Scars linger, 40 years later

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This article was published 20/01/2018 (2997 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

She was a healthy six pounds, seven ounces when she was born March 12, 1978.

Her hair was already thick and black, much like her dad’s, when she was featured several days later with her mom, Paula, and her 21-month-old brother Corey on the front page of the Brandon Sun. The headline read, Eight weeks later, victims picking up the pieces.

Her name was Beckie, named by the dad she never met.

If there was a ray of light from one of the darkest hours in Manitoba RCMP history, it was this baby girl.

Beckie Dawn Onofrey was born just weeks after her dad, Const. Dennis Anthony Onofrey, was killed in a wild shootout while checking on a stolen vehicle in Virden.

Today, her last name is Williams and she normally goes by Beck. She is one of several people caught in the wake of the Jan. 23, 1978, slaying and subsequent four-day hostage-taking that riveted a province.

“I don’t have any memories of my own,” Williams says earlier this week from North Vancouver.

“Sometimes I wonder which is worse, having a parent around for a short time and then losing that parent, or never having met one. This is the only life I know.

“The circumstances are incredibly sad, and at the same time they make me the person I am today.”

It was shortly before 1 a.m. when Onofrey, Cpl. Russ Hornseth, Const. Candace Adele Smith and Const. John O’Ray went to the Countryside Inn after another officer had noticed a truck, which was parked outside a hotel room, had been reported stolen in British Columbia.

O’Ray went to the rear of the motel to ward off any chance anyone could escape through a back window, while Onofrey, with his gun drawn, and the other two officers, went to Suite 20. Seconds later, after Hornseth asked the man who came to the door about the stolen truck, the occupant started firing with a shotgun.

Onofrey, 27, died on the spot. Hornseth was shot in the eye and Smith, a rookie in only her sixth week on patrol, was shot in the hip.

O’Ray fired several times at the fleeing motel-room occupants — Herbert Bruce Archer, 42, and 28-year-old Dorothy Lillian Malette — hitting Malette in the stomach. The pair escaped in one of the police cruisers and headed eastbound on the Trans-Canada Highway in a mad search for more weapons, a new vehicle and medical help.

They first took a hostage at a farmhouse just east of Virden, tying up the family there. They then drove to another farm and stole a vehicle there, tying up another couple.

They drove to third house and took a car after tying up the family there, and then ended up at a doctor’s house in Oak Lake where, for the next 93 hours, Archer held his hostage, along with the doctor and the doctor’s wife, at gunpoint. Early in the standoff, Archer agreed to have his wife taken to Brandon General Hospital. He also agreed to release the doctor, who had a heart condition.

The standoff finally ended on Friday, Jan. 27, when a deal was negotiated between defence counsel Hersh Wolch and Archer, which saw the hostages released in return for the dropping of outstanding fraud charges against him and for agreeing to let him meet with his wife in hospital.

It was a tough few weeks for the Mounties. Onofrey was the fourth RCMP officer shot to death that month alone.

Later in the year, both Archer and Malette were convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life imprisonment with no chance of parole for 25 years. Archer later died while serving his sentence. Malette was released after 15 years when she successfully applied for earlier parole with the so-called faint hope clause.

Onofrey’s funeral was held in Winnipeg the same day the hostage-taking ended. He is buried in the Assumption Roman Catholic Cemetery on the west end of the city. The grave marker has a photo of Onofrey and etchings of the RCMP regimental badge and of Jesus.

Underneath his wife and childrens’ names, are the words “always remembered with love.”

 

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She’s much frailer now, but Onofrey’s 90-year-old mother, Rose, still carries the grief she felt 40 years ago. But she also holds tight to the faith that has sustained her through those years.

“I go to St. Mary’s Cathedral every Sunday when I can,” Rose says during an interview at her Winnipeg apartment. “That’s where I took my sons when they were growing up. It’s where his funeral was.

“When he was killed, that was the worst thing that happened in my life. There’s nothing worse in the world than losing a child.”

While Rose admits there are many parts of her life she now forgets, she still vividly remembers her son’s decision to be a police officer and how proud she was of him.

“That’s all he really wanted to do,” she says. “If it’s what he wanted, I wanted him to have it. But I thought it was a dangerous job, but if he wanted it, I wanted it for him.”

Rose says through the years she told her grandchildren about the dad they didn’t know.

“I tell them he was a very nice person,” she says. “He was such a nice fellow. He had so many friends. He got along with everyone.

“I was always so proud of him.”

Rose also thinks about the years of living that her son never had. She says he’d be 67 now, long retired from the force, with grandchildren, likely living in Winnipeg and visiting her often.

“I often wonder why did something like that happen,” she says. “But I guess that’s the way life was supposed to be.

“What can you do?”

 

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The passing of 40 years has not only resulted in memories fading, but also the passing of key players in the drama.

Dr. Markus Scherz and his wife Stephanie died several years ago. Defence counsel Wolch, who was brought to Oak Lake to help end the standoff, and later served as Archer’s lawyer at his trial, died last year.

But defence counsel Jay Prober, who represented Malette, still clearly remembers his words of advice to his client at the onset of the trial.

“I told her don’t sit right next to him (Archer),” Prober says. “Don’t sit close to him. Don’t look at him. And she completely ignored me.

“They were holding hands during the whole time, looking at each other with googly eyes. I think they were convicted as a team. That’s why she was convicted. She didn’t shoot (Onofrey) — she had no idea what (Archer) would do. She was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

It was a highly charged atmosphere at the trial held in Brandon, he says.

“Hersh and I were unsuccessful applying for a change of venue,” he says. “It took us weeks to get a jury. It was difficult to find any juror who didn’t have an opinion on it.

“And then the judge, during his instructions to the jury, referred to them as Bonnie and Clyde. We objected, but we didn’t get anywhere.”

Forty years ago, Dave Penny, his wife Irene, and their two daughters, were in their house about 10 kilometres east of Virden, just off the Trans-Canada Highway, when an armed Archer walked into the unlocked residence shortly after 2 a.m. on Jan. 23 and demanded firearms and the use of their vehicle.

Penny, a municipal waterworks employee, recalls how Archer forced him to go with him to get more firearms at a nearby farmhouse, leaving Malette with a gun to watch over his tied-up family.

“That was worrisome,” the now 81-year-old says in a recent phone interview.

Penny and Archer soon returned, picked up Malette and headed to the doctor’s house in nearby Oak Lake. Penny remained a hostage there, while the injured Malette was later taken to hospital in Brandon following negotiations with police.

“She had a bullet in her. When she was taken to hospital, that’s the last I saw of her.”

Even though it was 40 years ago, Penny still recalls being scared throughout the hostage-taking.

“We never knew what was coming next,” he says. “You didn’t know how to act. You were in shock.

“He was always talking to police. He says he had plans, but they were pretty farfetched. He had plans about going south, but the only thing holding him back was (Malette).

“It was a pretty sad affair.”

News accounts at the time said the hostages hugged Archer before he was arrested and taken away — with some suggesting it was a case of Stockholm syndrome — where captives begin to sympathize with the captor.

That wasn’t the case, says Penny, who was given a week off work following the ordeal.

“It was pretty sad all around. It was hard on the doctor’s wife, too. If he’d been even more aggressive he would have shot more. He wasn’t aggressive, but he hated police. But he had his good points.

“It was a mixed-up thing.”

Penny’s wife Irene is more blunt about the incident and the role Malette had in it.

“She was wicked,” Irene says in a phone interview. “She was as bad as he was. I didn’t want to upset her.

“In my mind, she was the ringleader. She seemed more aggressive. She can say she didn’t shoot anybody, but they don’t know who pulled the trigger in that room.”

Occasionally someone in town will mention the shootout and hostage-taking, but it’s mostly her young grandchildren who bring it up now, Irene says.

“They always want to see the clippings I saved. And there are more younger ones coming up who will want to see them.

“It doesn’t seem like 40 years ago. Time is going so fast.”

 

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The Mounted Police Professional Association of Canada (MPPAC) says the Virden situation has been taught to incoming officers for years.

MPPAC president Louis Philippe Theriault says it’s normal for incidents like that to become part of training.

“There have been lessons learned from almost every death,” Theriault says.

“It’s not a fault of training, but sometimes it is.”

Following the 2014 shooting in Moncton, N.B., where a gunman killed three Mounties and injured two in a deliberate attack on police, an independent review identified several gaps in training.

Meanwhile, Rob Creasser, a spokesman for the MPPAC, says deadly scenarios are recreated for training, much like what the force did in the wake of the fatal shootings of four officers in Mayerthorpe, Alta., in 2005.

“They built a Quonset out in Regina (the training academy),” Creasser says. “They study each individual incident to learn from them.”

On March 3, 2005, lone gunman James Roszko ambushed Consts. Anthony Gordon, Peter Schiemann, Brock Myrol and Leo Johnston inside a Quonset hut on his property near Mayerthorpe.

Creasser, who was shot at during a traffic incident more than two decades ago, began training with the RCMP three years after Onofrey was killed. He says there have been two significant changes since the Virden attack — officers are equipped with different sidearms and holsters, and have access to bulletproof vests.

“We still had the ‘widow-maker’ (in 1978). It was a six-shooter revolver,” he says of the sidearm that left officers vulnerable because it was difficult to unholster, had fewer bullets and was harder to load.

“Other police already had Glocks or 9-mm handguns with a much easier strap to get it out. Bulletproof vests came years later.”

 

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Growing up without a dad was the only life she knows, Williams says.

“My brother and I were ‘the kids without a dad’, which was just the way it was. My mom was both parents to us and did an incredible job. She is one of the strongest people I know.”

There are many events while growing up — whether major milestones or simple daily interactions — that she would have liked her dad to have been there to take part in.

“The regular, daily things that I now do with my kids,” she says. “Homework, soccer practice, making pancakes. And, of course, that he could have been at my graduation, walked me down the aisle at my wedding and held his grandchildren.

“My brother stepped in for him at my wedding and that will always be a special memory for me.”

Her dad picked her name before she was born, but Williams doesn’t know what meaning Beckie had to him.

She remembers thinking about him a lot in the months leading to her own 27th birthday and how different things would have been for her dad back then.

“He had a career, a wife, a toddler and a baby on the way. He had so much to live for and so many people relied on him.

“To me, that’s the saddest part.”

After the shooting, Williams says her mother received a lot of support from both the RCMP and Virden residents, but three years later she decided to move her family to British Columbia, where they all continue to live to this day.

“She had a good friend network there, but even still, I think the memories of the life she shared with my dad became too much,” Williams says.

“There must have been reminders of him everywhere… I still don’t know how she built up the strength to pack up her life, a widow with two kids under four, and move to the West Coast. She was, and still is, a very strong, brave woman.”

Because Williams still has relatives in Winnipeg, she has driven to the city many times on the Trans-Canada Highway.

“I have visited my dad’s grave every time,” she says.

In 2015, she took her grandmother Rose to Regina for the annual memorial service at the RCMP Academy. There have been 238 Mounties killed in the line of duty since 1876.

“When I took my granny Rose to Regina for the memorial in 2015 we drove from Winnipeg and through Virden. We drove past the Countryside (Inn) so I have seen where everything happened.

“I didn’t need to stop and look around.”

kevin.rollason@freepress.mb.ca