(Parts of this column were published in the The Vancouver Province on Oct. 23, 2005)
Cornering a killer
By Leo Knight
When Brock Graham described where he put the body, Brad Duggan said, “Show me.” And the killer of his sister drew him a map, pinpointing where he dumped her body.
He almost got away with murder.
Former Vancouver police officer Brock Graham would have never been charged with the 1993 slaying of Lynn Duggan were it not for the love of her family and the determination of her brother, Brad.
“I wanted to fight the fight for my sister,” he said at an exclusive interview with Prime Time Crime just days before Graham was to appear in BC Supreme Court to answer to a charge of Second Degree Murder.
“One night we were sitting down to a family dinner and my dad broke down and I just wanted to get this over,” said Duggan. “I thought I gotta get in front of this guy.”
That started an odyssey that culminated with Graham’s guilty plea on Friday.
For over a decade, despite being the prime suspect in Lynn Duggan’s murder, Graham had managed to elude his pursuers. Brad Duggan went to great lengths to say that it wasn’t for a lack of effort on the part of the RCMP. Quite the contrary, in Duggan’s view it was because of Graham’s former career as a police officer that he knew how to cover his tracks and almost get away with murder.
Once Duggan made up his mind to get in front of Graham, he had to figure out how to do it. Graham was in Mountain Institute serving time for the murder of Patty Ducharme. He had resisted all efforts of the RCMP investigators to interview them. Why, Duggan thought, would he agree to see me?
He heard about a thing called the Victim Offender Mediation Program (VOMP) run by David Gustafason and Sandi Bergen in Langley. The idea behind the program is to help bring closure and comfort to victims by putting the victim and the offender face to face with a third party.
He was asked directly by Gustafson and Berger, “Why do you want to meet with him?”
“Because, I have a lot to talk about,” was Duggan’s response.
It took over a year and numerous conversations back and forth to open the door to Mountain Institute for Duggan, but finally he was told that Graham had agreed to the meeting. He was told that Graham had “issues” too.
Graham apparently believed that the Duggan family was out to kill him.
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On October 14th, 2004, exactly a year to the day before Graham first appeared in North Vancouver Provincial Court, the meeting was to take place. Brad Duggan was about to come face to face with the man he was convinced had killed his sister.
“It was amazing because I felt strong throughout,” said Duggan. “But, I don’t think I could have gone through with this without the toughness the WHL instilled in me,” said Duggan, who won the Memorial Cup playing on the Portland Winter Hawks alongside Cam Neely.
He was sitting in an interview room at nine fifteen in the morning and he was told Graham would be there in 15 minutes. A long, intense 15 minutes as it turned out. Finally, the door opened and Graham was escorted in.
“My eyes locked in on him. For the first few minutes he couldn’t look at me,” recalled Duggan.
“Finally, he looked at me as I started: You are the number one suspect. You are the only suspect and I want to hear what happened.”
For the next seven hours, the two men talked. For the first time Duggan began hearing the details of his sister’s brief relationship with the man who would ultimately take her life.
But not all the details. Graham was clearly holding back something. Details that Duggan knew that somehow, he had to get. Details of the last few hours of his sister’s life. Details that only the killer knew. Details, he was convinced, that only Graham knew.
According to Graham, he couldn’t remember some of the details of that tragic day and Duggan knew his only chance was to trip him up.
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Brock Graham was a family man with a wife and kids. He had another girlfriend too. Her name was Martine. On the day Lynn Duggan died, he spent the day with Martine and some visiting friends from Australia.
Typically, as with many murderers, he claimed he couldn’t remember a portion of the day.
He was a suspect in the disappearance of Lynn Duggan very early on in the investigation. The RCMP even phoned him from Lynn’s apartment. He denied any knowledge of her whereabouts and claimed to Lynn’s brother Brad that the police had not asked him to take a polygraph.
He was lying.
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“I called bullshit on that,” exclaimed Brad. “My goal was to get him to talk. This wasn’t about Brad. This was about Brock.”
But Graham insisted that the Duggan family were out to get him and Brad Duggan saw the opening he needed.
“We’re not trying to kill you. We want you alive and living in hell, in here,” he looked his sister’s killer in the eye.
“I’m telling you, I’ll take a polygraph. I’m prepared to take one about the death threats. You are claiming you’re innocent, I want you to take a polygraph too.”
Graham had claimed he had received some death threats. He waved some letters at Duggan.
After talking about the effects on his family, Duggan then spoke about the children of Patty Ducharme who he had gone to meet prior to seeing Graham.
“I started talking about my family then about his. He said Laurie, his wife, wouldn’t let him see his kids.”
“I told him he needed to clean this up. I felt I was getting to him,” explained Duggan.
By this time it was about four thirty in the afternoon and Duggan pushed hard on what he considers was the turning point.
He said directly to Graham, “When you get out of here you may think you’re free but you won’t be. That is when you’re getting in the hot box.”
“That was the key I think,” said Duggan. “That was when he agreed to take a polygraph. He also agreed to start talking to the police.”
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Weeks later, RCMP investigators Don Adams and Gerry Webb took Graham to Surrey Detachment and he was given a polygraph test.
He failed.
Adams and Webb went at their prime suspect hard. They almost got it out of him then. Almost.
Graham demanded an independent review of the polygraph which yielded the same results. Armed with that report, Adams and Webb went to see Graham again. This time, Graham gave it up.
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On the last day of Lynn Duggan’s life, Brock Graham was supposed to teach a martial arts class. He called his associate to cover it for him. He went to see his girlfriend Martine and his friends visiting from Australia.
According to Graham he got into an argument with her and then drove his Australian friends to the airport where they sat drinking awaiting their flight time. Lynn Duggan paged him there supposedly to talk about a dinner later in the week.
He stopped by the Fraser Arms Hotel and picked up some off sales and drove to Lynn’s apartment in North Vancouver arriving around eleven that evening.
They spent some time looking at a travel book of Australia that Lynn had bought for him. They drank a couple of beers and chatted. Eric Clapton provided the background music.
They spent some intimate time and Lynn asked where he’d been staying. He then told her about Martine and an argument started.
He claimed she came at him. He said to the police, “I hit her with my right open palm in the nose. It spun her backwards onto the bed.”
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When Lynn Duggan’s skull was found there were numerous fractures under her eyes and there was a large hole in the back.
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“I saw Lynn had blood trickling from her nose. I grabbed the small hammer near the bike and shifted around the bed. Lynn turned and as she closed I pushed her down with my right hand and hit her six or seven times with the hammer.”
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At their second meeting, after Graham confessed to the police, Brad Duggan said he was lying, that Lynn had not attacked him and he wasn’t defending himself. He responded by saying, “All’s I wanted to do was go home to my wife.”
Graham described what he did with the body of Lynn Duggan after he drove a hammer into her skull “six or seven times.”
When he described where he put the body, Duggan said, “Show me.” And the killer of his sister, drew him a map, pinpointing where he dumped her body.
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That meeting in June was hard for Brad Duggan. His sister’s killer sat across the table from him and walked him through it, step by bloody step.
At one point Duggan had to get up and leave to try and control his emotions. He barely could. But he kept himself in check and did nothing to give Graham an excuse, an out or an appeal.
Even when Graham described in vivid, gory detail what he did with the body to try and cover the terrible thing he had done, Brad Duggan held it together.
“I had to sit and listen to him and then go home and tell my family. That was the toughest day of my life. But we got him.”
And with that, perhaps, Lynn Duggan might finally rest in peace.
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