is the police just not listening to what they were being told by the community.

MARK SANDLER: There were opportunities that were lost from as early as 2010, another one in 2011, another one in 2013, another one later in 2013, that was very significant, another one in 2016. There were a lot of opportunities to get to the bottom of the identity of the person who was killing members of the community.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] When McArthur was brought in for questioning, police didn’t connect the dots.

MARK SANDLER: So here you had a man who was in the interview room who had a connection beyond just seeing these three men in a in a bar in the Village who had a connection of significance potentially with all three of the men and who had a criminal conviction for hitting a man in the gay village over the head with a lead pipe for no reason. Talk about a lost opportunity.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICOEVER] It wasn’t just about sexuality. It was about drug use. Homelessness. Race. Immigration status.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] And the assumption would be and it's a phrase you hear often on this case, the assumption would be that if this were three white women, there would have been all of these forces marshaled. Do you think that all of this would have been done if it were three upper class you know white folks?

MARK SANDLER: The reason why the analysis is more nuanced is because missing persons cases were not being given priority generally. It's not just about, you know, are these people white from Rosedale? It's about who's empowered, who's being heard and who's not?

So, one of the things that Judge Epstein speaks a lot about is intersectionality, like we have to stop saying, you know, this person's being treated this way simply because they're transgender or simply because they're gay or simply because they're Black as opposed to there are an intersection of personal identifiers that explain differential treatment, that explain overpolicing under servicing. The fact that these people are marginalized and vulnerable meant that they didn't have the same voices to be heard. They couldn't exert the same kinds of pressure on the police to give the cases the prominence they deserved. Judge Epstein can't say don't criminalize drug use, don't criminalize sex work, don't criminalize HIV/AIDS sexual activity in the way that it has been criminalized. That's well outside of her mandate. But what she could say and did say is that the way in which these issues are criminalized represents a major barrier to people coming forward and providing information.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Maybe Judge Epstein can’t say it, but I can: The consistent decision by every level of government to criminalize these things — drug use, sex work, homelessness, HIV/AIDS — it directly contributes to the queer community being unsafe. You don’t need to look any further than these frustrating cases to understand that. In the past few years, a conversation about defunding the police has gained momentum. While that debate is complicated, at the very least it means taking some responsibilities away from the exclusive domain of police, and instead bringing in civilians to help on cases that desperately need investigating.

MARK SANDLER: It's unfair to policing and it's also unfair to the community to think that the police should do play all these roles, law enforcement, social service agency, public health. You know, they're not well suited to perform all of those roles.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Most of the cases that Judge Epstein looked at have been solved. Too late, maybe, but solved. But in particular, I wanted to ask Sandler about Alloura’s case. The review actually interviewed the officer who got the call, on a hot summer day four years ago, that a body had been found in the Rosedale Ravine.

MARK SANDLER: He acknowledged to us in the interview that he had no idea what trans agencies or community groups existed that he could call upon to assist him in identifying someone who was obviously a member of the trans community. And he acknowledged that. It shouldn't be for somebody who finds the body to have to take the steps to get the police to be engaging with community, right?

The trans community is severely hurting. They are highly victimized by violence. They are not accepted at times, even within the LGBTQ2S+ umbrella. That's a significant issue as well. Officers just don't understand trans men and women. In the same way, as many of them now have a greater appreciation and respect for sexual orientation. The trans relationship has a huge way to go.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Judge Epstein’s report makes 151 recommendations. They are clear, detailed, and they come with steps on how police are supposed to implement them. But a report alone can’t change a culture, nor can it build those relationships.

MARK SANDLER: That's why the recommendations span everything from recruitment, promotions, educational requirements, a new approach to consultative committees, a central role for liaison officers as opposed to a more secondary role. We've tried to address just so many aspects of how policing is done, but the bottom line is that we just won't know how effective this will be until we see what happens in the next year or so.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Judge Epstein was asked to produce a report on how to fix many broken aspects of policing in Toronto. But, for a lot of trans people, many of these things can’t be fixed. More training, more education, better hiring: In the end, it all just leads to more policing.

For trans people like Morgan Page, the queer historian, the way to fix the tension between trans people and the police is simply to have less policing.

MORGAN PAGE: There's a bigger story to tell than individual missing and murdered cases, there is a much larger story about general violence and discrimination, but also about the way our community has come together. So, the reason the trans community in Canada is so strong is because of the murders of Diana Wilkinson, Junior Keegan and Brenda Ludgate. It's only because of that that the 519 began the Trans Community Services, which then inspire community services all across the country to pop up. And so, I think the bigger story for me is about the way that our community has worked really really hard across decades to take care of each other because society's not going to take care of us. The police aren't going to care for us. They're never going to care for us. Even, you know, 50 years from now, the police aren't going to care about us, but we care about us. We're here today. So, to me, that is the even bigger story.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] On April 13 2021 Interim Police Chief James Ramer held a press conference to react to Justice Epstein’s report. He’s there to deliver the Toronto Police’s mea culpa.

CHIEF RAMER: Justice Epstein has given our Service much to reflect on, about who we are and how we carry out the jobs we are entrusted to do. Her findings of failures and how we conducted some missing persons investigations — particularly those in marginalized or vulnerable communities —are accepted, and the shortcomings she identified are inexcusable. We know that many in Toronto's LGBTQ2S+ communities felt and still feel that our communications deepened a sense of mistrust between us. That was not the Service's intention, and we apologize for the anger, hurt and damage that was caused. Others have said we were not hearing them, that their fears were not taken seriously and even that they were blamed for the victimization they experienced. None of this is acceptable. None of this should have happened. As we all know, tragically, lives were lost. To the family, friends and community members left behind: We apologize.

[Music builds up]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] He wasn’t the only one apologizing. The 519 community centre also issued a blunt apology. They accepted responsibility for not going public with the information that a transgender woman was found in the Rosedale Ravine.

But I still had a ton of questions for the chief.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] First off, thanks for doing this. I'm happy we could finally find a time to make it work.

CHIEF RAMER: Yeah, no, I appreciate it. Thanks. I'm happy to be here, Justin

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] After weeks of back-and-forth, I managed to get a one-on-one interview. I really wanted to get to the bottom of what, exactly, he says isn’t working about policing. What he intends to do to fix it. And where the investigation into Alloura’s death stands.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] How do you ensure that after, after this, after one of Canada's worst serial killers, targeted the community in Toronto, how do you ensure that this report actually becomes something substantive and changes the way things operate so that it doesn't happen again?

CHIEF RAMER: And that's a great question, Justin, and it's the work that we'll do on those 151 recommendations and we will complete each and every one of them. And we'll do that in partnership with the community. They will be part of it. And I think that's going to be very different from what's been done in the past. They'll be on the ground floor helping us with procedures we put in place, helping us with training that will be doing and helping us complete those recommendations. And it's going to be listen, it's going to be a lot of hard work and it's going to take some time. And I'm really hoping that in time we're going to improve that relationship. And all I'm asking for the community to do is give us that opportunity, give us one more opportunity to get it right.

[Music fades out]

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] You know, obviously, there have been very specific points of contention between the community and the Toronto Police Service. You know, I think maybe one of the most visible in the last few years has been Pride, you know, an insistence from the Toronto Police Service that, you know, it wants its officers in the parade in uniform with their service pistols and an insistence from Pride and others in the community that that's inappropriate. They wouldn't they would prefer not. Not that there will be a parade this year, but, you know, if there is one next year, what would your position be?

CHIEF RAMER: I want to get our officers back into the Pride parade. It's important for this membership. We have a lot of members that want to participate in the Pride parade.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Would you be open to not having officers either armed or having them not in uniform? I mean, that has been the consistent ask.

CHIEF RAMER: Yeah, actually, I'm open to those discussions. So I'm certainly open to that kind of dialogue, Justin.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] A big call from for many activists who I don't think are any great fans of the Toronto Police Service has been to defund the police, and part of what they're asking for is to get police off some of these cases, off some of these files or out of some of these interviews. Do you think there is, you know, a level of compromise or a spot where you can meet in the middle?

CHIEF RAMER: Well, let me just say this Justin to start off. We've been defunding for eight of eight or nine years now as a police organization, while the city's been growing in leaps and bounds as the fourth biggest city in North America. So, finding alternative methods of service delivery so we can devote our resources to other areas that we need to be doing is very advantageous and is something we want to explore.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] While the Toronto Police Service budget may not be increasing in line with Toronto’s population, like Chief Ramer says, it is certainly increasing. Its 2020 budget was more than $1 billion dollars. Over a decade, its funding increased by more than $160 million dollars.

Of that budget, the homicide unit gets just $12 million. The sex crimes unit is just a bit bigger.

And yet Toronto City Council has consistently rejected proposals to cut the overall Toronto Police Service’s budget and reallocate those resources elsewhere.

CHIEF RAMER: Getting the best service for the public is what we're after. And if that means it's a medical specialists or community workers that are helping us with missing persons, and if that works, that's what we want to do.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] And I should say, Toronto has already started some of this work. Increasingly, when officers respond to calls for help, they will be accompanied by nurses, social workers, harm reduction specialists, and mental health professionals.

But there’s calls to do more. In recent years, under pressure from activists, other cities have opted to pull back on policing non-violent crimes. They’ve stopped arresting people like Cassandra and Alloura. They’ve tried to reduce tensions between police and marginalized communities, including sex workers and street-involved folks. Toronto has not been as proactive.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] You've seen other police forces across North America talk about a less aggressive approach to sex work, to drug possession. But I'm wondering where you think, you know, the balance should be there in terms of how you maybe respond to community complaints, keep the public safe, but also maybe use ticketing powers or arrest as a last resort.

CHIEF RAMER: You know what? I think our members utilize really a lot of discretion and some of some of these activities, and I would include it would include that work as well. We do now as part of our human trafficking unit, have a component of it where we're we have a social worker working with a police officer to work with those communities to help them and to maybe get people out of that area of work.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] You know, I think what you hear from a lot of sex workers, particularly in the city, is that it's not that they want more human trafficking charges laid. It's not that they want an escape route. Some of them are choosing to do this. And what they want is an ability to do it safely and without having to, you know, to hide from cops, without having to do it in the shadows, without having to park in risky neighborhoods or in abandoned lots.

CHIEF RAMER: Well, I think the police are only one part of the problem or one part of the solution, if you will, Justin. It has to be some collaboration with the community, you know, in the city as to how we want to proceed with respect to dealing with that issue. So, you know, in many cases, as a police agency, we respond to complaints.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] But I wonder, though, because, you know, a minute ago you said you sort of acknowledged that there were instances of systemic bias that are present in your officers. But at the same time, you're saying discretion is incredibly important.

CHIEF RAMER: Listen, even Justice Epstein in her report acknowledged that there was no overt bias apart our members that influence any of the trajectory of our investigations. Implicit bias? Yeah, I think that that exists in society and we're part of society. Systemic issues? Absolutely. And those we're trying to fix. But, again, I think in most cases, our members will utilize discretion and strike a balance.

[Suspenseful music fades in]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Honestly, this is naive. It has been clear for a long time that the Toronto Police Service does a bad job of policing, and protecting, marginalized communities. The Epstein report lays out very clearly how that implicit and systemic bias hampered their ability to catch a serial killer. It sounds to me like the Chief wants credit for recognizing the problem, without actually having to deal with the solution. Lots of people in Toronto will tell you: I don’t trust the police to treat me fairly because I’m a sex worker. Or because I’m trans. Or homeless. Or I use drugs. Giving police more discretion doesn’t fix that. Stopping the police from criminalizing those communities altogether, does. But, in fairness to the chief, police are there to enforce the laws. If we want to get rid of criminalization, that is really a decision that falls to our politicians.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Good afternoon, Prime Minister. You know, it was six years ago on the campaign trail that you criticized Canada's prostitution laws. You promised to study those laws, potentially fix them. You acknowledge that there were causing harm for sex workers in Canada. You are now in court defending those laws. What has changed about your philosophy when it comes to criminal law now that you've been in government for six years?

PRIME MINISTER JUSTIN TRUDEAU: I don't think anything has changed. I think the focus continues to be on allowing evidence to drive policy and not as previous governments have done, to let policy dictate the facts they choose to pay attention to. Our government has been diligently collecting data, looking at the real-world impacts around very difficult issues like prostitution to make sure that whatever path we take as we make improvements, as we continue to be committed as a feminist government, to protecting women, to protecting vulnerable sex workers, these are the things that we need to get right. And it's nice to come at it with an ideology to say, hey, we have the quick and easy solution. I think we've seen there aren't quick and easy solutions, only a lot of work we need to do working with community members, working with intervenors, working with partners to get the answers right. And that's the hard work this government has been doing for many years.

[Suspenseful music ends]

<beat>

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Regardless of what the politicians decide to do, there’s still the case at hand. And I wanted to ask Chief Ramer about Alloura.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Looking back now with a couple of years of hindsight, do you think the investigation into the Alloura Wells' death was adequate?

CHIEF RAMER: I mean, particularly at the start, you know, we did not do this well. And it's unfortunate. I really feel for the family and what they've had to endure with the loss of a loved one.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] So let's go back to the beginning. Toronto police get a report of a woman's body found in the Rosedale ravine from two hikers who just sort of stumbled across it. What went into the decision not to tell the public, the media, the community, you know, why keep that information to yourself?

CHIEF RAMER: And I've got I have no answer for you, Justin. It was wrong. You know, the the homicide squad wasn't notified as per procedure and a public reach out, particularly to that community, would have been very, very important to do and a very important step. And so, these were things that were done poorly.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] In the weeks before I did this interview, I started piecing together what, exactly, police had done in Alloura’s case. Specifically, what did police do to look into Alloura's boyfriend — Augustinus Balesdent. We know, from Justice Epstein’s report, that the restraining order against Balesdent, it actually ordered him to stay away from another trans woman. Epstein heard, like we did, that Balesdent was violent towards Alloura, and she reported that. After an unidentified body had been found, police had been given Balesdent’s name as someone who they ought to talk to.

But there’s another line in there that makes absolutely no sense. Justice Epstein writes that quote: “Mr. Balesdent has not been located.”

Yet we have his court records. We know he’s been located! He’s been arrested at least twice! In the Village, there’s a rumour that I heard when I first started working on this project. I was told that the police did interview Balesdent. So, armed with his court records and that bit of information, I went to the Toronto Police. In an email statement, the Toronto Police acknowledged that, in early August, they started talking to people in the ravine. The officers were told: Go find Augustinus Balesdent. So, police issued a BOLO — a be on the lookout for. But here’s something that police have never admitted before now: Some time in early August, not long after an unidentified body was found - Augustinus Balesdent was quote “investigated as someone who may have known the person found.” An officer questions him but quote “establishes no connection” between Balesdent and the found remains.”

[Train tracks]

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] I'm wondering what you can tell me about about those early days of the investigation in terms of whether or not you think even just those interviews that were being done were complete enough?

CHIEF RAMER: Yeah, there were there were some interviews that were done and there were there were others that were not done well and not completed. And, you know, when you look at Mr. Balesdent is one of the people that were, you know, believed to be one of the last people that saw Alloura, you know, some of the manner in which our members investigated that was was problematic as well.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] There are so many questions about Balesdent. When he was interviewed by police when they were trying to identify the body, why didn't he mention Alloura -- his girlfriend who he had not seen in weeks? And when Alloura was reported missing, why didn’t he come forward? Or tell Michelle or Monica that he had been interviewed after a trans woman's body had been found? It seems he just kept this information to himself. What’s more: It wouldn’t be hard for police to connect Balesdent and Alloura. It was pretty clear from their Facebook pages they were in a relationship. They were likely arrested together. In that email from the police, they say that On December 6, 2017, investigators filled out the paperwork so that Balesdent could be added to a police database. That should have ensured that, if police anywhere encountered him, the investigators on Alloura’s case would be notified. But, and I’m quoting here, “this paperwork was never processed.”

CHIEF RAMER: Some of the manner in which our members investigated that was was problematic as well in terms of it was even in terms of how paperwork was submitted, how things were put on the system. And it's just a series of mistakes.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] And saying it’s just a series of mistakes is putting it lightly. The failure to file that paperwork meant that when Balesdent was arrested in July 2019, and June 2020, he was not questioned about Alloura’s death. Or, as the police phrase it: “no further action is taken.” None of this has ever been released publicly. In May, 2021, the Toronto Police Service tell me in an email that “investigators are still interested in speaking with Balesdent.”

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] We now know that Mr. Balesdent was interviewed, you know, in the days after that body was found. Is there anything in that interview that looking back now would indicate, you know, that Mr. Balesdent might actually be a suspect?

CHIEF RAMER: Well, what I will say to you is that that investigation is still ongoing. And so it's it's it is being worked on by our cold case squad at Homicide. And so I'm not going to go into a lot of the details about it.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Has Augustinus Balesdent been interviewed since Alloura was identified?

CHIEF RAMER: [hesitant] I belie -- that that I'm not sure of. That I'm not sure of. I know there's a couple of times that he was arrested and released and he had not been spoken to even as recently as last year.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] You know, he's not hard to find. And by all indication, he's still not been interviewed about this death. And this isn't a problem of the initial investigators, this is a problem that's ongoing. And what does that say to you?

CHIEF RAMER: What I'm going to say to you is that that Alloura Wells' death is still being investigated and is being investigated by the cold case squad of the homicide unit.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Let me ask you this. Do you think that Alloura's case would still be outstanding, that her body would have been unidentified for this long, that a person of interest would have gone uninterviewed for this long? Do you think all of that would have happened if she were not transgender?

CHIEF RAMER: When someone is found dead, it is a traumatic event. And I, quite frankly, have never seen anyone — and I spent five years in the homicide squad — look at an individual and decide because of their gender or where they were born or whatever else was going to influence how we investigated that case. So, I'm not so sure that that is necessarily that I agree with that at all. And I think, quite frankly, for me to do anything else would just be pure speculation.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Alloura was homeless. She had engaged in sex work. She had used drugs. Do you think the fact that the Toronto Police Service was still, at least at that point, you know, making some some pretty determined arrests for drug use, drug possession, for sex work, do you think that that may have hindered the investigation into her death and the willingness by some of her friends or people who knew her to come forward?

CHIEF RAMER: Well, you know what? I will acknowledge that we've got a long history with the communities there in the Village that are problematic. And we were part of that problem going back years. So, you're absolutely right. There is distrust that no doubt perhaps influenced people and whether they would come forward and have the confidence to talk to us that that may have had useful evidence. I absolutely do agree with you there that that that has been the case. When you speak specifically to the Alloura Wells case, there's just been some pretty shoddy police work. We may want to say that for purposes today that we know that it was because, you know, there they had something against the transgender community. But quite frankly, in my view, it was just shoddy police work. There was an individual in that case that we we would have laid charges with under the police act. But that individual retired, so we didn't have jurisdiction and couldn't proceed.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Can you say what those charges would have been?

CHIEF RAMER: They would have been neglect of duty.

<beat>

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] We want to make sure that Alloura's family knows what we've learned. So, my producer Jennifer gives her sister Michelle a call.

[Phone beeps illustrate a phone call]

MICHELLE WHEELER: Hello?

JENNIFER: Hi, how are you?

MICHELLE WHEELER: I'm good, how are you?

JENNIFER: I'm OK.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] For years, Michelle has believed that Balesdent was in jail when Alloura died. Because that's what he told her. I would never leave her, he said in a Facebook message. I wasn't with her.

[Phone conversation continues]

JENNIFER: As far as we can tell, and we've looked through all his court records, he was not in jail during that time.

MICHELLE WHEELER: So. So, he's been lying all this time, obviously.

JENNIFER: So, what the police confirm to us is that not long after she was found, like in the two weeks, 12 days after she was found, the police did talk to him. They did talk to him.

MICHELLE WHEELER: Oh, my God.

JENNIFER: And what they tell us is that they made no connection.

MICHELLE WHEELER: Now, that's really, really messed up, so he actually was questioned about it, but, oh my God. That's crazy. I don't know how to feel anymore, like, like why is he so brazen and like…

JENNIFER: So, there's more.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Jennifer tells Michelle that police say they're still looking for Balesdent.

[Phone conversation continues]

JENNIFER: So, we went to the police with this information and said, have you ever interviewed him? And they said that they were supposed to file the paperwork with CPIC which is like the central database for police, that lets the police know, you know, to question somebody. And that the paperwork was not properly filed.

MICHELLE WHEELER: Whoever's not doing their job, that's really horrible. Yeah, there's a lot of red flags there. A lot. Like the fact that he's been lying this whole time, that he said that he's been in jail. I would at least like them to try to locate him and talk to him about the actual case and you know have somebody who's good at reading people, um you know. Well, I'm glad that I know, you know, this. And I'm just hoping that something can be done.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] I don’t know if Balesdent was involved in any way in Alloura’s death. I don’t know if he was lying about being in jail, or just mistaken. I know that I have tried repeatedly to get in touch with Balesdent to ask him these questions. In late June, I did get a call from a woman who says she’s Balesdent’s new girlfriend. She told me that Balesdent did not want to talk.

GIRLFRIEND: [over the phone] Hi, so I’m Augustinus’s girlfriend.

JUSTIN LING: [over the phone] Oh, hello.

GIRLFRIEND: [over the phone] Yeah, and he won’t talk about it.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] This was probably the closest I was going to get to asking Balesdent myself.

JUSTIN LING: [over the phone] We know that over the weeks that she died, Augustinus was not in prison, like he said. So...

GIRLFRIEND: [over the phone] No he was with me.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] She says she was with Balesdent when Alloura died. They were having an affair, she told me. I have no idea what to make of her. Is she covering for Balesdent? Telling me what I want to hear? I can’t verify any of this. And really. this is a job for the cops.

GIRLFRIEND: [over the phone] And if Toronto Police want to find him, they know where to find him.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] If Toronto Police want to find him, they know where to find him. For her whole life, the city failed Alloura. The city failed her when it criminalized her again and again, picking her up on petty shoplifting charges or for prostitution. It failed her when she had to resort to sleeping in a ravine. It failed her when she was left to lie in a morgue for months, without her friends or her family knowing.

And now we learn that, even in death, the city couldn’t help but fail her one last time. By totally failing to speak to the man that might hold the key to explaining how she died. Alloura was abandoned. But it didn’t have to be this way. She didn’t have to be trapped in cycles of poverty, homelessness criminalization. These are choices we, as a society, make. And they are choices we could just as easily make differently.

<beat>

MICHELLE WHEELER: At her funeral they played Butterfly by Mariah Carey. It was like a butterfly funeral. The song Butterfly came on and everyone had a paper butterfly and stuck it on the casket.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] Who organized that?

MICHELLE WHEELER: Uh, Monica. She did so much. Yeah and she helped me through the whole thing and we figured it all out together. I have a lot of respect for that woman.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] She's lovely, yeah.

[Sad music begins]

MONICA FORRESTER: I did a GoFundMe page because the family, because they - you know - had no money. So, we wanted to make sure she had a burial and a proper funeral. And also, someone donated one of their plots. You know I made that ten thousand dollars in days. So, there were people that really seen the need to put her to rest in the right way. And people missed her immensely. She was a staple in our community, just like all of us are. And she's very much missed. Her life was cut short because of circumstance. And yeah for a lot of us this is something we see all the time. It's nothing new. But it hits home, especially when it's someone in your community that you love dearly or that you're used to seeing every day, or for me at my job. Or at different community events. She didn't allow her misfortunes in her life to really -- to stop her from being the loving person she was.

LAYLA: I keep getting drawn back there just to her spirit. I still go down there. I don't know why.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Layla, her childhood friend, still visits the ravine where Alloura lived … just to remember what could have been.

LAYLA: She would have been an Instagram sensation for sure (laughs) A makeup artist … who knows. She would have been definitely a face of the LGBT for sure. If she actually recognized and believed in herself, I don't think she would have spent too much time here like this. You know, she just had too much too much potential, too much talent, like sooner or later she would have just found herself.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Every year, on November 20, the trans community gets together to remember who they lost. In November, 2020, I went to a small, outdoor gathering for the Transgender Day of Remembrance. This one was being held outside a particularly queer-affirming church in the west end of the city. On long strings tied to the signs out front are hundreds of blue and pink ribbons.

DOUG: [From the church] These are all people who died typically from violence in 2020.

JUSTIN LING: [interview clip] So pick any name. Yeah.

DOUG: [From the church] We’re just writing their name.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] There are more than 400 names of trans people who have been lost in the past year around the world.

JUSTIN LING: [CLIP] Jesus Santos, Ruby Ferria. Yeah so, a 35 year old from Brazil. Was shot. Paula … some of them are just first names. Some of them are full names. There's even one that says unknown.

SUSAN GAPKA: [At the event] My name is Susan Gapka. So now I'd like to read from this book Trans Activism in Canada. It's called Pause and Reflect. Let us pause and reflect for a moment for transphobia is a mark against humanity. My humanity, our humanity. For those of us who couldn't come out, for those of us who could not withstand the fear and hate, and for those of us who just had to be themselves no matter what. Let us pause and reflect for a moment.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] There are so many stories behind the names on those ribbons. And so many other stories in Toronto, and around the world, of trans people who have been lost.

SUSAN GAPKA: [At the event] So Julie was a courageous community member who spoke out against discrimination and transphobia.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] In 2019, a longtime trans activist Julie Berman was killed in her home in Toronto. What’s particularly frustrating is that Julie advocated for justice for many other trans women who had faced violence and who had been failed by police.

SUSAN GAPKA: [At the event] I shared a stage with Julie at the 519’s Trans Day of Remembrance, when she spoke passionately about her own vulnerability and experience. I had opened the vigil component with a moment of silence. As the vigil host, Julie's opening words remain so poignant that she said to the audience to open: do me a favor. Turn to your neighbor and tell them that you are beautiful. Julie, you are beautiful.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Police have made an arrest in Julie’s murder. When I sat in Allen Garden’s Park with Susan, she mentioned something really briefly that I’ve been thinking about a lot.

SUSAN GAPKA: [At the event] One of my dreams would be to actually have an inquiry of some sort into missing and murdered. Maybe we've got to use a different language, but it does cover it. Trans people across Canada, because I think I'd like to see our national government create some sort of mechanism for us to look at that on a national scale.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Maybe that’s exactly what we need.

SUSAN GAPKA: [At the event] Let us pause and reflect for a moment. For people like Sean Keegan, Diana Wilkinson, Cassandra Do, Kyle Scanlon, and now we'll add Julie Berman to the list.

[Audible deep breaths]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] In June 2018 - a few months after Alloura's funeral — Toronto held its annual trans pride march. One of the largest in the world.

[Busy street, party, parade noise]

MONICA FORRESTER: [CLIP] I came out 30 years ago. We didn't have a march. We stood on the sidelines. So, it's great that we actually have a day to celebrate who we are and see the diversity of people around gender, non-binary, culture, creed. It's just beautiful.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Monica was there, at the very front, wielding a bullhorn. She now runs her own advocacy group: it’s called Trans Pride Toronto.

MONICA FORRESTER: We now have a drop-in starting next month, we hired people in the community to be helpers. So, we're empowering people to give them skills. We're creating more spaces. We have an online support group for during COVID, which has been really great. It's really given me this energy to really be the first ever trans-run agency in Toronto. Alloura Wells has really kind of stuck fire up my ass [Laughter] to really push me to really make change. Her death has really driven me to really push for more accessible spaces run by trans people. Not what cisgendered people or queer people think that we need. We need spaces that really empower people, advocate and push people, and support people and get them housed and do what we need to do to support them in their lives.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] Nicki Ward was there too.

NICKI WARD: [CLIP] I've been here since 2009 when we weren't allowed to be here. You couldn't keep me away even when they were trying to. And now they actually want us here, isn't that amazing?

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] The Toronto Police service had been disinvited from the parade altogether.

MARCHER 1: We have this big, beautiful banner that says queers imagine a future without policing.

MARCHER 2: We are here to ask queers and trans folks and all of our friends to imagine a world without police and a society where we can think about other ways of making justice together that are informed by our queer and trans expertise and lives.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] In the crowd are activists young and old. There are a ton of kids. A sea of white, blue, and pink flags. More than a thousand members of the community came out. The sea of people stretches for blocks and blocks. Pride, at its core, was a marriage of protest and celebration. Today was about celebration — of a community determined to look after itself. Queer newspaper Xtra was there to document the scene.

MARCHER 3: I just kind of wanted to meet other people like me. And there's not many people in my community back home, so it's just nice to be here.

MARCHER 4: I am here today because I am celebrating my transness as a non-binary 2 spirit.

MARCHER 5: I think we all deserve to have a community without borders, education, health and rights, human rights.

MARCHER 6: We need to celebrate who we are. We need to reclaim our spaces // So we are proud of who we are out loud and here.

MARCHER 7: in our countries, this doesn't really exist. So, like to be able to see all these people support like who we are and be proud of ourselves. it's just amazing.

CROWD CHANTS: We're here, we're queer, we're fabulous, don't fuck with us, we're here we're queer, we're fabulous, don't fuck with us ....

MARCHER 8: My name is Katie and I'm from South Korea and I just came here 10 months ago. And this pride is the biggest reason I choose to come to Canada. It feels so free and I feel like myself.

MARCHER 9: My name is Kazdin, a.k.a. Quin. That's my drag persona. And I'm just this big old queer, non-binary alien that came out tonight.

MARCHER 10: Trans people have a right to exist and they have a right to be exactly who they are. They have a right to love. They have a right to jobs. They have a right to security. They have a right to healthcare. People die every day for being trans on this planet and it needs to stop.

CROWD CHANTS: Hey Hey! Ho Ho! Transphobia has got to go!

MARCHER 11: I'm originally from Barbados. I came here to Canada so that I can live my life free of judgment and prejudice.

MARCHER 12: As a visible minority and trans woman, it's important for me to be here in the mix of things carrying on with the activism that is necessary to move the trans community forward.

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] At the front of the march, right next to Monica, someone is carrying a big, handwritten sign that says Justice for Alloura.

[Episode ending music begins]

MONICA FORRESTER: [On stage at the parade] Every day. We all should be celebrating our bodies! Our choices! Who we are! We should be free to express who we are, love who we are, and respect each and every one of us! [big cheers]

JUSTIN LING: [VOICEOVER] The Village is written and produced by me, Justin Ling and Jennifer Fowler.

Sound design was by Julia Wittmann, with help from Evan Kelly.

Our associate producer is Eunice Kim and our digital producer is Fabiola Melendez Carletti.

Alex V Green, Faith Fundal and Chris Oke are our story editors.

Our senior producer is Cesil Fernandes.

Evan Aagaard is our Video Producer.

Ben Shannon designed our artwork.

Our cross-promo producer is Amanda Cox.

Special thanks to Natalya Ferguson and Kate Zieman at the CBC Reference Library

Thank you to Xtra for the audio of the 2018 Trans Pride march.

Thanks, as well, to the Arquives, Canada’s LGBTQ archives.

The Executive Producer of CBC Podcasts is Arif Noorani.

Our Senior Director is Leslie Merklinger.

If you haven’t listened yet, please go back and listen to The Village Season One — my investigation into serial killer Bruce McArthur and the spate of unsolved murders from the Village, dating back to the 70’s. All nine episodes are available now on the CBC Listen app or wherever you get your podcasts.

[Episode ending music ends]

Transcript: The Village, S2 E5: Accountability and Apologies

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