Found Dead In A River: Who Killed Reena? | Real Stories True Crime Documentary

[Music] [Music] source of life and cause of death water can wash away clues dilute evidence and conceal corpses for investigators water can be a cunning opponent for criminals a most accommodating ally for the perfect crime just add water [Music] one of the most chilling cases in canadian history the victim and the perpetrators are all teenagers between 13 and 16 years old and all but one are girls a crime so violent it sent shock waves through victoria the peaceful capital of british columbia and made headlines around the world reena virk who has been living in a foster home was going to spend the weekend with her parents [Music] on friday night a friend calls to invite her to a party by the river marina first says she would rather stay home but in the end decided to go rina's mother is concerned for the safety of her rebellious daughter i don't know if i feel comfortable about this her mother said don't go these girls don't like you why would you go well i think they want to bury the hatchet i think they want to make it right and she agreed to meet them by early morning rena has not returned her mother calls the foster home but rena is not there either by law the foster home is obligated to notify police when residents miss their curfew for a youth to go missing on a friday night and be reported missing especially from a foster home which is where this girl was at the time is not unusual at all normally they return home within 72 hours by monday morning rina is still missing the police make inquiries at her school in the following days disturbing rumors begin circulating among the students the number one rumor was that there had been some sort of altercation and that a young girl had gone missing or in fact perhaps had even been murdered and what made the case a little more difficult at the beginning was some of the kids had reported seeing the missing girl after she was allegedly murdered so the information was inconsistent this is a young lady who had been missing before had been reported missing before and as a result we believed that she would probably show up in the next couple of days like she had in the past rina's parents emigrated from india desperate for attention she was excluded by her peers and became estranged from her family some accounts nice girl other accounts she's lied about things to do with her parents she's lied about things to do with her friends and she had a hard time fitting in so she would do what she could to fit in rumors circulate that she was savagely beaten by a swarm of kids and that she had died from the attack but there was nothing concrete we didn't have anybody who had seen her be killed we had nobody who had heard firsthand because we're trying to get a feel are we doing a missing person case here we're doing a homicide investigation finally the police get the lead they've been searching for someone identifies chloe and jessie and said they've been bragging about beating rena so badly that they broke her nose it happens that these two girls actually live at the same foster home with rena the police pay them a visit and take them in for questioning things begin moving quickly after that it wasn't very long before the first girl started confessing to the being involved in the assault to what she knew about the actual murder she didn't witness the murder and she only had it second and third hand bob downey gets the first confession chloe gives him the names of all the attackers one boy and seven girls the boy is 15 years old and the youngest girl has only just turned 13. but one confession isn't enough bob downey authorizes arrest warrants for all of the suspects he takes charge of their interrogations this is not a case where you had young people breaking down and crying and getting upset and i can recall a number of the young females who were responsible for the assault sitting in there and chatting and laughing and i recall walking through there almost feeling disgusted it was almost unexpected the police learned that these kids often meet under the craig flower bridge in a riverside park the bridge is near their school and each week they party there until late into the night a favorite hangout hidden from the watchful eyes of adults where the kids feel free to do anything they want the victim was lured to this location under the auspices of coming to a party and you know they set her up they lured her there and they were ready and had planned to beat her and that's what they did on this particular night rina had decided to join the group under the bridge when rena saw chloe arrive she knew she wasn't invited to the party to bury the hatchet chloe immediately starts in on her [Music] one girl even had a cigarette and burned her right in the middle of the forehead which my opinion would be that because of the victim's uh ethnicity that that would have been an insult to her and her customs and to her family and everyone and i think that would have been done intentionally and missed a girl responded with a swing back and basically the fight was on and then other kids started jumping in to the point that eight kids jumped in they swarmed her she had no way out she there was no way she was going to win this or escape with the mob mentality that kicked him at that point she had nobody in the world there was nobody there for her there's nobody on her side one of our suspects finally saw that she had had enough and this girl was tough she was a kickboxer she had been in fights before and they knew that she was a tough girl and she made the other kids stop she said enough she's had enough anybody else wants to hit her is going to have to go through me and it was good that she did that because that assault would have carried on they stole her bag from her and they it was almost like like rats with a piece of meat when the swarming is over the attackers leave rena to her fate so she was mobile at that time she was walking slow some describe her staggering she didn't talk to anybody and started walking across the bridge in an easterly direction or towards saanich kids that saw her describe her face as being bruised already bloody nose and like i say staggering in her walk all eight of the young attackers make a pact they agree that reno was last seen crossing the craig flower bridge then a twist six of the kids say that warren and kelly broke away from the group and followed rina but kelly and warren insist that they simply went home the contradictory statements lead the police to expand their investigation from a missing person's case to a possible homicide police decide to focus their search in the river under the bridge the gorge is a tidal river that flows from victoria harbor it's overgrown with weeds and brush and has a strong current the police are well aware that their search will be tough [Music] well the water it's your enemy it's an enemy for any kind of investigation especially with forensics is both a psychological barrier for policemen and for criminals quite often a criminal will dispose of something in the water thinking he's gone no one's gonna find it i'm safe it's been thrown you know quote unquote in the ocean well that's what the dive team's there for us to remove that psychological barrier to go down there and to find the stuff the dive team has determined the search area taking into account the level of the tide on the night of the crime the river isn't very deep but the bottom is mud every step makes the water more murky for the divers this means visibility is almost nil they will have to feel their way in the dark rick gosling knows how hard it is to look for evidence under water you do it first quite often by touch and from a flat muddy surface to suddenly reaching out and touching a body can be quite emotional quite uh scary um and then out of the the gloom i suppose you'd say the body sort of blooms up on you and the fact that visibility is so bad you have to be quite close to actually confirm that it is a body and psychologically it's very hard on a lot of divers [Music] they make the first discovery a pair of girls underwear most of the items we find are on the bottom they're not floating anymore they're not subject to the tides quite often objects that sink to the bottom even light objects um like clothing or papers or things like that once they become waterlogged and touch the bottom quite often they stay there as on dry land every precaution has to be taken when recovering evidence under water [Music] you never know what small amounts of evidence may still be just slightly clinging to the fabric so what we try to do is every time we seize an object under water we try to have a large enough bag we can encompass it without perhaps picking it up and moving it and in that way we also capture some of the water that's immediately surrounding the object that may or may not contain um trace evidence hairs fibers things like that next the dive team finds a pair of jeans so at that point we thought that we were on the right track we had been moving in the direction that we thought a missing girl might be if she'd gone into the water at that time we felt confident that within a short period of time we we might find her hours pass and the divers have found nothing more than the two pieces of clothing it was very frustrating and we felt sure that she must be somewhere it would have to be an extremely unusual heavy vast current to move a body once it's on the bottom so we we weren't sure why we weren't finding uh the missing girl if we found her clothing unless perhaps she just wasn't there a week has passed and rena is still missing crown prosecutor stan lowe is anxious to charge the suspects as soon as possible but on what grounds will the teenagers be charged with rina's assault or with her murder a 14 year old girl has been missing for a week and is now presumed dead one boy and seven girls are in custody in victoria british columbia these kids have admitted to savagely beating reena virk as yet no charges have been laid against them the investigators continue to search for the missing girl a coast guard helicopter is brought in to help with the search the waters is very dark it looks almost like a deep deep gray color um at that time of year we passed over the dive team and we're only within about 400 meters of the dive team when we actually we'd only just really started the search and uh just absolutely surprised i looked down and there she was in the water she was very very well hidden from both uh the shore and from uh boat on the water however from the helicopter position right above it was crystal clear that she was there the investigators are surprised that rina's body was not found downstream of the bridge where they had recovered her clothing contrary to logic the body had drifted upstream and became snagged in the tall weeds hiding it from sight except from the air she was floating just below the surface probably an inch or two she was wearing a t-shirt as i recall um but of course nothing else we found the clothing she had on both her her jeans and her underwear prior to that so it was really just a t-shirt she was wearing the divers proceed with caution to avoid disturbing the muddy riverbed around the body being careful not to destroy any trace evidence obviously the body had been in the water for a week how much if any physical evidence or dna would there be for the chief investigator bob downey the discovery of the body means they can now begin to build a murder case so the finding the body it's almost a relief it's one less thing to do and it sounds cold to say that but we now have a crime scene that we have to go in and deal with it in a forensic manner and we have a body so that puts other investigative steps into place the news of the discovery sends shock waves through victoria people are horrified and outraged that a group of teenagers could commit such a ruthless crime the murder attracts worldwide attention it had a big impact on the city in my opinion because of the age of the people involved and the fact that you had a young girl who'd been murdered in the area in which she lived and not just that but that you had other young people almost children i mean we're talking about people 13 and 14 15 years of age who were the suspects in this so this wasn't a case of a pedophile or something like this but this was you know children murdering other children what makes this case particularly disturbing is that all the accused are teenagers seven out of the eight are girls rina's body has been taken for an autopsy finding the cause of death is crucial if she died because of the beating there would be eight murderers if she drowned there would be only two suspects warren and kelly whatever the outcome the autopsy bears witness to the extreme brutality of the attack what i can tell you is that the missing girl suffered significant trauma [Music] deep deep tissue bruising she had internal organs that were bruised it was significant trauma it was of a crushing nature i've seen several autopsies i haven't seen this level of bruising take place before short of it perhaps in a car crash that type of injury the results prove rena did not die from her beating deep in the tissue of her lungs the pathologist finds traces of gravel i attended the autopsy as the exhibit officer and the cause of death was while she was she was drowned and i believe that was indicative with the victim being forced down it was fairly shallow water where she was drowned and probably the last attempt to get a gasp of breath and near the bottom and sucking those small pebbles from the ocean floor into her throat [Music] the investigators focused their efforts on warren according to the testimony of the gang he is one of the two kids who followed rena on the bridge after the attack warren's life has been difficult at 16 he's been living on his own for over a year his father has moved to california and the last time warren saw his mother she was dead drunk in her trailer park warren became fascinated by a los angeles gang called the crips they inspired him to start his own the [ __ ] mafia cartel he would always wear white and his gang blue he took the investigators to the scene basically walked them through what had happened minimizing his own involvement more as i was there i saw it happening i believe he might have said he was perfectly involved in a bit of the assault the police begin to put pressure on warren they tell him that rina's body has been pulled from the river and was nude below the waist they suspect she had been raped and dna analysis would prove if it was worn they also explained that they are looking for fingerprints on all the evidence in particular from the running shoes they found on the riverbank for the first time warren looks off balance he admits that he and kelly demanded that rina take off her jacket and shoes and that he had picked them up desperate for help warren asks to speak to his father he was overheard yelling on the telephone to his father and he swore he's really [ __ ] up you know that's it's about what he did it's not about what happened to the to the missing girl and that's again typical with most of these kids the interrogations are complicated by the youth criminal justice act warren is 16 and kelly 15 at the time of the murder kelly simply refuses to cooperate she declares that she had no idea what happened after rina walked over the bridge even though witnesses had seen her and warned following rena the police can go no further with the youth criminal justice act and with the young offenders act of the day once they say i don't want to give a statement we have to stop kelly lives with her mother and stepfather a middle-class family in her group of peers kelly is the most laid back and withdrawn soon after her arrest the police search kelly's locker at school they make some disturbing discoveries one thing i distinctly remember is some drawings that were seized from the school locker of the female suspect one of them which depicted a police officer being shot and the bullets hitting the officer and then blood spurting out chloe also dreams of becoming a gangster like her hero al capone in fact she's made a good start in that direction which is why she's ended up in a foster home jessie's story is a similar one her mother couldn't control her violent behavior and placed her in the home with the hopes that it would calm her down armed with dozens of search warrants the police looked for evidence from all the suspects they even seized the clothing they wore on the night of the attack all these exhibits are sent to the forensic lab for analysis the dive team returns to the crime scene searching the riverbed for any evidence they may have overlooked we started coming across little things a small address book um pens uh like a pencil a funny little eraser and then we started coming across papers individual leaves of paper about the size of a journal you would have thought they had been they they would have been washed away but they were still stuck on the bottom and it was obvious very shortly after that that this was the missing girl's diary that that was pretty emotional [Music] rina's diary is sent to the rcmp forensic lab maybe it holds some clues that will lead to her murderer renoverk has been swarmed savagely beaten and drowned by a youth gang police search for clear motives behind such a cruel attack on a 14 year old girl the police dive team has just recovered greena's personal diary in the gorge river the diary is sent to the rcmp forensic lab john kovacs a document specialist gets down to work every second counts as the water continues to dissolve the paper dilute the ink and wash away trace evidence [Music] the first the most important thing was to separate out the single pages so that any information that was visually present could be preserved and passed on to the investigator all evidence found in water must be bagged with the surrounding water to preserve trace evidence in the case of paper documents it has to be done quickly before the paper decomposes paper when created is probably 97 water and a few fibers kicking around as it's actually created into paper it removes the water and the fibers are left in place now that the document has a natural fact and subject to an environment where moisture is there it swells considerably and starts to break down into its component parts the first task is to separate the pages that have begun to bind together there were in fact areas that had been eroded in this particular instance almost all of it was readable text and was a natural thought predominantly written with a ballpoint pen which is not a water-soluble link i did in this particular instance create a photocopy record of all the documents so that the investigator could in actual fact handle that with no concern as to possibly causing any kind of problem with the original document itself [Music] john kovac's objective is to preserve the documents so they can establish potential links between events and people that might shed light on rena's swarming the police widen their search they begin to question family and friends of the accused in order to piece together a motive for this violent attack [Music] the investigators discover that in the two weeks leading up to the attack chloe and jesse rina's roommates at the foster home had been on the telephone a lot with kelly [Music] when they were in the planning process they had talked about bizarre things like taking her into the woods and burying her in a hole i mean again this is all you know what other kids have told us investigators learned why chloe and jessie were angry with rena she'd stolen chloe's address book and then phoned chloe's friends telling them horrible lies about her things like chloe had aids chloe was absolutely furious worse still rena had been flirting with sam jesse's boyfriend the girls had seen her wearing his jacket some even said that rina had slept with sam when jessie heard that she screamed that she would take revenge on rena absolutely it was payback you can't do this to me you can't sleep with my boyfriend you can't take my books and call my friends and say that i'm i'm good friends with you because you're a misfit but nothing gave a strong motive to warren and kelly to commit such a brutal act throughout the interrogations warren gives several different versions of the events he maintains for the longest time how he'd simply headed home without having seen rena again but the police have an eyewitness what we have is uh an eyewitness who says the missing girl going and then two others going and as we described it later on we have three people going across the bridge only two came back [Music] warren finally admits that what the witness said was true he really intended to go home but kelly asked him to stay she said come on let's go see if rina's okay later he told us i knew we weren't going to see if she was okay we were going to do her more harm warren finally gives a full confession to the investigators the girl asked the missing girl are you going to rat us out and she's beaten she's beat up and she's got no means of protecting herself and of course her answer was no i'm not going to rat you out the girl the suspect then said we're not done they took her jacket and they took her shoes they folded those things up and they put them off to one side so now they started with an upping again to humiliate her even further to to again show that power that they had over here and then the boy and the girl just started beating on the missing girl they started both of them punching kicking it was a horrific scene to the point that she went unconscious the two of them then dragged her down to the gorge waterway on the way down her her jeans started sliding down exposing her buttocks warren says that when they arrived near the water he saw that kelly wanted to drag rena into the river he asked her three times to stop but kelly didn't she pulled rina into the river deep enough to hold her head underwater for a very long time boy described seeing red foam coming to the surface from from where the girl is being held under and he would see this in the moonlight that was a full moon that night kelly continues to deny everything she maintained she'd simply gone back home that night like all the others she remembers taking a shower before going to bed she insists that the others had decided to make her the scapegoat but she is innocent [Music] in the end the diary does not offer any new clues i probably didn't know a lot about the victim but formed some opinions from reading her diary and i felt that this was a young girl growing up wanting to be accepted wanting to be popular having probably difficulty in the home because of their expectations which were normal expectations because of the value system of her parents and her you know battling against that despite some limited evidence the lawyers have their work cut out for them they must prepare strong cases against eight accused six for aggravated assault and two for second-degree murder prosecutors decide that warren and kelly will be tried as adults in victoria british columbia eight teenagers stand trial for the beating and murder of rena burke six young girls are charged with aggravated assault warren glowatsky and kelly ellard are charged with murder people around the world await the results the assault case is airtight and should be over quickly the prosecutors have evidence eyewitnesses and confessions the girls are charged under the youth criminal justice act they all plead guilty and are sentenced to between six months and a year in jail warren and kelly are tried as adults both repeal the decisions but the appeals are rejected there are no witnesses to the murder no one saw kelly or warren drag arena towards the river and drown her crown attorney stan lowe is looking for concrete evidence that will put the suspects at the scene of the crime could water have washed away the incriminating evidence the first piece of evidence is the pair of jeans that warren was wearing the night in question will they put him at the scene of the crime he was wearing white jeans he had a girlfriend at the time and as i mentioned he was had one of the witnesses that was sleeping over at his house both the girlfriend and the witness described as about a dime size or quarter size what they thought was blood stain on his jeans he took his jeans and his socks and he washed them he actually asked for instructions how to bleach the spot out of his pants when we got the jeans later on we're able to find the mark but we're unable to trace it back to actually being blood and that's because of the bleach that was used he didn't want to be tied to that at all he knew there was evidence there and he did everything he could to get rid of that evidence the next pieces of evidence are the shoes worn by the accused each pair is placed in individual exhibit bags scott green examines the shoes at the rcmp forensic lab he notices something strange what i found later was those shoes albeit they appeared to be dry when they went in the bag they started to sweat and water leached out of those shoes and formed in the bottom of those bags that didn't happen with any of the other shoes that we seized and my theory today is that those were the same shoes that those two suspects were wearing the night of the murder they got soaking wet and they never completely dried out the forensic analysis was deemed inconclusive it was not strong enough to place them at the scene of the crime the third piece of evidence is the pair of genes recovered downstream of the victim forensic analysis found no dna evidence to put rena in the jeans the fourth piece of evidence is the jacket found near the craig flower bridge the jacket had its own interesting story it was taken from the girl it was folded up and put down a person coming by on a bicycle found the jacket thought it might belong to a friend of theirs they picked up the jacket saw blood on the jacket and they took it home and washed it the crown attorney knows that without concrete evidence it will be nearly impossible to place the suspects at the scene although warren has made many confessions kelly has denied everything warren goes to trial first charged with second-degree murder from the beginning warren looks vulnerable he looked young small nervous apprehensive prosecutor stan lowe begins with a powerful opening statement three crossed the bridge only two came back warren admits to crossing the bridge with kelly and catching up with rena it's one point for the crown i heard a very generalized antiseptic version of events which shifted blame from himself towards kelly ellard and he portrayed himself as a person who was trying to stop her by asking her to stop no less than three times what he did was minimize his involvement no detail and it was completely devoid of any descriptors of the victim during the course of the incident in cross-examination stan lowe questions warren about the events that night moment by moment but not in chronological order he's counting on this tactic to throw warren off balance he did not discuss what his motivation was so i took him there he spoke in general terms of the events that occurred but i took him through each one i queried him as to what he was thinking a time what was going on what did he expect to happen why would he assist in taking her shoes and jacket he didn't know on questions that that probed into his actions which i say speak louder than words he didn't have a reasonable answer the trial lasts a month the judge delivers a lengthy judgment up until his final word it's impossible to predict what the verdict will be guilty the mandatory sense at that time was a life sentence with no eligibility for parole for seven years warren was 15 years old at the time of the crime 17 when he was sentenced to life in prison [Music] the lawyers believed that warren's conviction would help with kelly's prosecution or so everyone thought in fact the crime has provoked such outrage in victoria that kelly's lawyers have requested that her trial be moved to vancouver 150 kilometers away after two years of delays kelly ellard finally gets her day in court she has admitted to being part of the first beating but to nothing more kelly's lawyer emphasizes that nothing puts his client at the scene of the crime no dna no fingerprints nothing he claims quite simply that warren lied regardless kelly ellard is found guilty and sentenced her lawyer immediately appeals five months later kelly is released catherine murray a colleague of stan lowe has been following the trial the cases that i was working on were the [ __ ] street gang cases when we heard about the appeal and i immediately phoned my office and said i really want to do that ellard case stan was involved in another murder trial and i ended up taking it this was a horrific crime it just terrified the people of victoria for prosecutors that that's just the ultimate challenge it really matters while preparing herself for the trial catherine murray learns that the jacket kelly wore the night of the crime was seized during a search it had what looked to be dried salt stains on the jacket almost up to where the waist would be and up the arms a little bit robert groves at the rcmp laboratory in vancouver examines the stains on kelly's jacket he asks for a water sample from the river to be used for comparison i wanted to try to replicate what would happen if this particular garment not a garment similar to it but this identical garment was in contact with seawater what happens so the collar was dipped the water wicked up into the fabric you could see it gradually soak up into it when i felt that i had enough transferred i removed the collar from the liquid and let the jacket dry once it dried i was able to see a similar pattern of this random line of white material in the area where the collar had been dipped and all i ended up finding basically was the sodium and the chlorine so i was able to basically solve the puzzle to some degree that the jacket certainly could have been in contact with seawater and because the elements that i found on my test area were indistinguishable from the elements i found from the questionnaire the evidence was not sufficient to put kelly at the scene of the crime however catherine murray has an idea of how the jacket might still be put to good use [Music] murray develops another tactic she asks warren to testify at kelly's second trial warren by this time was serving his sentence and he was just working on himself he was getting involved in all sorts of programs taking counseling warren agrees to testify seven years after the crime kelly ellard's second trial begins this time kelly will have to face warren for the first time since their arrest her demeanor was interesting in direct examination by her lawyer she was one way and then in cross-examination she kind of turned and she kept telling me to hurry up i was wasting her time she'd cry she'd deny over and over one point she said no matter what you say the answer is no it was kind of an interesting examination warren told a very compelling story he told how he and kelly then started attacking the victim beating her punching her how she fell to the ground they started kicking her stomping on her actually physically getting on her stomping up and down on her until she stopped moving clearly unconscious how kelly then took one of the victim's feet he took the other and how they started to drag her towards the water how once they got to the water's edge he stopped and he watched as kelly dragged the victim into the water up to about her waist and then how kelly held the victim's head underwater until she stopped moving [Music] he then told us how [Music] the victim was floating at the end of kelly's cross-examination catherine murray pulls out the jacket and shows it to kelly the courtroom is shocked by kelly's reaction i just held it up and i said the jacket tells the story doesn't it and she sort of broke down and said you've got what you wanted i'm going to be convicted i'm going to be in jail for the rest of my life does that make you happy words to that effect the jury's verdict a bombshell after five days of deliberations allah number two resulted in a hung jury 11 guilty and one not guilty when that happened we immediately got on the phone and we started phoning the witnesses told them and they said they'd be there for us again so we started up again and did ellard three warren came through again and she was kelly was found guilty murder second degree murder kelly ellard appeals yet again but in 2009 her conviction is reinstated putting an end to a legal case that spanned more than a decade in 2007 after his apology to the burke family warren galawatsky is granted day parole i don't think this girl died in vain her legacy has accomplished a lot this made international news at the time and what it did is it brought the issue of youth violence to the forefront not just in this city or in this province but right across the country and it was significant warren and kelly believed that water would hide their secrets but that was not the case perina work justice has been served [Music] [Music] [Music] you

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Id: t1NOGFOyAHg

Length: 46min 11sec (2771 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 04 2022