Innocents: Wheat Kings and Pretty Things

This is an ongoing series telling the stories of wrongful convictions in North America. Some of these stories contain content that may disturb some of you, so if you’re at all squeamish, don’t read them. To read more of these stories, please click here. If you have a story of someone wrongfully convicted, or you were yourself and want to talk about it, please email me at mommy@godlessmom.com. See my two previous series on the American Justice System, The Ultimate Price, and Reasonable Doubt. 

Sundown in the Paris of the prairies Wheat kings have all treasures buried And all you hear are the rusty breezes Pushing around the weathervane Jesus

Deep in the Canadian winter in 1969, a woman’s body was found lifeless in a snowbank in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She had been raped and brutally murdered. Gail Miller had been a nursing student. She was only twenty years old.

At the time, three teenage friends had just arrived in Saskatoon from Regina after making plans to drive across Canada. David Milgaard, Ron Wilson & Nichol John were to set out from Regina, pick up the fourth road tripper, Albert Cadrain, in Saskatoon, and drive until they hit Vancouver. They did just that; having picked up Cadrain, they made their way across the nation.

Somewhere during the trip, however, Cadrain caught wind of a $2000 reward (close to $15,000 by today’s standards) for information leading to the arrest of Gail Miller’s killer.

In March 1969, just two months after Gail was found dead and freshly home from his cross-Canada road trip, Cadrain went to the police and reported that he’d seen his friend, David Milgaard, with blood on his clothes the day of Gail’s murder.

In his Zippo lighter, he sees the killer’s face Maybe it’s someone standing in a killer’s place Twenty years for nothing, well, that’s nothing new Besides, no one’s interested in something you didn’t do

The Saskatoon police immediately opened up an investigation, interviewing Cadrain and Milgaard’s other friends, Wilson and Johns. Unable to accept that Milgaard had an alibi when both Wilson and Johns reported he’d been with them, the police repeatedly interviewed the two, over and over.

Miraculously, the two friends began to change their stories more and more drastically until Nichol finally came out and said she’d seen the actual murder occur.

Exactly one year after Gail’s body was found, David Milgaard, a seventeen-year-old boy, was convicted of her rape and murder and sentenced to life in prison.

There’s a dream he dreams where the high school’s dead and stark It’s a museum, and we’re all locked up in it after dark Where the walls are lined all yellow, grey, and sinister Hung with pictures of our parents’ prime ministers

Ten years later, after numerous attempts to have his conviction reviewed and being targeted unendingly for physical and sexual assault while behind bars, Milgaard finally took matters into his own hands and flew the coop. He busted out of prison and remained on the run for over two months. Unfortunately for David, this resulted in him being captured after being shot and then sent back to prison.

Milgaard, securely locked up once again, set his sights on proving his innocence. After several rejected applications for review, in 1991, Canada’s soon-to-be first female Prime Minister and then Justice Minister, Kim Campbell, accepted the application and set her plans in motion to review the case.

The review was granted based on the fact that new evidence had been made available, such as the recantation of his statements and testimony by Ron Wilson, as well as a confession to six assaults by a man who rented out the basement suite in Cadrain’s parent’s home, Larry Fisher. After the review, the Supreme Court of Canada offered its recommendation: overturn Milgaard’s conviction and retry the case with the new evidence. The attorney general of Saskatchewan, instead, waived the new trial but kept the recommendation Milgaard’s conviction be dropped. He was released in 1992.

Late breaking story on the CBC A nation whispers, “We always knew that he’d go free” They add, “You can’t be fond of living in the past ‘Cause if you are then there’s no way that you’re going to last”

In the years that followed his release, further investigation by the Association in Defence of the Wrongly Convicted (AIDWYC, now Innocence Canada) into what went wrong in his case included a DNA test of the rape kit evidence. The DNA matched that of Larry Fisher. It also uncovered the fact that in 1980, Larry’s wife, Linda, had confided in Saskatoon police that she thought her husband may have been responsible for Miller’s murder. The police dismissed this evidence, which would have shaved 12 years off of the time Milgaard spent in prison.

Milgaard was granted $10 million in compensation for the time he lost in prison.

This was an iconic case in Canadian history. It infiltrated our media for decades. Canadian pop culture has been sprinkled with references to the plight of David Milgaard, not the least of which is Gord Downie’s masterfully poetic lyrics for the hip song, Wheat Kings:

Further reading:

1. Innocence Canada – David Milgaard

2. Wikipedia

3. Canadian Encyclopedia

To read more of these stories, please click here. If you have a story of someone wrongfully convicted, or you were yourself and want to talk about it, please email me at mommy@godlessmom.com. See my two previous series on the American Justice System, The Ultimate Price and Reasonable Doubt. 

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