Conspiracy of Silence

Michael Mahonen is both sympathetic and chilling in his portrayal of 'Lee Colgan' in this acclaimed Canadian mini-series, based on a the true crime novel of the same name, by Lisa Priest. This film is thought provoking, as the crime committed was motivated by racial prejudice in a small Canadian town, The Pas, Manitoba. Mr. Mahonen won the Gemini Award for his role, and it was well deserved. I recommend watching this film, which currently enjoys re-run status, on the U.S. cable networks Lifetime Television for Women & its 'sister network' Lifetime Movie Network (aka LMN)...Mr. Mahonen is truly an actor to watch out for in the near future!

I have seen this movie many times over the years, and it is no less gut-wrenching today. Michael Mahonen won a Gemini award for his portrayal of Lee Colgan, a teenager who went out for a good time one night and ended up as an unwitting accomplice to a murder. The story is a complex tale in which the high school students who know what happened are threatened with violence if they go to the police and the older citizens don't want to see whites go prison over the death of a Cree.

The first half of the film takes place at the time of the murder, and the second half takes places roughly fifteen years later. Lee Colgan has become an alcoholic, while the other three boys who were in the car have gone on with their lives. Some of the young women who heard about the murder after the fact are still haunted by guilt at not having spoken up. There is also a sense of frustration on the part of the Mounties at knowing they're surrounded by people who know something but refuse to tell. I would like to add a personal observation here. Michael Mahonen's transformation from a carefree teenager to an alcoholic who is far older than his years was impressive to me when I first saw it. The performance became absolutely astounding to me when I learned that he made the film while he was working on the "Road to Avonlea" series. In the mornings, he was playing a teenager in the early 1900's with an Irish accent. In the afternoons, he was portraying a thirty-something alcoholic in the 1980's with a Canadian accent.

I've seen Conspiracy Of Silence numerous times over the years and even today it's still a haunting story to watch it's so unbelievable that a murder case like this one took over 16 years to end. What made me a bit angry was that the town Of Pas, Manitoba, Canada kept silent, they chose to protect the killers and not come forward because it was only a native woman that died and they didn't care.

Gemini award winner Michael Mahonen delivered a knockout performance as Lee Colgan one of the four men involved with the murder who was just a kid who turned into a alcoholic because of the guilt he carried for years. I read the book written by Lisa Priest and it gives accurate details from the murder in 1971 to 1987 when the man who killed Helen Betty Osborne was finally brought to justice.

On November 12, 1971 Helen Betty Osborne, (St.John) was a nineteen year old Indian woman who was out for a walk when she was beaten and murdered by Dwayne Johnston (Tracey). After her body was discovered the town was scared and shocked, one of the suspects Lee Colgan (Mahonen) couldn't stop talking about what happened at the pump house that night. The police continued to question anyone who might know something about who killed the young woman and why. However the town chose to keep quiet and all four boys including Jim Houghton (Potts) & Norm Manger (Chambers) went free. 11 years later, the boys have all moved on with their lives however Lee Colgan turned into an alcoholic and hasn't stopped talking about that gruesome murder as a result his wife Sandy (Kidney) left him and took their children. When a new constable Steve Frishbilski (Ouimette) sees the case file he becomes fascinated by the case and decides to investigate, another add is put in the paper asking people who know anything about the 1971 murder of a 19 year old Indian woman to come forward and hopefully help to close this case.

Two women Sherrie Linder(Disher) and Angie (Johnson) both tell the officer what they know Sherrie says that Lee confessed to his involvement she wrote an anonymous letter to the town paper detailing Colgan's story about the murder which lead to his arrest in 1986. In exchange for immunity he has to testify against Dwayne Jonhston & Jim Houghton his best friend. Finally in 1987 the case was officially closed when Johnston was arrested and convicted of first degree murder . After seeing this chilling tale I hated that the town was so racist against Indian people and how they kept quiet all those years it shouldn't have taken all those years to solve a murder. 10/10

I really liked this film because it focused on the wrongful injustices that have been committed against North America's First Nations people. Helen Betty Osbourne along with Donald Marshall and JJ Harper are 3 examples of what they went through at the hands of Canada's so-called "justice system". "Conspiracy of Silence" was well made because it accurately depicted what went on from that incident late that night in 1971 to the actual convictions that were FINALLY made in 1986 when all 4 men involved in the murder were brought to trial. In the end, only 1 man (the guy who committed the actual murder) went to prison while the other 3 went free. Now although justice finally seemed to be served, it literally took 15 YEARS for the 4 men to be brought to trial!! That's what's so appalling about the whole situation! Helen Betty Osbourne had something in common with Donald Marshall and JJ Harper. All 3 victims were Native (Donald Marshall is the only one still alive). Helen was a Cree First Nations woman who was never viewed as a human being by the Canadian laws and governments. To them, she was only "an Indian" and because of that, it took a whopping 15 years for the offenders to brought to justice! Of course the 4 men who committed the crime were white so it didn't matter to the "justice system" that they killed an innocent person (especially if the dead person was Native). If I were the judge and jury of that case, ALL 4 men involved would have had a lengthy jail term because the law IS the law and it applies to EVERYONE in this country who commits a serious crime like that. There's no room for racism and its bogus policies in this so- called "justice system" of ours.

Well............ anyways........... this is why I gave this film an 8 out of 10.

There is a scene in "Midnight Cowboy" in which the newly arrived John Voight is flowing along a New York street with the rest of the pedestrians when, to his awe, the stream bifurcates in order to flow more smoothly around the spread-eagled body of a well-dressed man who had been carrying an attache case. This seems to be emblematic of our attitude toward the death of a stranger, or even an acquaintance, in our midst. Nobody cares. In "River's Edge," the teenagers look wonderingly at the naked dead body of a classmate, and then go about their business, other things, like making out, occupying their minds. Nobody cares. But the late Stanley Milgram's quasi-experiments at Yale suggest the real responses of witnesses are anything but apathetic. They're emotionally aroused when a stranger is in a life-threatening situation; but they don't know what to do. They feel that someone else, somewhere, must have the situation in hand. In "Conspiracy of Silence," Milgram's findings are illustrated in the social dynamics of a small and snow-bound Canadian town. The Cree belong to a different caste than the white people and move in slightly different circles, but everybody soon knows what happened, except the agents of social control whose job it is to see that justice is done. In this superior TV miniseries we see just how things can go wrong. I suspect that the racism may have been exaggerrated to provide an additional dimension to the story here, and that the murderers of a white girl might have taken almost as long to be brought to court. Not sixteen years, maybe, as happened in this case, but probably not overnight either. Canada has always had a pretty fair record with regard to its treatment of Indians. Still, there are too many forces at work in small communities that are inimical to our acting like the upright citizens we like to think we are. It would be relatively simple for the rest of us to make value judgments about the residents of this town, if the town were like the one Rod Steiger tries to ride herd on in "In The Heat of the Night." Even today, in some of the smaller towns in Texas, when a murder is reported, the sheriff is liable to ask, "Did he NEED killin'?" But these Canadians are confused and distraught, not at all complacent. This film is very well done for its kind. The brutality is mostly offscreen or in shadows but is horrifying. The performances are uniformly good. It would have been easy to turn this into a shoddy narrative of prejudice, and of good vs. evil. But everyone concerned with this production avoided the easy way and the effort pays off.