Owen Rooney, Eric Wilson ... so what's changed since 1978?

Please Note: I've had this post held here in draft form for quite some time and did not want to post it for fear that family members might view it. Now that the Fifth Estate will be broadcasting a segment on March 11th 2011, I've decided to post this item. My regrets to the family and despite the content and tenor of this post, my continued hope that I am wrong.

Owen Rooney, Eric Wilson ... so what's changed since 1978?

The award-winning documentary Just Another Missing Kid, which was first broadcast on the Fifth Estate on CBC-TV on April 7, 1981, is an indictment of the apathy and bureaucracy of the legal system on both sides of the border. So what are the differences between the late seventies and the present day? Have law enforcement agencies changed their practices? Will they ever change?

Eric Wilson was 19. Owen Rooney was 24.
Eric Wilson was a Canadian citizen. Owen Rooney was on a working holiday in Canada.
Eric Wilson was last seen in the United States. Owen Rooney was last seen somewhat near the border of the United States and Canada.
Eric Wilson was last known to be in good health. Owen Rooney was last known to have suffered a serious neurological injury and to have been misdiagnosed and poorly treated.
Eric Wilson involved the legal system in Canada but primarily in the United States.
Owen Rooney involved the legal system in the United States but primarily in Canada.

There are some differences between the two disappearances but lots of similarities.

After considerable time was wasted by a variety of police agencies giving them the runaround, the Eric Wilson family had the good fortune to encounter a cop who told them "I'm not going to waste my time and your money running around all over the place looking for an amnesia victim: Either your son is a no-good louse who stole your car and is off somewhere doing drugs or he was a good kid who has been murdered. Which is it?" Yes, he said exactly that. Tactful ain't it! He was really and truly subtle in his approach to a very delicate issue at a time of a family's greatest need for tact wasn't he? There is one advantage however: he didn't bankrupt the family and let the case grow cold by wasting time looking all over the place for a non-existent victim of amnesia. Instead he started the ball rolling on a homicide investigation and he was the one who actually solved the case despite the "best efforts" of several police agencies and the FBI who all said "runaway kid" or "joined a cult".

The Owen Rooney family had the misfortune to have dealt with the RCMP who were only too perfectly happy to rubber-stamp the file as "Missing Person" and to leave it like that as the family ran all over Canada looking for an amnesia victim selling trinkets door-to-door. The loss of such deeply coded information as one's name is extremely rare. The loss of it for an extended period of time is even more rare. The loss of one's name while wearing a hospital bracelet is absurd beyond contemplation. The RCMP know this, yet they allow the Owen Rooney family to grasp at straws. It is so much easier on the RCMP to have the family scattered all over Canada tracking down dubious sightings than to have the family in Grand Forks breathing down the RCMP's neck and demanding action.

Sometimes you have to call a spade a spade. Sometimes its the right thing to do!
Try to do it tactfully if you can, but call a spade a spade! You ain't sparing the family from grief by holding out false hope. You are only prolonging their ordeal. And what is worse, you are only aiding the perpetrators to evade capture. One would think the RCMP would know this. They had not learned that lesson when The Fifth Estate did the Eric Wilson documentary in 1980, let us see if the RCMP has learned that lesson now.

Missing persons posters, newspaper features, TV "news" puff pieces can continue indefinitely. What has been the result so far? A "sighting" on Vancouver Island as one of three door-to-door salesmen when neighbors report there were no salesmen of any description at all during that time. A "sighting" in Alberta of a person so paranoid he could not have been hired for any job at all much less hired as a truck driver for some employer too foolish to ever ask to see a driver's license. What sort of investigative leads are these? Is it any wonder the Horsemen reach for a drink rather than for the reins of their steeds and go galloping off into the sunset?

Perhaps its time for the well respected Fifth Estate to prepare another award-winning documentary. This time, perhaps they will focus on informing the Canadian people that their RCMP is not there to tactfully hold hands and talk nonsense about amnesia just because there are heartbroken parents involved. No matter how attractive the RCMP finds Owen's sisters to be, its not the job of the RCMP to plant false hopes in the breasts they are staring at. What are the Horsemen going to do? Ride off in search of the criminals a year later because they were too busy sitting on their duffs while jotting down a series of endless vague sightings of utterly no merit whatsoever? There are people who couldn't tell an Australian accent from an Austrian accent but let them see a flyer or read a human interest piece in a weekly newspaper and suddenly they are experts at Australian accents as well as recalling descriptions of persons they saw weeks before even though they can't recall what they had for breakfast that very morning.

Families are under extreme emotions at times such as these and are not always able to properly assess their various options. The RCMP are supposed to be professionals. A bruise or contusion to an ear lobe is one thing, but bleeding from the ear canal is a sign of a serious neurological incident involving leakage of cerebral spinal fluid and impaired cognitive functioning. Suggesting a trip to a first aid station to obtain a band-aid is simply an absurd response of a police officer who views bilateral bleeding from the ear canals. A statement that people are trying to kill him is not necessarily paranoid behavior. The whole world may not be trying to kill him, only a limited few. The RCMP should have been aware that those limited few would-be murderers know how to get to that first aid station also. And if those malevolent few should happen to arrive when the only person who can give evidence against them is outside at a picnic table, there is no reason for them to hesitate to get done what has to be done and which they came fully prepared to do. Mental impairment simply made their job easier for them.

Now just to continue with the parallels between the Eric Wilson case, let me point out that Eric Wilson was keeping in touch with his parents via roadside payphones. That was the manner in which things were done back in the pre-historic era before cell phones, twitter and facebook. No one is more capable than the family to know how many times Owen would routinely keep in touch with his friends and relatives. The family has a general impression of his cell phone use but the RCMP has raw data available to it. Surely the RCMP doesn't really think a person with electronics training walks away from a non-functioning cell phone. Surely the RCMP knows in this day and age that young people rarely venture away from the internet these days. Surely the RCMP should have the wisdom to know that this is not and never has been a missing persons case. Surely the RCMP should have the courage to admit that to themselves and to act accordingly. So which is it that the RCMP lacks: common sense or courage?

NOTE: Additional information recently released about the messages to a girl friend show Owen Rooney to have been severely confused as to time and place. He not only thought someone who was two provinces away was in his immediate vicinity but that for some reason he thought she was in one particular house according to the two men who severely beat him.

The Fifth Estate: The well-respected Canadian news magazine will be airing a short segment on Owen Rooney and the search for further information about him. March 11, 2011.