Autumn is a difficult season for Trevor Brown.
“I try to bring a little levity to the house these days,” he says from the townhouse where his father has lived since 1980. “I’m decorating the house for Halloween. I’ve got some animated characters outside already and I’ve been stuffing the Halloween lawn bags with leaves. This time of year, it’s a constant reminder of this horrible situation we find ourselves in today.”
It was 35 years ago on Oct. 16 that Trevor’s sister Kerrie Ann Brown went missing after attending a small gathering. Her body was later found on a muddy road north of the Burntwood River. She was 15 years old and her murder remains unsolved.
“Kerrie loved autumn so much and she liked being outside and traipsing through the leaves,” Trevor recalls. “All the leaves falling from the trees, it’s just an annual reminder of our tragic loss in 1986, no question. Things are getting cold and we live in the middle of a cold case. Octobers are hard, for sure.”
Despite another anniversary arriving without him knowing the identity of his sister’s killer or killers, Trevor says there has been some new information revealed since the 34th anniversary in 2020 was marked with a release of a bonus episode of the Someone Knows Something podcast, which examined Kerrie Ann’s case in its fifth season.
That episode included Trevor Brown and podcast produce David Ridgen taking a road trip to Norway House to try to determine which officer there a caller who said he’d killed someone was looking for when his after-hours call was rerouted to Thompson, which used to be the dispatch centre for Northern Manitoba RCMP operations before being consolidated with southern Manitoba in a Winnipeg call centre in the 1990s.
“We’re pretty sure now we know the identity of the RCMP member that was requested on the night of Kerrie’s murder, the caller that called into RCMP and requested a specific member in Norway House,” Trevor says.
The discovery was made after a friend and former resident of Thompson had lunch with Trevor while she was in town and then travelled on to visit another former Thompsonite in Saskatchewan. They got talking about the case and how Trevor was trying to find this officer and the woman told Trevor’s friend that she had phone books from back then, including one from 1987.
“The RCMP members in Norway House are all listed by name, address and private phone number,” Trevor said.
They believe the officer that was asked for was Joseph Alain Labrasseur, who may later have changed the spelling of his last name to Lebrasseur. So far, however, Trevor and Ridgen haven’t tracked him down.
“Unfortunately we can’t find him to save our lives,” said Trevor, who has been told by the RCMP before that the call is a red herring and that they know who made the call and that that person was cleared of any involvement in Kerrie’s death. “I wold love to know what he remembers about the time and, of course, what followup was done with him, if anything, because we know the RCMP said it was followed up on but I don’t believe them. The fact that they said they’ve cleared the caller, they’ve identified the caller, it’s just ridiculous.”
The RCMP have also said that a private lab in the United States has been able to extract DNA from crime scene evidence and that another lab is conducting the genetic genealogy portion of the process to build the family tree of whoever the DNA belongs to. While Trevor has suspicions about this information’s veracity, he also harbours hope.
“If it’s true, I’m convinced it’s going to lead to answers,” he said. “We’ll know at a minimum who it was, whether they’re dead or alive.”
Even more than for himself, Trevor wants answers for his dad Jim.
“I so much want an arrest made before my dad dies. His health is declining. I think this is what keeps him going.”
