Corinne McKeowen and Doreen Leclair are dead: stabbed to death while the 911 operator listened to their fifth disregarded call for assistance. William John Dunlop murdered them in February 2000 in their Winnipeg home. He was a vicious ex-partner of one of the women, and he was more credible to the police than were the women themselves, and more credible than the two decades of information available to police and their staff as to the pressures on women in the moment of reaching for assistance in an emergency.
Shamefully, the tapes revealing the failure of the 911, and police response were not released until friends and relatives forced that release through the courts.
Initially the courts provided access to the transcripts after an application by media businesses. “We want the people to know exactly what the hell goes on with 911 operators,” said Hank Meadows, brother-in-law of Corrine and Doreen. He lives just a couple of houses down the road from the murder scene. He said people could read the transcripts over and over and not get the true sense of what happened without hearing the tapes. We think the transcript alone contains plenty of information.
Read this story in Canada’s Promises to Keep: The Charter and Violence Against Women, pp. 177-178