More than five decades after a 40-year-old chef and father of two was killed near a downtown Winnipeg construction site, the three men wrongfully convicted in his murder have been exonerated — leaving a crucial question unanswered.

Who really killed Ting Fong Chan?

“To say the trail is cold … doesn’t quite get to it,” said James Lockyer, a lawyer and the director of Innocence Canada. That group helped exonerate Allan Woodhouse, Brian Anderson and Clarence Woodhouse in Chan’s 1973 killing, and has filed a posthumous application for Russell Woodhouse’s manslaughter conviction to also be reviewed.

The more time that has passed in a case like this, the colder that trail — and “I hate to say this, but probably the less enthusiasm to reopen the investigation,” Lockyer said.

But does that make it impossible? Not quite.

In fact, the real killer has been identified in at least three other cases the organization has worked on — sometimes decades after the crime, like in the 1969 death of Saskatoon nurse Gail Miller, where DNA evidence helped exonerate David Milgaard nearly 30 years later.

DNA was also what helped identify the real culprit in the 1984 killing of nine-year-old Christine Jessop in Queensville, north of Toronto, decades after her next-door neighbour, Guy Paul Morin, was wrongfully convicted. DNA evidence also helped clear Greg Parsons, who was wrongfully convicted in the 1991 death of his mother, Catherine Carroll, in St. John’s.

A Winnipeg Police Service spokesperson said in light of the recent exonerations in the Chan homicide, the service will conduct “a review of the initial investigation to determine next steps” in the case, which they described in an email as an “open investigation.”

But in this case, one issue may be what evidence police still have.

Since the prosecution against the wrongfully convicted men relied on false confessions, Lockyer suspects there isn’t anything — no murder weapon or other physical evidence — that could yield the DNA of whoever really killed Chan.

However, that doesn’t mean they have nothing to work with. In reviewing parts of the case himself, Lockyer learned the police files identify other potential suspects who investigators at the time “discounted because they had decided who had done the crime,” he said.

“Now, maybe they can sort of have a better look at the other suspects, and what evidence it was that led them to identify them as potential suspects back in 1973.”

Missing exhibits, dead suspects

If a similar review of another Winnipeg wrongful conviction case is any indication, there could also be serious challenges ahead.

Andrew Mikolajewski is a retired Winnipeg detective who was tasked in 1999 with reviewing the investigation into the 1981 killing of 16-year-old Barbara Stoppel.

It didn’t take long to identify a man named Terry Arnold as a suspect in the case where Thomas Sophonow was wrongfully convicted.

Arnold killed himself in 2005, several years after being named as a suspect in Stoppel’s death. The convicted rapist left a note denying he had killed anyone.

But by the time Arnold’s name started raising red flags, Mikolajewski said much of the evidence police would have needed for their investigation was gone — something he said investigators may find as they review Chan’s homicide case.

WATCH | Detective says review of 1973 homicide could face challenges:

For one thing, officers’ notes from so long ago could be missing or destroyed, since “back in those days, officers just took their notebooks home when they retired or threw them out,” Mikolajewski said.

And if police did have any physical evidence related to the case, those exhibits could be gone too — which he said came up as an issue during the review of the investigation into Stoppel’s death and is “consistent with an awful lot of cold cases.”

“If you have missing exhibits, missing notes, and all these other issues, it becomes a confession case, which means that you have to get a confession so compelling that a judge will have to convict. Likelihood of that is pretty slim,” said Mikolajewski, adding that given how much time has passed, there’s a good chance whoever killed Chan is dead.

But if Winnipeg police are the ones that did the initial investigation, which a judge recently said was “infected” with systemic racism, should they be the ones to give the case a second look?

Lawyer James Lockyer, right, stands with Allan Woodhouse and Brian Anderson outside the Winnipeg Law Courts on July 18, 2023, after the two men were exonerated in the 1973 killing of Ting Fong Chan. (Brittany Hobson/The Canadian Press)

According to lawyer Lockyer and retired detective Mikolajewski, the answer is no — to avoid the possibility, or even perception, of any interference or bias.

“I would worry that they could come back with … ‘We have no reason to believe that our original investigation did not produce the real killers,'” Lockyer said, adding that sometime after Milgaard and Morin’s wrongful convictions, those cases were handed over to different policing agencies.

“Maybe I’m being unfair and cynical to the Winnipeg Police Service. But let’s avoid that possibility altogether and have someone else do it independently of them.”

The Winnipeg Police Service’s spokesperson declined to comment further on whether that review could be done externally, noting an ongoing lawsuit involving the case.

Relief — and closure

So if it’s unlikely DNA will answer the question of who really killed Chan, and there’s a real chance whoever did it is already dead, how much does it matter whether police are able to solve such an old case?

For the men who were wrongfully accused, the answer is a lot.

A teary-eyed Clarence Woodhouse stands outside the courthouse in Winnipeg earlier this month, after being exonerated in the 1973 death of Ting Fong Chan. (Tyson Koschik/CBC)

“There’s nothing Brian Anderson, Allan Woodhouse and Clarence Woodhouse would like more,” said Lockyer. 

“Russell Woodhouse is no longer with us, but his sister survives him, and she would like to know too.”

He added that even when a person has been legally exonerated, others may not believe they’re innocent — especially when no other suspect has been identified.

There’s also a societal interest in finding the actual killer, in part because of the chance that person continued committing crimes.

That was the case with Larry Fisher, the person who actually killed Gail Miller.

He “had been committing multiple rapes across Canada … when he should have been in jail, locked up for a murder that the police should have known he committed,” Lockyer said.

Finding the person responsible in a killing is also a critical part of the healing process for the victim’s family, said Karen Wiebe, executive director of the Manitoba Organization for Victim Assistance.

“You want the person that did this to be held accountable. And if somebody else is held accountable, that means the person that did it is walking free,” said Wiebe, whose 20-year-old son, TJ Wiebe, was murdered in 2003. “That’s not what anybody wants.”

Chan’s family were in court last summer when two of the men wrongfully convicted in the killing were acquitted — something Lockyer said he still remembers.

“When Brian Anderson and Allan Woodhouse were exonerated, they were there. I met them. I went up and introduced myself to them,” he said.

“They were very gracious — and they deserve to know who killed [him].”