Case Summary
On June 23, 1990, nineteen-year-old Kyle Unger attended a rock music festival near Roseisle, Manitoba.1 While at the festival, Unger spoke briefly with an acquaintance from high school, sixteen-year-old Brigitte Grenier. Around midnight, festival attendees observed Grenier dancing closely with seventeen-year-old Timothy Houlahan, whom Unger did not know.2 Eventually, Grenier and Houlahan made their way to a wooded area of the festival grounds.3
Grenier was not seen again. Houlahan was next observed between 4:00 and 4:30 a.m. on June 24, with mud on his clothes and blood and scratches on his face.4 Unger had also disappeared from the festival for some time, having told his friend that he was going to search for women to pick up.5 Unlike Houlahan, however, he returned with no mud, blood, or scratches on his person.6 Later that morning, Grenier’s body was found in a secluded area of the grounds. She had been brutally beaten and sexually assaulted.7
The RCMP interviewed both Houlahan and Unger in the days following the murder. Houlahan gave two police statements to the RCMP officers. In the first statement, he claimed to have had sex with Grenier before being attacked and knocked unconscious by a person fitting Unger’s description.8 In the second, he alleged that Unger killed Grenier and that he himself had played a smaller role. Houlahan claimed that Unger had ordered him to punch Grenier, and later to help him move her body, and he had complied under duress.9 Subsequently, both Unger and Houlahan were arrested and charged with first degree murder.10
On December 11, 1990, at the preliminary inquiry (held to determine if the Crown’s case was strong enough to merit going to trial), the Crown stayed all charges against Unger and he was therefore released.11 However, an inmate soon came forward claiming that Unger had admitted to killing Grenier while they were both incarcerated.12 Convinced of Unger’s guilt, the RCMP planned a “Mr. Big” sting with the aim of inducing him to confess to Grenier’s murder. In this type of operation, undercover officers posing as gang members offer the suspect a lucrative position in their criminal organization, but only if they will first prove their credentials – i.e., confess – to the purported crime boss (“Mr. Big”).13
The sting against Unger, called “Operation Drifter”, began on June 13, 1991. Two undercover officers staged a breakdown of their vehicle outside the hobby farm in rural Manitoba where Unger lived.14 As the sting progressed, the officers befriended Unger, gave him expensive meals and alcohol, showed him large sums of money, and promised him attractive employment in the fictitious crime group – provided that he would first confess to Grenier’s murder.15 Many times, Unger denied that he had killed her, but the sting succeeded in the end: desperate to prove himself to his new friends and colleagues, Unger made a false confession to the undercover “Mr. Big” on June 22, 1991.16 He was rearrested on June 25 and charged with first degree murder.17
Unger and Houlahan’s joint murder trial commenced on January 20, 1992.18 The Crown relied on three key pieces of evidence against Unger – a hair found on Grenier’s sweatshirt, the “jailhouse” informant’s testimony, and his “Mr. Big” confession – treated in turn, below.19
First, the Crown presented a forensic hair microscopy expert, who testified that the sweatshirt hair was microscopically comparable to Unger’s. This evidence was crucial to the prosecution’s case, since the hair was the only physical evidence connecting Unger to the crime.20 However, the expert had not tested the hair to see if it also matched Grenier’s two friends (romantic partners) who lent her the sweatshirt that evening.21 Furthermore, while hair microscopy was considered “good science” at the time of Unger’s trial, we now know – thanks to DNA testing – that it simply “cannot support any statement as to the likelihood of a match” between hair retrieved from a crime scene and that of a particular suspect.22
Second, the jailhouse informant testified that “after being advised that [his] charge was stayed” at the preliminary inquiry, Unger had told him, “I killed her and I got away with it.”23 However, defence counsel proved that Unger had been “released directly from the courthouse” when the stay of proceedings was entered, undercutting the informant’s account.24
Third, the trial judge permitted the Crown to use the “Mr. Big” confession as evidence against Unger, despite the fact that its details were obviously untrue.25 For example, Unger had claimed that he killed Grenier by a bridge, but the bridge in question was not built until several months after the murder.26 Unger had also claimed that he committed the murder alone, despite the fact that Houlahan was involved, by Houlahan’s own admission.27 Though the defence pointed out several such lies – and called a number of people acquainted with Unger, who testified that he was a “story teller” – the Crown argued that the dubious “confessions” and hair analysis were together sufficient to prove Unger’s guilt.28
Unger and Houlahan were convicted of first degree murder on February 8, 1992. They were sentenced to life in prison.29 Both men appealed their convictions to the Manitoba Court of Appeal. On July 7, 1993, the court found Unger’s appeal “devoid of merit.”30 Unger sought leave for a further appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada, but the Court dismissed his request.31 The Court of Appeal did, however, allow Houlahan’s appeal and grant him a new trial (primarily on the basis that the trial judge’s instructions to the jury had “entangled and confused … the case against [each] co-accused”).32 Houlahan took his life before his new trial could begin.33
The accuracy of hair microscopy was called into question in 2003, when “DNA evidence demonstrated the innocence of James Driskell, who had been convicted of first degree murder in part due to flawed hair microscopy evidence presented at his trial.”34 Bruce MacFarlane, then Manitoba’s Deputy Attorney General, established an advisory committee tasked with reviewing homicide cases in which hair comparison evidence played a role in the conviction. This committee released a report of its findings on August 19, 2004, which included mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA) analysis performed in regards to Unger’s conviction.35 The test results proved that the hair from Grenier’s sweatshirt had not come from Unger.36
In light of this revelation, on September 13, 2004, Unger filed an application to the Minister of Justice for his conviction to be reviewed.37 He was released on bail on November 4, 2005, having spent over 14 years in prison. The judge who ordered his release noted that the Crown’s case had been significantly weakened because it could no longer rely on either the hair microscopy evidence or the statement of the jailhouse informant (which would not be called at the retrial due to updated Crown policy guidelines). Moreover, an expert on false confessions would be reviewing Unger’s “Mr. Big” confession.38
The Minister of Justice quashed Unger’s conviction in March 2009, stating that there was “a reasonable basis to conclude that a miscarriage of justice likely occurred,” and ordered a new trial.39 That October, Deputy Attorney General Don Slough, who had worked on Unger’s case as a prosecutor, requested that the court enter an acquittal because “it would be unsafe to retry [him] on the available evidence.”40 Unger was acquitted on October 23, 2009.41
On September 21, 2011, Unger filed a civil suit against the government, RCMP, and Crown prosecutors, seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction. In April 2019, the government finally settled Unger’s lawsuit for an undisclosed amount.42