TALE OF A SENSELESS MURDER: CBC drama moves swiftly, surely and with devastating accuracy
By: Richard Ouzounian
December 2, 1991
Helen Betty Osborne was murdered in 1971. It took 16 years to bring her killers to trial and four more years to bring their story to television. In both cases, justice has been only partially done.
There is no question that Conspiracy of Silence (CBC, Dec. 1 and Dec. 2, 8 p.m.) was made with the best of intentions. It is light-years from U.S. shows in the same genre, in which last month's tragedy becomes this month's titilation.
Executive producer Bernard Zukerman, director Francis Mankiewicz and writer Suzette Couture are all intelligent, concerned people who wanted to bring the facts of the Osborne case to the widest possible audience. In doing so, though, they've lost some of the dramatic edge that made their study of Colin Thatcher, Love and Hate, so excitingly memorable.
Certainly, the murder of Helen Betty Osborne has all the requisite ingredients for powerful drama. The 19-year-old Cree student in The Pas, Man., was abducted at random by four drunken white teenagers one November night in 1971. They dragged her into their car and tried to rape her. When she resisted, they stabbed her 50 times with a screwdriver and left her body in the bush.
A few days after the murder, one of the boys involved was discussing it openly and soon most of the town knew who had been involved, but the people closed ranks and thwarted a Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigation.
Because of this conspiracy of silence, no one was arrested. Sixteen years later, a newly stationed RCMP officer re-investigated the case and kept prodding until the veil of secrecy was ripped apart.
The major problem in telling this story is a result of its very structure - a lot of things happen, then 16 years go by, and a lot more things happen. In effect, we see two stories connected by common events and some of the same actors.
As a result, the first two hours of Conspiracy of Silence are much more successful than the final ones. The narrative moves swiftly, surely, and small town life is painted with devastating accuracy.
The gossip, the racist jokes, the male-bonding banter, all the small change that passes for conversational gold in a town like The Pas have been captured perfectly by Couture. And in the first part, the actors are up to the assignment, especially Michael Mahonen as Lee Colgan, the kid who set the whole tragedy in motion through his desire to party on a Friday night.
Carl Marotte is impressive as the RCMP officer who tries hard to close the case, but can't break through the stonewalling. Maury Chaykin has a droll vignette as the Nero Wolfe-ian defence attorney with a penchant for young men and wild animals.
In the second part, all the tension, control, accuracy and precision dissipate. To begin with, there is a new RCMP officer (played excellently by Stephen Ouimette) and a new defence lawyer (a waste of Leon Pownall's considerable talents), which diminishes any momentum that may have built up.
More damaging are the problems inherent in concentrating on Lee Colgan. Mahonen is unconvincing - the attempts to age him from a fresh-faced youth into a hopeless alcoholic are far too artificial. With his moustache and dark-rimmed eyes, he looks for all the world like Charlie Chaplin on a bender.
It is possible to age convincingly - two of the girls (Brooke Johnson and Catherine Disher) manage memorable performances in both halves of the story, but they don't appear nearly often enough to make an impact.
At the end, when the killers are finally brought to trial, the drama regains its power. The entire story of the night is told in flashback, the same device used in In Cold Blood. The Osborne murder is presented as the brutal, senseless act it was; it is not cheaply sensational, but it is horrifying.
What makes it so horrifying is the reason it happened: as one informant told the RCMP: ''Betty was killed because she was native. Her killers all went free because they were white.''
Copyright 1991 Financial Post Ltd.